The Eighth Stage of Fandom

by Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison (Afterword), Wilson Tucker (Introduction)

Assembled here are Robert Bloch's best essays from fan-produced magazines, including such classics as "The Seven Ages of Fan," "Through a Picture-Tube, Darkly," "The Demolished Fan," "Poe and Me," "In Weird Tales," and "The Incredible Head-Shrinking Man." Bloch's blend of wry humor, insight, awful puns, and verbal play make the 46 essays and 3 poems in The Eighth Stage of Fandom some of the most interesting and remarkable work in a career filled with the interesting and remarkable.

Genres: Nonfiction, Fandom

212 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2001

About the author

Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer. He was the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884, Chicago-1952, Chicago), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880, Attica, Indiana-1944, Milwaukee, WI), a social worker, both of German-Jewish descent.

Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction, and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction (Psycho). He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle; Lovecraft was Bloch's mentor and one of the first to seriously encourage his talent.

He was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award (for his story "That Hell-Bound Train"), the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He also worked for a time in local vaudeville, and tried to break into writing for nationally-known performers. He was a good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the 1960's, he wrote 3 stories for Star Trek.

Reviews

[EJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is mostly fascinating as a window into a certain era of sci-fi/fantasy fandom, and you'll get more out of it if you already know at least a little of the background. Even having some awareness of fandom history, I still found some parts of the book impenetrable; I suspect anyone going in totally blind, as it were, might find more of it incomprehensible than not. (Though some things can be looked up online as you encounter them--http://fancyclopedia.org/ might be of help.) That said, there are essays here that are still relevant, some on very specifically fandom-related topics (such as what makes someone a BNF and those people who loudly declare that they are leaving fandom because they've Grown Up and realized it was a Childish Hobby) and some on more general pop-culture topics (I found his article jabbing at TV cliches still more accurate than not, and then there's the one on bad film adaptations of sf novels, which is a problem we will probably always be plagued with).

All in all, a solid read for anyone who is interested in the state of fandom in the 1930s-1950s--all the essays included seem to have been written in the '50s, but Bloch was already a fandom veteran by then and some of the essays go into some depth on the way things used to be and how they've changed. (I say "seem to" because the book leaves the essays undated; I did find this a bit frustrating, as knowing what year they were published or even what order they were written in would help with understanding the context.)

There is some period-typical sexism, mainly in terms of assuming the Default Fan is male and women interested in sff are rare and sexy unicorns, but overall for something written by a white middle-class guy in the 1950s, I'd say it's better than average on not being a dick about marginalized people in general.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very nice collection of essays (and three poems) on various topics that Robert Bloch wrote for fanzines. It says a lot about Bloch's generosity that, though he was a successful writer, he also contributed to fanzines, and his wit and insights are quite delightful. Since these pieces appeared in science fiction fanzines, they might be lost on anyone who is not a science fiction fan and not familiar with the culture of fandom. But I thoroughly enjoyed them. This edition has an introduction by Wilson Tucker and an afterword by Harlan Ellison.

[Booklover · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb history of science fiction fandom.

[C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's no fair way to award stars to this--some pieces were five-star, others (of less interest to me) were two or three. If you're interested in fandom history, it's worth a read.