Talk:GAFIA

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I can never remember what the acronym stands for, and find this entry very useful. Please don't delete it. -- Avirr (talk) 05:04, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Desperate for something to read while waiting for a bus, I found a copy of Doc Smith's Subspace Encounters the other day. At one point, one of the characters goes, or pretends to go, on holiday to a planet named Gafia. It seems too obvious an in-joke to be a coincidence, but it would be nice, if anyone knows for sure and could provide a citation.The-Dixie-Flatline (talk) 07:06, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Doc was always well-connected with fandom, and wrote to and for fanzines of his day. I doubt he ever found it necessary to say it out loud, as all the fen would spot the joke and the non-fen wouldn't care. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proz?

"Diagnostic symptoms are sheer boredom while trying to read proz or fanzines..."

What exactly is "proz"? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's an abbrev for "prozines" (i.e., professionally published science fiction magazines, as distinguished from "fanzines"). In the days when you manually typed your fanzine on a mimeo stencil or dittoo master and wanted to save keystrokes, fanzine fans delighted in creating abbreviations and acronyms in much the way that texting does. Like computer leetspeak (and originally for analogous reasons), it became a distinguishing feature of fanspeak, and (inevitably) a shibboleth. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]