I was struck by the following passages from Hansen’s THEN (p124, Ansible Editions):
Relations between fandom’s sercon and fannish wings were not always harmonious, but by 1954 external developments, in the form of SF’s increasing popularity were beginning to affect them both. Writing in HYPHEN, Bill Temple observed that:
“Today SF batters you with more magazines and books than you could hope to read if you did nothing else all day. It’s all over the cinema and TV screens, and drools from the radio. It infests advertisment hoardings, strip cartoons, kids’ comics, toy-shops, literary weeklies, and pantomimes. It’s even been mentioned at The Globe.
We always wanted to spread SF, and now, God help us, we’ve done it. And somehow in the stampede the magic has been trampled underfoot.”
To which Willis replied:
“Fandom does seem to be passing through a period of self-evaluation at the moment. For years its ostensible purpose was to promote science fiction; but now that SF has been promoted it snubs its old friends and scorns its humble beginnings. Fans are now ‘unrepresentative’, an esoteric clique… and the serious constructive fans have been left as high and dry as the rest of us — in fact more so, because they have lost their entire reason for existence.”
The Adelaide Fan Review 