A common bumpersticker from the early sci-fi and fantasy cons was: “fantasy writers eat their dead”.
Thinking about that certainly brings back a smile. “Fantasy Writers Eat Their Dead” was widely recognized as an inside joke of science fiction/fantasy convention fandom, especially on bumper stickers and badges in the early 1960s through the 1980s. I don’t know the definitive origin story or a first appearance in print, but you might find it in Zap Comics. Mr. Natural may have said it first.
Every huckster booth in the smallest to largest cons definitely offered all sorts of merch with that slogan. It was very popular, and lots of Hollywood cars sported the bumper sticker version.
The joke works on a couple of levels:
- It’s a parody of sensational anthropological clichés like “X tribe eats its dead.”
- It pokes fun at the fact that fantasy writers constantly recycle—or “feed on”—the works of earlier fantasy writers. Tolkien borrows from Norse myth, everyone borrows from Tolkien, and so on.
- It also alludes to the rather macabre tendency of the field to canonize deceased authors. A writer dies, and suddenly everyone is quoting them, reprinting them, writing sequels, and arguing over who “inherits” the tradition.
There was another layer that old-time fans appreciated: conventions were full of wonderfully irreverent bumper stickers and buttons and t-shirts and stickers and badges and more … Things like:
- “Fen Do It In Costume.”
- “Support Your Local Mad Scientist.”
- “Reality Is For People Who Can’t Handle Science Fiction. (also “face fantasy”).
- “Fandom Is A Way Of Life.”
The “Fantasy Writers Eat Their Dead” sticker fit right into that style of black humor.
A lot of stickers were produced in tiny quantities by individual fans rather than commercially, so they largely vanished, unless someone saved one in a scrapbook.
Fantasy Writers Eat Their Dead stickers was just one of those pieces of fannish folklore that everybody at the cons recognized but almost nobody bothered to document.
Sometimes you see a reference, buried in a 1966 convention progress report or a dealer’s-room photo where you can just make out the bumper sticker on somebody’s suitcase. That kind of archaeological dig is fun.
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