One of the more enduring coinages of Fan Language, this is the short form of "filksong", which in turn originated from the obvious typo in a 1950s Fanzine. The term was adopted for songs composed by members of the sf community, usually for performance at Conventions, where a group filking session is known as a "filksing". Originally these songs added sf- or Fandom-slanted Parody lyrics to well-known tunes – one of many examples being the generic calypso of Randall Garrett's "Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions" (in Takeoff!, coll 1980) – or added music to songs from sf and fantasy novels; but wholly new compositions soon became frequent, and the category has been extended to songs about real-world science, traditional ballads, neopagan hymns, the poems of Rudyard Kipling set to music – in short, anything appealing to the eclectic tastes of Fandom. A number of established conventions now regularly invite filk guests of honour, and there are a few conventions entirely devoted to filk. [DRL]
see also: Julia Ecklar; Tom Holt; Don Sakers.
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