History of Fandom & Cosplay

The history of fandom is difficult to trace as the very act of fandom is the actualization of "sub-culture", and as long as humans have lived, there has been culture, and thus some aspect of sub culture.

The existence of Cosplay as a sub-culture can be seen publicly as early as 1939 with the start of "Worldcon", a science fiction convention (http://www.worldcon.org/). However, in the 1970s with the explosion of science fiction, Cosplay as a sub-culture activity (and fandom as a whole) exploded publicly to what it is today part of the mainstream.