Portable Storage Four Cover by Brad W
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Portable Storage Four Cover by Brad W. Foster A Poet’s Life by Alva Svoboda—page 10 A Few Moments by Chris Sherman—page 17 Pictures and an Inner Vision by Dale Nelson—page 24 Hidden Machines by Jeanne Bowman—page 40 Adventures in the Wimpy Zone Pt. 1 by Jeff Schalles—page 44 Familiar Landscapes by Peter Young—page 48 Journal of the Plague Year 2020 by Bruce Townley—page 58 A Digression by Michael Gorra—page 63 Paper Lives by Andy Hooper—page 67 Free Books! by Tom Jackson—page 73 The Cracked Eye by Gary Hubbard—page 75 The Road to Cimmeria by Cheryl Cline—page 84 Adventures in the Wimpy Zone Pt. 2 by Jeff Schalles—page 96 Aces and Eights at the Hotel California by AC Kolthoff—page 99 Letters of Comment —page 101 Cool Grey City of Sex by Donald Sidney-Fryer—page 112 Gorgon of Poses by G. Sutton Breiding—page 133 2 Crow’s Caw William M. Breiding I read J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye as a mature adult in a moment when I decided to peruse some classic mid-twentieth century literature that I’d ne- glected as a youthful autodidact. I also read John Cheever’s Complete Short Stories at this time. Among others. I might have liked it had I read it when I was in my teens. But I doubt it, because the book is utter bull- shit from word one. Yes, Catcher in the Rye is the real phony. Read as a mature adult its transparency as a placation and reassurance to rich, upper-middle class parents is obvious—too damned obvious. So it was with some trepidation that I started Carl Brandon’s The Cacher of the Rye, Jeanne Gomoll’s little print on demand book from Lulu. Truth be told I was seduced into buying the book by Jeanne’s gorgeous cover of Terry Carr obscured by aged hands of color. But when it came down to the actual reading, Terry’s long and fascinatingly thor- ough introduction of the life and times of Carl Brandon, his hoax black fan, was far more interesting than “Carl Brandon’s” fannish The Cacher of the Rye. True—Terry’s prose is creamy and executes precisely Salinger’s tone and content. But Terry fails utterly in the phoniness quotient, something Salinger and his bogus book were unable to achieve. Carl Brandon’s fannish version of Rye is followed by Samuel R. Delany’s “Racism and Science Fic- tion”—one of his more lucid and straightforward pieces of observation on the foibles of the science fiction genre and sf fandom. In this moment when BLM no longer stands for the Bureau of Land Management what exactly is the meaning of Carl Brandon, a black fan created by a middle class white man and his white friends in the 1950s? When the BLM-minded are pulling down historic statues as forms of idolatry I begin wondering if the “woke” will soon be insisting that any book that is seen as ideologically incorrect by a few will be banned for all. Portable Storage Four Autumn 2020 Edited by William Breiding. Available in hard copy for the usual: letters of comment, trade, contributions of writing and visuals, or endowments of cash. Also available at efanizines.com. Please send letters of comment and submissions of all kinds to: [email protected]. Hard copy trades: street address is on your mailing envelope. Artist credits on page 138. Thanks to Mustafa for technical advice. Entire contents © 2020 William Breiding. All rights revert to contributors upon publication. Contact! [email protected] 3 I just finished reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, published in 1912. It is fresh with quaintly portrayed and insulting gender-stereotyping, racist stomach curdling typecasting, and a general sense of good natured imperialism. And while I was disappointed that Doyle chose to focus on the decimation of the Ape Men of the Lost World rather than describing more encounters with the dinosaurs, the book was a hoot, a splendid read. As I read it I couldn’t help but wonder what reach the “woke” will have in destroying free speech and freedom of the press—not to mention whatever is left of the Constitution after Donald Trump is done with it. Visons of dystopian leftist fascism laid atop populist authoritarianism. Will I soon be memorizing and reciting The Lost World as all the copies are mulched and recycled for another type of insistent propaganda? If the social justice warriors get wind of Carl Brandon, that imaginary black fan, that figment of three white guys—Terry Carr, Ron Ellik, and Dave Rike— how will they construe this black creation? What flaming and virulent boycotting might ensue, and exactly what do Jeanne Gomoll and the Carl Brandon Society think of this political irony—BLM, yes, but a mild mannered black man created by white men? It makes you think. It really does. Does Carl Brandon really matter? On the other hand the John Cheever was magnificent. But then he was a privileged white suburban drunk. &&&&& I didn’t become vivid to Chris Sherman until after we met. On the other hand, Chris had been vivid to me from first contact. That’s just the kind of guy he is. Neither Chris Sherman nor I can remember how we actually made first contact. But logic dictates that we met through Darline Haney’s Science Fiction Fan’s Correspondence Club (SFFCC) in 1973. Darline Haney lived in rural Elma, Washington, thirty miles west of Olympia on highway 12 in route to the coast. At the beginning of the 1970s it was still possible for science fiction fans to feel lonely and disconnected. The 2010 census count for Elma, Washington was 3,107. In the early 1970s Dar- line must have felt truly backwoods. So she started the SFFCC by placing classified ads in the back of science fiction magazines such as Amazing and Fantasy & Science Fiction and started connecting fans. Many teenaged science fiction fans responded to Darline’s advert, from all over the country, from every type of environment, rural (myself), small town (Warren J. Johnson), and urban (Frank Balazs). It has always been my theory that 1973 was the year of the last big influx of teenagers into science fiction fanzine fandom. And many of them started forming life-long friendships through Darline Haney’s Science Fiction Fan’s Correspondence Club. Not only did they correspond but they started publishing fanzines, arranging meet-ups, and going to science fiction conventions. Chris Sherman not only corresponded with others but published the fanzine Antithesis, and founded Apa-50 in 1974, collecting many of these teenagers in one very dynamic and often angst-ridden bi-monthly forum. To my knowledge the Science Fiction Fan’s Correspondence Club was Darline Haney’s only legacy as a science fiction fan. But it was a big one. My correspondence with Chris started in the traditional manner, written letters. After I returned to San Francisco from the mountains of southern West Virginia and had access to a portable cassette recorder we began exchanging cassette-letters almost exclusively. This added the extra intimacy of 4 hearing each other’s voice, and being able to add aural back- ground. Chris would take me to school with him, and I would wander around San Francisco, talking. Chris was also a bur- geoning pianist and would often sit at the piano in Golden Val- ley, a suburb of Minneapolis, and play compositions he was working on. We also included pop songs we were listening to, sharing our tastes (Chris pretty much turned me on to Prog-Rock and Steely Dan). Chris was 15 and I 17 at this juncture. In 1974 I took a long hitch- hiking-and-Greyhound tour to the east coast and Bill, 1974 back. This included a stop off to meet my best fan- friend, Chris Sherman, in Chris, 1976 Minneapolis. I had been having bad luck hitching rides so I arrived in Minneapolis by Greyhound. I was standing at the curb waiting for Chris to show up, figuring he’d be driven by one of his parents. A Corvette pulled up where I was waiting and a good looking fresh-faced kid with a feathered haircut said, “Bill Breiding?” Chris cracked up at the shock on my face as we squeezed my backpack into the Corvette and I got into the passenger seat—a long-haired San Francisco post-hippie sitting shotgun with a suburban jock in a Corvette. Chris was still laughing at my shock when he slipped an eight track tape of Yes into the slot and “Round About” started its soul-tingling opening. He put the peddle to the metal and we were off. Chris had just turned 16. After that first meeting, our most unlikely friendship accelerated. Chris returned the favor by visiting me a number of times in San Francisco. As we both transitioned into our twenties Chris relocated to Southern California, not only for school, but no doubt also seduced by the SoCal beach lifestyle. Chris’ visits to San Francisco were frequent, and intense. For me, our friendship ran very deep, but it was often fraught as our very different upbringings and approaches to life collided, yet it never in- truded on our interest and respect in each other’s lives. Chris went on to found a business, a career, and a family. We drifted, as tends to happen in life. Eve- ry couple of years we’d reconnect—often through an exchange of mixtapes (and then CDs), some- times letters, emails, and occasionally Chris would do zines for Apa-50 (which is still going), and as our Founder was always welcome to contribute without membership requirements.