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ASKANCE #21 Back to school special issue! Featuring a really spiffy Do It Yourself section. September, 2010 September, 2010 Volume IV, number 3 AskancE whole issue number 21 Edited and published by John Purcell, 3744 Marielene Circle, College Station, TX 77845-3926 Contents © 2010 by John A. Purcell. All rights revert to original artists and authors upon publication. So there. What you have here in your hands (or on screen) is another Mythical Publication. Copies of this fine QUARTERLY fanzine can be had for The Usual, which means expressed interest, submission and eventual inclusion of articles and artwork, letters of comment, expressed interest, and cold hard cash in the amount of $2.00 USD to cover mailing of a hard copy. Bribes encouraged. Of course, if you send in locs, articles, and artwork, you‟ve earned a life-time free subscription. Heckuva deal, eh? Contact information via e-mail: [email protected] contents Bemused Natterings…………………………………………………………..….…….2 Not Quite the Marching Morons, but… – Thomas Sadler……………….…….……6 10 Embellished Stories from Randy’s NASFiC – Randy Cleary………..…….……9 My NASFiC Ghost of Honor Report – John Purcell………………………………. 11 Sixty Years Ago in Science Fiction – Robert M. Sabella………………………….14 Penney for your Thoughts – Lloyd Penney…………………………………………16 My Two Cents Worth – John Purcell……………………………………….………..18 Figby – Bill Fischer…………………………………………………………………….20 Science Fiction Books The Editor Has Actually Read .........................................21 From the Hinterlands – locs and bagels from readers…………………….……….25 Do-It-Yourself Fanzine Arkle – by you! The readers write. Literally………………34 Regional Convention Calendar ………………………………………………………36 What’s Next……………………………………………………………………………..39 Cover: nicked from the Internet (7 Aug 2010) Art Credits: photo from the Bryan-College Station Eagle website by Stuart Villanueva– 3; image googled ―Marching Morons‖ – 6; image googled ―Gradall‖ – 7; image googled ―Raleigh, NC‖ – 10; photos from Gary Farber‘s FaceBook NASFiC folder – 9,10,11, 12, 13; image googled ―Galaxy Magazine‖ – 14, 15; Alan White – 16; image googled ―pennies‖ – 18; clip art – 21, 33; book cover scans, John Purcell – 21, 22, 23, 24; Image goggled ―middle of nowhere‖ – 25; Jose Sanchez – 24, 26, 39; Valerie Purcell – 28; image googled ‗funny dogs‖ – 29; Sheryl Birkhead – 31; Jonny Duddle – 32; image googled ―sf cons – 36; image googled ―furry cons‖ – 38; Taral Wayne – 38. Backcover: provided by R-Laurraine Tutihasi Member FWA (since 2007!) 2 I got them old kosmic blues again… On the second weekend of August – to be precise, August 13-14, 2010 – the annual Navasota Blues Festival was held in the Grimes County Expo Center, a mere 20 minute drive south of the Purcell abode in College Station, Texas. Expendable fundage during the summer months is always a problem for us (oh, hell, for virtually all of us fans this is a problem) so I wasn‘t able to attend both days of the festival. But I was able to participate in a bit of a blues jam/music lesson with Michael Birnbaum, who is a fine guitarist and Blues Scholar; his primary research interest is Mance Lipscomb - even played with him in the 60s. The Lipscomb songs we learned (there were about thirteen of us with our guitars) were ―Freddie‖, ―You Reap What You Sow‖ and an open-D tuned version of ―When the Saints Go Marching In‖. Michael was playing it with an aluminum slide, too, so when I broke out my glass slide and started playing along, he looked over and smiled. He gave me a nice compliment about my playing despite the fact that I was sorely out of practice. It was fun and I learned some new tricks at playing turn- arounds and such. The scheduled blues musicians who played on Saturday afternoon and evening were wonderful. Allow me to single out Gary Boehm and the Blues Cats, Texas Johnny Boy, and the all-star jam that closed out the festival with Texas Johnny Boy, Milton Hopkins, Hash Brown, and Christian Dozzler. Michael Birnbaum and Steve Howell also joined in. Great music and great people. Next year I would like to take in Friday night‘s show as well. Armadillocon 32 This convention did not happen for us, which supremely bummed me out. It was held over the last weekend of August (the 27th-29th), and that could have been a big problem for me since we started fall semester classes on Monday the 30th. *grumph* Valerie didn‘t say much about missing it, either, but I could tell she was sad because she wanted to get there and see if there was any call/demand for the Steampunk wearable art/jewelry she has been making this year. So our goal is to definitely get to Dallas in two weeks time from now – in other words, September 17-19 – for Fencon VII. Val has a nice selection of items to peddle sell now, so we shall see what happens as far as those items go. In the meantime, here are the two websites where my wife has her wares displayed: http://www.artfire.com/users/IronicIcons and http://www.madeitmyself.com/user/ironicicons.aspx They obviously overlap in content, but that‘s okay. I think she‘s made some very cool looking wristbands that fen would like. We shall see. 3 And furthermore (to invoke the title of a prior fanzine of mine), the Texas Renaissance Festival is rapidly coming up, and once again we‘ll traipse on out to enjoy the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. That is always a good time, and the fireworks display each night at dusk is the best we‘ve ever seen, including College Station‘s Fourth of July celebration. That fireworks display is positively anemic compared to what the RenFest offers each night at closing. If you are here, come on down for a visit and enjoy it with us. I was going to surprise Joe Lansdale, but… This is definitely not going to happen. The plan was to either see the movie Jonah Hex, starring Josh Brolin in the title role, and write a review of it, or run a review of it written by someone – preferably a comics fan – who had seen it, and then give a copy of this fanzine to Mr. Lansdale at Fencon VII. Alas and alack, I didn‘t get to the movie, and the word from other fans was that the movie wasn‘t that good. In fact, James Bacon, whom I know is a big fan of the Jonah Hex comic book, sent a link to me via FaceBook that was a rather, shall we say, unflattering review of the movie. Rather than risk getting slugged in the face by the creator of Jonah Hex, I opted to not run that review; instead, I will still go ahead and hand Joe Lansdale a copy of this fanzine at Fencon and hope for the best. My personal plan is to still watch the movie when it comes out on DVD, which will probably happen before Christmas this year. Then I will review it. Thank you, Hal Hall. Halbert Hall, the long-time curator of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection at Texas A&M University, finally achieved retirement status as of 5:00 PM on August 30, 2010. The torch has been passed to the very able Catherine Coker. Cait – as she likes to be called – is also a fan who is a regular at Aggiecon and other conventions in this area. Hal also told me in an e-mail on August 29th that he will continue to read SF, fanzines, and visit the collection to do research. Chances are that I will be running into him from time to time, and the good news is that Hal is going to remain actively connected with science fiction fandom, and that is most definitely A Good Thing. Hal started the collection in 1978, and his vigorous efforts have resulted in the collection now numbering well over 46,000 items; contents include books, prozines, fanzines, manuscripts, correspondence of authors, artwork, and other scientifictional memorabilia pertaining to Science Fiction (and Fantasy, too) and the subculture that this literary genre spawned. In the 19th issue of Askance I wrote about the opening of the exhibit ―One Hundred Years Hence‖, which is on display of the 2nd floor of Cushing Library and runs through the end of January 2011. So now I get to work with Cait Coker on some SF collection projects. That article on Cepheid Variable, TAMU‘s student SF club, will be written someday, requiring some trips to the Cushing Library to dig through the club‘s boxes of goodies stored in the collection. Also, there is a book sorting project that I will be doing, greater details of which I will share later once I have been given the final go-ahead. In short, all I can say for now is that a few months ago Dr. Stephen Atkins passed away; he was a research librarian at Texas A&M University specializing in military history. Dr. Atkins also read science fiction, specifically SF that dealt with future war. His widow has already given me the green light to choose which books I would like to have, but there is no way that I could house so many books that, quite frankly, I am not interested in. That sounds like a terrible thing for a science fiction fan to say, but military science fiction really isn‘t my forte, so I need to clear it with his widow that the remaining SF books can be donated to the SF collection at Cushing Library. My job will be to sort and organize them, and there‘s a lot to sort through. My guesstimate is there are over 200 SF titles.