Issue No. 22, May 2003. Edited and published by Robert Lichtman, P. O. Box 30, Glen Ellen, CA 95442 USA. Please send trade fanzines and letters of comment to this address (or [email protected]). Founding member and Past President1991: fwa. This fanzine is available by Editorial Whim for The Usual (letters, contributions both written and artistic, and accepted trades), or $5.00 per issue (reviewers please note!). An “X” on your mailing label means this may be your last issue. All contents copyright Oc 2003 by Trap Door with all rights reverting to individual contributors upon publication.

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE: Doorway Robert Lichtman 2 Sense of Wonder Gordon Eklund 4 Invasion 1949 Charles Burbee 57

ART & GRAPHICS: ATom (2). All other artwork in this issue is by Dan Steffan. Major egoboo to Carol Carr for a superbly crisp conversion of Dan’s originals into electronic form.

weren’t his thing.) Harry is also well-known for his two volumes of fan history as well as for his Two of my personal fannish giants contributions to fanzines in addition to his recently passed away: Harry Warner Jr. and stream of letters. He won Hugo awards in John Foyster. 1969 and 1972 for best fan writer, and Harry became active in 1936 and pub- again in 1993 for A Wealth of Fable, his lished his first fanzine, Spaceways, from history of fandom in the ‘50s. Inter- 1938 and 1942, but his most famous publi- estingly, Harry wrote All Our Yesterdays, cation was Horizons, the first issue of the first of his two books, as the result of which appeared in October 1939. Harry Sam Moskowitz’s vitriolic reaction to started it out as a second general circulation Harry’s review of Sam’s The Immortal fanzine, but after five issues, in mid-1940, Storm, which appeared in Terry Carr’s Horizons became his FAPAzine and Innuendo in 1959. In his article, Harry continued almost uninterrupted after that. made various assertions about how to write He missed only one mailing in 1943 due to fan history to which Sam took serious serious illness and another in the ‘90s exception. Harry resolved to do better, and because the parcel containing the issue although there are schools of thought about went astray. There was a total of 252 how well he succeeded, these two books issues, the final one appearing in this year’s were the happy result. February mailing. It’s safe to say that no Harry also wrote science fiction, pub- one is likely to top Harry’s 64-year record lishing a dozen short stories between 1953 of regular publication of the same title. and 1957. He never made much mention Harry is best known as the most of this, and I discovered their existence dedicated author of letters of comment of only shortly before his death. all time, a feat that inspired many cartoons Harry and I only spoke on the phone by Rotsler and others in homage to his occasionally, mostly on FAPA business. dedication to the craft. For decades he But, having read hundreds of his fanzines, could be counted on to turn in a pub- I felt I knew him more personally—his lishable LoC on just about any fanzine sent many interests, his well-known hypo- to him. (In counterpoint to this distinction, chondria, and (as it turned out) his he went to few conventions; they just excessive fiscal prudence. We had our disagreements in his later years, mostly in came into fandom when I was in my late NOTE: This is the first FAPA and SAPS where, in the interchange teen years and so, like Harry, he was of mailing comments, he revealed a more always there. He was the first of the new, issue of Trap Door to be posted deeply conservative viewpoint on social literate generation of Australian fans, hard on the Web. I'm doing so with and fiscal issues than I had suspected. I on the heels of and soon replacing the dry- the permission of the primary found myself unable to resist responding to as-dust, plonking “Etherline” crowd, and contributors in order to bring that side of him, and to his credit he whereas he was soon supplemented by remained a gentleman throughout and John Baxter and later John Bangsund and their story and the accom- never let our differences of opinion in those Bruce Gillespie, he simply was Australian panying artwork to a wider areas interfere with our more fannish fandom to me. Beyond that, over the years audience of readers. exchanges. as our interaction matured and deepened, John Foyster came into fandom the he was a good friend, a compatriot, a sym- This page has been inserted same year I did, if you count attending his pathetic ear, and more. I didn’t know until to keep Dan Steffan's two-page first convention in April 1958 as joining after his death, however, how much I’d opening spread for Gordon up. He didn’t publish his first fanzine until also meant to him. Yvonne told me that I Eklund's story intact for full 1961, but after that there was no stopping was always the first one he would write him. We were SAPS members together for after one of his medical setbacks, to let me visual impact as it appears in a few years starting in 1963 until I dropped know he was still there, still coping and the print edition of this issue. out; he continued until 1972, when he left putting up a good fight. A month or so This fanzine was originally both FAPA and SAPS in protest of Nixon’s before his death, he and Yvonne also called actions in Vietnam. I didn’t know that me and we had a good, long talk. John was created in WordPerfect 9 for until the Festzine in celebration of his only a little over a year older than me, far printing "booklet-style" and sixtieth birthday came out last year, and I too young to leave us. will not print in that fashion admire him for it, even though it was a Harry and John approached their fanac rather quixotic gesture. John’s fanzine in different ways, but both were grounded from this PDF. titles are legion and the total number pub- in the production of fanzines—and thus in If you like Gordon's story lished enormous. In addition to publishing communicating with us—and each and Dan’s artwork and would fanzines, John organized and worked on enriched our subculture in ways that will like to have a hard copy, it is numerous conventions. He and John live on. I miss them both. Bangsund were co-chairs of the first available for $5 postpaid ($7 Australian Worldcon when it was in the This is the All-Fiction Issue of Trap outside North America) from early bidding phase, and later he served as Door, in case you hadn’t already noticed. the editorial address in the “program manager” of the convention. He When I first got Gordon’s story last year, I also founded the Down Under Fan Fund typeset it in the more usual size of type colophon. Many other back (DUFF) in 1971 and served as its first (such as this editorial) and it filled just over issues of Trap Door are also Australian administrator, although he was half an issue. But when Dan Steffan available; inquire by e-mailing never a DUFF delegate. However, later he offered to do the amazing and extensive me at: was the first winner of GUFF, attending the artwork that graces this issue and suggested 1979 Worldcon in England and publishing this format—well, what could I say. (I [email protected]. a highly readable report of over 100 pages could say think of Dan next year when it’s —Robert Lichtman, in 1996. John’s final fanzine was eFnac, Hugo-nominating time.) December 2003 which saw 39 issues between February I hope you enjoy the stories and the art. 2000 and his death, the last one published Please let me know your reactions so I can posthumously. share them with Gordon and Dan. There I met John only once, at the 1996 will be another, regular issue before the Worldcon in Los Angeles and then all too end of the year, I promise .... briefly, but there was a connection between —Robert Lichtman us that I increasingly became aware and appreciative of. As I wrote above, John PROLOGUE

“Die, Gernsback, die!” I hiss. With my guts jammed in my throat like a palsied python I shove my revolver right smack straight into the drooling, slack- mouthed visage of the crazed maniac cowering in front of me, his eyes bugged like frogs in a soup, the lips like two skinned mackerels. He simpers senselessly back at new mown grass like a couple ducks It was called science fiction. the Law of the Inverse Square as for- me, tongue flapping like an eel. Spittle floating in a pond, white tee shirts, I became a fan. mulated by Sir Isaac Newton (and later spattles his chin like crocodile urine. rolled-up jeans, smoking Lucky My half-brother Sidney, who was Einstein), any ant as big as the ones in I tighten my finger kangaroo-like on Strikes and staring at the sky. We both already in high school and captain of the movie would collapse under its the trigger. saw it at the same time: the orange- the football team and as popular as a own sheer mass. That’s how come “Pussy,” babbles Hugo Gerns- white flaming light, bright as the eye of joint at a hippie conclave, took me to whales, the largest animal on the face back, father of science fiction. “Cunt, God, zipping nonchalantly through the see the movie version of The War of of the earth, live in the deep ocean. So prick, big hairy balls.” starry firmament like it had a will of its the Worlds. That’s the one, if you they can float. Like turds in a tub. I can’t hold myself an instant own, the speed and precision of a don’t know it, that’s even sort of scary I also read a lot of science books, longer. bullet fired from a gun. today. On the walk back home Sid searching for anything I could find that I fire at the egg-glazed whites of “What the hell’s that?” drawled kept grabbing my shoulder and dealt with outer space travel. his eyes. Dougie. pointing at the sky: “There’s one One time when I was ten years old Me, I knew. there! Look, Charlie! There’s I went around all day with bricks 1 “Flying saucer,” I said. another! A light! A meteor light! strapped to my shoes because I’d read “Don’t look like no saucer, Eiiiiyeee! Eiiiyeee!” that on Jupiter a person’s body weight The name’s Frap. Charlton H. Charlie.” Me, I didn’t so much as quiver an is eight times what it is on the earth and Frap. “They never do, Dougie.” eyeball. Why should I? I’d already I wanted to get a feel for it. My friends call me Charlie. “From outer space, huh?” seen the real thing. In time I got around to reading my Except that I ain’t got no friends. “The deepest, the darkest, the Men from Mars—huge fucking first ever real science fiction book. (Not really—that’s a gag.) blackest.” deal. Try scaring me with a moose in a It was Red Planet by Robert I’m a fan. A science fiction fan. “There’s monsters inside?” see-through penguin suit, why don’t Heinlein. You know the one. The kid (Is there any other kind?) Just about “Nope. Entities. Real live alien you? growing up on Mars with his Martian ever since I can remember my entire entities.” After that I went and saw every pet, Willis, who turns out to be a higher life has been totally wrapped like a A split second later, like spit in the monster movie that came to Cleveland: form of Martian life in a sort of bright red bandana around the solitary eye, the saucer was gone. The Thing from Another World, The embryonic phase. beaming flagpole of the ever-lovin’ I never saw its like again. But Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, King I read all of Heinlein’s other books blue-eyed science fiction field. from that moment on I knew one thing Kong (revival), Son of Kong (double out of the school library: Between I’m in love with it. Literally. for sure. We ain’t alone in the uni- bill), Tarantula, The Deadly Mantis, Planets, Citizen of the Galaxy, Farmer More than I’ve ever loved anything in verse. We got company. And just like Them! (giant ants), The Mole People, in the Sky, Starman Jones, Space my life. Girls, gods, gladiolas, gold- us, too. Maybe better than us. Forbidden Planet (good!), Franken- Cadet, Tunnel in the Sky. I think the fish, (bars of) solid gold. You name it: An important thing to know. stein (another revival), Dracula (ditto), last remains my all-time personal anything and everything. Science After that schoolyard night with The Horror of Dracula (remake), The favorite. fiction has, I truly believe, provided Dougie I stopped going to church. Curse of Frankenstein (also ditto). I found and read other books by my life its sole meaning. It’s given me (Not that I ever went that much to And so on. other authors in the library, too: Isaac a place in the cosmos I can call home begin with.) I didn’t stop believing in One thing I want to make clear. Asimov and Ray Bradbury, Alan and where I know if I crawl inside and God though. Heck, even Arthur C. Except for (arguably) Forbidden Nourse and Lester del Rey. pull my legs in after me no mundane Clarke believes in God. I think. Planet, none of these pictures was I stumbled upon Arthur C. clod is going to dare hassle my ass. Though the one time I met him face to truly science fiction. In true science Clarke’s The City and the Stars in one How it began: When I was eleven face at a COSFO party in the mid- ‘60s fiction it’s axiomatic that the science of the paperback racks in the big liquor years old my best buddy Dougie I didn’t have the nerve to ask. make sense according to present-day store on Superior where my stepdad Fogarty and I were down at the old But I’d just found a new way to knowledge. You can’t have anything stopped on his way home from work Cuyahoga school yard one hot August worship Him. (God, I mean, not occur that’s flatly impossible. Like the every evening. (He was a dental night, lying flat on our backs in the Clarke.) giant ants in the movie Them! Due to technician and practicing alcoholic.) That’s also where I discovered alive is George Herman Ruth (even if cation to the more clearly commercial As for my ears—what ears? Feel another whole entire rack devoted to he did have a shitty year the season Amazing Stories. He may or may not them, heck. I can’t even remember digest-sized science fiction magazines: before, the Yankees finishing seventh). be aware of this yet, hopefully not, that what part of my head they’re attached there was Astounding, Galaxy, Amaz- Valentino is alive, Rockefeller is rich, being the main reason why I am here in to. And no, I didn’t think to bring any- ing, Infinity, Venture, Future, Fan- Jolson is singing, Satchmo is blowing, New York City at this particular point thing with me as sensible as a knit cap tastic Universe, and The Magazine of the stock market is soaring, and Adolf in time nearly twenty years prior to my any more than I thought to bring Fantasy and Science Fiction. Hitler is a fruitcake with a Chaplin own birth.) gloves. Who would have figured on a Then I found out about a second- mustache who nobody except a couple In the pocket of my plaid jacket I blizzard just because it’s mid- hand magazine shop off Euclid where prescient foreign correspondents has grip, as cold to the touch as a Bowie December and New York City, New you could buy old pulps, some of them ever heard of. knife, a camera. (A Kodak Brownie, York? You might think the mad dating back to the 1930s. The entire A heck of a goddamn glorious believe it or not, a good thirty, forty genius N. B. Norton (another character store smelled of must and dust and time to be alive, you’d think. years old, the only camera Arbogast yet to come) would have considered ancient antiquity. It bore a sweet, Except for the howling blizzard to seems to own; this man, Mr. Science that far ahead, flipped through some sickly stench that filled your nostrils beat holy hell through which I am pre- fucking Fiction himself, who you’ll newspaper files, looked up a local and stuck there like a pot of glue. The sently trudging like a hog in wingtips get to meet formally below, is not weather report. A fairly basic precau- proprietor was an old man in a green down the middle of a deserted Man- exactly what one would call au tion for everyday time traveling, right? eyeshade and round pink eyeglasses hattan boulevard on my way to the courant. He sleeps in a flannel night- But no, sir, not fucking him. Not fuck- named Pops Shue, who I don’t think editorial offices of the Experimenter shirt, too, and cuts mimeograph ing us. We’re all too brilliant for that. ever read a word in his life. Publishing Company, Hugo Gerns- stencils for his fanzine Blight on a Do I sound bitter as a chunk of Pretty soon I was reading every- back, president and editor-in-chief. Royal standard typewriter.) Limburger cheese? thing I could find anywhere that was A little background here: Gerns- Taped to my chest, like a tit gone Just then another nasty thought remotely science fiction. back, a Luxembourg-born gentleman flat, throbs a portable tape recorder. pokes me like a stick in the eye. What I was hooked. Like an addict. of forty-one years, presently publishes Or throb it would if I had it turned if old man Hugo isn’t home? What if With a fat green monkey on my back a monthly, Science and Invention, on, which right now, since there isn’t him and his whole damn Experimenter named Earl. I couldn’t budge free. largely devoted to the still nascent field another human being anywhere around Publishing Company decided to shut Most all this took place in the of radio electronics. As early as 1911, and thus about as much life to record in down for a snow day? spring, summer and fall of 1957. I with his own short novel Ralph this New York City 1925 as on the I first landed here in 1925 in wouldn’t mention the date except that 124C41+, Gernsback has evidenced a ancient seabeds of the dying red planet Central Park right back of the pond. time is critical in this story. Time is genuine enthusiasm for the sort of Mars, would be pretty damn dumb of That part we did plan out in advance. what this narrative is all about. scientific based fiction originally made me. It seemed the safest, quietest place to Now let me skip ahead a bit and popular by Jules Verne and H.G. So on I trudge, my poor frozen arrive. “A straight shot from there to tell you about the first time I was ever Wells. On occasion Gernsback has fingers, even buried in my pockets and the E.P. offices,” murmured Arbogast, sexually molested. printed such tales—by himself and wrapped snugly around the Brownie, grunting deep in his pipestem throat, kindred souls—in his science maga- threatening to snap off in my fists. gazing down at the Manhattan borough 2 zines. These have proven surprisingly I’m pretty convinced there has to map stretched out on the stovetop popular with his readers and Gerns- be an icicle dangling from the tip of my between us. “Perfect—absolutely December 17, 1925. back has lately announced plans to nose. perfect.” New York City, New York. launch a new monthly devoted My lips could French a horny A straight shot for him maybe—he Picture it. The President of the exclusively to such fiction. This new snowman and in the process grow isn’t here in this blizzard—a frozen United States is Calvin Coolidge, the magazine will be called Scientifiction. warm. cookie ass for me. king of England is George V, the (As a matter of fact, under pressure My toes—you don’t want to hear I take a glance at my watch—or heavyweight champion of the world is from distributors Gernsback will soon about my toes. I can’t feel them my chronometer as we chrononauts Jack Dempsey, the best baseball player change the title of his embryonic publi- anyway. call it, hooha!—and see it merrily ticking away. Three forty-seven. 3 dreams of the angels could have stumbling home from some nameless Christ. Already. Trudging through all brought you otherwise. Lake Erie-side saloon, Astounding this goddamn snow—and, yes, me in Arbogast’s the name. Burton T. And so on. Stories clutched in hand, weaves an my navy blue sneakers—has decidedly Arbogast. Arbogast first chanced upon the unsteady path through the darkened slowed me down. I want to be able to Not mine—his. The guy I said I’d world of science fiction one late night parlor, and plops one drunken foot get this over with and be back in the be telling you about. in 1938 when he was six years old and smack down on top of one of young park before nightfall. So you’re mumbling to the effect his old man came stumbling into the Burton’s roller skates, lying where it Even if they haven’t invented of how you think maybe you know big white shingle house on the east has no good right to be. muggers in 1925, I’m holy goddamned him. The name makes a distant tin- side of Cleveland that he, Arbogast’s Picture the rest: Mr. Arbogast if I’m going to try finding Norton’s kling noise, like a firebell in the night, mother Pearl, and young Burton the shoots straight into the air like vomit Way Back Device in the weeds in the a cowbell on the moon, only you just boy shared, clutching in his mitt the fired at a toilet bowl and comes dark. can’t place it in the here and now. August issue of Astounding Stories. spinning back down to land—smack, Just then, like a miracle from on Unless you’re yet another died and Arbogast’s father’s father had blooey!—square on the back of his high, a pigeon shits on my head. gone to heaven science fiction fan like been one of John D. Rockefeller’s head, blood puddling in a pool. I lift a bone-frozen hand to wipe yours truly, in which event you know original partners in the Standard Oil That’s right: deader than a door- away the goo. Burton Arbogast better than you know Company and even after the old shark knob. Old Mr. Arbogast. And that’s when I see it. any man alive except for maybe the pushed him out the door in the 1880s The Astounding Stories, like a The building! Gernsback’s build- Pope in Rome, Ray Bradbury, Arthur he hung on to his original stock. So the descending angel, flutters to the floor ing! The Experimenter Publishing Clarke, all of the above. son—with wife and child—lived off beside him. Company! The golden pot at the end But for the rest of you: Burton. the dividends. Never had to work a The following morning an early of my shimmering science fiction Arbogast. Mr. Science Fiction him- lick in his life. And boozed like a rising Burton discovers lying on the rainbow! self. The Number One Fan Face. The salmon. parlor floor like fungus on a log both I hear church bells toll. Angels man with the world’s biggest collec- Which is why I describe him here his deceased Daddy and the form of from on high sing hosannas of joy. tion of everything written, seen, as stumbling home that crucial 1938 literature which ever afterward would Etc. smelled, spat or smoked that might midsummer’s night. Because, quite stand as his one true love and devotion I don’t even bother wiping off the even remotely be called by that term. frankly, that seems to be what he did in life. pigeon shit. Where you’ve probably heard of him is every night of the week. According to The Freudians among us could Let it freeze solid like the rest of every time People or TV Guide want to his son, that is. (The same son who, untangle one big ball of string over that me. run a spread on “The Sci-fi Cult when Pops Arbogast kicked the pail, one, right? I’ll be warm enough, soon enough. Phenomenon,” usually tied in with the inherited the pile.) But as for Arbogast—old Mr. When I’m inside. latest popular cable show, they send a As for that August 1938 Science Fiction himself—the only Thrusting my chest boldly in front stringer out to Cleveland to interview Astounding supposedly clutched in the critical factor in this tale is that issue of of me, I plunge forward like an aard- Arbogast so he can tell them some shit old man’s drunken fist, don’t ask. Astounding. Cover by Hans Wesso- vark in pursuit of the great granddaddy they didn’t already know they knew. That’s the part that’s got to be taken on (lowski). Lead story, “Who Goes of all fat plump ants. Like that sci-fi’s cool stuff. faith. Like the virgin birth. But There?” by Don A. Stuart. (In reality, I reach inside my shirt and give the Like that it appeals most directly Arbogast insists it’s true and who am I editor John W. Campbell Jr. under a tape recorder a gentle thumb flick. to the wonderment of the adolescent to doubt his word at this late date? If nom de plume.) On it comes. boy. I’ve heard him tell this tale fifty times, And so what of Arbogast ever Whirring! Like that sometimes those ado- I’ve heard him tell it fifty times fifty. afterward? Humming! lescent boys (like Arbogast) (or me) And it never alters. (He doesn’t The decades rotate past like Throbbing! never grow up. mention the drunken part, though— sprockets on a reel of film. Burton, Howdy, Mr. Gernsback, here Like that it takes you in your that’s my own embellishment.) like his father, never works an honest comes Charlie Frap! imagination to places where only the And so old man Arbogast comes day in his life. With that Standard Oil stock still producing fat dividends, Plain-Dealer: Arbogast and his amaz- there’s no earthly need, and Burton is ing collection of science fiction and nothing if not about as ambitious as a fantasy which filled eight rooms of his lizard on a rock. He’s a good, dutiful large Eastside home. An address was son (Mom Arbogast finally shuffles given for the local SF club. Naturally, off this mortal coil in 1961) and the I wrote away for information. two of them continue to inhabit the big At only my third COSFO meeting old east side Arbogast manse as the Arbogast sidled up to me and asked in rest of the neighborhood decays like a a hushed, surreptitious tone that rotting corpse around them. In 1952 sounded like his throat was seeped in (according to actual receipts) phlegm if I was interested in dropping Arbogast installs a chain link fence by one afternoon and examining his surrounding the grounds. In 1955 collection. three strands of razor-sharp barbed I’d just got out of high school. My wire are affixed to the top. In 1958 he stepfather wanted me to join the Navy. electrifies the works. In 1960 he My mother said I needed to find a job acquires a pair of matching Doberman and, goddamn it, right away. They pinschers, male and female, named didn’t have any programs back then to Ralph and 124C, to prowl the grounds pay your way through college. My life day and night. seemed stretched like a flaccid rubber But I’m getting ahead of myself. band ahead of me, like frog shit mixed It was in 1945 that Burton Arbo- with yesterday’s black gravy. gast, aged thirteen, founded the So I told Arbogast, sure, I’d see Cleveland Ohio Science Fiction Orga- him Sunday at ten. nization. He was already editor and And thus, bus transfer clutched publisher of one of the top science talisman-like in hand, there and then I fiction fanzines of the period, Space appeared at Arbogast’s electrified gate, Time Gazette, a leading member of tinkling the bell. both the Fantasy Amateur Press Asso- The man himself emerged from ciation and the National Fantasy Fan inside the white shingle house, a bone- Federation, and in regular correspon- thin, already graying man with the dence with other devotees of the genre skinniest lips I’ve ever seen on a throughout the world including Forrest human and a patchy goatee beard to J Ackerman in California, Bob Tucker conceal his lack of chin. (A “beatnik in Illinois, and Walter Gillings in beard” we would have called it back England. then.) It was at a COSFO meeting in “Have any difficulty finding the 1962 at age 17—me, not him, place?” he inquired throatily, Arbogast was already a grizzled 30 escorting me through the gate. (“They —that I first met good old Mr. Science don’t bite,” he added, meaning the two Fiction himself. dobermans. “Down Ralph! Down There’d been an article in the 124C!”) Sunday rotogravure section of the “Ever seen so many Negroes in your life?” he inquired as we maneu- Future to make room for me and my form pocket like a thumb from a fist. around 1970. I knew I shouldn’t have vered through ankle-deep dead grass to bedroll. “Elevator working?” I ask, giving voted for that thief Nixon. It all began the door. “They’re really taking over I had a job. My first. Mom and a snap of the chin. with him. First there was the oil everything, aren’t they?” Stepdad were as proud as buttons on a “Self service, lad. Boy went home shortage and then the oil glut and the A quarter-hour later we were clown’s waistcoat. (And damn glad to early today.” stock kept declining in value. I was huddled like bugs under glass in the get me out of the house.) I was now “Anybody home upstairs?” frightened, Charlie, frightened like a open basement where Arbogast the newly proclaimed Assistant “A few hearty souls.” seahorse. I panicked. I told you from maintained the most valuable elements Curator-in-charge of the Burton T. “Experimenter Publishing?” the beginning I was never meant to live of his collection: his original Love- Arbogast Special Collection of “Ah, the lunatic kraut?” He beams in this horrible, dreadful mundane craft Arkham House editions, his Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Related and weaves, then shakes his head. world.” Edgar Rice Burroughs memorabilia, Memorabilia. “There’s somebody up there, I “If you’re telling the truth, you his complete files of Weird Tales and In payment Arbogast picked up believe.” may not have that much fucking longer The Thrill Book. I was seated on a big my room and board and slipped me $5 “I’ll just go up and see, then.” to live anyway.” plush red velvet couch that struck me a week pocket money. Hey, I should “Fourth floor. But aren’t you a tad “Charlie, please. Show some com- as something out of an A. Merritt complain? It was a living. young, my lad?” passion. I meant no harm. I only fantasy novel. Theodore Sturgeon wrote a series “I am?” wanted us to continue to live in the Arbogast laid his hand on my of stories in Galaxy back in the 1950s “For the kraut’s unholy wares.” style to which we’d grown knee. about what he called Synergy. “You mean, science fiction?” accustomed.” I was clutching in my hands an Symbiosis. That was how me and “Call it as you will.” I couldn’t help myself. I swung original chapbook printed for the Arbogast related. Each of us making “Someday we’ll all be living in it, my head and took a long hard look at premiere engagement of the original use of the other to obtain something he pal.” the tangled piles of moldering pulp Tarzan serial starring Elmo Lincoln. could not have acquired on his own. “Perhaps, lad,” he says, his paper surrounding us as there we sat, His hand edged up to my thigh. For me: shelter from the shit that lowered eyes taking on a dreamy haze. chatting away like two magpies in “You’ll like this, Charlie,” he was life. “Perhaps rightly so.” what was supposed to be a kitchen. whispered, loosening my belt. For him: no pulling of hard time at The elevator doors glide softly Except you couldn’t see the stove for I let him slide my zipper down. a state prison. shut like a glove around a hand. the stacks of Famous Fantastic He gave me a pinch. It was a relationship founded upon Moments later the elevator lifts me Mysteries. Not that I did. Like it, that is. Or mutual want and need. (Like all on high. “Some goddamn style.” dislike it either. My personal agenda relationships.) “And now we’re broke. I...I... of the moment concerned itself not And it continued on pretty much 5 Charlie, what are we ever possibly with matters of like or dislike. But I right up to the point where the story going to do?” was no dummy. Since birth I’d always I’m herein relating commences. Tears bunched in the corners of his “You can get a job.” been able to sense another person’s eyes like wildebeest on the African I knew that would throw him for a need the way a shark can scent blood. 4 veldt and trickled down his face like big fat loop: “Me, Charlie? But who “I’m going to call a cop,” I said midget waterfalls. “We’re broke, would ever hire me?” when he finished. The doorman looks Irish. Charlie,” Arbogast gasped. “As broke “McDonalds, Burger King, maybe “No—please.” Shanty Irish. as two promises at the end of a fat lie.” the corner gas station. I think it’s a We came to a quick under- His wart-encrusted nose in a wood “What are you talking about? Chevron. Tell them about your great- standing. block face glistens as shiny and bright What about the Standard Oil?” grandpa and the Standard Oil Two days later I moved into Mom as Rudolph’s snout come Christmas “Sold,” he hissed. Company.” Arbogast’s old first floor bedroom, Eve. “What? When?” “Charlie, you’re jesting.” shoving aside enough duplicate issues He smells of cheap whiskey, the “Over the years. Not all at once. “I’ve never been more serious in of Startling Stories and Captain stem of a jug protruding from his uni- Starting—I don’t know—starting my life. Either you get a fucking job or else”—I waved an arm—“you’d better thing called “Pandora’s Box” with her gorgeous blue eyeball, though. darting toward the door in the wall. start selling some of this crap.” in it. (Needless to say, he’s a huge fan The noise jolts me back to reality. After all, I remind myself, it’s not “Crap?” he swung his head like a of the silent cinema. His all-time A dinner date? Who am I kidding? Gernsback personally I’m after. It’s lost child. “What crap?” favorite movie is Metropolis. I swear Christ, this is 1925. And it’s getting his latest creation. “Your stupid collection.” he jerks off (in private) to the false damn late. “Wait, Mr.—” “But, Charlie, don’t you believe in robot Maria.) Misty’s wearing a perfume that But she’s too late. I’m through the science fiction anymore?’ “Good afternoon, sir. May I help tickles my nostrils with the scent of an door like an angel entering heaven. “Sure, I do. But I believe in being you?” Arabian mare. Me, I’m as intoxicated On the other side, T. O’Conor able to eat, too.” I fight for words. Let me tell you as a stallion. Sloane—or who I assume must be “Charlie, I—I have a confession to something: hanging around science I struggle to restrain my brute Sloane—a tall, stiff as an arrow, make.” His voice grew hushed again. fiction fans all these years I haven’t animal instincts. There isn’t time. straight-backed man with a full gray I saw him swallow hard, like python seen many girls as gorgeous as this “I’m here to see the editor-in-chief,” I beard, peers at me blearily from behind digesting a brick. Momentarily, I was one. If any. manage to blurt out. wire-rimmed spectacles. tossed back in time to my first visit So who gives a shit if—looked at “Oh, you don’t mean Papa?” He’s standing next to a big ever to the house, when he’d given me from one angle—she’s a half-century “Papa? Hugo Gernsback? I didn’t wooden desk. that first dose of molestation. “I’ve older than me? know he had kids.” Between his hands he grips a large already sold off the majority of the I plop my rear end as delicate as a “I’m adopted.” book, what I recognize as nothing less duplicates. It’s—it’s what’s supported fawn on a corner of her desk and meet “Well, I’m, uh...”—the cover story than Webster’s Unabridged. Standing us the last two years. I tried to do it her gaze head-on, like a bull rhino- the three of us, me and Hapgood and there, staring at me, Sloane drops the surreptitiously, a few items at a time, ceros. “That depends, sweetie,” I Arbogast, concocted between us starts book on the floor. without your noticing. But they’re drawl. coming back to me—“I’m a writer. Thud! gone, Charlie. There’s nothing left to “Depends upon what, sir?” Her And I heard about this new magazine “Huh?” I manage. sell.” voice is like the moan of an ostrich in of his, this Scientifiction. I think it “Scientific experiment.” He “I wouldn’t be so damn sure heat. (Or what I’ve long imagined might be straight up my alley. I’m a stoops down to pick up the dictionary. about—” such a cry would be.) big fan of Wells and old Jules Verne.” “What I hope will be the lead piece for Just then the telephone rang. “Depends on what your name is.” “I’m afraid Papa isn’t in,” she says our new magazine.” “I’m Misty LaTour.” softly. For some reason the baby blue “Scientifiction?” 6 “And I’m Charlie Frap.” I put my glow has gone out of her eyes. She “What’s that?” He gives me a hand out to shake. “So what are you looks sad as a lost caribou. sudden quick glare. The office stinks. doing for dinner tonight, Misty baby?” “Because of the storm?” “Your new magazine.” But it’s a stink I know well, a scent Her touch is a jolt of electricity. I “I’m afraid...afraid Papa won’t be “Oh, that’s been changed.” which has long pervaded my life like gasp. in for...for some time.” He lets the dictionary go again. an all-encompassing fog. ”With this dreadful storm, I’ll There’s another loud noise from Thud! The smell of wood pulp paper. likely eat in.” the back. Another dropped Webster’s. “But Gernsback—” There’s a girl in the anteroom “Mind if I join you?” I leer. Thud! “Gernsback?” he says, cocking an seated in back of a wooden desk. A “Maybe we can eat together, both I swing my head questioningly in eyebrow. “The poor sad fellow. Bon- good-looking girl, too, with cobalt at—” that direction. kers, I’m afraid. Totally bonkers.” He black hair, eyes like a pair of baby blue There’s a sudden loud noise from “Dr. Sloane,” she says, by way of stoops down to retrieve the dictionary. marbles, lips as red as a baboon’s the back. As if somebody has just explanation. “So what would you say? Six-tenths bottom, a round pert smooth chin. dropped an unabridged dictionary on Sloane! T. O’Conor Sloane. of a second? That’s what I make it as. She looks incredibly like the silent the floor. Gernsback’s managing editor on Did you know that Galileo himself film actress Louise Brooks. One of Thud! Amazing Stories. “ He’ll have to do,” I once dropped a grapefruit from the top Arbogast’s favorite videos is some- Misty LaTour doesn’t blink a say, springing up from the desk and of the Leaning Tower of Pisa?” Bonkers? Gernsback? But that he “Fiction.” I almost say science trated edition of The Beasts of Tarzan. physical violation upon his person, the can’t be. “But I came here to see Mr. fiction but catch myself first. There is “Hello.” instrument in question being a hard Gernsback.” no science fiction here—not yet. His voice altered instantaneously. rubber dagger which she most “Then try the asylum. In Brook- “Stories.” “Hapgood,” I heard him gasp. “Hap- violently wielded. lyn. He’s been confined there nine “Then you’ve come to the right good, how are you?” (And which was one hell of a sight months now. Mad as a blue banana. A place.” He’s back at his desk again, And he made it sound as if he to behold, believe you me, even after a hopeless case, it appears.” holding up yet another cover proof. really gave a fat flying fig. group of us fans managed to break Sloane dumps the dictionary on his This time my jaw damn near hits And in this one particular instance down the elevator door with a fire ax desk and picks up a sheet of paper from the floor. I knew he did. and rescue Hapgood from the prover- another pile. He holds it up to me. Sexology. That’s what the cover The Hapgood on the other end of bial fate worse than death. In any “So what do you think, young says. And the illustration: I recognize the line was none other than the Man event, without meaning to brag, I was man?” Misty LaTour. Himself, Hapgood Snails. Yes, the the cool-headed one who actually I stand there with my mouth wide Naked. Stark naked. Limbs very same. The Hapgood Snails who: pulled the crazed huntress off her open in an oval as big as the moon. akimbo on a red velvet couch. author, painter, poet, actor, musician, chosen prey. It turned out later she It’s a magazine cover proof. I And, yes, it’s Frank R. Paul again. producer, composer, director, was an L.A. area costume fan who’d immediately recognize the sturdy, “We’ve got a 5,000-word gap in carpenter, plumber, etc. And other- gotten hold of some of the bad acid that archaic, quasi-Germanic style of Frank next issue,” Sloane says. “Quality wise all-around genius. The most was making the rounds of the room R. Paul. fuck fiction is always welcome here at renowned graduate in the history of parties the night before. “I thought he The cover depicts a view of the the Experimenter Company.” our very own ever-lovin’ blue-eyed was a bull hog,” she told anyone who Leaning Tower of Pisa. science fiction field and (believe this would listen. “I really truly honestly Squinting, I can make out the 7 or don’t) also (like me) a one-time did. A bull hog. Really.” shadow of a round object spiraling protegé of good old Mr. Science (And, no, please don’t ask me toward the earth below. As I was saying earlier, just then Fiction, the Number One Fan Face of what a bull hog is. Or why an alien A grapefruit? the telephone rang. All Time, Burton T. Arbogast. huntress would want to violate one. The title of the magazine reads: Now I know that sounds way too The two of them had kept in touch With or without the rubber dagger.) The Practical Experimenter. convenient to be true and I wouldn’t over the intervening years since Hap- In any event, Hapgood turned “So what do you think, young necessarily buy in on it myself if some- good, unlike most other successful more reclusive after that. man?” Sloane repeats. “Don’t you body came up to me and said hey, this escapees from the field, never saw fit In the beginning, though, years agree this ought to thrash that Scienti- was utter fact. to conceal his original scientifictional back, the then thirteen-year-old Hap- fiction tomfoolery all to Hades and But that’s the way I remember it roots, though ever since the Worldcon good Snails had materialized like a gift back? Voyages to the moon indeed. happening. incident in the middle seventies he from heaven at his first meeting of the On a day like today when we can’t The telephone rang. stopped attending public fan functions. Cleveland Ohio Science Fiction even manage to get to the Bronx.” Riiiiing, riiiiing, riiiiing. (You’ve probably heard one ver- Organization in response to a mention And he giggles. (Oh, sure, it might have been an sion or another of what allegedly took of the club in Rog Phillips’s fanzine It’s only then that I realize the old hour or two later—maybe even a place there. As an actual eye witness, review column in Amazing Stories. geezer’s drunk as a bull moose. whole day—but that’s not the point: I can confirm the following: a enor- (The same magazine which, two years His expression suddenly stiffens. the telephone did ring. Honest Injun.) mous waddling blonde femme fan later, would publish Hapgood’s first “Say, what do you want here anyway? Riiiiing. dressed as an alien warrior huntress story.) They tell me that even then You’re not with the police, are you? Arbogast crossed over and complete with brass brassiere and ant- there was something about Hapgood We paid you fellows off last week.” plucked the receiver off the left front lered helmet—and also, inexplicably, the boy, something indelible that set “No, I—I’m a writer.” burner of the gas stove, shoving aside a pair of Mr. Spock ears—forced him apart from the multitude of other His eyes narrow. ”What kind of the August 1949 issue of Fantastic Hapgood into a freight elevator and teenage SF fans: a spark, a flame, a writer?” Adventures and an A.L. Burt illus- there attempted to commit an act of fierce gold glint in the eye. Whatever. “Hapgood looked like Warren Beatty temporary. And sexier. And how’s 8 Once when I’d been sneaking before anyone had ever even seen the weather out there, Hapgood?” maybe a bit too hefty a dose from one Warren Beatty,” he confirmed. Another murmur. “So what favor?” I didn’t bother of my hidden peach brandy flasks (I By the time he turned twenty-five, Arbogast: “Yes, I know that’s not asking how come, considering our haven’t mentioned those, have I?— Hapgood had left the science fiction why you called...a fan?...a fan is most recent topic of conver- well, go figure: anyway, there’s got to field behind, propelling a swift orbit stalking you?...from Cleveland?...by sation—that is our own precariously be plenty of places to hide a bottle in a through the literary universe with the phone?...Norton...N.B. Norton?...No, lousy finances—he hadn’t hit up house filled with 17,500 books and relentless velocity of a meteorite I’m afraid I don’t...it’s a new name to Hapgood for a loan. I knew his reply: magazines) I asked Arbogast straight piercing the earth’s ionosphere. me, Hapgood.” something to do with the soiling of the out if he’d ever tried to fool around The rest is history. More murmuring. Mona Lisa. with Hapgood as he’d done with every For the past couple years Hapgood “Of course, Hapgood...I’ll be He said: “Some local fellow, other Cleveland boy fan including, as has been holed up in Los Angeles, more than happy to...you have an apparently a fan of some sort going by previously related, one Charlton H. where he now mostly resides when he address?” the name of Norton—” Frap. isn’t hanging out in Paris or Berlin, Arbogast made a scribbling I shook my head in ignorance. “Oh, my God, no!” he said, working on a screenplay for his motion in mid-air. Pencil and paper. “—got hold of Hapgood’s private throwing a hand in front of his face in remake of the D.W. Griffith silent Like an obedient armadillo, I hastened phone number and keeps calling him sheer abject dread. “For the love of all masterpiece Intolerance, a four-part to fetch. day and night. Even when he has the that’s holy, no, no, no! How can you historical epic (with one far future He jotted: 1814 Aldrich Avenue. number changed, this Norton character even suggest such a thing? Laying a segment) which he intends directing Beneath he scribbled: N.B. Norton. uncovers the new one and starts the hand on Hapgood, that would be himself and which has been rumored to “He’s not a COSFO member, phone calls all over again.” like—like soiling the Mona Lisa.” star Leonardo DiCaprio, Carrie-Anne Hapgood. I’d know him if he were.” “Hapgood say what about?” And, again, I believed him. Moss, Brad Pitt, ex-porn actress Annie Murmurs. “Something to do with a device By the time he turned eighteen, Sprinkles and rock star Trent Reznor Arbogast: “Certainly we’ll take this Norton claims to have invented Hapgood had published his fourteenth of the band Nine Inch Nails. The care of it...Charlie and I. Yes, Hap- and which only Hapgood can properly professional science fiction story, this tentative budget is supposedly in the good, I’ll give him your best...I know evaluate.” one a lead novelette in Galaxy entitled $300 million range with Paramount, you feel you owe him for the “Perpetual motion?” I guessed. “Erupting Centaurus,” which not only Fox and Disney pooling their re- Worldcon thing...yes, I’m pleased to “Another Dean Drive?” brought Hapgood his first professional sources to pick up the tab. hear from you, too...if there’s anything “Not this time. It sounds more like Hugo (he’d already won two for his And yet here he was now. On the else, I’ll be sure to get back to you. a variant on the classic Wellsian time fanzine Blight) but which is nowadays phone. With Arbogast. Yes, good-bye. Good-bye, Hapgood. machine. Norton calls it his Wayback regarded as a breakthrough piece in Who was saying (as I listened in): Talk to you again soon?” Device.” adult-themed SF, the first story ever to “Yes, Hapgood...yes, I’m very well Click. “I saw the show, too.” deal realistically with alien/human sex. indeed...thank you so very very much He hung up the phone. “Show?” Arbogast looked blank And I repeat for emphasis: Hapgood for asking. And how is the Intolerance “That was Hapgood Snails,” as a paper bag. (If it wasn’t hardcore was then eighteen years old. I also project coming?” Arbogast said, his eyes rolling circles science fiction, the chances were he repeat: he hadn’t been molested by I heard a murmur from the other in his head, his cheeks and forehead as hadn’t a clue. Mention The Iliad and Arbogast. (That’s a gag. Alien, end of the line: Hapgood no doubt. It damp as washrags. “He’d like us to you’d draw a blank, too.) human sex. Get it?) gave even me a tiny little tingle to do him a personal favor.” “Mr. Peabody. And Sherman. And have I mentioned that he was know I was actually hearing his voice. “Did you tell him he could kiss my From the old Rocky and Bullwinkle as beautiful as a Grecian god? And an “You’ve changed the title?” ass?” show.” exact spitting replica of the movie Arbogast again. “The Human Condi- Arbogast blanched. Arbogast still looked blank as a fig actor Warren Beatty. From a very tion...yes, I like that...oh, I agree “Hey, just kidding,” I said. leaf. early age, too, according to Arbogast. totally...it’s much, much more con- I let it ride. “So what’s Hapgood got to do driver in frail hopes that our proximity packs, the scattering of discarded at the rear of the house. And there on with this Norton and his Wayback to authority would convince the condoms that looked recently used. the floor knelt what I assumed had to Device?” I asked. various thuggish types on board to let When we at last reached the front be N.B. Norton. “Hapgood says Norton keeps try- us eventually disembark with our lives door of the alleged Norton domicile, He was damn near as bone skinny ing to bring up the old Time Rebels and sacred fortunes intact. (Hey, if Arbogast rang the bell. as his grandmother and dressed in a set series Hapgood had in F&SF when you want to meet a bunch of folk you It didn’t work. of bib coveralls that closely matched Avram Davidson was editor. You never in your life wanted to meet in the So I knocked. her flour sack dress in both color and remember, classic time travel pieces first place, take a trip on your local There was a long wait. fabric. And when he lifted his head to but with a surreal twist. Norton thinks crosstown bus.) Something thudded on the other gape at Arbogast and me a pair of dirty they were the best, most realistic The way the two of us dressed may side of the door. yellow buck teeth protruded walrus- writings ever on the theme of travel have helped some to keep the riffraff at I knocked again. like from his mouth. into the past.” bay. Arbogast was making his usual A bone-thin woman in a pink-and- Otherwise, he looked like a pretty “They were. The novelette Silver- fashion statement of chinos, broken- purple flour sack dress hurled open the average guy. If your idea of an berg had in Galaxy about the same soled sandals, and a 1978 Midwescon door. She could have been on either average guy is the banjo-playing kid time with the dinosaurs and shit—that souvenir teeshirt. Me, I wore my side of eighty years old. Rivulets of from Deliverance. All grown up and was good, too. But Hapgood’s was dingy blue work shirt, hacked-off-at- sweat puddled her skeletal physiog- moved to the big city. hipper, which a lot of fans missed.” the-knee Levis, and matching blue nomy like pools in a forest. I half expected to hear him to say, Including, I was sure, Arbogast. sneakers. “What you want, white trash?” she “Yuk.” But he didn’t say a thing. He nodded anyway. “But pure Did I forget to mention? Arbogast asked, amiably enough and despite He just gaped at us. fiction.” was as bald as a beet. Me, I wore my being as white as a fresh carnation In one knotty palm he clutched a “Well, sure. Norton thinks other- frizzy black locks coifed in a banded herself. big heavy crescent wrench, in the other wise?” pony tail. “Norton?” I managed to squeak. a pair of needle-nose pliers. There “I guess that’s what we have to Somehow intact and utterly “N.B. Norton?” were a couple of long-necked screw- find out. First that and then get him to unmolested, the two of us staggered “My little boy!” drivers sticking out of the bib pocket of leave Hapgood alone once and for off the bus at a corner dead across the “Your son?” his coveralls. good: street from the pile of soot-streaked “Grandbaby.” She swept suddenly It was Arbogast who finally “What you mean ‘we,’ white shingles and boarded-up windows that aside, moving with the grace of a snapped the silence. “Mr., ah, Mr. man?” I inquired. appeared to be the home of one N.B. matador teasing a bull. “Come on in, Norton, my colleague and I represent Arbogast didn’t seem to get that Norton. The address fit, anyway. It fellows. One of you this Hapgood Hapgood Snails and we—” reference, either—early comic book wasn’t the first time it had been white trash he’s been waiting for?” Norton cut him off with a brisk Mad. brought home to me that there were “Well, we represent Hapgood head shake. “You ain’t him.” His I let it ride. neighborhoods on Cleveland’s east Snails,” I said. voice was like a reedy snort. The next morning, pooling our side that made the one Arbogast and I “Don’t say nothing ‘bout the buck “Ain’t—aren’t who?” resources like a couple racetrack touts inhabited look like the hills of Beverly teeth thing, though. The child’s a bit “Snails.” with a line on a hot nag, we boarded a by comparison. sensitive ‘bout that part.” “Ah, no, but—” crosstown bus. Wishing I had a third eye in the “Ain’t either of you look a fucking back of my head like the alien in the 10 thing like that Clyde fellow in the 9 bar in the famous Damon Knight story movie.” to keep watch on the pack of lounging The old lady guided us lemming- “You mean Warren Beatty,” I put Like baby marsupials cuddled in a crackheads on the corner, the two of us like through a veritable maze of dim, in. pouch, Arbogast and I sat up front, skirted a zigzag path through the piles narrow, dust-choked, low-ceilinged, ”That’s the fellow. The one that taking up between us the whole of the of broken glass and rusty beer cans, the vaguely diseased hallways to a looks like Snails.” sidewise seat directly in back of the million or so crumpled up cigarette unexpectedly open, sun-splashed room Norton had something clasped between his long bony knees. Some- as if he’d just uttered a dirty word. thing mechanical, a machine. I “Pack of fans make a circus of geeks couldn’t help trying to get a better look cool as a sea breeze,” he look. It resembled a spider’s web of observed. black and red wires held together by I decided to let that one pass since nuts, bolts, and screws. The whole I couldn’t necessarily disagree. contraption glistened with a silvery He rose to his feet, all six feet, five sheen. inches of him. It took a while. He Norton saw where I was looking. stooped to pick up the Wayback “My Wayback Device,” he confirmed. Device and then marched across the “I know. I saw the show, too.” length of the room to where the hazy “What show?” afternoon sun streamed through Arbogast took a tentative step for- mottled window panes like urine ward, holding out both hands in front through a sieve. of him. “Mr. Norton, we’re here to He set the machine down on top of represent Hapgood Snails and to a card table and gaped at us again. request that you kindly refrain from “Don’t think it’ll work, do you?” disturbing him further in the future.” “Well, I wouldn’t—” Norton lifted one albino-white “Built the whole contraption in eyebrow. The hair on the top of his two nights, using nothing but an head grew in tufts, a patch here, a patch erector set and the brains the good there. It was impossible to guess at his Lord blessed me with. And you and age. “Snails told you to come down fucking Snails don’t think it works.” here and say that, did he?” He was starting to make me feel “Why, I—yes, yes, as a matter of guilty. “Hapgood’s a busy man.” fact, he did.” (And if you don’t know what an “Then tell him to come here and erector set is, ask a guy over fifty; he’ll say it his own fucking self.” tell you.) I could see that a direct approach “Want to see it work?” he asked. was getting us nowhere. I decided it “Why—” I looked at Arbogast. was time to try the opposite tack: in- “Why, sure.” direction. “Then don’t shut your eyes.” “So what’s the N.B. stand for?” I Bingo! asked, in what I hoped was an amiable And he was gone. tone. Vanished. “It stands for No Bullshit,” he said. Disappeared from the room. “And that means you, too, chubby Ker-poof! boy.” And the Wayback Device had “Look, friend, we’re just a couple disappeared right along with him. of local science fiction fans who—” I tried to do what he said. Not shut Arbogast chose to try to put in at just my eyes. But I did blink. One time. that point. Bingo! “Fans.” Norton spat on the floor He was back again. The Wayback Device, too. Wayback Device—please, oh pretty hammer, stand back, and let the you already are. Two of the same body There was something tucked please—we’ll be right back just as shattered pieces topple to the floor. cannot occupy the same place at the underneath his arm. soon as we phone Hapgood Snails out So what it all means is: same time. It’s basic physics. What He held it up to the sunlight. in California to give him the general The next morning finds the two of year were you born in?” A newspaper. The Cleveland lowdown. us, me and Arbogast, again riding that “1932,” said Arbogast. Plain-Dealer. Arbogast and I crept • We phone Hapgood and let him crosstown bus on our way to visit the “Then you can’t go back any later closer. know this crazy turkey Norton really brilliant, brain-big, bursting-with- than that. And you, hoss? We read the headline. has invented a working time machine. talent genius of an inventor, Mr. N. B. He’d taken to calling me “hoss.” No shit, sez Hapgood. I can hear Norton. I hated it but thought it wiser not to KENNEDY SHOT IN DALLAS female giggling in the background and immediately object. a gush of running water. Well, keep in 12 “1945,” I said. “You old farts know when that touch, fellas, sez Hapgood, clicking “The same thing there with you.” was, don’t you?” the phone. Norton gave us a short lesson on I nodded. Like puppets on strings, Arbogast • Arbogast and I put our heads how it worked. “The Wayback travels at a rate of and I both jerked our heads. together. Me, I’m imbibing peach “It’s so dang fool simple even a one day back through time for every “November 22,” I said, “1963.” brandy; him, he’s sucking on a stogy- couple of sci-fi nerds—” ten seconds that passes for the fellow “You got it on the button,” he said. sized joint. (I didn’t mention that “Please don’t call it that,” using it. So if you wanted to go back, The Plain-Dealer was as fresh as either, did I? Burton Arbogast, pot- Arbogast broke in softly. say, one week—and you wouldn’t the day it was printed. head. Hey, think about it. It does sort “Don’t call what what?” ‘cause you’d blow up if you did—then “He could have had it hid in his of figure.) “Don’t call it sci-fi. We fans hate it’d take seventy seconds for you to get pants,” Arbogast whispered. We thereby arrive at a certain set that.” there. If you wanted to go back one But we both knew better. of mutual conclusions. Norton tossed his shoulders. year, it’d take 3,650 seconds or a shade “So it does—” I began. These conclusions entail to wit: “Okay, then, let’s just say the over one hour. So you can figure on “—work,” Arbogast finished 1. Norton’s Wayback Device Wayback Device is so goldarn simple that: one hour for every one year.” lamely. works like a clockwork fucking even a couple scientifictional devotees “So then what you’re telling us,” “You bet your sweet fucking buns orange. (Previously established, I like yourselves ought to be able to Arbogast said, “is that yesterday, it works,” Norton said. “You think I’d acknowledge.) figure it out. What you do first is you during your demonstration, it took you hassle a bright boy like Snails if it 2. We’re flat fucking broke, me pick it up and hold it in your hands. some forty hours to travel back to didn’t?” and him (Arbogast) both (ditto). Then you press this lever here. The 1963.” So take point two above and divide one painted fire engine red. Hold it “Right. And then another forty 11 it by point one and what you end up down and count to five. One... hours getting back here.” with is yet another future possibility, two...three...four...five...and “Yet Charlie and I noticed Of course that meant we had to go namely: —zippo!—you’re gone. Like that. nothing. For us it was a matter of back home and think things over and A method for achieving wealth Then you just keep holding it down— microseconds.” since this isn’t the main thread of the beyond both our nuttiest dreams the red lever, not the green, remem- “Sure. But you were here. I was narrative but rather what Hapgood exists. (Italics added for emphasis.) ber—and whatever you do, don’t let go there. Different places, different Snails writer-types would call the Another fact I throw out at this too soon because you’re traveling times.” background exposition, let’s squeeze time for whatever it’s worth: All through time and you don’t want to “And you didn’t get hungry?” up tiny up like a toad tonguing a fly Arbogast and I really know from shit accidentally blow up into a couple “It doesn’t seem to work that way. and herewith quickly summarize a few and a tree is science fiction. zillion pieces—” Or thirsty either. I don’t think you basic facts for the record: You then take all the above, datum This was where I broke in. even get older.” • We tell old No Bullshit Norton and possibility both, roll it up into one “Excuse me. Blow up?” “And there’s no way of doing this not to tell anybody else about his huge ball of earwax, hit it hard with a “You don’t want to land some time any faster?” I put in. “Oh, maybe,” said Norton with a head or what?” Pharaohs and you wanted to take a do? Fulfill a need, of course. But shrug. “But I’d have to tinker. And “No,” said Arbogast stiffly. “Not gander at what it had been like back what, really, was our single greatest stopping the machine would be that I’m presently aware.” then. Now the matter of boredom mutual need? Money. That was as tougher. Unless you’ve got a few “Then what gives you the goofy aside —having to stand there with the brutally honest as we could put it. We seconds lead, it can be hard getting the idea you can visit some place that Wayback in your hands for fifteen were flat, full out, fucked up, totally, Wayback to stop right when you want don’t exist? The future ain’t real, pal. years, just waiting to arrive—when completely, entirely broke. Busted. it on an exact date.” It’s still out there ahead of us. In a you finally did get there you still So money it had to be. For the time “And how does that occur?” state of flux—pure temporal flux. wouldn’t see much of anything except being at least, forget historical Arbogast asked. “The stopping, I Like kangaroos in a pickle jar. You maybe a forest and a sparkling blue research. Forget sightseeing. All that mean?” can maybe picture it in your head. But lake and, if you were really lucky, a was fine and dandy as a duck in mink “Take your finger off the lever. it ain’t real. It ain’t happened.” tribe of Indians squatting around a fire, but if you were in serious danger of What do you think?” Arbogast and I shrugged our roasting a squirrel. Because you’d still starving to death, it was also a luxury, “And the green lever?” I chimed shoulders. So much for a thousand be in Ohio—in what eventually was to like a gold mine in the sky. Now in. “What does that do?” and one science fiction tales from become Cleveland. And the pyramids science fiction—that was our game. It Norton gaped at me. “That’s for Wells’s original Time Machine were nowhere near. Instead, they were was the one and only thing either of us the return trip. Coming back. Just onward. Bye-bye, Morlocks. off where they were meant to be, really knew diddly shit about. So we push it down—the same as the red I looked at Arbogast. namely in Egypt, getting built. And so travel back through time. To the lever—and count to five. You don’t Arbogast looked at me. in order to see that you’d have to go earliest days of science fiction. To have to hold it down this time. It’ll get “So when can we go?” I said. there first—to Egypt—and then travel when certain publications now worth you back where you belong.” “What you mean ‘we,’ white back through time. hundreds, even thousands of dollars “What’s the power source?” I man?” said Arbogast. So it wasn’t going to be easy. can be plucked hot off the press for a asked. Nothing really tremendous ever was, it handful of pennies each. Arbogast “Power? I don’t get you, hoss.” 13 seemed to me. And traveling back was already a renowned collector. “What makes it run? You know, through time—since nobody had Nobody would think twice if he started fuel.” So it was just going to be me. I figured out how to do it pre-N.B. selling off an occasional valuable item. “Just batteries.” should have figured. Arbogast, like Norton—well, that had to be a pretty They’d just figure it was a duplicate. “What batteries?” Asimov and Bradbury and Stanley tremendous event. I’ve got to admit the dollar signs “The ones it runs on. Eight flash- Kubrick, to name three other vision- For our first planned trip through like angels on wing fluttered through light batteries. Evereadys. I got them aries of the future, refused to set foot time I had no need to leave good ol’ the firmament of my wild, maddened from the Wal-Mart on sale.” aboard an airplane. Not surprisingly, a Cleveland anyway. It was going to be dreams that night. Arbogast’s, too, I’ll I looked at Arbogast. And he was time machine didn’t strike him as any a fairly lengthy jaunt, though. All the bet. looking at me. Neither one of us was more practical a means of travel. way back to December 1929 to be We decided to start with the first— logically believing a single word. But I spent a lot of time talking to precise. Arbogast and I had picked January 1930—issue of Astounding we’d seen it. With our own eyes. Norton, trying to get the whole thing out the date between us. Stories of Super-Science. We’d seen the newspaper from 1963. down pat in my head. So how come December 1929, you Now we both realized a number of And the headline—crisp, clean, clear Geography was also a major probably want to know. early SF books were worth even more as a butterfly on a mountaintop. consideration, it turned out. The Way- That was something Arbogast and than the first few magazines. To name Arbogast said: “What about travel back let you travel back through time I had decided that first night after we’d just one, H.P. Lovecraft’s 1939 post- into the future?” but not through space. So let’s visited Norton and discovered that his humous collection The Outsider and “Come again,” said Norton. suppose you wanted to visit the Wayback actually damn well worked. Others, published in an original “Suppose one wants to visit 2199.” pyramids to watch them being built Take all of history—and all of pre- limited edition, could fetch upwards of Norton grinned from ear to ear. due to the fact that, like me, you were a history, too, for that matter—and put it $2,500 on the open market. But “Are you goddamn crazy out of your big fan of the movie Land of the at one’s personal disposal. What to Arbogast pointed out something I hadn’t thought of. Limited edition But we forgot about The Outsider meant just that— limited. Every single and Others, even though it would have one of those copies of The Outsider been an easy snatch. and Others had eventually belonged to We set our sights instead on that somebody. What if by going back in first pulp Astounding, cover by Wesso, time and buying up, say, twenty copies a single copy of which in tiptop of the first Arkham House edition condition might fetch upward of a cool Arbogast and I thus deprived twenty $1,000 in the current collectors’ real people of copies they ought market. otherwise to have owned? Now “Let’s try for fifty copies,” chances were, if we did that, no big Arbogast ventured. deal. But what if, just say, we grabbed I did the math in my head: fifty a copy of The Outsider and Others that copies! Fifty times one thousand was otherwise destined to be owned by equaling fifty thousand! a man named Horton Finkletter and In the end, without anybody along this Horton Finkletter had a son named to help with the load, twenty-five Buddy who needed an operation to copies was the most I could tote back. cure his failing liver, and in 1954 Twenty-five copies at twenty 1930 Horton Finkletter reluctantly unloaded and earlier cents each (pennies surrep- his personal copy of The Outsider and titiously acquired from various coin Others, then valued at $500, to pay for dealers around town) and you still had the needed surgery and little Buddy one hell of a sweet profit: twenty-five lived and thrived and grew up to thousand bucks! become president of the United States Give or take a few. or maybe just shot one in the head but, Now another thing you’re anyway, did something important to probably wondering is how come alter history in a significant way. Norton, a real Grade A asshole as I’ve Time travel was risky business. painted him here, was so accom- As dangerous as a snake in a seer- modating in letting Arbogast and me sucker suit. But I’d already read make use of his Wayback whenever enough science fiction to know that. and however we pleased. History could be changed, altered, Well, it was because of Hapgood rearranged like the pieces of a Snails. Norton still wanted to meet the kaleidoscope. Norton fully agreed on man. He was that much of a fan. the possible problems. Hell’s bells, he I guess you could say we strung mused, maybe it already had been him along. We assured him—like a changed. There’d be no sure way of spider blowing kisses at a moth—that knowing. It was like chaos theory. we remained in continual intimate Kill a butterfly in Australia and cause contact with Hapgood and the very a hurricane in Florida. It was as scary minute he finally finished the first draft as a hyena on a bad drunk when you of his Intolerance/Human Condition thought about it. script he’d be birddogging it to Cleve- So I tried hard not to think. land to meet up with Norton and shake his hand and see for himself what a in a total of slightly more than $28,500 “Like the first Amazing? Or how dog manure in a jar. “Nobody knows wonderful incredible marvelous after costs and expenses, enough for about Weird Tales? You know how what the hell scientifiction is,” said invention the fabulous Wayback the two of us to live on for a year. few of those are still around. You can this man, whom I envision with a black Device really was. I looked at Arbogast. He looked at get four or five thousand per copy for cigar jutting out of the corner of his And on and on. All pure murky me. the first issue easy.” mouth, lips fastened around the stub bullshit. We actually hadn’t said We were both grinning. “No, not that either. It would just like a hankie around a wet nose. another word to Hapgood. He was rich Backwards in time went I again. depress the market all over again and “Nobody gives a shit. You need to call enough already. We were the ones in This time a shorter jaunt. To the late we’d be right back where we started. it something that’s going to interest dire need of dough. We figured we’d winter of 1940. The first issue of No, we need something better. Some- people, Hugo—that’ll intrigue them.” save it up for a surprise. Captain Future. Arbogast’s second thing truly rare. Something unique.” “How about Amazing Stories?” “You know, hoss,” Norton said, all-time favorite magazine. (His first: His voice dipped in tone as if he were said Gernsback. that last night as I was preparing to Planet Stories.) speaking in a cathedral. “Something And there you have it. leave, “I ain’t made mention of this Being as it was a largely senti- truly one of a kind.” But there was still the matter of before but I’ve written a few stories of mental trip, we ended up clearing less “Like what?” that dummy issue of the original my own.” than $2,000. He folded his hands in his lap, Scientifiction title. “No shit,” I said. “SF?” So for my next trip it was back to beaming like a toaster. “According to what Gernsback “Why, sure.” 1929 again and another armload of “You’ve got something in mind?” confided to Moskowitz when Sam was “Time travel?” Arbogast guessed. twenty-five first issue Astoundings. I said. editing Science Fiction Plus back in “Nope. Space adventure. Action This time we barely made $9,700. “Charlie, I do indeed.” the fifties,” Arbogast said, referring to stuff. But realistic. Like Doc Smith The price was dropping like a fat “Tell me.” Gernsback’s final, belated venture into crossed with one of those New Wave toad on a lily pad. “Something that’ll make us rich science fiction magazine publishing, weirdos like Ellison or Spinrad. You “They’re catching on,” Arbogast forevermore. Something that’ll set us “and what Sam told me himself at the know, it sure would mean a lot to me to said, when he returned from the latest up for life.” Clevention in ’55, there was only the have Mr. Snails’s opinion.” Midwescon in Cincinnati, a glum look “But what?” one single dummy issue and one “And I’m sure he’ll be only too on his face as if he’d swallowed a “Scientifiction,” he said. dummy copy of that. There was a full happy to give it,” I dissembled. horse turd. color cover by Frank R. Paul—not the “When he’s got the free time, that is.” “Who, what, when, where?” I 14 same cover that later appeared on the “And then maybe help me with asked. first Amazing—and an entirely differ- finding a publisher. Or an agent “Other collectors. They’re starting Which was how it happened. ent line-up of stories. Supposedly, maybe. I ain’t been having much luck to wonder where I’m getting all these Arbogast quickly filled me in on there was something by Burroughs, on my own.” January 1930 Astoundings. The the skinny, a fabled bit of science too—not just Wells, Verne, and Poe— “That too,” Arbogast agreed. word’s getting around I’ve got an fiction lore, how Hugo Gernsback but Gernsback couldn’t remember “I’m certain, knowing Hapgood, he’ll closet full of them squirreled away.” when he’d first come up with the idea what the story was, whether it was a be pleased to help.” “But that’s not true.” of a separate magazine entirely reprint or an original.” Norton? A writer? Like the man “One dealer from Detroit told me devoted to the sort of fiction he’d been “And only the one copy,” I mused. said: everybody wants to get into the the second issue of Astounding was running in his scientific publications “Which ultimately vanished. fucking act. (And his maiden aunt, now worth more than the first. He said wanted to call his new mag Scienti- Pulped and destroyed, said Gernsback. too.) it was thanks to me.” fiction in honor of the term he’d But you, Charlie—” “We’ll be sure to mention it to “Then I’ll go back in time and personally concocted for such tales. “Me, traveling back through Hapgood when we next talk on the snatch a bunch of the seconds,” I said. He’d even done up a dummy issue. time—” phone,” I lied. “No, Charlie. That won’t work for But then someone—presumably a “You could recover it.” For those twenty-five January long, either. We need something else, distributor—had objected to the title, “Steal it.” 1930 Astoundings we ended up raking something different.” saying it was about as commercial as “Snatch it and bring it back here.” “To be sold for—” gast—giant figures four in the history occurred as we knelt among the dank padded cell. I...”— I held up Arbo- “Tens of thousands,” he finished of futuristic speculation—N.B. Norton stentorian weeds of Central Park. My gast’s Kodak Brownie—“I’ve got a dreamily. “A truly one-of-a-kind item refused to fly. “Till somebody can chest heaved like a hungry snake. I photograph.” to fetch a one-of-a-kind price.” show me with evidence good enough knew I was only inches from bursting “Sounds serious.” He looked “If we could find a buyer.” to satisfy my own two eyeballs what it into a waterfall of hysterical tears and suddenly sly. I could see the gears “I’ll find one,” Arbogast said, his is that keeps a plane from falling out of snot. whirling behind his pearly white eyes. voice as grim as a horsefly at a ball the sky like a wet turd, then, no sir, Norton gazed at me languidly, “So you gonna tell Hapgood Snails game. “You can trust me on that, count me out. I’m taking the train.”) glancing up now and then from his about this?” Charlie. I give you my bonded word.” We took the train. 1948 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories “I suppose he might want to I took it from him, exuding trust. Norton spent the time catching up with a Leigh Brackett Mars story on know.”’ Arbogast may have been a shit and a on antique issues of Startling and the cover. Norton slammed shut the pulp moral crud but he knew the science Thrilling Wonder Stories, fabulous “So what you’re saying, hoss, is mag. “And high goddamnit time, too. fiction collector’s market like no- gifts bestowed from the Arbogast col- that this Experimenter Publishing Sounds to me like you really done body’s bare behind. lection. (Yes, you could say we were Company ain’t all that it’s cracked up went and screwed the pooch this time, So I made a whistling sound. bribing him with his own favorite to be.” hoss.” Arbogast summarized: “You go reading matter.) “It’s a front—for a goddamn por- “Me?” I exclaimed. back to early 1926—or perhaps late New York City bound! 1925! nographic publishing ring.” “You.” 1925—visit Gernsback’s office, locate We picked out a spot in Central “And old Gernsback himself?” “How the fuck do you get that, you the dummy issue of Scientifiction, and Park in back of the pond in between “Insane, ” I confirmed. dumb hayseed?” spirit it away. It’s the one best chance some thick weeds and shrubbery and “So these other folks told you.” “You went and changed history.” the two of us have, Charlie, of setting made that our jumping off point. Not “No,” I corrected. “I visited him “I did not!” ourselves up comfortably for the rest only were we concealed from casual myself. In Brooklyn. Why do you “It’s changed, ain’t it?” of our natural lives.” view but it would provide quick and think it took me so long to make it back “Well...yes.” I agreed. Unhesitantly. (And thus easy egress to the midtown offices of here?” “Then who did it?” I share his guilt.) Gernsback’s Experimenter Publishing “Can’t say that it did, truth to tell.” “I...I...I...” “First thing,” Arbogast said, “you Company once I arrived in 1925. “Well, it did, goddamn it. I had to “Damn straight, hoss. You screw, have to go to New York.” And so there I went, there I saw, walk there. All the way across the you pay. That’s life.” “I hate New York,” I said. “All there I did not conquer. Brooklyn Bridge. The whole damn He went back to his TWS. those feuding fans.” Hugo Gernsback, the Father of way. In a snow storm. A blizzard. I And we went back to Cleveland. “Forget the fans. It’s where Science Fiction, as nutty as a chip- didn’t have enough 1925 money for a When we got there I let Arbogast Gernsback is.” munk! Grey-bearded managing editor taxi, even if there’d been any running. have it all. It turned out to be a real “Was,” I corrected. T. O’Conor Sloane, PhD, running the The Murgatroyd and Malloy first for me: I’d never before seen a “Precisely,” said Arbogast with show! A porno magazine, the Brook- Psychoneurotic and Resting In man turn literally white as a sheet. another of his nova-like beams. lyn loony bin, a blizzard to beat all Facility, it was called.” But Burton T. Arbogast did. holy hell! “Now you’re putting me on, hoss.” He flopped back into the nearest 15 As previously narrated earlier in “Do I look like I’m putting you chair. More precisely, his body folded this document. on?” I held up my hands so that he into one like a goose seeking a gander. So we bullshitted Norton some When I got back, my ears frozen could see them shake. “I got them to He ended up perched on a stack of the more and in the end, ultimately, he like popsicle slabs, my toes as numb as let me in to see him. I said he was my first twelve issues of The Magazine of ended up agreeing to accompany me rock candy in a box, my eyeballs uncle. Gernsback. Hugo Gernsback. Fantasy and Science Fiction. and the Wayback Device to NYC via protruding from their sockets like eggs With my own two eyes. He was just And he didn’t seem to care that he an Amtrak out of Chicago. (Like from a hen’s asshole, I shakily filled the way Sloane said. Crazy. Mad as a was crushing the shit out of them. Bradbury, Asimov, Kubrick and Arbo- Norton in on everything that had mutton. They had him penned up in a His voice, when it finally came, was like the last rasping wail of a dying “The end of science fiction, you schmuck, Warren Beatty.” “Goldarn it clear to my daddy’s caribou. “We’d better call Hapgood,” mean.” I nodded again. grave,” he remarked. “but you sure do he said. “There’s a difference, Charlie?” “So,” he said, as we swept through look just like that Beatty fellow.” “Well, if you really think—” the front door, knocking over a huge Hapgood twisted his head, looking “You don’t realize what this 16 stack of World War II bedsheet a bit grim. I knew it wasn’t something means, do you, Charlie?” Astoundings as we did, “the end of the he liked being reminded of. “It means we’re out one hell of a Less than twelve hours later, Hap- world as we know it or what? Well, “The genuine spitting mirror lot of fucking money.” good Snails was there. Like a cavalry let’s see what we can do to change that, image,” Norton rubbed it in. “It also means the end of science colonel leading a charge, he came eh, Charlie boy?” He reached up and I’d spotted something clutched in fiction as we know it.” blazing into Cleveland-Hopkins at the slapped me on the back. Norton’s fist as he edged nearer to “Huh?” controls of his own private jet plane. I grinned down at him. His can-do Hapgood. A sheaf of papers. A “History, Charlie. It’s been The bulk of his travel time, he later all-American fucking optimism was manuscript. altered.” explained, was expended trying to infecting me like a virus of hope. “No, goddamn it,” I whispered, “Not by me, damn it. I was entice a cabby into driving him to a Hanging around Arbogast and Norton sidling up to him, “Not now, for careful.” neighborhood as seedy as ours. all night had dropped me about as far Christ’s sake.” “Not careful enough, apparently. Dawn was piercing the eastern sky down the ol’ totem pole as a pile of But there was no more stopping If you had been, this—this corruption like a straw penetrating a drink when second-day doggy-do. But with Hap- Norton with his story than a hog on would not have occurred.” the taxi hurtled up to the curb, dis- good now on the scene I was already slippery ice. “I was wondering, Mr. “Goddamn it, I didn’t drive gorging its lone passenger like a dog feeling a thousand percent better. He Snails, sir,” he cajoled, “if you’d mind Gernsback loony!” vomiting into a bag. was the kind of person who could do looking over this little tale of mine and “Then who did?” It was Hapgood, all right. Hap- that to you. It was his particular telling me whether you think it’s got a “How should I know?” good in his customary black leather charm. One of them, anyway. possibility of selling?” “Think, Charlie, think. You need fringed jacket, designer blue jeans, We marched into the cramped Hapgood’s eyes darted evasively to recall. What specifically was it that pineapple-and-pink-sunset Hawaiian kitchen. Arbogast and Norton waited, from side to side. “Is it science you—or someone—did that brought shirt, and filter cigarette in a long ivory faces about as long as the slow freight fiction?” about this—this dreadful horror?” holder. out of Youngstown. “You bet your buttons it is.” Norton, who’d been sitting silently Hapgood Snails, reigning King of Hapgood ground out his cigarette “Then maybe,” said Hapgood, the whole time, gazed up from his Hollywood! on the linoleum floor and then pitched evading the proffered script with a 1949 Startling Stories. “It’s a hurri- Hapgood Snails, former boy himself forward into Arbogast’s wait- sudden, artful feint, “we ought to first cane in Florida,” he said. genius of the science fiction world! ing embrace. It gave me a warm feel- be sure that science fiction still exists.” “What?” Hapgood, alive and well and in ing like pissing my pants on a cold day That stopped Norton cold in his “And you ain’t never going to find person in Cleveland goddamn Ohio! seeing the two of them reunited like tracks. no Australian butterfly.” I raced out to meet him in the street that. A couple veritable giants—each “You have to figure,” Hapgood “Chaos theory,” Arbogast said and guide him through the front gate. in his own way—of the ever-lovin’ said, smiling sweetly, “you can’t sell grimly. There was a denim baseball cap blue-eyed science fiction field. the story if there’s no place to publish “You got it, pal.” perched on the crown of his head, the That is, assuming that such a field it.” Arbogast nodded, rising from his bill pulled down low, almost still existed outside the dirty, badly lit Norton jerked a thumb over his chair on knees as wobbly as mar- concealing his fierce black eyes. interior of our dank little home. shoulder back at me. “It’s all that little malade crutches. “I’m calling Hap- “I didn’t want anybody at the I hastily dried my eyes as the two jack straw’s fault.” good now.” airport to recognize me,” he explained. of them broke apart. “Now we don’t know that for “What are you going to tell him?” I nodded. “Down, Ralph,” I said. Norton was on his feet now, certain,” Hapgood said smoothly. I “That it’s the end of the world, the ”Down 124C.” gaping like a giraffe who’d swallowed appreciated the defense. “And does it end of everything.” “Or think I was that talentless a whistle. really matter anyhow? Isn’t the impor- tant part to set things right again?” an opera singer with a furball caught in question, Charlie. Mr. Norton, you 1925. You and me, Charlie. The two Norton looked unconvinced. her throat. have an answer?” of us this time. I believe we need to “Ain’t going to be that easy to pull I was the one who finally broke it. He was slow in replying. “Ain’t revisit the Gernsback offices.” off.” “Don’t you want to hear the tape nothing about time travel ever for “And then what?” “No,” said Hapgood, “I’m sure it first?” sure”— I noticed he was still clutching “And then,” he said, dragging the won’t be. But you’ve got to keep one “What tape?” his manuscript—“but one thing might words out, “together we’ll fix every- point in mind: if we fail, if science “Charlie made a tape,” Arbogast maybe explain it. You got to think of thing.” fiction falls into some kind of limbo of said, “of Hugo Gernsback. You can, a pond in a forest. You toss in a rock. “But—but how?” non-existence, then there won’t be ah, hear him pretty clearly.” The rock goes kerplash in the middle He shook his head slowly. “I’d anywhere anyplace to publish that ”Sure, Charlie,” said Hapgood, of the pond. Ripples spread. But slow. rather not get into that right now.” story of yours.” “play it.” Gradual. Like a mule hauling a hippo- “Oh,” we all said in unison. “Guess not.” Norton nodded I played the tape. At first there potamus. In concentric circles. It may I was reminded of an old Warren ruefully. was just a lot of hissing. Then take a hell of a time for that first circle Beatty movie I hadn’t seen in years, “And now, Burton,” said Gernsback came on. The sound was to lap the farthest shore.” one from his early pretentious phase, Hapgood, turning and calling Arbogast far from clear—it wavered like a beach “Which is,” Hapgood said, “us?” Mickey One. That’s the one where by his rarely used given name, “how ball full of sand. But you could hear “It’s right now,” Norton agreed. Beatty plays a nightclub comic on the about putting on some coffee so we him. Hapgood nodded, as if this were run from some hoods and if that movie can all sit down and thrash this thing “Pussy,” said Hugo Gernsback, the something he’d already thought out. ever makes the slightest sense it’s out?” Father of Science Fiction. “Cunt. “In other words, Mr. Norton, what something I must have missed. Arbogast put on the coffee. The Prick. Big hairy balls.” you’re saying is that history doesn’t But it makes a good movie rest of us found places to sit. I ended There was a moment of silence. necessarily change all at once. It’s anyway. It’s worth sitting through. up perched on the edge of the stove as More hissing. more a gradual process. Which means You can’t hardly pull away. far from the one lit burner as I could Then he said it again. that we may well have—if you’ll That’s pretty much how it was get. “Pussy. Cunt. Prick. Big hairy excuse the term—time. Time to sort with Hapgood and his idea of us going Looking at Hapgood, I was struck balls.” things out. Time to make a back in time again and making by an errant thought: if Warren Beatty “That was Gernsback?” said Hap- correction.” everything okay. On the surface it had only been half as self-assured and good, when I shut off the recorder. Norton nodded slowly. “I guess didn’t make a hell of lot of sense. But debonair and downright cool as Hap- “Yes.” so.” I couldn’t pull away. good Snails he would have been “And he didn’t say anything else?” Hapgood beamed. “I was hoping Only later did I discover he’d been elected president of the United States “Well, sometimes he said shit. Or you’d say that.” lying through his teeth the whole time. long ago, no problem whatsoever. fuck. But mostly it was just what you “But Charlie doesn’t know what But you’ve got to remember at that heard. I’ve got a photograph, too.” he did wrong in the first place,” 17 time I’d never met Beatty. “Never mind.” Arbogast put in. “So how can we “Okay,” said Hapgood once he Hapgood looked suddenly correct what we don’t even know?” That same evening the three of had a cup of coffee in his hands. He lit thoughtful. I started to raise an objection, us—minus Arbogast—and of course a cigarette to go with it. (He was the There was one thing that was still saying it hadn’t been proved that any including the Wayback Device—piled only person Arbogast ever let smoke in bothering me. “If history really has of it was my fault, when Hapgood into a taxi and headed out for his house—with all that paper, the been changed,” I heard myself blurting shushed me silent. “I think I’ve got an Cleveland-Hopkins airport and combustibility level was frightfully out, “then how come none of us knows idea,” he said softly. Hapgood’s waiting plane. low.) “Let’s brainstorm. Anybody anything about it?” “You—you do?” For an instant I We were New York City bound! got anything they want to contribute? There was yet another long didn’t even recognize my own awe- 1925! (Well, eventually anyhow.) Ideas, concepts, questions, anything?” silence. struck voice. I sat up front next to Hapgood, There was a long loud silence like Hapgood broke this one: “Good “Yes. First, we need to go back to strapped comfortably into the co- pilot’s seat. Norton slithered into the Norton and Arbogast but to every other thick blanket of glittering, gleaming “So you’re a science fiction reader, back. Ten minutes later, when we person of our time. It was a per- stars somewhere out there, but if there right?” he said, “You’ve read it since were airborne, Hapgood turned and spective I’d never thought of before. were I couldn’t make them out. The you were a kid?” looked at me quizzically. “What’s that “You need to try to conceive it, weather had seemed clear when we left “Since I was eleven.” funny sound?” Charlie,” he said. “Picture it. A world Cleveland. But apparently no longer. “Then tell me something, Charlie. I’d been hearing it, too. “I think without science fiction. More impor- All I could see was the blackness, Which has to come first? The image or it’s Norton,” I said. tant, a world where science fiction not darker than a sunset on Pluto. the thing itself?” “What’s he doing?” only isn’t but where it never has been. From the back of the plane The conversation was turning “He’s murmuring.” You know what truly makes science Norton’s murmured prayers echoed unexpectedly philosophical. But I “Murmuring? Murmuring what?” fiction important, essential? It’s not distantly. The sound had taken on an tried to answer anyway. “The image, I “His prayers, I think.” the stories themselves. Most of them, oddly reassuring air. suppose.” “Oh.” including mine, stink like day- old owl “What kind of dreams are you “Yes. Sure. That’s the way I Neither of us look back. “He’s shit. Oh, there are some good ones talking about, Hapgood?” I said. write, for instance. First I see the story afraid of flying,” I explained. —Sturgeon and Wells and Alfie “All dreams, really. The good in my head. In terms of images. Then “But he’s here.” Bester—but compared to the world of dreams, that is. The dreams of pro- I put those images down on paper, I shrugged. literature as a whole they’re like gress. The better angels of our gentler translating them into words and “And that’s something. It means worms crawling up slopes of Everest. nature, you might say. Scratch a suc- phrases. I imagine that’s the way God he cares enough about what we’re That’s why I sometimes end up feeling cessful scientist and nine times out of must have gone about creating the trying to accomplish to push aside his sorry for you fans. Not for kid fans ten you’ll find a science fiction fan universe. First the thought—the image own cowardice and go along with us like I used to be, where it’s just a lurking beneath. I don’t mean a fan —and only afterward, the thing itself, anyway.” phase, like masturbation. But for all like you or Arbogast. Not somebody the universe.” “I think he just thinks you’ll help you grown-up lifetime fans. It’s not who breathes and sweats the stuff. I “But what if there is no God?” him get that story published.” because of anything inherently wrong mean somebody who used to read it Like most fans, both Arbogast and I “Well, maybe I will,” said with the ingroup itself but because of when they were a kid and moved on. were stone cold atheists. Hapgood. how much you end up missing in the But it’s all still there, Charlie. It’s “It doesn’t matter. There is a But somehow I didn’t think so. outside world.” implanted in the brain, embedded in universe. And what I said holds true Somehow I thought the story stunk so “But the outside world sucks,” I the subconscious. Some things don’t for it and for everything in it— bad that nobody—not even Hapgood said. fade. We all dream on. And without including the whole of the human Snails—could force somebody “Well, maybe so.” He shrugged. science fiction—given the condition of race. Until we can somehow picture legitimate to publish it. “I won’t argue with you on that. But as the world the last eighty years—since it—I mean, space satellites, atomic But I could have been wrong. I was saying, the real question is, what Gernsback—you tell me: where would energy, television, electric toasters, Norton’s murmuring grew softer. makes science fiction essential, why is we be? I think it’s only because of travel to the moon—until that happens, Ninety minutes later we were in it something we dare not lose? I’ll tell those magical collective science it can’t happen.” New York City. you what I think. I think it’s because fictional dreams of ours that we “You’re saying science fiction On the way Hapgood really only science fiction is the stuff of our haven’t all committed mass suicide predicted all these things.” talked to me once. It was a conversa- dreams, of our collective dreams, and and turned this planet into a “No. It dreamed them. There’s a tion that afterward I was never totally it has been ever since Gernsback. It’s smoldering ember.” difference, Charlie, a distinction. And able to put out of my thoughts. It been the stuff that’s kept us plunging “Isn’t that kind of a bleak way of if science fiction does die, if it ends, reverberated, like a crack on the ahead.” looking at it, Hapgood?” then everything else, everything that forehead. Through the plane’s sloping wind- “You follow the news, don’t you, grew out of it, everything I just got He was talking about the science shield I could glimpse nothing beyond Charlie? You tell me.” through talking about—that may well fiction field, about how much it had except the sheer blackness of the I was looking through the wind- die with it.” meant not only to him and me and nighttime sky. There may have been a shield again. At the blackness beyond. “Television?” I said. “And toasters.” the three of us set out by taxi for I thought of ignoring him. But gloves, even overshoes, neither us had “But none of it’s died yet,” I said. Central Park. I could sense the cabby, what the hell. possessed the necessary foresight to “Are you sure?” He smiled the usual black-bearded Sikh with a At zero I popped the red lever. bring an umbrella. slowly. “We’ve been up here an purple turban, staring through his rear And away we zipped. We left the Wayback Device awfully long time.” view mirror at the tangled mass of the Bingo! sheltered as well as we could manage Twenty minutes later we landed at Wayback Device squatting in Norton’s The trip back through time to 1925 in the somewhat thicker foliage right Idyllwild. lap. was as uneventful as ever. The long down next to the pond. Considering The first thing I did when I got to “It’s a sculpture,” Hapgood said. tedious hours seemed (as always) to everything, it didn’t seem likely it the terminal was look around desper- “My friend’s an artist. We’re taking it pass without actually passing. I would be readily damaged by a bit of ately for a TV set. to a gallery on Central Park West to figured that was just as well. Seventy- bad weather. I was really only con- I didn’t relax until I’d found one. display.” eight hours spent staring at the puck- cerned about the possibility of rust and Playing CNN, of course. The world of “Appears much like my little boy’s ered physiognomy of Hapgood Snails that mostly because I didn’t want to our collective dreams. erector set,” the driver observed. could get old for just about anybody. have to listen to Norton whine when “Well, it’s, ah, it’s supposed to,” Not to mention the vice versa part we got back. 18 Hapgood said. “That’s the point of the of it. I knew he took great pride in the work. It’s about childhood.” The idea was for us to set down physical appearance of his stupid Hapgood signed the three of us in The cabby looked unconvinced. precisely on the day prior to my goddamn time machine. (Excuse my at the Chelsea Hotel in Greenwich On this point I had to agree with him. previous trip back to December 1925. attitude but it really was raining like a Village. He explained as he did that But modern art wasn’t exactly my cup That way, whatever I might originally son of a bitch.) the hotel occupied a particularly exalt- of elderberry wine, either. Science have done that had turned poor Hugo Already about as soaked as bath ed place in science fictional history. fiction forever! you know. Gernsback into a slobbering lunatic towels at a pool party, Hapgood and I “This is where Arthur Clarke Central Park was more teeming would end up being set right by our set off at as quick a pace as we could stayed when he and Kubrick were with people than seemed common for current activities. handle for the offices of the Experi- writing the screenplay for 2001.” a Tuesday morning but the bucolic At least that was the plan. menter Publishing Company. “And it’s also where Mr. Bob spring weather may have played a part. I didn’t buy it myself. Not totally. Twenty minutes later, drenched Dylan wrote his ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the We were stopped twice before we But then I didn’t buy that I’d done past the bone, we hopped off the self- Lowlands,’” Norton put in. managed to wind our way to our anything wrong in the first place, service elevator and went barging Bob Dylan? Norton? I stood there established jumping off point in the either. through the door. a moment with my mouth hanging high shrubbery back of the pond. Both We weren’t carrying any cameras Seated primly behind her big wood open but didn’t utter a word. times by tourists. The first spotted or taping devices with us this time, desk, Misty LaTour, as radiant and What the hell. You go figure. Hapgood Snails, the famous writer and either. Hapgood had insisted. He sparkling and Louise Brooks-like as So we went upstairs to our Hollywood director, and demanded an wanted to be careful with what we ever, gaped at the two of us as if we individual rooms. Since I hadn’t slept autograph. The second recognized carried back and forth through time. were a pair of uninvited black rhinos in about thirty-six and one-half hours, Warren Beatty and wanted his, too. Anything and everything might be the crashing a wedding ceremony. I was out like an albatross with an Hapgood scribbled both names culprit of change, Norton’s Australian “We—we’re writers,” Hapgood arrow through its neck the instant my without the blinking of an eye. butterfly. managed to gasp. “We’d like to see head hit the pillow. In the shrubs Hapgood and I stood The good news was, when we Mr. Hugo Gernsback.” I didn’t even bother putting out the with the Wayback Device between us, arrived in December 1925, it wasn’t “I’m afraid you must—” She light. our hands cupped beneath. Norton for snowing. stopped suddenly, staring at Hapgood, I didn’t dream a single dream that some reason I couldn’t at first figure The bad news was, it was raining jaw slack as a sturgeon in a lake. Her night, either, in case you were wonder- kept glancing at his wristwatch. To beat all bloody holy hell. big blue eyes zipped past me without a ing—collective or otherwise. Then he started a countdown. And while we’d been smart flicker of recognition, not surprisingly, The next morning, after breakfast, “Twenty...nineteen...eighteen...” enough to bring along mufflers, since the only time we’d previously met was tomorrow. “Why, sir,” she back before—” “Come on?” I tried putting up a jewel you wouldn’t believe—and we said to Hapgood, “aren’t you just about “Who’s the publisher now?” futile resistance. “Come on where?” were there. The same sign I recalled the prettiest young man I’ve set eyes “Oh, that would be—” “To Brooklyn! To Gernsback!” from before (or was it after?) engraved on since I left my daddy’s home in old From the back office came a loud “But we don’t need to see that old in the same dirty gray stone wall, Alabamy. Tell me, aren’t you in the thump! The unabridged dictionary crazy coot!” strands of barbed wire curled on top motion pictures or something?” again. “It’s imperative, Charlie. There’s like a hair weave: Not the goddamn Warren Beatty “Sloane,” I said. “Dr. T. O’Conor no time to waste!” thing again? I thought. But no, of Sloane, PhD.” By then he had me halfway out the Murgatroyd & Malloy course not. That was being silly. “Uncle Tommie,” she finished. door. The last thing I remember is Psychoneurotic & “No, miss,” Hapgood said Thump! poor Misty LaTour’s plaintive blood- Resting In Facility politely, doffing his denim baseball So nothing had changed— curdling whine: “But when will I see cap and sprinkling the carpet even nothing! Just as I’d insisted all along, you ever again?” It had stopped raining, too. further with rainwater. “You must it hadn’t been me who’d screwed In about thirty-five years, I Hapgood paid off the cabby with have me mixed up with somebody things up. Here we were in 1925, one could’ve told her. Try keeping your- what looked like a clean, crisp twenty- different.” full day ahead, and Sloane was still in self together that long. You can see dollar bill. “But you could be in the movies, charge, Gernsback presumably still in him in a movie called Splendor in the “Keep the change.” you surely could, I’m telling you.” the Brooklyn loony bin, and all else Grass. The cabby looked the bill over “Gernsback?” I managed to butt otherwise right and well with the But too late. The door flopped front and back, our overall appearance in. “Hugo Gernsback?” world. shut behind us. Just as it did I heard still pretty scruffy from our earlier “Oh, that’s just what I was just No! Wait a minute. I had that one final fleeting echoing thump! from trek through the rain. Apparently about to inform your gorgeous friend backwards. All wasn’t right with the the back. satisfied, he tucked it away in a vest here about.” I didn’t recall her thick world. All was wrong. Totally, com- Hapgood hustled me onto the pocket. “You want me to wait around, Southern drawl from my previous visit pletely, thoroughly, abjectly wrong. elevator. The Irish doorman eyed us bud?” and got the impression she was putting This wasn’t just a world where suspiciously as we dashed across the “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. it on for Hapgood’s benefit. “We don’t science fiction was dead; it was a lobby like two bulls escaped from a We may be awhile.” have anyone by that name.” world where it had never been born. china closet. “Not too long, I’m hoping.” He I started to wheel triumphantly in And it was the real world! The A stupid tune was playing in my lowered his voice. “I don’t know if Hapgood’s direction but he beat me to world was as it was! head. I decided to put words to it. they told you, but this is a cuckoo bin.” the punch: “This is the Experimenter While I stood there, reeling like a “Oh, we know. My colleague’s Publishing Company?” he demanded. dervish on a whirl, Hapgood grabbed Charlie Frap is my name uncle”—Hapgood made a spinning “It most surely truly-dooly is,” my arm in both of his. The expression Science fiction is my nation sign next to his ear—“crazy as a coot.” Misty LaTour confirmed. She put her on his face, when I turned to look at Fandom is my dwelling place “Too bad.” chin on her fist and stared openly at him, was—to my utter amazement— The nuthouse my destination! “It doesn’t seem to run in the Hapgood, batting her eyes. I mean that one of total complete unmitigated family, though.” literally. She genuinely did-so bat triumph. 19 “Well...good.” them. “I knew it!” he was saying. “I “So he tells me, anyway.” “And you have no Hugo knew it all along!” Hapgood hailed a cab. Hapgood gave the cabby a Gernsback here at all?” he persevered. “Well, I did try —” How he was intending on paying farewell wave. “No, sir, we don’t.” Grinning like “Enough!” His grip on my arm for it I didn’t have a clue but it had to As we passed through the asy- a tuna fish. was like the bite of a shark. He beat hell out of another thorough lum’s big iron front gate and entered “He’s not the president and dragged me toward the door. “We’ve drenching. the rolling green lawns beyond, I publisher?” got to get out of here. Charlie, come Less than fifteen minutes later— leaned over and asked Hapgood, “How ”Well, I guess he used to be, way on!” crosstown traffic, 1925-style, a gentle in hell did you get away with that?” “With what?” Just like my visit before (or after, “With giving him that twenty.” depending on your view), the smell “It’s perfectly okay—a 1921 was like a pig ranch on gelding day. series.” Gernsback squatted in a heap in a “You brought that along?” far corner of the cell, chewing on the “And three more just like it. In my edge of his frayed, filthy mattress. His wallet. The trouble with you, Charlie, slick mop of gray-blond hair lay is you don’t realize the critical nature matted across his forehead like a dirty of always being prepared.” kerchief and his pale blue, piercing, Words to live by, I thought, just Germanic eyes darted crazily in his like the goddamn Boy Scouts. (My head like fornicating fire flies. sole regret now is that I didn’t listen Vaguely, I could hear him muttering, better at the time. To the words. Hap- “Cock, piss, cunt, pussy.” good was warning me. I genuinely His vocabulary of choice, it believe he was. And I let it go flutter- appeared, had not notably altered. ing right past me like a fart in the “Do you mind if we have a few wind.) moments alone with the patient?” Hap- There was a different—though if good said. He’d handed the old nurse anything uglier—nurse manning the that same dumb story about Gernsback main front desk from what I remem- being my uncle and she’d bought off bered. There was also—naturally—no on it, wholesale. Rack up another for record of my previous visit (tomor- the benefits of charm. “Say, ten row), so we had to start over from minutes, fifteen?” scratch, talking our way in to see The nurse glanced over at Gerns- Gernsback. back as if he were a misplaced bag of Luckily, this time we also had manure. “You’re sure you’ll be all Hapgood’s gift for gab. And his good right?” looks. I was only happy he hadn’t “Only if you’re nearby,” said given Misty LaTour as hefty a dose of Hapgood. his personal charm as he was giving “I’ll be waiting right at the end of the old bat nurse. the corridor.” It might have killed her, poor “That’ll be wonderful. Then if thing. something happens, if he makes any Am I sounding jealous here? kind of nasty move, we’ll just give a Well, maybe so. But I’d seen Misty yell.” Latour first. (Or had I?) “And I’ll come running.” She Ten minutes later and the nurse showed us her doubled-up fist. It was was escorting us personally down the a big doubled-up fist too. “And see to dark, dank-as-a-swamp-with-mildew- the patient.” encrusted-walls corridor to the cell “I’m sure you will. My name is containing the shattered remnants of Hapgood, by the way. It would please the man who had once been Hugo me no end if you’d call me that.” Gernsback, father of science fiction. “And I am Hannah.” 20 explain. It’ll only take a minute. I moment and stared at Gernsback. “What a lovely name!” promise you.” Then he looked back. “Why don’t I “Until the quarter hour then... Hapgood raised the gun to his lips I let him explain. “This better be believe you, Charlie? For God’s sake, Hapgood.” and coolly blew away the trail of fucking good.” you could be father and son.” “I’ll be counting the minutes... smoke. It was good, all right—goddamn “Well, we’re not.” I folded my Hannah.” I looked over my shoulder, waiting good—but it wasn’t the kind of good I arms across my chest. “And I’m not We listened as her gentle footsteps for the nurse—or somebody— to come wanted to hear. going to do it.” like the tread of a tiptoeing moose charging in on us. It took longer than a minute, too. “Even for the sake of science faded down the corridor. “Did you Nobody came. It took longer than five minutes. In fiction?” really have to pile it on so goddamn “It’s the best silencer on the fact, it took a good full ten minutes. “No.” thick?” I asked Hapgood in a whisper. market today,” Hapgood explained. But that was because I kept inter- “The thing you’ve devoted your But he didn’t seem to be listening “It’s what the CIA used during their rupting him. The reason I kept inter- entire life to?” to me. Instead, he was gazing intently glory days.” rupting was he still sounded about as “No.” upon the cowering, trembling, “You killed him,” I said. daffy as a rogue duck. “This is your final decision, babbling mass of Hugo Gernsback. “Well...yes.” As if it were “I’m afraid there was simply no Charlie?” “Tits. Cum. Asshole. Prick.” obvious—which, I guess, it was. other way of pulling this off,” he “Hell, yes. My final and abso- Hapgood took a deep breath, “You killed Hugo fucking Gerns- finished at last. “No other way at all. lute.” I took a step toward the fallen pulled a gun out of his pocket and shot back.” I’m telling you, Charlie, I’ve thought Gernsback. “Now we both better Gernsback through the chest. “Lower your voice, Charlie.” this thing through. All the way from figure some way of explaining—” It happened that quick. Driing. “But I—” L.A. to Cleveland, I thought about it. That’s when he sapped me. He just shot him. It wasn’t that big a “Lower it. Please.” And all the way here, too—the The dumbest thing I ever did in my gun, either—maybe a .32—silencer I lowered it. Actually, I didn’t say seventy-five hours we stood there, life had to be turning my back on equipped. a goddamn thing. I just glared fiercely holding that machine, that whole time Hapgood Snails. I can’t explain it even Hapgood advanced on Gernsback, at him. I was thinking. And I’m telling you, now. Call it fate, I guess, call it shooting him three more times. The Hapgood glanced at his watch. He Charlie, this is what you were born to destiny. sound echoed in the confines of the made a clicking noise with his tongue. do. You can’t back away from it. It’s Hapgood would. cell like the ringing of a faulty Then he shook his head. He chewed your fate, your destiny as a man, as a I figure he must have used the gun telephone. Driing! Driing! Driing! on his lip. human. It’s your heritage.” butt to conk me with. Driing! Then he wiped a thin film of per- “The hell if it is. Find yourself Whatever. A couple bare nano- The last shot caught Gernsback spiration off his forehead. another sucker, Hapgood.” seconds after he clipped me, I was out dead between the eyes. At last he looked at me again. “Who?” He waved a hand around like a porcupine trying to steal home. I swear I saw a last, sad, fleeting “You do understand why I did what I the cell, encompassing the three of A big pool, black as doom, opened expression of total incomprehension did, don’t you?” us—me, him, the dead Gernsback. at my feet. wash over his face. “Because you’re a—you’re a...”— “That’s not my problem.” I dove headfirst down into it. Then he was dead. I searched for the exact right words “Then you’re telling me you never Like the proverbial fucking —“because you’re a fucking nut case.” noticed the resemblance before?” 21 doornail. “No, Charlie. I did it for one “Never.” Hugo Gernsback, father of science reason: because I happen to care. Not “You never looked in the mirror, Hapgood fixed everything. fiction, deader than that roasted just about science fiction. About the combed your hair a different way, He came up with a cover story and mackerel you ate for lunch the day world. The human race, I did it thought about how you would look then got them to buy off on it. before yesterday. because I wanted to save us all.” without the beard and mustache?” Don’t ask me how. I suppose it “You are nuts.” “No, never.” had to be that notorious charm of his “Lower your voice. Let me He turned away from me for a working overtime again. Even after I came to, it took me a tiny cell, not to mention the carcass of nurses. That was when I got mad. while to figure out what Hapgood’s Hugo Gernsback, it was a struggle. Like I said, Gernsback was dead That son of a bitch! Hapgood cover story had been, but the way it “Publisher and editor.” and nobody cared. Snails! There was only one explana- came together was this: Gernsback (or “His place of birth?” Sad when you thought about it. tion for all this. Uncle Hugo) had somehow managed “Germany. No, Switzerland. I Really truly goddamn sad. Hapgood assumed that stranded to grab the gun out of my pocket and think it was Switzerland.” But not half so goddamn sad as my here in 1925 I would have no alter- tried to kill himself with it. (The “Date of birth?” own personal plight. native but to carry out the fullness of reason I had a gun was that I was a This was one Arbogast had made Do I need to fill in the tragic his designs. jeweler’s assistant and often carried me memorize: “1884.” details? My frantic race (on foot—no Well, fuck him, I thought. I won’t big bags of diamonds around with me.) “You can’t you be more specific? 1921 twenty-dollar bills in my wallet) do it. I’ll find something else to do (Don’t ask me to explain any of this: You must know your own uncle’s through the drenching rain to Central instead. I’ll become a bootlegger. A like I said, it was Hapgood’s cover birthday.” Park. My discovery, upon arrival, of fandango dancer. I’ll make a million story. And anyway, they bought it.) “Uh, make it April 1.” no fucking Wayback Device to be bucks betting on Tunney over Demp- There was a fierce struggle. In the And on and on. seen. My admission then of the truth sey. I’ll make another million buying course of the struggle Gernsback After enough of this, it finally hit of what I had feared all along: Coca-Cola short and selling the day managed to rap me over the head with me: nobody really gave a shit that Hapgood had stranded me. In before the market collapses. my own gun. Then he turned the Hugo Gernsback was dead. Why 1925. There was no way for me to get Hell, there were a million possi- weapon on himself and put three should they? He was a crazed lunatic home. bilities. All I had to do was pick one of bullets through his chest. Then he without a friend in the world and his For I don’t know, let’s call it five them and go for it. finished things off with a fourth and only known relative (me), a nephew minutes, I stood there among the I spent the night in a lice-ridden final bullet between the eyes. who didn’t even know his own uncle’s weeds and shrubbery, the azaleas and bunk at a Salvation Army flophouse in All this while, Hapgood was birthday. (Or the country he was born the bonsai trees, the ferns and the the lower Bowery. screaming for help. in. Luxembourg, not Switzerland.) flowers, and I bawled my eyes out like In the morning I managed to By the time the nurse reached the Which helped explain the a baby deprived of its rattle. borrow a razor, a bar of soap, and a cell, it was too late to do anything. incredible ease with which Hapgood’s Baby rattle, my white ass. I’d been pair of scissors from my fellow Gernsback was dead and his equally incredible cover story had deprived of my whole entire life. By flophouse denizens. nephew (me) unconscious. been bought and paid for. that no-good son of a bitch Hapgood I shaved my face and trimmed my I woke up flat on my back on the Speaking of which... Snails. hair. floor of the cell with the old hag nurse I sat up suddenly, as wide awake I wept on and on. Then I borrowed a jar of pomade and three or four others who could as a zebra at dawn. “Hapgood? Where Luckily, with the rain, nobody and a comb from the sergeant in have been her sisters (or maybe the hell is Hapgood?” could tell. And I had the place all to charge, telling him—half-truth- brothers) standing around. “Who?” myself, anyway. fully—that I planned on going out and There was also a little man with a “Hapgood Snails. The man I came And back home it was spring! looking for a job. Hitler mustache, holding a clipboard here with?” Wonderful, bucolic, all-embracing, I couldn’t do anything about my and fountain pen. Some kind of “Oh, he said he had an appoint- all-entrancing spring! clothes. But at least they were dry administrator, I gathered. ment. In Manhattan. At the Central That was the kind of thought that now. He was the one who kept tossing Park, he said it was.” only got me to crying harder. Spring, In fact, it had begun to snow. asinine questions at me. “Your uncle’s “Oh, my fucking God!” wonderful spring, I was never to see A blizzard was on its way, they occupation?” I was more than wide awake by spring again. said. Yeah, I could’ve told them. I “The father of science fiction.” then. I was on my feet and racing for Wait a minute. That was stupid. know. Been there, done that. “Excuse me?” the gate. Incredibly, no one made the Another four or five months and it I hung around the Bowery till late I tried to swallow a breath of air. slightest move to stop me. Not even would be spring here, too. An April afternoon, swigging free coffee. The With all the people crammed into the one of those big bruiser Amazon 1926 spring, to be sure, but still spring. one thing I didn’t want was to run into my own other self. Not that I could 22 called “race” music. (I’d decided to launched a new magazine. I called it have. Or else I would’ve remembered. invent rock ‘n’ roll.) On the other I Sexology. Right? And so it came to pass like flies created talk radio. Rockwell did the first cover Still, I hung around. lighting on a turd. In due time, I would be awarded illustrating the lead serial, an unexpur- When I figured it was safe I started In April 1926 the first issue of New York City’s first television gated version of D. H. Lawrence’s walking. Amazing Stories hit the newsstands. broadcasting license. Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It was hardly any more fun than it For a while I’d intended calling it In the spring of 1930, I suc- It was the first all-color cover on a had been the time before. If anything, Scientifiction but a distributor with a cessfully brought suit against the nationally distributed magazine to the snow was deeper, the wind colder, big cigar clenched between his teeth Clayton publishing chain for infringe- show a woman’s pubic hair. my toes and fingers more brittle and talked me out of it. ment of trademark over their new mag- Not to mention a penis erectus. numb. “Nobody knows what the fuck that azine, Astounding Stories of Super (But you had to look close.) But I made it where I wanted to go. means, Hugo,” he kindly said. Science. In settlement I was awarded The magazine was banned in The Experimenter Publishing But with the second, May 1926, all rights to the title, including its Boston and seized in Salt Lake City. Company. issue I started using the subtitle complete backlog of stories. But it also sold 450,000 copies I rode the self-serve elevator Science Fiction just to prepare the I tossed the stories in the trash bin, nationwide. upstairs. public for it. renamed the magazine Analog, and A sexual revolution has begun, I I walked through the door. And with each subsequent issue folded it after one more issue. announced in issue number two. By When Misty LaTour saw me, her the subtitle increased in size. The following year, I removed then I was in contact with a promising jaw dropped six inches toward the With the April 1928 issue, the one Frank R. Paul from his position as expatriate writer in Paris named Henry floor. “Mr—Mr—“ she sputtered. carrying the first installment of Doc Science Fiction’s premiere cover artist Miller. Eventually, he became a top “Uncle Hugo, you’re cured!” Smith’s Skylark of Space and also the and replaced him with a young man contributor to both my magazines. From the back I heard thump. first ever Buck Rogers story, I dropped named Norman Rockwell. In May 1935, I wed Misty LaTour “That’s Mr. Gernsback to you, the Amazing Stories part and went over I editorially assisted another bright in a simple civil ceremony performed young lady.” I let just a faint trace of to Science Fiction as my main title. young fellow, a writer I discovered at New York’s City Hall. In keeping a German accent waffle over my Then I registered the title with the working for the post office in Oxford, with the stated theme of sexual tongue. U.S. Patent Office as a legal Mississippi, named William Faulkner, freedom, the bride was an obvious “Yes, sir.” trademark. in putting together a four-part serial seven months pregnant. “And that upstart, Sloane? Where Ho-ha! based on the concept of using fission- In July Misty gave birth to twin is he to be found lurking?” Circulation climbed past the able Uranium 238 to build a bomb boys I named Burton and Hapgood. “Uncle Tommie—Dr. Sloane— 150,000 mark. capable of flattening entire cities. I The August 1936 tenth anni- he’s in his office, sir.” In 1929 my main competitor, the had to prune a lot of his long sentences versary issue of Science Fiction “That’s my office, you mean,” said notorious health nut Bernarr Mac- but the story caused a sensation. featured a special cover by Salvador Gernsback/me, marching straight Fadden, tried to force me and my I sent copies of the pertinent maga- Dali and stories by Faulkner, Heming- ahead. company into bankruptcy, but with the zines by registered mail to Albert way, Thomas Mann, E.E. Smith, H.G. I hurled the door open and barged cash reserves I’d accrued betting on Einstein, President Herbert Hoover, Wells (Return of the Invisible Man) forward. the Dempsey/Tunney fights and with and Army Chief of Staff Douglas and Edgar Rice Burroughs—Tarzan in And so on. the additional support of my consider- MacArthur. (In case they didn’t have Heat. Hapgood Snails had won the day, able holdings of Coca-Cola stock, I their own.) It sold in excess of one million his well-prepared plans carried was able to thwart his nefarious In March 1933, with the Great copies. forward by me to final fruition. designs and hold on to my assets. Depression at its lowest ebb—an eco- Time magazine ran a cover story Hell, a guy’s got to eat, don’t he? Meanwhile, I purchased two radio nomic crisis which, thanks to my entitled, “Hugo Gernsback: The Man And, tell me, what’s so goddamn stations, WBHG and WBML. On one insistence upon preparation above all Who Sees Tomorrow.” bad about being Hugo? I broadcast nothing but what was then else, had impacted me little—I And so on. All of which is just ancient history Trotsky and Mussolini. now. Oh, by the way, thanks to my But what about Burton T. efforts at promoting atomic energy, Arbogast? What about the ol’ Number World War II didn’t start until 1943. One Fan Face? But that wasn’t what worried me. Glad you asked that What worried me was me. So what about nothing? I was about to be born. Arbogast was alive. On his birth- As the critical juncture day—December 8, 1932—I’d made it approached—10:37 a.m. Eastern a point to check our mutual home town Time, October 29, 1945—I put my newspaper, the Cleveland Plain- affairs in order. On the day itself I left Dealer, to be sure. my Scarsdale home shortly after dawn, He was there, all right. Seven telling Misty, who had put on a little pounds, four ounces. weight over the years but was other- But he never became a fan. wise the same Louise Brooks lookalike He couldn’t have. There weren’t as always, that I needed to swing by any. the office early. I then had my driver I’d seen to that. drop me off at a secluded corner of the By altering the essence of the estate where I had taken the precaution genre, I’d made science fiction of constructing an underground air instantly acceptable. And in the raid bunker. I assumed it would be the process I’d deliberately obliterated its safest possible place for whatever was traditional appeal for the lonely and going to happen to happen. isolated, the introverted and Was I ready? I’ll answer that the dispossessed. only way I can: no. Hell, no. I wasn’t To the Burton T. Arbogasts of the ready to die. world. But I didn’t want to inadvertently Who the hell needed them? harm anyone else when and if I did. I was doing plenty goddamn all Norton’s law, remember: two of right on my own. the same body cannot occupy the same In 1939 I checked the Plain- space at the same time. Dealer once again. Hapgood Snails, But the time came—10:35... eight pounds, two ounces. 10:36...10:37...10:38—and the time No fandom for him, either. passed. Ho-ha! Nothing happened. I didn’t blow In the meantime Time did a second up. cover story on me: March 11, 1940: Later, I checked the AP wire and “The Man Who Makes the Future found a story about a mysterious Work.” explosion in the maternity ward of a The April 1941 fifteenth anni- Cleveland hospital. Four dead, versary issue of Science Fiction including a doctor and two nurses. contained tributes from world leaders Five, I felt like saying. You forgot as diverse as Hoover and Gandhi, the baby. You forgot me. I was dead, yes. But it was the Guess fucking what? other I, the original. It’s true. I shed a brief tear. There was no corruption in time. Hugo Gernsback lived on! There was no changing of the past. Three days later President Dewey Time was always what it was and ordered the atom bomb dropped on history was as it is. Paris and we won the war. Charlie Frap and Hugo Gernsback are one and the same person. They 23 never were anything else. Charlie Frap was born in 1945 and lived until 2003 So how did it happen? and then traveled back through time I know you want to know. Coin- (twice) to 1925 and that was when he cidence is coincidence, you say, it can became Hugo Gernsback Number Two occur, but even Charles fucking (after Hapgood Snails had plugged Dickens wouldn’t have tried to get Hugo Number One) and that’s just the away with this shit. way it was and is and always will be. Hugo Gernsback and Charlie Frap, Time is like a rock. It’s never spitting images of one another, changing, never altering. What is, is. identical twins, brothers in blood under What was, was. What will be—well, the skin. Put one in the other’s place as Norton said, there ain’t no will be. and nobody can tell the difference. Not yet anyway. Except Hapgood Snails. Who also Being Gernsback was not simply spots the resemblance from the very my destiny, my fate. Being Gernsback beginning and makes it a key part of was always what I was. And from the his nefarious plot to save the world of very beginning, too. science fiction and so on and on and Wait a second, you say. Where on. does that leave free will? Yeah, right, you say. Bullshit. Where the hell do you think it GERNSBACK-STYLE CLASSIC REPRINT You ain’t buying it. leaves it? Welcome to the crowd. In the great big shit can in the sky. It was in the early spring of 1949 merely passed him by with a glance. I don’t buy it either. Yes, me, So hooray for me, hooray for Hugo that the first odd event took place. No one wished to make himself con- Charlie Frap/Hugo Gernsback himself. Gernsback, and hooray for the ever- When the man, who stood eighteen spicuously naive by taking more than Fuck, I thought, staring into the mirror loving’ blue-eyed science fiction field. inches high at the shoulders and an casual notice of the little visitor. in my Scarsdale bathroom, if I look If you don’t like this story, then go additional four inches when measured So he walked the streets un- like Hugo Gernsback, then former out and write one of your own. Hell, if from the top of his head to his unshod molested, except that he was almost Secretary of State Henry Kissinger it’s any good, I might even publish it. feet, first began to walk the streets of stepped on sometimes. He rode street- looks just like Bozo the Clown. As long as it’s got that good old Los Angeles, no one paid any attention cars half-fare, and since the fare in Los And I happened to know he don’t. sense of wonder. to him at all. Angeles was 7¢, casually dropped his Well, not that much, anyway. —Gordon Eklund He was the smallest man ever 3½¢ piece into the coinbox, or And so? seen, and perfectly proportioned, too, sometimes a 2¢ piece and a 1½¢ piece. So whatever will be will be. Que but no one paid any attention to him. (The 1½¢ piece had been developed sera, sera. Angelenoes had all carefully cultivated for people who wished to purchase one You’ve heard that, right? an air of complete sophistication, and 1½¢ stamp.) He was seen everywhere, but no from the planet you know as Saturn, tilted to the left and followed a tacking “Indubitably,” said George, his one wrote him up for the papers. the one with the ring around it. I came course which brought him up against a face going blue as he choked on the Secretly, everyone knew it was all a here six months ago, parked my ship in bar where he ordered a double rum. As five-syllable word. publicity gag for some super-colossal Pershing Square, and have since been the glass was placed in front of him, When George had recovered, the motion picture which some studio reconnoitering. The time is ripe. We everybody, including the bartender, reporter said, “Well, then, how come might release at any time, and they did will strike soon. This is an invasion, of dissolved. He was alone in the bar. He I’m still alive?” not wish to be fooled. course, and we cannot fail.” ran into the street just in time to see the “While you spoke to me you were The little man spoke to everyone. “Ya mean there’s more of you last of the people dissolving. Several enveloped in my protective aura, His English was excellent, though he guys?” cars careened off curbs or jumped naturally.” (He didn’t choke on this had a tendency to swallow his words, “Certainly. There’s John Jones in them and came to sudden stops against one.) “Soon as it wears off, you’ll melt and for fear of choking to death on San Francisco, Jim Watson in New buildings. Nobody at the wheel. away also.” some multi-syllabled word, he spoke York, Arthur Tucker in Bloomington, Pretty soon he saw George. “Ya mean I’m gonna dissolve like only in words of three or less syllables. and about three thousand others of us. “Hey!” he shouted. the rest of them?” When he'd been around for six The whole world is being covered this “Yes?” asked George politely. “Right,” said George. months, he became a community insti- way. We’ve looked you over in detail. “You were on the level, then, He did, too. tution. We know your culture better than you about all that stuff you were telling me, --- Charles Burbee One day a courageous reporter, do. It has failed to meet our standards. eh?” full of rum, saw the little fellow and We know your weak points and your “Certainly,” said George. (from The Acolyte No. 13, Winter 1946, stopped to talk to him. strong ones. We will strike, and soon. “Then everybody’s been dis- F. Towner Laney, editor) “What is your name?” he said. Kill off everybody and take over.” solved?” “George,” said the little man. “How come we haven’t heard of “George what?” the other little guys?” “Smith.” “You're all too blasé to admit our “And what do you do for a living?” existence, that's all. I’ve been in con- “I don’t pay any attention to that.” stant communication (he choked here) “Where do you live?” with all my army, and we’ve found the “In my ship in Pershing Square.” same condition prevailing every- Here the reporter looked narrowly where.” at his interviewee and then asked, “Brother,” said the reporter “What sort of ship?” earnestly, “either you and/or I should “Why, my space ship, of course,” go somewhere and sleep this one off.” said the little man whose name was “You see?” asked George compla- George. cently. “You find yourself incapable The reporter, who had a nose more of believing me. That is all to the ‘02 ‘01 ‘00 '99 '98 '97 '96 '95 '94 '93 '92 '91 '90 '89 '88 '87 Australia 24 17 12 9 12 9 11 12 13 16 18 16 16 12 15 32 for whiskey than news, thought of go- good.” Canada 15 18 18 19 16 19 14 16 14 12 1712214 U. K. 52 39 61 65 64 58 47 52 60 51 50 44 30 61 51 33 ing away for awhile until he felt better, “Uh huh,” said the reporter. “And U. S. 113 84 105 69 91 109 108 143 109 91 104 85 66 55 67 58 but thought he'd ask just one more just when is D-Day?” Others 001 1000022215043 question and then go away and lie “Today,” said George. “Ten Totals: 204 158 197 163 183 195 180 223 198 172 191 147 119 130 138 130 down somewhere. minutes from now.” To a minor extent, 2002's fanzine output reflects publications posted on efanzines.com and other Web sites, but only the ones that I actually download and print. Paper fanzines “Tell me all about it?” he said. “Aw, t’ell with it all,” said the continue to be the vast majority. “Certainly,” said the little man. reporter, and staggered away. He’d “My name is George Smith because walked a short distance when he you can pronounce that. I have come thought he needed a quick one. He