Head! #8 Porpoise Song Contents Hello and welcome to Head! 8! You: Cider: Ian Sorensen 2 This issue of Head! has been a long time in the mak- Doug Bell ing. First, as ever, came the cover from the wondrous Brad Foster, bringing colour into our black and white TV Towers and the Essence of Post-War 7 world at last. Then came my conrep on Year of the Humour Teledu, written mostly on the train journey home, back Christina Lake in the summer of 2007. By early 2008 we’d already fingered Randy Byers for an article, and his fascinat- Punking The Diva 10 ing reappraisal of the film Diva turned up well before Randy Byers Easter. By May, Doug had plotted and elaborated his Ballardesque account of Orbital. There should have Methuselah’s Children: The Science Fic- 12 been no stopping us! But here in Cornwall we’re a long tion Influences of Salman Rushdie or my way from any other fans, and the cut and thrust of life percieved as an allegory of the BSFA conversations about fandom that nurtures and inspires Christina Lake an interest in writing and publishing. And besides, sum- mer in our household is traditionally the season for Secret Sounds Vol. 1 14 camping, going for long walks and braving the waves. Doug Bell Not that last summer provided much opportunity for any of those activities, but we weren’t to know that The Year of the Teledu, how the new fans 17 and somehow kept failing to take advantage of the play rain and wind to get on with completing the fanzine. Christina Lake Luckily, occasional fannish conversations with friends Locs 20 in Bristol, and conventions like last October’s Cytricon You Lot revived the urge to get the fanzine out, as did the steady trickle of fanzines through our letter box. What can I Art say? Without these fanzines our wit and wisdom (such Cover - the living legend that is Brad Foster. as it is) would just be a series of one-liners on Pg 10 heading - by fanboy supreme, Steve Facebook. So, I’d like to thank Claire and Mark for the Green. Head! fully supports Steve Green for frequent and always thought-provoking issues of Ba- TAFF. Vote now, vote often. nana Wings that have kept us going when all other Pg 16, 19, 21 - artistic gems from William fanzines seemed to be in hibernation. Meanwhile, Doug Rostler, delived to Head via the hands of the managed to get on the mailing list for Prolapse, and extremely generous Sandra Bond. printed out all the issues we’d missed, leading to the Pg 6, 11, 13, 23 introducing the boy-genius discovery that fandom was alive and well in the ex- John Toon traordinary debates of the Prolapse letter column. Then there’s the continuting inspiration of Chunga with its Head! #8 is assembled, edited and collated great look and feel, and eclectic content. Not to men- in fits and starts over far too long a period of tion the arrival of fanzines from fans who have been time, by Christina Lake and Doug Bell. It is out of circulation for a while like Nic Farey and Sandra available for the Fannish Usual i.e. trade, art- Bond, the return of Plokta and the privilege of being on work, articles, locs, begging, beer and a smile. the mailing list for Bruce Gillespie’s Steam Engine Time. Contact us at: All of which has prodded us back into undertaking the slow, incremental process of getting this fanzine out [email protected] of the computer and into your hands (or onto the [email protected] Internet if you’re reading this online). I hope you enjoy the current issue, and will help in the task of keeping Or send us presents, stuff, letters and love to: up our enthusiasm so that it won’t be so long until the next issue! 35 Gyllyng Street - Christina Falmouth Cornwall Vote Steve Green for TAFF! TR11 3EL UK March 2009 2 Porpoise Song Conventions April 2009 This issue starts off with a report of last year’s British Eastercon Orbital. The whole experience of spending the entire weekend stuck in a hotel at Heathrow warped Doug’s fragile eggshell mind... You: Cider: Ian Sorensen by Doug Bell The Robing of the Bride The ‘Soft’ Death of Fandom It is Saturday night and I’m sitting on a sofa in the I’m sorting through a pile of zines with a London Pride lobby accusing Clarrie of “having the drag touch”. She in my hand. The nearby water feature’s insistent bur- laughs, but again I notice that the conversation subtly bling makes me need the loo. Lennart shocks me “I shifts back to Hinge and Bracket. I turn down the offer found a Wrinkled Shrew here earlier”. Bastard! of Unicum. Despite searching for what seems like days I fail to Fragmentation find another iconic British fanzine hidden in the enor- Faces swim past me. It’s a struggle trying to find, let mous piles of paper. My search does turn up a miss- alone meet up with everyone I want to talk to, a bit like ing issue of Not Science Fiction News, and some a Worldcon. Somewhere here is Tony Keen, but not nameless US semi-prozine with a Matt Howarth strip around the halls. I keep bumping into Colin Harvey, I’ve never seen before. Lennart’s big find still smarts. usually it seems with a sandwich in his hand. Do these Beer takes away the pain from my paper cuts, but authors never eat anything proper? getting rid of the nasty case of the mouthcrabs con- tracted from the rusty staples is another matter. I see Alison Freebairn in passing once, and occasion- ally a Michael Abbott or Spike Parsons, but still no Tony On my last night of the con my Swedish brother sticks Keen. Everything seems too difficult. It takes me until the knife in further. He abandons me just as it is his the Saturday to connect with the Bristol Group; not so round to “watch TV” in his hotel room, or that’s what the horde of Edinburgh fans - they are easy to spot in he says. Somehow the image of Lennart, naked, sit- the bar on Friday night. I even manage to catch five ting on top of piles of True Rat, Seamonsters and minutes with the rare and elusive Pam Wells, but the Wrinkled Shrews is stuck in my mind. Maybe I should one thing that still bothers me, where is Tony Keen? ask if Anders can adopt me as his sidekick instead? Conventions 3 Head! #8 Conventions Indefinite Divisibility Wilson and Malcolm Hutchison. Before any of us can The exchange rate goes up first to five and then six get the assorted hip flasks out we have calvados in our tokens. We annoy latecomers telling them of the hands. I’m already heading deep into the hangover days of plenty and of the god who provides. They zone and can’t decide if the apple drink or my own are not impressed. Bowmore will get me there quicker. I compromise – I down the calvados, pour the whisky into my plastic Heathrow’s Surface cup and keep going. I offer the Bowmore around, We’re driving in from Slough after dropping in on Andrew groans “But I’ve got to meet John Jarrold early Christina’s brother after a long but easy drive from tomorrow.” Cornwall. I’m feeling excited about Orbital, but keep getting distracted from my navigation task by look- The Dead Plane’arium ing for people having sex in crashed cars beneath Again with the bridge. Peter Weston corners me, he’s underpasses or men stranded on islands surrounded lurking there with Greg Pickersgill and Bill Burns. “What by eight lanes of traffic. None emerge but I do worry do you think of fan-history Doug, we’re on a panel to- if having a convention in the epicentre of Ballardian gether?” alienation is a good thing. Time will tell, time will tell... Feeling like I’m just up to the big school and I’ve been cornered by the a gang of older kids who want my False Ale and Cider of The Hotel dinner money, I panic. I struggle to string a sentence The real ale bar is too hot and stuffy so we take together. The usual jumble of thoughts spill from my refuge in the large cold hanger and try out the bar mouth in an incoherent order. I talk from personal ex- there. It’s a strange place the hanger; the main perience, mostly about picking up old zines here and feature, in the middle, is a large X shaped bridge there at cons, attending panels on fanhistory at cons, over a large waterless water feature. Down there, trying to decode fandom’s mysteries and a bit about below, cheap plastic fish lurk, no doubt some grey the Bristol SF group’s history. I startle Pete with the bottom feeding variety. They look like they ought to knowledge that Tony Walsh came back to Bristol fandom glow in the dark, but as much as I wish they would, in the 80s. they don’t. I don’t know if I’ve said the right things but I soon have I order two lagers and a cider. I realise something a copy of Prolapse in my hand. The conversation has is wrong mid-pouring of the second cider.