Captain Flashback

CAPTAIN FLASHBACK A fanzine composed for the 415th distribution of the Turbo-Charged Party-Animal Amateur Press Our Timelines, Ourselves: Association, from the joint membership of Andy Reading Recursion by Blake Crouch Hooper and Carrie Root, residing at 11032 30th Blake Crouch is a consummate pro, and if a Ave. NE Seattle, WA 98125. E-mail Andy at Hollywood casting director wanted a writer [email protected], and you may reach Carrie at who looks like a young science fiction [email protected]. This is a Drag Bunt Press Production, completed on 1/20/2021. professional, Blake’s head shot would be on top of the pile. He has the glasses, the nerdy CAPTAIN FLASHBACK is devoted to old fanzines, haircut, a degree in Creative Writing from monster movie hosts, tunnels through time and North Carolina – I think every science fiction other fascinating phenomena of the 20th Century. workshop should have at least one Blake All material by Andy Hooper unless indicated. Crouch, and sometimes more. Contents of Issue #26: But they certainly don’t all write as well as Page 1: Our Timelines, Ourselves Crouch, who can slide 329 pages by you Page 2: A Key to Interlineations in Issue #25 before your skepticism has a chance to Page 5: Comments on Turbo-Apa #414 protest. His 2019 time travel novel Recursion Page 8: Horror Host of the Month: was the subject of the January “Books Without Bill Camfield: The Gorgon is a Twerp! Borders” discussion, conducted via Zoom last Page 12: Fanmail from some Flounder Dept: night. Almost everyone had finished the book, Letters to CAPTAIN FLASHBACK. and several people commented on how easy Page 13: I Remember Entropy Dept. Crouch’s prose is to read. Everyone seemed to “Harry Warner’s parallel universe” admire the professional quality of the writing, By Arnold S. Patou, Hagerstown Herald-Mail, and found his characters decent company, First published in March 2003 even if some of us didn’t think they were particularly interesting. People who had also read it thought a little more highly of his 2016 novel Dark Matter; no one mentioned the “Wayward Pines” Trilogy, which was adapted to a TV series in 2015. His crime novel Good Behavior was also made into a TV series by TNT and it ran from 2016 to 2018. It’s enough to convince me that Crouch knows what he’s about; he’s comfortable working in both mystery and science fiction and to date, has brought 15 novels safely into harbor. Recursion is exactly the kind of science fiction novel that Hollywood producers love. First of all, space travel is not mentioned at all, and there are no talking space squids to be seen. Would you buy a used gorilla from this man? There is a dramatic technology at the center of (See Page 8.) the story, a device meant to record human [Continued on Page 3] ------Issue #26, January 2021 ------

1 ------A Key to Interlineations published in December in CAPTAIN FLASHBACK #25: Page 3: “I eat serpent seven days a week.” Veteran assassin Gelt (Robert Vaughn) in Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). Page 4: “Better a fool’s paradise than none at all.” Interlineation attributed to Ray Nelson, FANAC #80, October 1961. Page 5: “Giving up is always easy, It’s the peace the follows that sucks.” Attributed to fantasy novelist Rachel Caine (1962-2020). Page 6: “Widmark changed motion pictures forever, displaying a gleeful sadism that was something entirely new in movies.” Eddie Mueller, host of Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley, discusses Richard Widmark’s unforgettable debut in Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death (1947). Page 7: “A landmark of American cinema for several reasons, none of them having to do with its Christmas spirit.” More from Eddie Mueller on Kiss of Death, starring Victor Mature, Colleen Gray and Brian Donlevy. Page 8: “In the shadow of the cargoes I take you one time.” & Page 9: “We’re counting all the numbers down to the waterline.” Lyrics from the song “Down to the Waterline,” recorded by Dire Straits on their self-titled debut album, 1978. Page 10: “You know what I do to squealers?” & Page 11: “I let ‘em have it in the belly, so they can roll around for a long time thinkin’ it over.” A pair of lines by the cackling sadist Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) in Kiss of Death (1947) Page 12: “So much time and so little to do, Wait a minute, Strike that, Reverse it. Thank you.” The inimitable Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder), Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) Page 13: “I realize you weren’t born a wolf, but couldn’t you at least act like one?” & Page 14: “You’ve never been a more endangered species than you are right now.” Tough love from the sensible panther Bagheera (Sebatian Cabot), Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book (1967) Page 14: “I Had a Lot Of Headaches But the End of the Stencil Down There” Interlineation published by Terry Carr, FANAC #68, December 19th, 1960. Page 16: “I love my Roomba, because our house is always so full of hair.” Statement by Turbo-Apa member Hope Kiefer during the December 2020 post-collation Zoom session. Page 17: “I wonder often what the Call Girls buy…” Interlineation published by Redd Boggs, DISCORD #15, November, 1961 Page 18: “I love sports. Whenever I can, I watch the Detroit Tigers on the radio.” Attributed to President Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006) age 19: “You could never get the smell of bubblegum out of your cards, but you kept your Yankees cards. Pristine.” Attributed to American Actor and Director Penny Marshall (1943-2018). ------

“The way I love monsters is a Mexican way of loving monsters, which is that I am not judgmental. The Anglo way of seeing things is that monsters are exceptional and bad, and people are good. But in my movies, creatures are taken for granted.” ◼ Guillermo del Toro

“I have an idea for a Godzilla movie that I've always wanted to do. The whole idea of Godzilla's role in Tokyo, where he's always battling these other monsters, saving humanity time and again - wouldn't Godzilla become God? It would be called 'Living Under the Rule of Godzilla.' ◼ Quentin Tarantino

“Women are the most important part of horror because, by and large, women are the ones the horror happens to. Women have to endure it, fight it, survive it—in the movies and in real life. They are at risk of attack from real-life monsters. In America, a woman is assaulted every nine seconds.” ◼ Molly O’Meara, The Lady from the Black Lagoon

2 Our Timelines, Ourselves pages of struggle, do not in fact apply. Our Continued from Page 1 hero returns to the original moment of divergence, neatly pinches it off and smugly memories for the benefit of those losing them prepares to enjoy being the wisest old man in due to dementia. Improbably, if not the history of the world. I’d have been more ridiculously, this system can be used as an annoyed, but I remembered that even a good effective method of travel into the past time travel story can make you want to throw represented by one’s memories – but only if it against the wall when you’re done. the subject is willing to die and abandon the life they have lived since the memory was Recursion also makes the point that human formed. The only problem comes when the identity is forever defined and limited by our traveler reaches the point from which they sensory capabilities and the minute delays returned to the past – not only does the between the reception of light and sound awareness of both of the traveler’s “timelines” waves and our brain’s ability to interpret them suddenly re-appear in their brain, but also in means that we perpetually live a split second the minds of everyone everywhere. in the past. Our bodies already occupy a future that we can’t yet observe. With this in As the technology proliferates, reality fractures mind, the idea that we might be able to go to the point where humanity cannot endure or backwards in time through sheer force of understand its existence and can do nothing brain chemistry begins to seem disturbingly but destroy itself. The protagonists are able to plausible. reset their lives repeatedly but face the necessity of destroying the time travel Derivation Without Derision technology without any tool other than time Recursion has many elements which seemed travel. They also develop a passionate and familiar from other novels and films, and we devoted relationship of the kind that had a good time trying to come up with a bag Hollywood lives on, and romantically seek one full of them. Ken Grimwood’s 1986 novel another out across multiple realities. The Replay made similar use of the idea of time narrative ends with one impossibly old traveling at the moment of death. (No one is protagonist preparing to meet the other for saying time travel is convenient.) I recalled the the first time, which is really the 14th time, but novel Memories by Mike McQuay, which won with the hope that life will play out without the the Phil Dick Award in 1987, and in which invention of the memory travel technology. people in a state of heightened awareness approaching death could enter the lives of any Crouch makes a lot of choices that give ancestor in their genetic tree. This Recursion the potential to appeal to a mass immediately provoked a comparison with audience. His limited number of POV Octavia Butler’s Kindred, to which I could only characters means that no one will have to be reply, “Of course!” And then a little particle of eliminated in the screenplay. Two female doubt follows – did I really read all those time characters are sacrificed – one of them twice - travel books, in this one lifetime? - to serve as motivation for the male protagonist, but this also has the effect of Finding similarities and relationships between paring down the cast and making the central works is almost a reflex for science fiction relationship more important. We expended a fans and other obsessive readers, and total lot of effort trying to avoid calling the results originality is perhaps overrated as an artistic “hacky,” but it is a challenge when you’re imperative. Writing something without any dealing with time travel fiction. Recursion reference to the ocean of words we swim in turns on the revelation that the supposed seems fairly impossible to begin with, and who limits of the technology to access previously knows if a reader would be capable of overwritten timelines, observed through 300 [Your Timeline Continues on page 4] ------You mean you dig that Crazy Dr. Destrukto stuff? ------

3 ------I always wanted to do a trivia. Who knows what I might know? ------Our Timelines, Ourselves Continued from Page 3 enjoying it? Each of us has a personal literary if the entire thing is a fantasy or hallucination timeline and only the limits of memory keep experienced by people who have their us from seeing every idea in relation to all the memories enhanced by the magic chair. This others we have read. I would argue that being would explain occasional lapses in logic and reminded of other books is one of the primary prevent questions about the dead body of the pleasures of reading and Crouch’s ability to time traveler left behind in the present day. neatly pilfer parts from a variety of sources is (They seem to disappear as the timelines the mark of a savvy pro. change, but opinions were mixed. I still thought it was possible that there was a whole There was one piece of reference or allusion cemetery full of abandoned cops and memory that no one mentioned in the discussion, scientists somewhere.) much to my surprise. In the book’s opening a scene, a butterfly flies around the I would have warned the reader about various protagonist’s head during a lunch in spoilers contained here, but first of all, I’m an Manhattan; it seems to have no other function adult; and second, the entire course of this than to remind the reader of Ray Bradbury’s novel flashed before my eyes while reading 1952 short story “A Sound of Thunder,” often the first 500 words. The only surprise was that incorrectly identified as the conceptual origin the hero’s dead daughter was still dead at the of “The Butterfly Effect.” Sure enough, the end of the story. butterfly appears again near the end of the Despite all of these complaints, like most of novel. I think it is possible that Crouch means those responding, I enjoyed reading us to see that despite all we do to muddle up Recursion, right through the concluding our own timelines – however much doubt and chapters wherein the pace of divergence and regret do to us what time travel cannot – disaster becomes completely frantic. Crouch reality is more resilient and positive than we makes it so easy to keep turning pages, just to think. The butterfly abides. see if your predictions will come true. And I was surprised that most of the group were mostly, they do. Recursion is shameless in its perfectly comfortable with Crouch’s idea of manipulation; eventually, I just laughed out time travel through enhanced memory. It loud at the second false climax and shook my occurred to me afterward that the ground had head admiringly at the equally inevitable film been softened by other works where school ending. I don’t know if there is one characters travel through time using items as original particle to Blake Crouch, or if his very prosaic as hot tubs and sleeping bags. People essence is a mélange of J. G. Ballard, Elmore travel through time and space by hugging Leonard and Diana Gabaldon, nor do I prehistoric stone monuments, by boarding the particularly care. His prose reads like a silky wrong commuter train or thinking really hard cocoa mousse, inciting the same feelings of and turning a magic key. gluttony, shame and delight. I can’t wait to devour another of his books, even though I’ll Recursion keeps its cards hidden for a little hate myself when I’m through…. while – you wonder if false memories are being accidentally implanted in people by the Big Machine, rather than sending them back (Recursion by Blake Crouch, Ballantine Books, in time. In fact, one might reasonably wonder Trade Paperback Edition, 2019)

------That was so dangerous! I feel like Mrs. Dracula! ------

4 Mailing Comments on Turbo-Apa #414: Your proposal for a Municipal Mental Health Unit seems long overdue, and we need one (Comments will be pretty minimal this month: here, too. I’ve written two fanzines and read a 300-page novel in the past seven days and carried Scott Custis & Jeanne Gomoll, MADISON several carloads of old fanzines out of Elinor FOURSQUARE #50: Congratulations to both of Busby’s storage locker and into our garage. If you reaching 50 issues! That’s a milestone you don’t get a comment, you’ll know that I fell that only a tiny percentage of apazines reach. asleep.) I was frankly a bit surprised to learn that Cover (Hope Kiefer and Karl Hailman): This Savidusky’s fur business had remained was brilliant – not only did the collage of solvent at least through the beginning of 2020 COVID slogans and warnings look great, but and also immensely relieved that you had they perfectly captured the tone of the succeeded in recovering the Tiptree Quilt from outgoing year. Decades from now, someone their storage facility. What will eventually will be able to look at this and the whole year become of it? The quilt and the cookbooks will come back to them, you sadists. were what came to mind when Tiptree’s name was dropped from the award, and I’m glad you Marilyn Holt, LETTER FROM THE FARM: My have done so much to preserve them. sister Margaret’s partner Eric spent a few years editing self-published fiction for several As ever, I appreciated the feedback on my authors. He made enough money from the own work. Many of the events in Orson Welles’ work that it seemed like the writers had to be early life read like a piece of fiction. But turning a profit. I can’t believe that all of them everything I have tried to investigate further were independently wealthy and had no need has proven to be even more complicated and to show any income from their work. When unlikely than the details provided in summary your packager gets done with your book, I biographies. There were more famous people hope we will have a chance to buy it! in Welles childhood and adolescence than a meeting of the Algonquin Round Table, Lisa Freitag, AFTER WORDS #44: It is interesting to see the different images that Elizabeth Matson, COAT & BOOTS: I found the people have developed of de la Fayette, story of your Christmas Stocking tradition depending on whether they have seen wonderful reading and have always loved the Hamilton or read Sarah Vowell’s book about general idea of finding gifts that are small and his tour in 1824. I find it remarkable that his special like that tiny red volume of A resentment of Napoleon was so great that he Christmas Carol. Old coins, ancient beads, never considered participating in any of the fossils, old postcards: My family has come to First Empire’s adventures. It’s hard for me to expect something found in a flea market will see that as the same man who actually be under the tree. This year, we ended up bought a ship and its cargo so that he could sending fruit and flowers from a Madison get to the war in America as quickly as florist instead of personal gifts, so I’m already possible. He managed to become the skilled thinking about what I can find this year. and experienced general he had dreamed of I liked the account of your course on being but then hardly ever made any use of revolutionary history. I was lucky enough to those skills again. That must have been take a semester focused on Chinese history in frustrating, on top of seeing his ideas ignored high school. The unit on the revolution started in the revolution he helped begin. with the Tai-Ping war, continued to the Boxers and ran full speed through the Cultural

------Even a Humble Noob has a place in the seasons of trivia. ------

5 ------I know it was collegiate and underhanded, but you forced me into it. ------More Mailing Comments on Turbo-Apa #414: elaborate good-byes. I think the idea of trying to add a camera to my desktop seems more Elizabeth Matson, COAT & BOOTS, continued: attractive than ever. Revolution. I had quite a few college history courses that didn’t cover half as much! Jae Leslie Adams, alphabet obsession: We have a new work-out, which seems perfectly Gregory G. H. Rihn, AN WISCONZINE: I was designed to break old people’s will completely. sorry to hear about the passing of Richard It involves pulling up huge masses of English West. I have the general impression that the ivy and chopping thickets full of blackberry Tolkien Society was the first organized fan bramble, usually in a cold morning rain. I find group to operate in Madison, although it is making me hurt in ways I have never individual fans and pros certainly passed previously imagined. through the University before that. The long section of the funeral of Theoden King was Your zine is an unexpected multi-sensory also wonderful and made me think of things delight. My fingers luxuriate in the grainy we have seen over the run of the TV series fibers of the paper, and my nose giggles at the Vikings. almost-forgotten scent of Gestetner ink. And look – not a hint of bleed-through. The world is I had somehow avoided hearing that Richard not all bad that can still produce such Corben had died. Back when I was reading fabulous things. HEAVY METAL, I would find the story by Matt Howarth first, then look for something by Steven Vincent Johnson, SONOVA QUARK: I Corben. No one else did anything like his work continue to root for you in your efforts to find at the time. some peace with your long-standing anxieties. You made note of a number of reasons to be Kim & Kathi Nash, KN: Those epic mounts for hopeful, and with a few hiccups, all of those your World of Warcraft characters are really seem to be falling into place. (Joe Biden was something! Your Dwarf Priest kind of looks like inaugurated today; I don’t think he even sat a human perched on the back of an elephant! down before he fired some hateful troll lurking The saddle should definitely come with a in the Labor Department. Run while you can, safety belt. you rats!) And all honor to Zoe the cat, for Oh, good luck on the downsizing scheme, I having her own cancer experience, and had a very good year sending large volumes of returning to work without even complaining paper back out in the mail, but over the past about the strange outfit you dressed her in. week, I’ve accepted another huge load that Would that we can all be so resilient and undid all the progress for the past 12 months. lacking in sartorial self-consciousness. Time to ship some more random boxes of F. J. Bergmann, A TURBULENT APA-RITION: treasure to collectors who are too foolish to Your accounts continue to confirm the complain…. spiritual and financial link between owning a Carrie Root, THE HOUSE ON THORNTON horse and owning a boat. I’m glad you liked CREEK: I really liked seeing that trippy photo the Orson Welles biography in issue #24: I feel of the crescent-shaped dapples taken during like there is some kind of fiction there, but I’m the eclipse. My gosh, that already seems like torn between realism and glowing rock from that was MANY years ago… space. You know, the fannish condition. Our efforts to get the laptop to function for Your poem, “Tea Ceremony,” was fragrant and Zoom have gone nowhere, but I haven’t really warm to the touch, but also an exercise in minded sharing the screen with you. Since you restraint. There was a strong impulse to rush, always have more endurance for it than I do, I skim, flip the page prematurely. But I stayed am able to slip away early without making

6 through every line and so the brew was oatmeal snickerdoodle bars, and then it was perfect when I finally had permission to take a just pouring buckets of rain and the party was sip. postponed for several weeks. We had to eat all those butterscotch cookies by ourselves, “Expedition,” on the other hand, was over just and there are still a few left in the freezer. a little too quickly. I marvel at the menace you We managed to get through the entire holiday concealed in those little syllables. season without ever eating turkey or making a Regarding your comment to Carrie Root, pie, so those butterscotch bars were a kind of comments are not necessarily better for being reminder of the celebrations we hope to have longer; I’m doing my best to prove that here. again someday. Jim & Ruth Nichols, Fluff and Jim lost in the I read your comment to me about the timelessness of waiting: I rather liked the conflicting preferences for new inventions and story of the fall of Sophie’s cat tree, and the old formulas that exist side by side in the sweet payoff that she was restored to fannish heart, just before the Books Without happiness by the appearance of the Border discussion. That group wanted to come replacement. This past year, I think we all feel down firmly on the side of the new, but our like cats that can see our favorite tree but seemingly encyclopedic command of the can’t go climb in it. The story the lost pillow canon of time travel stories suggests that that ended up stuck in the dryer was also we’re also perfectly comfortable reading the quite familiar, and I was glad that it finally was same book several times. found. I somehow lost my backpack right after I’ve come across some more interesting we returned from Texas last year, and I’ve examples of fan art and Carrie always has spent the entire subsequent year wondering photos that we could use for cover what I did with it. illustration. Rather than sign up for a specific “Kissing in the Time of Covid” was very sweet. month, I propose we complete several We have only had one snowfall all winter, so I potential covers, and leaving the date and am not able to quite recreate the feeling of distribution numbers blank. The next time you being slowly marooned in the snow. In Seattle, are left without a cover at the deadline, let us it seems more like we’re being enveloped in know, and we will finish one of those projects an unnaturally dark and quiet night; and at and send it to the UPS store along with our this time of year, it often feels as if the night other submissions. If no such situation arises, will last forever. we’ll eventually ask you to fit them in the schedule. All honor to Jim on his long-awaited retirement. I hope you guys find being To be completely honest, I also found Orson together more as pleasant as Carrie and I Welles to be almost infinitely more compelling have – I honestly thought it would be much than the character of The Shadow. There harder than it has. seemed to be a disconnection between the wily and resourceful Kent Allard, who had Jim Hudson & Diane Martin, THINGS THAT formed a network of spies and agents while BEGIN WITH H: First of all, there was much keeping his identity concealed, and the sloppy vicarious pleasure in reading about your Lamont Cranston, who would spend two acts annual cookie baking program. It just doesn’t trying to solve the mystery, then take out his seem to make much sense to make a lot of twin automatics and blow a bunch of holes in cookies when you hardly get to see anyone it. Kind of like the difference between else. But we did have one event, a proposed Chandler and Mickey Spillane. solstice celebration with the Kramer Creek stewards. Carrie made these rather fantastic ------You’ll be happy to know that stupidity is not hereditary, You acquired it all yourself. ------

7 Horror Host of the Month: graduated from Carter Riverside High School Bill Camfield: The Gorgon is a Twerp in 1947. He had gained some experience in school shows and participated in Christmas It has been over sixty years since Vampira and pageants where he was tutored by Paul Jung, other first-generation performers created the a legendry clown with Ringling Brothers. But role of monster movie master of ceremonies, even before finishing high school he took a and hundreds of men, women and puppets respectable job writing advertising copy for have been part of that tradition. But fans Leonard Brothers Department Store. continue to have a particular appreciation for the pioneers of the field, most of whom On the Origin of the Specious became horror hosts without the benefit of In 1949, his boss asked Bill to write scripts for ever having seen one before. The costumed a local television series titled Hometown horror guide was one of several characters Harmony, and because of his previous stage common to early television programming, experience, Camfield ended up appearing in particularly on independent stations, which the series too. Leonard Brothers was pleased had to fill a broadcast day without access to with the results; Camfield was promoted to network newscasts or series. Besides horror “Radio and TV Director,” and would create and hosts, stations often had avuncular characters appear in several more series underwritten by who hosted “straight” movie broadcasts, or the store. These includes gems like Let’s Go dressed as cowboys, pirates or spacemen to Shopping, Man about Music, Billboard and host programs aimed at children of varying Meet the Candidate. During this period ages. And in many cases, one performer Camfield also studied at Texas Christian played all those roles at different times, and University on a writing scholarship and would became more memorable to viewers than the complete a degree in English in 1957. cartoons and creepy movies they peddled. In 1951, he married Ela Hockaday, whose Bill Camfield (June 27th, 1929 – September family were well-known patrons of the arts, 20th, 1991) was one such versatile actor and and Ela’s Aunt and namesake Ela Hockaday writer, who came to personify independent was known as the founder of the Hockaday local broadcasting in the Dallas/Fort Worth School for Girls. Bill and Ela had a son and a area of Texas. He is lionized first for playing daughter, but sadly, she died in 1965, at the Ichamore Twerpwhistle, much better known as age of 38. “Icky Twerp,” the host of Slam Bang Theatre, a Across the 1950s, Camfield became more twice-daily collection of cartoons and Three actively involved in TV production, and by Stooges short subjects aimed at the tweens 1954, was employed full-time by Ft. Worth and shut-ins of the Dallas metro area. But Station KFJZ-TV. He had a healthy lack of Camfield played several other memorable shame, portraying memorable but cheesy characters in both series and local characters like “Mortimer Moolah” in a series commercials and horror fans knew him as of commercials for the Texas Consumer “Gorgon,” the sinister, black-caped host of Finance Corporation and voicing “Hoover the Nightmare, a horror broadcast that presented Movie Hound,” the puppet-co-host of the the original Screen Gems “Shock Theater” film Million Dollar Movie. He was already known catalog starting in 1957. for several comic characters when KFJZ asked Camfield was born in Mineral Wells, Texas, him to host their new Nightmare broadcast in where his father Joseph E. Johnston Camfield 1957. worked as a coal miner. Joseph and Nina At that moment, melodrama and horror had Barbara Weaver Camfield had lost their first not yet evolved completely into camp, so child, a daughter, in the influenza epidemic of Camfield’s character Gorgon, although given a 1918. Nina was 39 in 1929; Bill must have single name like Vampirella and Liberace, been an unexpected miracle. Joseph Camfield displayed a bit more menace than many of his died in 1935, and Nina took her son from contemporaries. Rather than poke fun at the Mineral Wells to Ft. Worth, where he Shock Theater offerings, Camfield did his best

8 to enhance their effect with as much genuinely spooky atmosphere as possible. His segments were shot in a convincingly dark and menacing set, with fog and frequent flashes of lightning. Camfield would open the show with a glorious soliloquy on the fearful aspects of the evening’s film, and his delivery was inspired by the great orators of monster cinema, including John Carradine, Vincent Price and George Zucco. He also had a great and memorably “evil” laugh, a threatening cackle that was his ticket to playing the part. Camfield was a self-professed fan of gothic literature, particularly Poe, and Gorgon appeared to have stepped from an early 19th Century novel. Clad in a white shirt with fluffy white cravat and a black cape lying strategically over one shoulder, he looked like a disgraced aristocrat forced to take up gravedigging. Sometimes, the show would feature another actor as a mock-up of the Mummy or Frankenstein’s monster, and the episode would fade out with Gorgon about the Bill Camfield as Gorgon the Gruesome expire in their clutches. This was quite different from the campy schtick that most resurrecting it for future Halloween specials. monster hosts traded in. By this time, Camfield was putting a lot of Beginning in September 1957, his Saturday effort into his character “Icky Twerp” and Slam evening shows ran from 8:00 to 10:30 pm, Bang Theatre, a show which gave him far and featured two complete movies! Although more license to do slapstick comedy, his first this left Gorgon only a few chances to present and most enduring love. what he called his “Gothic doubletalk” each The role came to him when the regular week, the growing audience loved every cartoon host, “Captain Swabbie,” went on minute that he was on the screen. He was vacation and Camfield was asked to profiled in issue #2 of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF temporarily replace him. Management was FILMLAND and voted the #3 Horror completely delighted with Able Seaman Personality of 1958 by its readers. Ichamore Twerpwhistle and asked Camfield to Clubhouse of the Apes build a new show around him. This turned out With two features per broadcast and several to be two shows taped every day, for morning of the “Inner Sanctum” films reserved for the and afternoon time slots – no wonder Saturday afternoon mystery matinee, KFJZ Camfield was happy to let the Saturday (later re-named KTVT) soon had to repeat the Nightmare broadcast go dark after 1959. classic horror offerings in the Shock Theatre As Icky Twerp, he appeared in a striped suit catalog, and saw the audience erode. After (Camfield had worn it to his high school two years of weekly broadcasts, Nightmare graduation) and horn-rim glasses, with a tiny was taken off the air in what would now be cowboy hat perched on top of his unruly wig, called a “planned hiatus,” with the intention of

------A journalist makes himself the hero of the story. A reporter is only a witness. ------

9 ------About this wanting to be a reporter – don’t ever change your mind. ------which appeared to have been coated with gleeful mischief. He presented a stark “greasy kid stuff” and attacked with an contrast to his crosstown rival, the gentle “Mr. eggbeater. Visually, the character owed a lot Peppermint” portrayed by Jerry Haynes on to Ernie Kovacs’ delicate aesthete “Percy Dallas station WFAA. Dovetonsils” and that impression was Camfield created several other characters for underlined by Icky’s sidekicks and KFJZ. Cosmo the Clown was actually a antagonists, Ajax and Delphinium, who were sophisticated robot who acted as the host of played by two guys in Gorilla masks. A third an interplanetary network. The science fiction ape, Arkadelphia, later joined the troupe, adventurer Captain Catfish was also an encouraging further comparisons with Kovacs’ offbeat hero, a near-sighted polymath under a “Nairobi Trio” sketches. dramatic helmet and a red satin cape. (Icky Regular cartoons on Slam Bang Theatre Twerp’s thick glasses were quite real and included Felix the Cat, Hercules and the quite necessary; as Gorgon, Captain Catfish original Max Fleischer Popeye episodes. But and other lens-free characters, Camfield was the Three Stooges shorts were always “Icky’s” functionally blind.) Camfield also wrote the favorite segments and his slapstick skits often Captain’s exploits, which often featured the extrapolated on extravagant acts of idiocy nefarious interference of a bearded proto- invented by the Stooges. Icky helped a new hippie known as “The Black Beetle.” (Not to generation of Texans discover their humor and be confused with keyboard artist Billy he was one of several local TV hosts asked to Preston). appear in the Stooges’ last feature film, The The Grace of Goofs Outlaws is Coming (1965). Bill Camfield got to In 1962, KTVT brought Nightmare back to the play Wyatt Earp. air, and Gorgon’s maniacal laughter echoed Part of Icky’s appeal came from the sense that from Fort Worth TV sets every Saturday night he was a co-conspirator with the kids watching at 7:30 pm. The show now featured just one his show and seemed to revel in all forms of classic monster movie and the earlier start time made it easier for some of Icky Twerp’s older viewers to stay up and watch his creepy alter ego. The show appeared in the Saturday slot for two years. Then in 1964, KTVT changed to a variety format featuring Country Western music on Saturday nights, and shifted Nightmare to Wednesday at 7:30. Perhaps it was harder for young monster fans to commandeer the family television set on a midweek night, but

Nightmare only lasted a few more months, and Bill Camfield (with umbrella) and the Slam Bang Orchestra left the air again in early 1965.

10 Slam Bang Theatre continued on the air into 1972 and presented more than 5,000 episodes. At the end of the last show, Icky strode away into the sunset, while “You’ll Never Walk Alone” played in the background. Various North Texas personalities like Joe Bob Briggs, Elaine “Spanky” MacFarlane and the late Bill Paxton have cited Icky Twerp and Gorgon as major formative influences. Paxton put scenes from Slam Bang Theatre in the background his 2001 feature film Frailty. Camfield apparently decided to end the show in order to take a job as program director at a Denver TV station. Before leaving KTVT, Camfield brought back The 3 Stooges with Bill as Wyatt Earp Gorgon for a Nightmare special on Halloween, 1972. The entire studio was transformed into TV studio. But they were successful students a dungeon set for the show, which presented and both were expected to attend prestigious a broadcast of Roger Corman’s The Pit and universities. When the 17-year-old Martha the Pendulum. This was also Gorgon’s first Camfield was killed in an auto accident in the broadcast in color. Camfield returned for spring of 1977, Bill was incapacitated. His another Halloween special in 1976, and that alcoholism reached a life-threatening state, was apparently his last appearance as the and he stopped working in television for character, who was a more esoteric figure several years. than the mischievous Twerp. Bill’s son Paul could not explain how his father Sadly, if comedy afforded an escape from the managed to sober up, but by the mid-1980s sorrow of life, Bill Camfield had a great deal to Bill Camfield had his own creative consulting escape from. His wife Ela Hockaday was an firm and was working in entertainment again. alcoholic and suffered from a bipolar disorder He built a closer relationship with his son, and that led her to several stays in Parkland the two of them even appeared on stage hospital and treatment with Thorazine, until together, performing skits in a 1989 tribute she was sent home in a nearly catatonic fog. celebrating the 30th anniversary of Slam Bang After several of these cycles, Ela found her Theatre. In the 1980s, Bill also had the time misery unbearable. In 1965, she killed herself to pursue his long-standing ambition to write, by eating rat poison while at home with her completing two screenplays and a novel. two young children. Bill Camfield did not live to see the foundation Bill Camfield was also an alcoholic, and Ela’s of the Horror Host Hall of Fame, nor his death deepened his depression. He would induction to it in 2013. He was diagnosed with marry twice more, but both marriages ended a malignant brain tumor in 1991 and died in divorce after less than three years. His only a few months later. He was mourned by professional success and Ela’s estate allowed thousands who had known him in their him to send his children Paul and Martha to childhood and recalled his program with an exclusive boarding schools. Having grown up ardent affection. He had never let them down in humiliating poverty, he was determined to by trying to educate them or make them into see that his children wanted for nothing. more righteous, moral citizens. All he ever Camfield did not know them particularly well, asked from them was their laughter and having spent most of their lives working in a nothing could have been easier to give. ------It may not be the oldest profession, but it’s the best. ------

11 ------Cartoons on Pages 13, 14 & 15 by Bill Rotsler ------Fanmail From Some Flounder Department: mind like Morgus the Magnificent and Letters to CAPTAIN FLASHBACK Morgus was a perfect fit for the Worldcon. I can easily imagine him covering some of the Guy Lillian III same ground as the great Bob Shaw in his ghliii@yahoo,com legendary “Serious Scientific Talks.”

December 9th, 2020 It occurs to me that horror hosts were also It's been a delight to read about Morgus pioneers in cosplay and that the convention the Magnificent in the pages of your is the ideal environment for them to meet their public. There would be no issue coming publication. Although I wasn't a resident of with a hall costume, for example…] New Orleans during the heyday of his TV show, I did catch his final incarnation and Jerry Kaufman like much of fandom had the pleasure of [email protected] meeting him at the '88 Worldcon, Nolacon II. There he gave a righteous presentation December 31st, 2020 that left attendees gasping for air. (Their I enjoyed this issue, but without much in only complaint, as voiced by Orleanian the way of comment. I do appreciate your Joanne Montalbano, was the absence of guide to surf/horror music and will try out his masked and monstrous sidekick, a few tracks. You possibly know already Chopsley.) that this would appeal to Tom Becker and Lynn Kuehl, who are big surf music fans. At that event some wag thought to baffle the lisping genius by asking him to explain I'll have to tone down my advice on direct relativity. To his surprise, and everyone's, delivery of zines via email as a road to I'm sure, the good -- if insane -- doctor's greater response. I can think of at least alter ego, Sid Noel Rideau, was an one zine that's emailed to me, but whose educated gentleman and Morgus' only letters of comment come from Lloyd explanation was accurate and concise. Penney. The chants of "MORGUS! MORGUS!" that erupted at the end of his show. [APH -- I used to get letters from Lloyd Penney too, but he seems to have stepped I spoke to Morgus afterwards, asking him away from his former practice of writing to autograph the article on him in my letters to almost every zine published. program book (I was editor), and he paid Perhaps he is limiting himself to zines that me the head-spinning compliment of still appear on paper. We have quite a few people still publishing these days, but not so requesting a copy for himself. He also many writing letters of comment. corrected my attempt at making the secret sign for members of his "Higher Order." And regarding a subject you raised in your When Sid Noel ascended to a higher plane previous letter: I see that “Chilly” Bill last August, the whole of New Orleans Cardille is also a member of the Horror Host mourned. A great guy and a great Hall of Fame. I’m sure I will eventually get character! around to profiling him, as well as Bill Miller (The Great Zucchini), Bill Bowman [APH – I think Worldcon was the ideal (The Bowman Body), William Castle and environment for a distinguished scientific William F. Buckley Jr.]

12 I REMEMBER ENTROPY DEPARTMENT “His contributions have been enormous and “Harry Warner’s parallel universe” his two books, ‘All Our Yesterdays’ and ‘A By Arnold S. Platou, Wealth of Fable,’ are the standard historical Hagerstown Herald-Mail chronology of science fiction fandom. His tireless correspondence and feedback over (This article was published a month after fan the last 65 years have been amazing. He will historian, publisher and correspondent Harry be missed,” Brown said. Warner Jr., died in February, 2003. Robert Lichtman originally republished it in SAPS.) Warner, born in 1922 in Chambersburg, Pa., Herald-Mail newsman Harry Warner spent started working at The Herald-Mail Co. in 40 years reporting on our community, but it Hagerstown on May 17, 1943, as a reporter. was not until he died last month at age 80 He covered several governmental agencies that his significance to an entirely different and the farming community, and he wrote world came to light. obituaries and general news. Warner had told few local people, if anyone, During World War II, he translated letters that for most of his life his fascination with from Dutch and German families who wrote science fiction and science fiction fans had parents of American soldiers they’d met led him to write volumes of magazine overseas. Warner had taught himself seven articles and books on the subject, and that he foreign languages – an accomplishment all was known to thousands of sci-fi the more amazing because health problems aficionados throughout the world. had forced him to drop out of Hagerstown High School by the 10th grade. Warner “has been one of the primary founders and mainstays of the science As a youngster, he grew to love the fiction field since the 1039s,” said Charles emerging world of science fiction. N. Brown, editor and publisher of Locus, the “Harry was like a number of other teenagers nation’s primary trade magazine for science in the 1930s” said Joe Siclari, a New York fiction and fantasy publishing. teacher who chronicles science fiction history as a publisher and through his Web site, fanac.org. “A lot of these youngsters were very interested in our future and looked at science fiction as a way to speculate and see possibilities,” Siclari said. In 1938, before his 16th birthday, Warner began writing and, using an old mimeograph machine, publishing Spaceways, a magazine for science fiction fans. In its four years of publication, Spaceways became “one of the most important fanzines of its period and had articles from some of the most important names in the field,” Siclari said.

Less than a year after launching Spaceways, Warner began producing Horizons, a

13 personal opinion fanzine – a word meaning fan magazines in science fiction circles. “Race relations, dangers of the atomic bomb, the speculation about whether atomic power could be used for good – there were discussions in Horizons about many, many of these things,” Siclari said. Like Spaceways, Horizons had only small circulation at first, reaching a few friends in addition to the 75 copies Warner circulated through the Fantasy Amateur Press Association. Warner continued to write Horizons every three months until he died, and it is still being published, Siclari said. In 1969, Warner’s first book, “All Our Yesterdays,” was published in hardcover. It repeatedly for the World Science Fiction was an informal history of science fiction Society’s Hugo awards – “one of the biggest fandom (essentially, conventions, awards in science fiction given annually by publications and other activities involving fans,” Pratt said. fans) during the 1940s. It was reprinted in Warner won the Hugo in 1969 and 1972 as a 1971 in both hardcover and paperback fan writer, and a third time in 1993 for Best editions. In all, about 4,000 copies were Non-Fiction Book, “A Wealth of Fable,” printed, Siclari said. which had been published in hardcover in Warner’s second book, “A Wealth of 1992. In 1995, he won a First Fandom Fable,” which covers fandom in the 1950s, award, a lifetime achievement honor for first appeared as a three-volume service to science fiction. mimeographed edition in the late 1970s. Until he retired in 1983, Warner continued Siclari, who was the publisher, was working working at The Herald-Mail, seldom, if with Warner on an illustrated edition that’s ever, mentioning these achievements. to come out soon. Longtime Women’s section editor Gloria Warner also wrote science fiction stories, Dahlhamer, who started on The Morning but most fans knew him for the “interesting Herald in 1947 and retired in 1991, said she and extensive” letters of comment he wrote was surprised when she learned from her to fanzines throughout the world, Siclari brother-in-law, a science fiction fan in said. “It was a fan maxim that your fanzine California, about Warner’s fame. “He never was not complete without a letter from talked about any of that,” she said of Harry Warner, Jr.” Warner. For his work, Warner won several top Dahlhamer, who lives near Hagerstown, said science fiction awards, said Tim Pratt, an Warner was accomplished in the newsroom, editor at Locus headquarters in Oakland, too. A rapid-fire typist and writer, Warner Calif. would take the call from a local weather In addition to a Locus award for best fan observer “and be writing the weather story writer in 1971, Warner was nominated as he took down the information. He was amazing.”

14 She also remembers him having a “really Historian Siclari has a theory to help explain dry sense of humor. Harry was a lot of fun,” why Warner kept it a mystery. He thinks a quality that often emerged on the one night part of the reason is that back in the early of the week the boss was away and he was years of science fiction, much of the public in charge. On those nights, she said, Warner equated it to Buck Rogers stuff. excelled, doing page layouts and writing But Warner was “into more serious “some really great headlines.” discussions than about Buck Rogers,” Siclari Like others, Dahlhamer recalled that Warner said. “So maybe, it was that he never lost loved classical music. He played the piano that feeling about bias.” and oboe at home, in the community and in Regardless, it is remarkable that Warner recitals on radio. And so, he became a achieved success in so many areas, and that regular reviewer for the newspaper of local he bridged them all through writing. groups’ performances. “Always liked writing, monkeying around He also wrote a frequent column that with words,” he wrote in 1962. “You meet a became an authority on local history and lot of people you’d never know otherwise. happenstance. Topics included the passing It’s given me a chance to express my of the porch stoop, the coming of talents.” neighborhood yard sales, and, 40 years after World War II, the number of primary (Arnold S. Platou is a copy editor for The airplane trainers built at Fairchild’s Herald-Mail. Starting here in 1970, he knew Hagerstown plant that still existed. Warner as a fellow newsman but only a little about his connection to science fiction. So, it followed that Warner became the Now, he wishes he’d done what journalists media representative on the county are trained to do and spent a lot more time government’s Historical Advisory with Warner, asking questions. Committee. For 10 years, he keenly followed local historical discoveries and Copyright The Herald-Mail ONLINE events, and promptly wrote about them in the newspaper, said John Frye, who chaired the committee. For his work, Warner received the county’s Historical Preservation Award for 1982. But Warner never told Fry about his other awards in science fiction. Indeed, after hearing that the newsman might have written a book, Frye recalled, “I had an awful time getting him to admit it, and then getting him to give me a copy.” Now, “All our Yesterdays” is at the Washington County Free Library as part of the special collection in the Western Maryland Room, where Frye is curator. “He is the Harry Warner that none of us knew,” Frye said.