Issue No. 33, December 2016. Edited and published by Robert Lichtman, 11037 Broadway Terrace, Oakland, CA 94611-1948, 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, contribu- tions both written and artistic, and accepted trades), or $5.00 per issue (reviewers please note!). An “X” or "?" on your mailing label means this may be your last issue. All contents copyright © 2016 by Trap Door with all rights reverting to individual contributors upon publication. CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE: Doorway Robert Lichtman 2 Waiting for the Golden Age: John W. Campbell Jr. at the 1939 Worldcon Andy Hooper 4 Stare With Your Ears: A Radio Reminiscence John Baxter 18 The Cracked Eye Gary Hubbard 24 The À Bas Story Boyd Raeburn 31 The Queen and I Roy Kettle 34 The Ether Still Vibrates the Readers 44 ART & GRAPHICS: ATom (2), William Rotsler (17, 23, 30, 55, back cover), Dan Steffan (2, 44), Steve Stiles (cover, 4, 18, 24, 31, 34) & Steve Stiles/Pat Patterson (31). Welcome to the always hope for more letters second 2016 issue of of comment than I actually Trap Door! This is receive. However, echoing the first time since what fanzine fans have 1993 that I’ve pro- frequently said over the duced more than a decades, response is the single issue in the name of the game. It gives same year, and no one writers and artists feedback could be more sur- – and yes, egoboo – for prised and pleased their efforts, creates and than I am: surprised maintains interactivity even because after publish- in a letter column as infre- ing back in March I quent as mine, and makes was completely out of material except for the editor feel that the effort and expense of this issue’s cover and Boyd Raeburn’s held- publishing is worthwhile. over article, and pleased because I had a Although it would be easy to do, I don’t good response to the feelers I sent out, and want to succumb to an image of myself an additional article turned up out of the standing over the readership cracking a whip blue. Steve Stiles came through with out- and screaming “LoC now!” Instead I’ll standing headings for all of them, and Dan simply hope that this low response was Steffan resurfaced with a couple of beauti- atypical. ful column headings. I hope you will all enjoy the result, and that you’ll let me and And speaking of Boyd, as I was before my contributors know about it. my Big Kvetch, I mentioned last time that I I say this because response to the last would relate the full story of how his article, issue was the lowest it’s ever been “The À Bas Story” – originally intended to be (surprising since I thought it was a very published in the seventh issue of my fanzine comment-worthy one), only a little over half Frap in the fall of 1964 – is only now (at of what I typically hear back. Of course I last!) appearing. First, a little personal history. I became Fast forwarding to 2015, I heard from aware of Boyd extremely early in my Greg Benford that he’d run across Boyd’s fannish career. The penultimate issue of À letter in a pile of fanzines and sent it to me. Bas was among the first fanzines I’d ever It occurred to me that what Greg had was a seen. It made a distinctly positive impres- small portion of my original fanzine collec- sion on me in large part because of his long tion, and I wondered what winding trail it and intriguingly titled lead article, “The took to reach him. Back in 1971, when I was Moth and the Arctic Steamroller.” It was an divesting myself of “material plane” accumu- engrossing travelogue of his 1957 European lation before moving to Tennessee, perhaps visit to five European countries, with a brief the dumbest thing I did was to give away my report on the first London worldcon embed- entire fanzine collection (even including file ded in it. I was a big fan of travel writing copies of my own stuff!). I must have mind- back then, mainly from having discovered lessly tucked Boyd’s letter into that large pile Richard Halliburton at an early age, devour- and then forgot about it. ing every book of his available from the I’m so glad – and grateful to the fannish library, and then moving on to other travel ghods – that Greg found Boyd’s letter and writers. But I found Boyd’s writing livelier thought to send it on to me. A mere fifty-two than that of the others, and it has stuck with years late, here is the article that Boyd “told” me all these years. In retrospect it was also me. very fannish in ways I really didn’t get at the time because of my utter neofan- Everything in this issue is new, except for nishness. Andy Hooper’s piece which, like the three I didn’t meet Boyd until the 1964 installments reprinted in previous issues, Worldcon in San Francisco. I asked him appeared first in a distribution of WOOF (the there if he would write about À Bas for Worldcon Order of Faneditors, one of the Frap, and he agreed. But later that year I enduring legacies of the late Bruce Pelz), had a letter from him in which he con- which have a very limited circulation. fessed: This is a somewhat abridged version. “I burnt some papers this afternoon, and Omitted are more detailed plot descriptions I have just realized that amongst them was of the stories in the July 1939 issue of the draft of the article for you on À Bas – Astounding which, to quote Andy, “many How It Began and What It Was and all that. critics now consider…one of the finest single I haven’t the time to rewrite it as a formal issues of any SF magazine ever published.” article, and I’ve held you up long enough. In addition to taking a close look at the All writers are taught to look for conflict. ferences that would take a lifetime to settle, if So, in this letter I’ll just give you the back- events at the first Worldcon from yet another Whether their chosen field is fiction, history indeed they ever were. There was a more ground and a few thoughts and if you wish perspective, Andy has painstakingly pro- or journalism, conflict is where the story lies. friendly rivalry between the New York and you can write the article yourself – ‘by duced the most extensively detailed Camp- And one finds an abundance of conflict in Philadelphia fan clubs, with the former eager Boyd Raeburn as told to Bob Lichtman,’ bell family history and biographical chrono- considering the first “World Science Fiction to impress the latter. And there was an aes- just like the SatEvePost.” logy ever – an important piece of scholarly Convention” of July 1939. There were many thetic rivalry under dispute, a struggle to Unfortunately, what happened next was research. This is further augmented by rivalries on display on the afternoon of July determine the quality and purpose of science that instead of creating the article from details of Campbell’s professional career, 2, 1939, when roughly 150 people gathered fiction. The earnest intensity of this fight Boyd’s extensive notes, I focused on the and in addition a look at the careers of the in the fourth floor auditorium of Manhattan’s seemed almost absurd in the context of dime conclusion of my final – and very demand- men behind the magazines competing for Caravan Hall to celebrate what was then pulp magazines and paperback anthologies, ing – semester at UCLA, followed by my readers with his. merely the “Fifth Convention” of science fic- but it would have the most far-ranging move to the Bay Area, getting my first full- This installment is definitely more sercon tion enthusiasts. There was the famous feud effects, on fiction, on science, and on the time job, and living with A Woman for the than its predecessors – and some may be between the fans who were “supposed” to “World of Tomorrow.” first time. In the process I put Frap on surprised to find it here in a mostly fannish organize the convention, and those who actu- In the context of world events of 1939, the hiatus (from which it never returned) and fanzine – but I found it just as engrossing a ally did it. This split had resonance with question of science fiction’s future seems put Boyd’s letter away – out of sight and read as the others. mundane political conflicts, ideological dif- petty at best, but actual science and engineer- definitely out of mind. (continued on inside back cover) —4— ing that had been nothing but speculation a remarks, establishing a tradition that persists man Campbell (1853-1927) of Napoleon, seems to have improved after she divorced decade before would have an immense effect to this day. Ohio. Trained as an electrical engineer and her step-brother. She then married James on the course of the World War that was to But the single person that most of those employed by AT&T as a technician, the elder Alfred Middleton in 1928, and John and his begin on the first day of September. If gathered in Caravan Hall really wanted to see John was not affectionate toward his son, but younger sister Laura Philinda Campbell science fiction was only the escapist adven- and hear was John W.