¶ unexploded ordnance

this is A fanzine published for distribution at Corflu XXX, on the first weekend of May 2013, by John D. Berry, 525 19th Avenue East, Seattle WA 98112. Fact and fiction about the editor can be found online at johndberry.com, and he can be reached digitally as [email protected]. Misusers of Google should keep in mind that he is not the country-music singer, nor is he the retired Native American studies scholar, nor the author of several books on the mechanics of helicopter rotors. He is, however, the guy who writes about type a lot.

Everybody’s doing it. I know, that’s I never mailed out the majority of the not really a good excuse, but it does seem copies. It was a big issue, at least for me: as though a remarkable number of Old & 32 mimeo’d pages, with a cover by some Tired science-­fiction fans have thrown off guy named Dan Steffan and a back cover their lethargy lately and published actual by Harry Bell; half of those pages were fanzines, many of them even printed on letters on the previous issue.Hitchhike paper. Who am I to resist the siren call had become something of a dialog about of print? After getting sucked into fan- the counterculture of the 1970s, and zine-publishing again through the back that conversation dominates the letter­ door, by designing and producing the column. (There is also a one-page piece two Progress Reports for corflu xxx, by Felice Rolfe that is the funniest take I find that my typing fingers are all poised on cookbooks I have ever read, much less and ready to play. The least I can do is add published.) to the paper trail that will be strewn out There were 100 copies of this undis- behind this Corflu. I blame Randy and tributed issue in that box. Rather than Dan. call in the dogs and the bomb squad, I’ve decided to simply take the whole stack to I’ve been finding a fair amount of Corflu and give them away on a table at unexploded fannish ordnance as I rum- the Fanzine Flea Market. What better way mage through the boxes in the basement. to reach the readership it was intended for One box seems to have all of my college (albeit several decades after the fact)? notebooks, plus a lot of fan art, some of it my own. Another contains detritus There’s a connection between my from the time I was living in Washington professional life, in the world of typog- DC, including a set of operating rules raphy, and my fannish life – or at least I for the food co-op in my Dupont Circle like to think there is. Not only did I put neighbor­hood. There are oldN3F zines my fanzine-editing chops to use when I and an unread issue of the Doc Clarke– was editing the graphic-design magazine era OSFAn. (Dang! Not the lost issue that U&lc, and creating its digital companion contained The Eyes of Argon. That must U&lc Online, but there’s a clear connec- have been one of the ones that I never tion between my first type conference, even opened.) Typ90, where I knew myself to be a rank But the most interesting bit of poten- neo, and its successor nineteen years later, tial shrapnel, at least to me, was the big Typ09, where I was the head of the associ- stack of copies of Hitchhike 28, the final ation that put it on. issue of my principal fanzine of the 1970s. Five years ago, in February 2008, I For reasons that escape me now (im­ found myself for the first time in Mexico pecunious­ ness­­ probably figured largely), City, on a scouting expedition for venues and partners for the next annual confer- Seattle and arrive in a warm, sunny clime ence put on by ATypI, the typographic where we could walk around in sandals organization of which I am president. and light shirts. (Unlike LA, Mexico (The odd acronym stands for Association City’s rainy season is in the summer. And Typographique Internationale, or in despite being quite a lot farther south English “inter­national typographic asso- than LA and technically in the tropics, ciation.” The name is French because the Mexico City’s 8000-foot elevation gives association was founded in France more it a climate remarkably similar to that of than fifty years ago; why they chose not to southern California.) Roger’s connec- make the acronym a simple “ATI” I have tions meant that we weren’t arriving like never managed to find out.) Most ATypI tourists, bouncing off the surface of a conferences have been held in Europe, strange city; we were plunging straight with a handful in the United States or into its deep cultural life. Canada; this was the first time it would be Roger had a well-connected old friend, held in Latin America, and that was a big Abel Quesada Rueda, the son of the deal. It was important not only for Mexi- famous political cartoonist Abel Quesada can typographers and type designers, but and an artist in his own right, who among for the very active type communities in other things had been Mexico’s cultural South America, especially in Argentina attaché to Canada. Abel put Roger in and Brazil. Those countries are a very touch with his friend Ricardo Salas, who long way from Mexico, but the shared had the resources, the energy, and the linguistic and cultural roots meant that a professional nous to put on the confer- Valle de Bravo: metates, lot of people could be expected to make ence. Ricardo is a graphic designer at tools, & dinner conversation the long trip to Mexico City for this con- the top level of Mexican design; he even ference. As, indeed, they did. created the graphic identity for one of his But on this first visit, Eileen and I were country’s presidents. (Apparently each there with ATypI’s executive director, incoming presidential administration ­Barbara Jarzyna, and with Roger Black, has its own visual style. Imagine such a the very well-known editorial design thing in the United States! Barack Obama director whose idea it had been in the first seems to have been the firstUS president place. It was Roger who had organized who even knew what graphic design the 1990 ATypI conference in Oxford, meant.) He was also head of the design which he dubbed Type90. That was the department at the small but prestigious first big ATypI conference, the first one Anáhuac University, where his wife ­Tullia open to the public (albeit the paying pub- Bassani, also an artist and a graphic de­ lic); earlier conferences had been more signer, was a teacher and administrator. like professional congresses. Now for Ricardo knew everyone, it seemed. several years Roger had been pushing He took us around the Centro Histórico the idea of an ATypI in Mexico. A few to see potential venues for the confer- months earlier, when we met at another ence, including the national folklore conference, I told him, “Okay, Roger, museum, MAP (Museo de Arte Popular); if you’ll take responsibility for making the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City’s this happen, let’s do it.” He agreed. He amazing opera house, which was begun wanted to call it, in allusion to his earlier in the Beaux Arts style and, after a slight conference, Typ09. It would be held in interruption for the 1910 Revolution, the fall of 2009 in Mexico City (or “DF,” completed as Art Deco; and several muse- as the locals call it, for “Distrito Federal” ums and art galleries around the Centro. – much the way locals in our own capital When Ricardo walks into a major gallery city refer to Washington as “DC”). Our or museum, the director comes out to sojourn that February was the first fruit of greet him: “Ricardo! Hi! How are you?” this agreement. Definitely not like coming in as anony- Mexico City in February is like Los mous tourists. Angeles in August – including the smog. When we weren’t traipsing through But it was a delight to leave cold, rainy the finest museums inDF , we were being

unexploded ordnance | 2 taken to wonderful restaurants for food definite), and negotiations with hotels and drink and laughter and conversation, and caterers; we even met the Mexican the essentials of the good life anywhere cultural minister, whom Ricardo hoped on earth. Ricardo and Tullia and Abel to get interested in the conference. (He (and, when we finally met her later, Abel’s was, but unfortunately by the time the wife Mercedes) were all excellent com- conference rolled around he had left to go pany, intellectuals and artists with wide back to his career as a playwright.) Once experience and even wider curiosity. again we ate and drank well, and again we Eileen and I fell in love with the city and got to stay at the hacienda with Ricardo with the people that we met. & Tullia. After we finished the business part of The actual conference, Typ09, was the visit, and Barbara, who had another in October, just at the end of the rainy job, headed back to the US, Ricardo and season in DF. Everyone hoped that the Tullia invited Eileen and me, and Roger rain would be gone by then, but it turned and his travel companion, to their week- out to have a little kick left in it. (I have a end home in Valle de Bravo, two hours lovely video clip of lightning appearing west of DF. This proved to be not just a to hit the top of a pyramidal building modest little retreat but an old, once-­ in the city, taken from our hotel room.) ruined hacienda that they had bought Everyone hoped that the economic crisis many years before and slowly, over time, of 2009, which had hit Mexico especially restored and added to. It sat on a forested hard, would also be gone by then, but hillside above the town, which overlooks that proved a forlorn hope. Despite this, an artificial lake that gives Mexico City Typ09 drew the largest attendance, by part of its drinking water. (Apparently far, of any ATypI conference; we got only the lake is also, because of the air currents a subset of the usual international crowd, caused by the surrounding hills, the best because of slashed travel budgets, but we place in Mexico for hang-gliding.) The saw a large number of designers and stu- hacienda was large, beautiful, and filled dents from DF and other parts of Mexico. with art (and with Ricardo’s collections, The main program was held in the which could include such things as doz- round, or rather in the square: the ens of old metates, the stone grinding stage was erected over a fountain in the tools traditionally used to grind corn, center of a covered courtyard at MIDE, and abandoned agricultural or indus- the Museo Interactivo de Economía, trial hand-tools, which he affixed to the a former convent that was now a mod- outside walls). Abel arrived too, bringing ern high-tech museum. This was just a Mercedes and their son and Abel’s two couple of blocks from the Plaza Mayor, teenage daughters. There was plenty of the huge central square of Mexico City room for everyone. and the former heart of the Aztec city of We ate guacamole made from fresh- Tenochtitlán. After the main program at picked avocados, drank tequila whose MIDE, two days of workshops were held agave, or part of it, had come from fields at Anáhuac University, in the western DF: lightning over Mexico owned by relatives of Ricardo’s, and hills. (If you’ve seen Mexico City traffic, City, MIDE courtyard,­ talked away in several languages. you’ll understand why it would have been an ATypI presentation, This idyllic sojourn caused Eileen and impossible to have simultaneous events Typ09 banner at Anáhuac me to swear that we ought to make a habit both downtown and out at the edge of University of visiting Mexico City and Valle de Bravo town; since there isn’t a metro connec- every winter. We haven’t managed to do tion, everyone would have spent all their so, but we did get back again a year later, time stuck in traffic jams trying to get the following February, for the practical back and forth.) In place of AT­ ypI’s tradi- purpose of doing more intense planning tional “gala dinner,” we finished up with a for the upcoming conference and for the banquet at a 1930s dance club, the Salón impractical purpose of simply enjoying Los Ángeles, followed by some very lively ourselves. There were more visits to dancing by an energetic crowd of typog- venues (not so much “potential” now as raphers.

unexploded ordnance | 3 So far, we haven’t managed to get back More recently, though, that same Mr. to Mexico since Typ09, though each win- Hooper has been conducting an online ter we intend to. We’ve been to other far- auction of old fanzines for the benefit flung cities, though, thanks to my involve- of Corflu XXX, and I’ve mined a few ment with the typographic world: Dub- easily accessible lodes for material that lin, Reykjavík, and most recently Hong might contribute to the cause. The little Kong for subsequent ATypI conferences, one-sheet typed ad from a certain “Steve and even a sojourn last June to Yerevan, King” in Maine, dating from my teenage the capital of Armenia, for a small con- days of getting monster-film fanzines, ference in a country that takes its unique turned out to be the Big Nugget of the lot alphabet seriously – so seriously that they and made an online collector very happy. have huge statues of individual Armenian The hard part about sorting through letters in at least two different public these boxes is deciding which fanzines parks. Not to mention other type-related I really want to keep, and which ones conferences that have taken me to New should go on to a new home. In the old Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and days, we would have passed them on to faroof exotic Milwaukee. some eager and promis­ing young fanzine I go to a lot more typography confer- publisher, just as many of these were ences these days than I do science-fiction passed on to me; but how many such are conventions. The social interactions of there today? I think it’s not unreasonable Armenia: monumental the two are much the same, as I recog- to let them get out into the wild in a less letters from the Armenian nized back in 1990, when I went straight controlled way, and see who finds them alphabet from that year’s worldcon in The Hague and perhaps ends up inspired to do some- to Typ90 in Oxford the following week- thing similar – or something creatively end. I wrote about that recognition a different. couple of years later, in what turned out The best fannish fanzines – that is, to be the final issue of my fanzineWing fanzines whose subject is the fannish sub­ Window. culture itself – embody the world of con- I’ve been doing a lot of writing, of vari- versation and inter­action that obtained ous kinds, and a lot of design, but the only at their moment of creation; in fact, that other fanzine I’ve managed to publish in inter­action takes place in the pages of the nearly two decades since then was the those fanzines. The “paper inter­net” long single issue of Gasworks that I co-edited precedes the invention of online social with Steve Swartz. (We intended Gasworks media, but perhaps we could call this to be a “semi-­frequent fanzine,” but you “cultural media,” within the context of can see how well that’s worked out.) What a small, vibrant subculture. Just as I used you hold in your hands (or are perusing to happily read fanzines about groups of on some kind of screen or other) is my fans I had never met who were writing sole contribution to the ­fanzine-editing before I was born, maybe what we’ve writ- art in the 21st century. ten, drawn, and published will nourish So far. But I make absolutely no guar- the imaginations of future readers whom antees about any future fanzines. we will never know. Isn’t that how culture is passed down? Further exercises in nostalgia are all Or maybe I should just stop trying to too easy to come by for anyone with a few make some grand theory out of all this, decades in fandom and a basement full of and start delving back into the boxes undifferentiated boxes. Well, not entirely again sometime soon. Who knows what undifferentiated; some years ago, the I might find? resourceful Andy Hooper sorted most of You’ll be the first to know. my fanzine collection into neat alphabet- ical categories. But there were quite a few John D. Berry · May 2, 2013 boxes hidden in other nooks and crannies that Andy never saw, so the system is not complete.

unexploded ordnance | 4