ASKANCE #40 – TENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

APRIL 2017 VOLUME X, number 1

Edited and published by John Purcell, 3744 Marielene Circle, College Station, TX 77845-3926 USA

This time, proofreading services are probably not being rendered by Katrina Templeton.

Contents © 2017 by John A. Purcell. Contact information: [email protected]

Even so, all rights revert to original artists and authors upon publication. Disclaimers are a dirty business, but are always included. You understand. I know you do.

What you have here in your hands (or on screen) is another Mythical Publication. Copies of this fine, back on a quarterly schedule fanzine can be had for The Usual, which means expressed interest, submission and eventual inclusion of articles and artwork, letters of comment, expressed interest, and cold hard cash in the amount of $3.00 USD. Bribes are also accepted. Of course, if you send in locs, articles, and artwork, you just earned a life-time free subscription. Consider yourself lucky, indeed.

contents Editorial Natterings……………………………………………………………..3 Self-Reflection on a Decade of Issues……………………………………6 10 Select Articles - Club Egg, by James Bacon………………………………………………….…8 The Rocky Road to Fandom, by Lee Lavell…………………………..15 What a Piece of Work is a Fan, by Claire Brialey…………………19 An Odyssey Galactic, by Gregory Benford…………………………..28 Claire de Loon, by Taral Wayne…………………………………………..40 Two Gentlemen from Arkansas, by Arnie Katz…………………...45 Wikiphilia: the Fried Encyclopedia, by Bill Fischer………….……50 Long Ago and Far Rockaway, by George Kenneth Berger.….60 Fun-eral Music, by Walt Wentz…………………………………………..62 1962 All Over Again, by Earl Kemp……………………………………..64 From the Hinterlands – letters from readers…………………..….72 What’s Next ……………………………………………………………………..…80 10 Select Covers – a Portfolio Brad Foster (#1) Marc Schirmeister & Taral Wayne (#11) Kyle Hinton (#6) Ross Chamberlain (#16) Taral Wayne (#9 & #17) Alan White (#22 & #38) Steve Stiles (#10) Greg Rieves (#26) Figby by Bill Fischer - pages 57-59; Chat, the 4th Fannish Ghod & The Stars Talk Hugos by Teddy Harvia – 61, 71. Art Credits for this issue From cover by Brad Foster Sheryl Birkhead – 2; A. B. Kynock – 5, 7; Al Sirois – 19, 25 ; Robert W. Sirignano - 22; Steve Stiles – 28; Taral Wayne 62, 63; Atom (Arthur Thomson) – 64; Bill Rotsler – 68.

Member: FWA (since 2007!)

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Editorial Natterings

Through Fannish Generations

Or so multi-Hugo Award winning Fan Artist Brad Foster labeled the front cover of this issue of Askance. When I start thinking about the phrase “fannish generations” I am reminded of all the people who have passed through the doors of science fiction fandom. As an entity, fandom has existed for approximate 87 years now, if one considers the publication of Comet in 1930 as the first truly science fiction-related fanzine. Then keeping that figure in mind, my time as an active fan is half of that: 44 years. That is nothing compared to some folks that I have known over those years: Ted White, for example, I have met a few times at various conventions, and he has been involved with this madhouse since something like 1951, three years before I was born. The late David Kyle goes back to the beginning of organized fandom in the mid-1930s, so his fannish career spanned a whopping 80 years! Closer to my age group and origins, the people who began Minn- stf (the Minnesota Science Fiction Society, Inc.) in the late 1960s have fifty years of fan activity under their belts (Frank Stodolka, Fred Levy-Haskell, Don Blyly, etc.), and some of them are still active, even if they have slowed down a titch. And friends like Matthew B. Tepper, Guy H. Lillian III, and many others started out at the tail end of the Sixties, too, so my mere four decade run looks puny by comparison.

But then I realize that we stand upon the shoulders of the jiants that created science fiction fandom. There is no question in my mind that my life has been blessed by knowing and interacting with so many wonderful, intelligent, and talented people for so long. This SF Fandom thing is worth the effort because of them, and this issue is a direct result of their continued friendships and inspiration. To all of the fans – be they fanzine, club, convention, apa, or whatever interest – who have come before, I dedicate this tenth anniversary issue of Askance in their honor.

Through the Years

That rambling preamble brings me to the contents of this issue. When one stops and thinks about it, sticking with producing a fanzine – or any kind of an amateur publication – is proof that one is either in love with what he or she is doing, or simply has lost their mind. It is probably a mixture of the two. Of that, I am convinced. Years ago a Canadian faan named Mike Glicksohn stated a dictum that accurately described what I believe is the essential nature of why a fan remains in fandom. Known by the catchy abbreviation of IF³, Glicksohn’s dictum is “If Fandom Isn’t Fun, It’s Futile.” Mike was spot on with this truism. It even seems a bit on the cliché side, but most distillations of the human experience into a single catch-phrase are like that: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” (well, no shit, Sherlock. What was your first clue?); “I am vitally interested in the future because that’s where I will spend the rest of my life” (uh, again – duh!);

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“Love means never having to say you’re sorry” (such a stupid sentiment. Seriously?); “Don’t dream it, be it” (Okay, this is from Rocky Horror Picture Show, so maybe this one doesn’t belong here, but you get the idea).

What it all boils down to is a brown sludge on the bottom of the pan is that Mike, a good friend whom I miss terribly, was absolutely right. Fandom is supposed to be fun, and once you start taking it too seriously, then you might as well close up shop, cover your mimeograph, then slink away into the night and don’t look back. The only person to blame for placing too much emphasis on science fiction fandom in your life is yourself. Thirty-some odd – and boy, I really mean “odd,” but that’s definitely another fan article subject – years ago I recognized that for me that FIAWOL (Fandom Is A Way Of Life) wasn’t really how I felt about it. For me, someone with a family and career, plus numerous other outside interests, the acronym that fits me is FIJAGH (Fandom Is Just A Goddamned Hobby). In truth, I soften that “G” word these days to “Goldurned” because I don’t feel that vehemently about it, but the meaning is true because I am definitely having fun with what I do in fandom. I produce fanzines because I enjoy writing and the creative aspect of putting together a fanzine; it’s a pleasant challenge, like assembling jig-saw puzzles. Sometimes when I attend conventions I volunteer to work on them (as a gopher, panelist, help out at my wife’s craft/art table, or whatever) because I want to be a part of the convention-running process. You also meet a lot of delightful people this way, too.

Yeah, Mike is still right. Fandom to me is still a lot of fun, so I’m not done yet. You guys are going to have to put up with me for quite a while. Be afraid. Be Very Afraid.

That little paragraph provides the much needed segue into the next sub-section of “Editorial Natterings”:

The TAFF 2017 race is finally over! And thank great Ghu and Roscoe it is. As practically everybody now knows, I eked out a victory – by one stinking, rotten vote, people – over Alissa McKersie and Sarah Gulde in this year’s race to see who gets to attend WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, Finland on August 9th – 13th, 2017. By the time this issue sees publication on efanzines.com, we will have purchased our airplane tickets and a basic trip itinerary planned. Stay tuned for further developments as Valerie and I finalize exactly where we will be and when. In the meantime, thanks go to everyone who supported me this year. On April 18th, this is what I wrote on my Facebook page:

Man, what a trip these last 18 hours have been! I am finally starting to come down from the rush of geting the wonderful news last night that I barely won this year's Trans- Atlantic Fan Fund race to attend the 2017 World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, Finland. It really is hard to believe. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank everybody for their support of TAFF.

To my nominators - Lloyd and Yvonne Penney, Jacqueline Monahan, and David Thayer (North America); Jim Mowatt and Ro Nagey (Europe) - my deepest gratitude for your

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willingness to back this effort. I owe each of you at least a drink and a dinner. (White Castle does ship internationally, you know.)

To Alissa McKersie and Sarah Gulde, my co-candidates this year, I thank you two for running a fun campaign and wish you both all the best of luck in the world in whatever you strive to achieve. I look forward to meeting each of you at some point in the future…

Thank you, folks.

There. That should do it for now. In the next issue (early July?) or the next Askew (end of May, early June) said trip itinerary should be listed – subject to change, of course. One must be flexible with these things, you know. In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?

This issue’s format

Putting this celebration issue has really been a lot of fun – and hard work, too: it has not been that easy re- doing layout and such. One would think that it would mostly be a simple process of cut-and-paste work, but even that has revealed itself to be a bit of a bear because of software upgrades, and it’s not that easy converting a PDF document back to Word or Publisher so I can work with text, images, and what-not in order to make this entire fershlugginer issue come out Just Right. All in all, it’s been more time-consuming than I first thought, but the end result has been worth the effort.

What I have done here is to basically present my personal top 10 favorite articles and covers, adding in an assortment of cartoons and illustrations that have appeared in this fanzine over these past ten years. I have included some comments along the way, identifying the issue the piece first appeared in, in order to place that article or artwork in its proper context. My goal here is to share what could be called the Best Of Askance’s First Ten Years.

But does that mean this fanzine will continue for another ten years? Frankly, I don’t know. I kind of hope so. We shall see how things progress. With this year’s TAFF trip looming, I have a lot on my plate right now, so if all y’all hang with me, I am sure everything will work out in the long run.

No matter what, I most certainly appreciate everybody’s support over these last ten years. All of the contributions I have received have made producing this fanzine a lot of fun, and I thank everyone who has been involved with this ongoing project. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so very much.

I love science fiction fandom. You people are the best.

If Yngvi is a louse, then what does that make you?

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On a Decade of Issues

I have issues. Not all of them are publishable, but if these issues deal with science fiction fandom in one way or other, I can guarantee they will be published..

Since Corflu 34 jest ended over the last weekend of April this year - a mere one week ago as I write this – it makes sense that I muse over why I feel the need to produce a fanzine. Well, the main reason is because I enjoy doing it. This reason was mentioned over the LiveStream of the panels I watched last weekend (oh, the wonders of modern technology!), and I do not deny it. In fact, I would wager that 9 out of 10 fanzine editors would say the same thing. We do this because we enjoy doing it.

But what do we fan editors get out of it? Prestige? Name recognition? Egoboo? Or do we simply get out of fan publishing the satisfaction of saying “I did this!” and leave it at that?

My guess is that it is all of the above.

Speaking for myself, I can say that I get a kick out of seeing something that I have written appear with my byline, whether it is in my own fanzine or somebody else’s fanzine. The ego boost of this is quite intoxicating, but more than that, I really get a deep feeling of satisfaction seeing the final product of a full- blown fanzine reach completion. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

And every single issue could not have been completed without the contributions from other fans. Therefore, here comes a listing of the writers and artists who have made this ten year, forty issue run a reality. Many of them are represented in this issue, and I am sorry if I have forgotten some names:

James Bacon Randy Cleary Phil Foglio Harry Bell Teresa Cochran Brad Foster Gregory Benford Cait Coker Jane Frank George Kenneth Berger John L. Coker III Charles E. Fuller III Sheryl Birkhead Scott Crawford Christopher J. Garcia Claire Brialey Matthew Davis Janice Gelb Robin Bright, PhD Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) Alexis Gilliland Jason Burnett David Dyer-Bennett Steve Green Linda Bushyager David Emerson James Halperin Randy Byers Tom Feller Teddy Harvia Ross Chamberlain Bill Fischer Leslie Hawes Graham Charnock Ken Fletcher Janet Hetherington

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Kyle Hinton Jim Mowatt Robert Whitaker Sirignano Andrew Hooper Real Musgrave Al Sirois Dr. Albert A. Jackson Hal O’Brien Jose Sanchez Neil Jameson-Williams Kathleen David O’Shea E. South Arnie Katz Mark Oshiri Kevin Standlee Earl Kemp Lloyd Penney Maureen Starkey Brian Kesinger Curt Phillips Dan Steffan Trinlay Khadro Lizbeth Phillips Steve Stiles A.B. Kynock Andrew I. Porter John Straede Lee Ann Lavell Valerie Purcell Andrew Trembley Robert Lichtman Robin Reid Taral Wayne Dave Locke Greg Rieves Toni Weiskopf Mike Lowrey Bill Rotsler Walt Wentz Tyler Martin Robert M. Sabella Alan White Eric Mayer Thomas Sadler David B. Williams Joe Mayhew Marc Schirmeister Rob Williams Bill Mills Stu Shiffman Bill Wright Roxanne Mills Steven H Silver Frank Wu Jacqueline Monahan Isaura Simon Patricia Rogers

My deepest appreciation goes to all of you. Without the contributions of all of these folks – their artwork, their articles, their reviews, their letters of comment, their insults, their smelly sweat socks, their etceteras – not a single issue of this fanzine could be possible.

Reviewing all of the previous issues for these names was both revealing and bittersweet. It saddens me to see the names of friends who have passed on to that Great Convention in the Sky, but my life has been blessed by their presence, and I am so grateful for their contributions. In their memory, I dedicate this issue.

Thank you so much, everyone, for making these ten years such a wonderful, memorable experience. From the bottom of my heart, I love you all. Your most humble editor

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This article first appeared in the third issue (July 2007) when Askance was still a bimonthly fanzine. That lasted all of a year and a half, but that’s not the point here. At that time, James Bacon was all over fanzines with articles appearing not only in my fanzine, but also in Chris Garcia’s Drink Tank, Banana Wings (produced by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer), and quite a few others. Of all the articles that James has written for Askance, this was his first, so I’m giving it the opening slot.

Club Egg James Bacon

Club Egg on Friday was really some sort of embodiment of what I have always visualized as a science fictional music sub-culture, with so much about it being a derivative of science fictional imagery and themes. The sensation on the brain must be some pseudo Dick-ian meta-experience: the pumping music, gyrating view of girls gripping poles, all topsy-turvy as they gymnasticate in black shiny PVC and long black shiny leather trench coats.

I get off the Tube, it was crowded but not really like the sardine system that goes for commuting to work; it was more like a lot of people taking up too much room, more than they deserve. I step into Kings Cross Underground station. Deep underground -I know it well so very well - I have watched it repeatedly, watched it again and again, watching the dispatches explaining the horror and death that occurred here in 1987. Now it’s all sub- surface station section 12 fire regulations nineteen eighty-nine. Mistakes are so often made, but behavioural changes are required to show that learning has actually occurred. London Underground’s Grey suits had smouldering’s for years and years. Smouldering’s are not fires. Those burn, and there are flames and smoke. People may worry, flesh may fall off bone, but it’s not a fire, it’s a smouldering, and if the men in grey suits say so, then it must be true, so it’s a smouldering, not a fire. We only learn from our mistakes, but learning actually needs to occur. The London Underground at least had fires, but not many any more.

I pace myself slowly up the metal escalator. A dwelling is where someone lives, so I just head up the stairs with my butterfly brain already flittering off on some other electrical thought. I am on a night out and I am in good spirits, but history has a place in the firing of particles.

Kings Cross, London, at twenty past eleven on a Friday night, is a train station, a terminus: grandiose, but functional. I have passed through here before for real and in pages. It is here that

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platform nine and three- quarters doesn’t even exist in reality, as the fiction is really fiction. Did Rowling mean Euston, I imagine, or Paddington, I muse; there is a trolley attached to a pillar here, and the platform number adorns the wall next to it, though there is no platform, just a boring walkway between two bits of a train station a bit bolted on just like the trolley. It needs the application of a level of imagination to bring it to life like the mind does from the pages, just like it should be: pure imagination. Reality isn’t important; they used

The Midland Railways Hotel for the celluloid version anyhow, and she got it wrong either which way you look at it.

You come to Kings Cross this late for two things: Sex and Drugs. Not to look at trains. As I wait a moment to look at the bullish class 225 HST, idle, stabled maybe, its power subdued, I hear something familiar a few platforms down as the guttural diesels the same age as my younger brother ignite in the heart of an IC 125 Class 43, and fires out two huge horns of black exhaust with a mechanical roar. As the driver preps the unit, he revs it, harder and harder, pushing hard. The Paxman Valenta engines scream 2250 horsepower’s worth of defiance. Definitely unnecessary, but the engineer knows it, and shortly the throat-cutting smell of diesel hits as the plumes rise, descend, and fail to disperse at all. This is a good smell that serves as a reminder of the bear’s home. The engines subside and the driver goes to start the twin at the other end; the blue air hangs, and the noise abates a little. I suck it in.

I phone Stef. Where the fuck is he at this stage? He said they were leaving his home in Uxbridge ages ago. I call him. A cheeky-wide boy voice answers. it’s Dom. We abuse one another down the fone and I learn he is a bit of a distance still away; the convoyed posse that is making up the gang for the night has left late due to the applications of War Paint upon the ladies. Great. So where is this place then? I’ll walk meself.

After some unsatisfactory directions, I walk into the cold of night. It is bright and busy, heaving with people, fast fooderies, clubs, bookshops with no windows or under 18’s, The Fantasy Cinema with no Lord of the Rings, or perhaps there is. The whole area is bustling with activity, but not like the west end, where there is more of a desperation in the desire to enjoy life and a lot less tourists and more beer for your pound.

I walk up York way, towards the club I am going to, and realise that the club is in Camden really, and not King’s Cross, lying Bastards. I walk past historic buildings and places where goods yards and shunting was the norm, all replaced by diesels of another kind, past the canal and the CTRL, two transportation links juxtaposed by time and cost and speed and efficiency, which is better at what, is somehow undeterminable, depending on how you see it.

At last I find Club Egg, a square looking building, with many a bouncer at the door, a system to gain entry, and mini cabs hawking their businesses. There are not many people about. I stand at the corner of the windowless building. It looks like some sort of unused old sixties office or perhaps warehouse; it is

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definitely normal enough looking. I await on the corner and ponder what I shall say if I am approached.

I wait; my exposed legs are cold, as am I. I realise I should have brought a Jacket. I could go in and wait or I can wait outside. I have never been inside, so I worry I might get lost in what-ever Pan’s Labyrinth there is inside, and never see my friends again. It would be warm, though. I think about the pros and cons of the situation, and people arrive and go into the club. Black is de rigueur of the evening, and a lot or little of it, as the case may be.

As I stand there. a girl approaches, asks me what I am doing and would I like to entertain her as I wait for my friends. She continues to hand Flyers out to the people gaining entrance as we chat briefly. I know damaged goods when I see it, and despite politeness and some chatty chatyness, I don’t get too friendly, and ponder that this was not the sort of approach I had in mind at all.

The bouncers deter normalised- looking people by explaining it’s a Goth night, and that it may not be the music that they are looking for, move along, move along. People pour in, groups of youths with varying calibres of facial growth, and ladies in skirts like belts and boots built like Panzers, ready for blitzkrieging by the looks of it. Ladies, ladies, boys, ladies, ladies, men. It’s 3 to 2, I reckon, unusual for such a place.

A car slows down, sleek and Swedish, not a Grippen, but its smooth lines are slightly ruined by the swivelling head looking to see what’s what, and right past a car parking space they go; someone points out to the driver that I am stood nearby. A blast of high-pitched horn and the car is gone.

Then they are here. Stef, who has wanted to come here for a while, is currently single and it’s good to get out and party a bit. We have run conventions together, but he has been taken by live role-playing and attends events with thousands, but we still do cons and stuff. He is normally near to any mayhem I am helping out with. He is no Goth, but loves the industrial and new metal scenes, goes snow boarding a lot, had trained himself to balance on a Skate board, and knows who Slayer are and dresses accordingly.

Dom has the vouchers, cleverly printed off, which allow us cheaper entry before twelve; we are in time. As I enter, I greet Dom warmly. He is known in some circles as ‘I am Sparticus’. In others, he is just Sparticus. Such is the way when you go to a science fiction convention, find that you are enjoying it, and get involved and decide you’ll be Sparticus all weekend and not just for the dancey dressy up bit, and that’s you then. Dom is another computing guru, but at the end of the business, which is more business-like, and not just an extension of college: suits, fast cars, and not this type of music. Dom is with us because he wants to be, and that’s how I met him: he likes to be with friends doing something a bit different than usual.

We walk in, and have to empty our pockets. Efficient security goons wave us through the metal detectors. The girls are searched quite thoroughly, and we get our discounted entrance. The girls are frisked by a frisky-looking eastern European lady and come through. This is unusual, even for London: metal detectors are not that common. Anyhow, Glocks aren’t ceramic or plastic, so the detector would work.

I am greeted by Tamar with a hug. This Israeli chick knows her Tannhauser gate, and is a tall and powerful woman, my own age, and with hair that would make any Irish girl proud. I met Tamar at

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LACon IV; she approached me along with Naomi after a panel and helped out with Chaos Pirates. When she and her husband moved to Maidenhead, it was inevitable that she would somehow just fall in with the SF crowd, which she has done, and has now been to Croydon quite a few times. Her clothes belie the fact that she doesn’t do rock clubs a huge amount, but 'tis mitigated by her stunning good looks and impressive stature, which in its own right is more in tune with the venue’s ethos than some fashion attempt.

We walk down a wide, blood red, carpeted hallway; it’s nice, nice as in expensive and well designed, and has had some investment spent on it. No wonder it’s only a Metal and industrial venue one night a month. I can imagine that it’s a drug- fuelled DJ dance venue with much dancing going on most other times.

We walk out onto an open area, with many umbrellas, nice coverings and selections of very fine gardens, where covering allows interior furniture way too tremendously tasteful compared to the metal venues I am used to. There are many people around, enjoying ciggie’s or buying a beer from the bar in the corner of this grassless garden, although if the astro turf is good enough for semi pros, it’s fine for me. This ultra-modern style is a bit of a jar in a strange direction; I suddenly feel rather out of place. All that is lacking is some sort of dome around us keeping the vacuous vacuum out and keeping this pleasant world intact.

It’s only a T-shirt, not a statement of life choices. Emo, this isn’t.

I have entered the sub-culture that is Metal and Industrial music. Attachments are the norm, and there is much in the way of flesh and stockings, garter belts and not too many Corsets; now they remind me of science fiction conventions, whereas I suddenly feel that I have entered some sort of weird science fictional universe; not very different than the norm of skirts and suits, but out of kilter enough to be from the pages of some sort of word wizard.

I drink. It is good to drink, and the cider quenches thirsts and refreshes the places that it shouldn’t refresh. We go. We walk into the unknown.

The unknown is at first a long, luscious, sheer-clad, black, shiny leg at an unusual angle at head height; untouchable, but you can taste the flavour from this close. The pole is not greasy; it’s some sort of electromagnet and this girl’s gusset is clinging to the pole like there is no escaping. She is no pro, and that makes it all the better, for she is just like many of the girls here, but fitter, more flexible and supple, and a death-metal gymnast. I have to avert mine eyes and take in the rest of the scene. It is good and dark. Smoky-busy enough, the bar is long and well tended, trendy, out of place and unusual, as if a strange glimpse at a different world exists over the counter. A lot of noise emanates from the dance floor that would put the intercity diesel to shame. This noise has rhythm. To those who know the language, it’s melodic; to others, it sounds like the venting of some anger, much anger.

“What a load of bushwah that was,” exclaimed the Zoronome leader, Q36-1973.

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Everywhere there is long hair and leather; Black T-shirts are worn like football colours indicating interests like badges of honour. Elvis’ honour is a group of Care Bears and Care Friends, and a sickly scene of death amongst the strong bright colours. He puts the cute into execute, apparently. I think his lady Lara would disagree, but then upstairs to see what it’s like on the first floor.

Here it is all smoke and lasers as I walk into some sort of embodiment of a science fictional cyberpunk scene. People are moving at great speed on the dance floor, fluorescent lights flying to the music that Marylyn screams out. There’s Geiger images on the screen, and the PVC and Kaiser boots are in abundance, Black painted lips and finger nails, bare-chested virility, and Betty Page beautiful fringes and red gloss; the styles clash like some sort of car crash of under-culture, and it’s moving furiously fast. Laser shots fly through the ice smoke, lights sickly green arcing as the noise pumps to its own heavy and frenzied assault.

The noise is too much, too much by far. It is a separation of perhaps taste or age, but although some tracks from celluloid sources are pleasing, I consider my sensitive ears and the view was better downstairs anyhow. I leave the fast-paced angle grinding and head down back down to the mixture of forgotten music cultures. I am assaulted at first. Nuclear, perhaps, and then I feel alive. I am joined by Ian, a giant of a man who shoots at people for a hobby and who stands next to me. We are next to a pole looking at the dance floor, across at the writhing bodies bashing up and down in a rythemless orgy of energy, pumping necks rising and falling like heavy-duty machinery banging away at an invisible anvil. The muscles are evident, strength and youth are in abundance on the dance floor. Then like the changing of records, there comes the changing of the guard, and girls step up to dance. Eyes are caught by a black leather trench coat. No wipers trench here, though; underneath there are no Flanders graves. No, just a sleek black bra and spray on pants that are hellishly hot pants - petiteness is sweetness. Despite the turning heads, the clumsiness is all too evident, and appearances of fitness appear to be a figment of the extended imagination only. The guard changes, and an obvious semi-pro climbs on board and makes love to the pole, immediately declaring a dominance over the erect steel and proving her mastery. The movement is electric. From floor to pole, the whole place is a heaving, living organ of muscular effort and concentration lost in the moment.

The music becomes memorable, and I am joined on the dance floor. I start to jump around and move my feet to my own insane rhythm, calling out the words I know as I bend double and grip onto an imagined instrument that I couldn’t play for all the blue pills in the world.

As the night slides onwards and downwards, the erotic beauty of some of the girls at the club oozes out between their hot pants and body armour. Metal braids fly through the darkness. The music changes again, more recognisable, popular maybe, but we all know what it is, and everyone is up, and the movement is good as people jump up and down to the recognised peaks and troughs.

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I rest. I am older, but even so, I am not quite up to the scrap heap challenge that a few stalwarts appear to be. I admire their love for the music and the scene, and appreciate the tolerance that such a place takes as the norm. The burly blokes don’t fight here; the ugliest of the ugly just want a good night. Like some sort of leftover homage to the hippy long hairs, there is always a nod of respect towards live-and-let- live and humour circuit breakers rather than bones.

I note the disaffected youth, angry and angstful. I recognise myself. They would all have no problem with me whipping out a Heinlein of Miller. Here, the sub-culture extends further than the music, and I know these are my brethren who will have read pages of the fantastic.

There is an affinity that comes from not fitting in as one should do. Many people here have made life choices, and permanent face and body artistry attest to the truth that the geeks have inherited the earth, but even so, standing out makes one a target, and here we are amongst comrades who hate jocks and the pretentious balsollogy that goes with everything normal and mundane. Manners are welcomed and are received with smiles.

I travel upstairs. The pace has quickened. The bastard world is slowly separating from its drunken, benign, ground floor parent. There is the slide in style and rhythm. The music has transcended a number of styles now, and would be equally at home at some DJ dance venue just as here in the pleasant surrounding of heavy industry, the visual’s belying the speeded up nature of the music.

I miss the music I know and head down, deeper down, and go straight to the dance floor, I am welcomed, and so I move my body faster now, knowing the strains will bring on aches and pains. tone scours through my veins as I move to my own beat and enjoy the pleasure of Punk, Rock, Death, Speed, and Metal.

I take a moment to survey. The report back states there is a considerable amount of ladies on their own, which such an unusual state of affairs, compared to my beloved McGonagle’s in Dublin, where you had to fight and talk hard and fast to have any chance with a girl in striped tights.

There is no innocence here. No, these girls know what they want. I see the scars that they wear proudly. They don’t care really; they have the burn tissue of girls who don’t really think they will meet anything of true worth, I know they are wrong, and my friend who is single looks about, but decides that the night has been good and that any further extensions of chance may be a step too far. Shame for him. More shame for them, for here is true salvation, for he is a good bloke and a hard worker, and would make any Bitch Mom pleased for their daughter.

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More music, more dancing, more drinking, more pole clinging, more shouting words to one another, and the dance floor becomes the focus of energy venting. I record something on my phone to preserve the feeling I have of emersment in a science fictional sub-reality.

The night turns to morning and we are leaving. Sobriety has infected two people who were not drinking all night, and we are driven back towards the west and to the Bridge of Oxen. The journey is windy as there is no roof, only stars on the vehicle I am in, and as they speed increases, the windage batters those of us who want to continue the rock movement, and I fear I will be a flu-struck idiot shortly. The car travels at take-off speed, and we fly through the night with music blearing, on our way to the hills of Cydonia. at one hundred miles an hour. I sit down, for the airflow is not conducive to the banging.

I am put to bed by true friends, to dream of railway stations built between buildings and no drivers at the front.

-- JAMES BACON

The next article came from Lee Ann Lavell, who has been in fandom a long time, as you will see. She recounts how she came to be first involved with science fiction and its fandom, a story that ties all of us together. One thing I learned back in the mid-Seventies when I began going to conventions and producing my first fanzines was that fans love to tell this story; it definitely ties us together. Because I was in SNAPS (the Southern Nevada Amateur Press Society) with Lee Ann ten years ago, I asked her for reminiscences along these lines, and she complied. I ended up receiving three segments: this one is the first, appearing in the fifth issue, dated November 2007.

FIAWOL or FIJAGH? It’s your decision!

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The Rocky Road to Fandom

Your narrator is here.

by Lee Anne Lavell

This is going to be essentially a column about nostalgia. I suppose everyone has had their own unique way of getting into fandom, and I guess mine might be not too different than many others from my particular era save for the fact that I was a female at a time when there were very few girls who at least admitted to reading science fiction. So, off we go.

The First Wobbly Steps

I had an interest in both fantasy and science from the earliest time that I can remember. There were comic books. Mickey Mouse had some sort of adventure in outer space. Back in those “ancient” days Mickey Mouse had real adventures with villains like Peg Leg Pete, etc. I was fascinated by that. When I was five I had my tonsils taken out and was given The Wizard of Oz as a sort of consolation. Although it was read to me at the time, by the time I was seven I had read it myself several times so when at that time my appendix was removed and I was asked if there was a book I would like I inquired if there were any more books about Oz and I received The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz. And there on the flyleaf of the cover of one of them was a list of all the Oz books----almost forty of them! So began my obsession to acquire every one of them. “What do you want for your birthday?” I would be asked. “Oz book” I would reply. “What do you want for Christmas?” I would be asked. “Oz book.” “What are you going to do with your allowance?” “Oz book.” I was around twelve when I finally completed the set, at least up to that time. I still have them all.

During this period I was also getting comic books that fit into the s-f category (although I didn’t know what it was called). There was a Justice Society of America issue where all the superheroes visited the different planets. When Wonder Woman went to the future where –gosh wow—a woman was president of the United States. At school I read all the science and fantasy books in the library, learning all about the stars, dinosaurs etc. There was also a comic book called Planet Comics which I devoured.

“Big Little Books” put out two “John Carter of Mars” editions and I was introduced to the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series. One was an adaptation of the first half of A Princess of Mars

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and the other of the Burroughs short story John Carter and the Giant of Mars so when I found, in one of my aunt’s attic, a copy of The Mastermind of Mars I had some idea of what was going on there.

There were few movies of any import in that period. I especially remember Dr. Cyclops and something based on Donovan’s Brain. I think it was called either The Lady and the Monster or The Monster and the Lady. (A much better version was made some years later.) Saturday afternoon kiddie matinees sometimes had an s-f theme although most were westerns. Radio had a few programs such as Lights Out and the kiddy serial version of Buck Rogers. In addition there were a few other programs such as Suspense and Inner Sanctum which either offered adaptations or original shows with a science-fiction or fantasy theme. But, on the whole the pickings were quite sparse, and I still hadn’t even heard of the term science-fiction. That was to change when I was twelve years old.

Down the Primrose Path

In the spring of 1945, my mother had a very bad belly-ache which she ignored until she ended up in the hospital for weeks with a burst appendix. Of course all the family went to visit her frequently and I was brought along, although I wasn’t allowed to see her because of my age. I was left behind in this shop at the hospital. It seemed to be, the best I can remember, a combination lunch counter, gift shop, over-the- counter drug store and book/magazine store. There I discovered both a copy of Donovan’s Brain and a collection of stories by H.P. Lovecraft (with whom I was familiar from radio dramatizations) in cheap hardbound editions. I talked my relatives into letting me buy them so I could have something to read while they had their visits.After having devoured them I looked around for something more to read and saw a stack of pulp magazines. One of them had the title Planet Stories. Hmm, I thought. Planet Stories? Planet Comics? Sounds interesting. So I asked if I could buy a copy. Well, my Aunt Bonnie, who was with me at the time, took one look at the cover, which featured the typical BBB (bem-babe-bum) format of the time, and promptly turned me down. After much pleading I finally convinced her to buy a copy so she could (along with my mother, who was feeling somewhat better) check it out. Of course they discovered that the only sex in the magazine was on the cover and I was allowed to have it. That was the Fall, 1945 issue (they pre-dated) and I fell in love. I still have that issue, albeit coverless by this time, but it was one of the turning points in my life. In one swell foop I had discovered pulp magazines, the genre of science fiction, and letter columns. I was hooked.

Now that I had discovered pulp magazines I began to look for more. At my local drug store they were stacked in a rack sort of half beside and half behind the entrance door. There I found Startling Stories and its companion Thrilling Wonder Stories, Amazing Stories and its companion

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Fantastic Adventures, Weird Tales and Famous Fantastic Mysteries. A few months later I discovered Astounding which was not placed with the other pulps since it was digest size. That was about it. Remember, this was 1945, World War II was still on and there was a bad paper shortage. Most of the magazines were issued on a quarterly basis. I devoured them, kept them, re-read them. In the letter columns I found that there were actually other people who were just as enthused about science fiction as I was. ( Does anyone remember Sergeant Saturn and his cohorts, Snaggletooth, Frogeyes and Wartears who conducted the TWS and SS letter columns?) I avidly read such letterhacks as Chad Oliver and Rick Sneary. I was much too shy at the time to try to contact them but they became, in a way, friends in my mind, anyhow. And, there seemed to be some kind of fandom around with references to fanzines and conventions. Still too shy to do anything except read and dream.

About this time or shortly after I also discovered the Capitol Book Store , a second bookstore downtown from which I was able to find more Burroughs books about Mars and Venus et al. This store would become important to me later.

Walking the Streets

After the War ended paper became more available and the magazines started appearing more frequently and even some new ones showed up. When I was about fourteen (and just entering high school) I was on a visit with my parents to Farmersburg, Indiana, my mother’s home town. While there I was dragged around the town wherever they went (not that there was much to be dragged around to as Farmersburg is a very small town) and one of the places I was dragged to was a small second-hand store. While waiting for whatever transaction was going on I noticed a table at the back of the room that had some magazines on it so, of course, I wandered over. THEY WERE PULPS! And one of them was Thrilling Wonder Stories! An issue I didn’t have, from before I had started buying it. Another revelation. I immediately asked my mother if there were any stores like this in Indianapolis that could sell second-hand magazines. She said she thought that there were along Massachusetts Avenue. Well, Mass. Ave was right along the trolley route to downtown from my house so as soon as I could, I checked it out. There were three stores in particular that seemed very promising, their signs saying not only used books but used magazines as well.

So, for the next couple of years I would take the trolley downtown and then start trudging back home stopping at each store and buying as many magazines as I could afford, or carry, at two for a nickel or three for a dime. I was able to get most of the pulps back through 1940 and even a few into the thirties. The only exceptions were the Street and Smith publications, which were very few and far between. After a couple of years I had pretty well cleaned them out of everything that I needed. Also the prices had started going up. So my trips stopped. (I stopped in at one of the places some twenty years later to search for a book and the proprietor looked at me and said “The science fiction’s over there.”)

Around this time the Capitol Book Store started carrying some interesting new publications. They became the outlet for the genre book publishers such as Shasta, Gnome, Arkham House and FPC I. They also carried a little known but excellent magazine called Fantasy Book which really published some groundbreaking authors and stories.

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Trudging My Way Through High School

I attended a very large high school with multiple buildings and a huge campus but had still met almost no one else who was interested in science fiction. I had a girl friend, Caroline, who was marginally interested in fantasy. Once, at my local drugstore, while buying one of my pulps, a guy wandered in and got a copy of Planet Stories and mumbled something about wishing it would go monthly then left. I was in such a state of shock I hadn’t said anything and I never saw him again. And finally, in my chem class there was Charles. He was a “genius” (well, he entered the University of Chicago as a junior) who used to borrow my copy of Astounding which I carried around in my notebook. He would ask the teacher a complicated question then read the magazine while the teacher answered it. He didn’t seem to have much interest in going any further than that, although I remember that once he remarked that Hal Clement was his favorite author. (It figured.)

I was generally a nerdish, introverted, gangly, quiet student, getting just average grades because most of my teachers didn’t notice me. (Everyone went into a state of shock when the results of that time’s equivalent of the SATs came back and I was off the charts in English, in the 90th percentile in science, 80th in history but bombed math,) However, I did have my moments. In a sophomore creative writing class, we had a young teacher who generally allowed us to write on any topic we wished, so I wrote short (very short, not very good) science fiction stories. It was such an “innovation” (I mean, whoever read that “crazy Buck Rogers stuff”) that it blew her away and I became the star—so to speak---of the class.

My stale junior year I took Journalism so come my senior year I was on the school newspaper--- or, actually, it was a news magazine. Somehow they heard that I wrote fiction and asked me to turn in a story so I turned in one of those I had written for the creative writing class. I guess it went over because they asked for another which they got. It was kind of a relief from the wretched beat to which I had been assigned: Home Economics. (Have you ever tried writing something interesting about a sewing machine?)

My reputation as a “successful fiction writer” now having been established, I was asked to write a serial. Okay. I turned in a three part hand written time machine story which was sent to the school typists before it went to the editors. I turned in one part at a time. I guess the serial was successful as non-subscription sales of the paper went up. I also found out that members of the Senior Council and some of the school athletes were hanging out where the typists were turning out the pages so they could read the next installment before it got into print. But as far as meeting anyone else who read science fiction, I had no luck.

Dashing to the Precipice and Plunging In

It was in the summer of 1950, the year I graduated from high school, that I finally decided to do something. I subscribed to my first fanzine. I don’t remember which one. I think it was some sort of newszine. I also joined my first convention, one which I had no hope of attending, the NORWESCON on the west coast. Then that September, just as I was entering college, someone heard a guy on the radio saying he wanted to form a local s-f fan club. I was told about it and called him (Ray Beam) and there I was: over the edge and done for! - LEE ANNE LAVELL

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Fans talking about fans to the point of getting philosophically existentialist about fandom and its nature has long been a popular topic in fanzines. Why should Askance be any different? When Arnie Katz started up his column in my fanzine back in the fifth issue, it generated some responses that became point- counterpoint articles in the sixth issue (January 2008). The first was by Andrew Trembley, followed by Claire Brialey’s thoughts on the subject. This entire sequence of articles was very interesting, so it was hard to select just one of them to reprint in this issue. I settled on Claire’s mainly because I thought it was the most far-ranging of the three that managed to touch upon other aspects of sf fandom in the process. WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS A FAN

by Claire Brialey

It has been quite a long time since I actively worried about what sort of fan I am, and I’m not about to start that again. Nonetheless, having read the profoundly thought-provoking Askance #5, I now have a miniature projection of Arnie Katz on one shoulder and a matching James Bacon on the other, and I feel I’m being steered inexorably towards some sort of internal dialogue. Being introspective or possibly self-obsessed, I’ve obviously thought quite a lot about being an SF fan and, in fact, I seem to find myself stating a position on it more often than not, but it doesn’t actually bother me these days. I’m just a science fiction fan.

Of course, when I say that I either expect people to know what I mean, or have to quickly go on to qualify that statement; by this I mean that, as well as being a fannish sort of fan – and recognising that I may already have alienated or just lost a sizeable chunk of broader SF fandom there, including some of my longest-standing friends – I’m the sort of science fiction fan who still reads and enjoys science fiction, and sometimes even writes about it. And I do feel a need to define myself by this, sometimes a bit defensively and sometimes as a badge of entry; if you like, science fiction remains the core to my own involvement with science fiction fandom, rather than simply the password that got me through the door.

Once started on this, of course, I can’t stop. I feel I also have to say that although I enjoy discussing SF, I don’t have a great intellectual contribution to make or any sort of academic perspective; that I consider my primary form of fan activity to be through fanzines, although I continue to be involved and interested in running conventions; that I value and support the fan funds; and that I feel fan history is vital to my feeling part of this community to the extent that it baffles me that lots of other people don’t share that. I realise that to many people, this same line of reasoning also firmly places me in what many UK fans think of as Boring Old Fart Fandom.

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Personally, I don’t consider that pejorative, particularly when I consider the alternatives – which just goes to reinforce it all, really.

But over the years I’ve been other sorts of fan, too, partly in the estimation of others, but also because that was what seemed normal behaviour at the time. When I first went to conventions in the mid/late 1980s, I wore hall costumes and even entered masquerades because that was part of what appealed to the people I was hanging out with then. I was a teenager and they weren’t much older, so really why not have fun dressing as mutant zebra women or wearing Hitchhikers towels like togas? Even then, though, I found my personal costuming limits were fairly narrow. The mutant zebra look required face paint as well as the clothing, and I felt irritated and self-conscious about it quite quickly; the advance preparation for most of the other con costume ideas we had – including sewing – took much more time than it took me to get bored wearing them. Then at a Robin of Sherwood convention1 I wore a costume based loosely on a specific character from one of the episodes. This was mainly because I’d realised that the head-dress would be quite easy to make, thus lending an air of period authenticity to the otherwise very generic ‘mediaeval’ dress I had available; but people assumed that I was dressed as that character and that I therefore intended to role-play that character and wanted to be treated as her. That was decidedly too weird for me.

After only a few years, therefore, I found that having a costume was a combination of too much effort for too little, or too weird, return, and not in any case necessary to fit in since only a minority of people did it. For me it was no longer fun. Obviously those people who continued to do it were getting more out of it than I had, and I didn’t feel that they didn’t fit in – but then I started to run across the problems of public and press perceptions, and I admit that I sometimes rather wished that people in costumes would show them off only to fellow con-goers and not to people who patently didn’t understand the bigger picture.

I also have to admit to some vanity here. I’ve never been conspicuously attractive, but for a brief period shortly after I started going to cons I was, unaccountably and quite uncharacteristically, slim – which to alot of people counts as the same thing. Going to an all-girls school had meant that most amateur dramatic opportunities came only from playing male roles (and also that there wasn’t much masculine attention, but when it would otherwise be coming from teenagers, I frankly didn’t miss that very much). If I was going to dress up during my proto-adult years when I might actually have a chance of looking conventionally pretty, I was damn well going to dress as a girl – and specifically not to come out of it looking less attractive than I went in. This, as I’ve gotten older, fatter, more wrinkly and even less photogenic than before, has continued to be a guiding principle, and one that applies just as much to the flesh fest that British conventions threatened to become a few years back as it does to having never, ever wanted to dress up as a zombie.

1 1 Yes, we went to Robin of Sherwood conventions. Many of us, particularly those of us who are female and straight, watched Robin of Sherwood for a number of reasons which may possibly have included Michael Praed in tight leggings. And the people who ran some of the SF cons we went to in the 1980s also ran several Robin of Sherwood conventions in the same hotel which were primarily attended by other SF fans, so we went to those too. It was in fact one of these cons that led to Mark’s foray into costuming as well, but that’s not my story...

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There are other things about zombification that are also not for me; James Bacon’s Askance article set out the positive perspective on most of them, but it doesn’t feel quite like that from where I’m sitting, hoping not to get covered in fake blood. To start with, it’s not enough just to look like a zombie: you need to act like a zombie too, and really, I’ve never been that good at ad- libbed role-playing, so mostly I’d just feel like a fool.

But beyond that, there are two further things I find off-putting: firstly, even within fandom there is a fairly firm division in people’s minds between lots of dressing up and being serious, so that too much zombifying may mean you can’t get taken seriously when you want to do something else. James did allude to this in fairly stark terms, although in practice I don’t think it’s something that affects him personally these days; he and a few other British fans like Max are sufficiently well-known as participating in a lot of different fannish activities to be accepted by each of the fannish sub-groups who major in them.

Nonetheless, there was definitely a period when the mainstream of British fandom identified James more with activities like skateboarding with fireworks, mooning at police cars, crucifying Tobes at an opening ceremony, wrapping himself in clingfilm (that’s plastic wrap for US readers) for a con disco – and the list could go on and on – than with founding the James White Award for short fiction, running the Irish national science fiction convention, and owning a science fiction book shop. And Max took us to task in a fanzine a year or so back for, as she saw it, identifying her primarily with dressing-like-a-zombie fandom, since she didn’t want the risk of being pigeonholed by other fans.

Secondly, dressing up brings with it an element of carnival: not just the spectacle and holiday mood, but also the potential for the overturn of social order.2 Doubtless this should be something that forward thinking science fiction fans embrace, but in practice many of us are really quite conservative in our own little ways, and I certainly can’t escape the fact that in social, professional and fannish terms I am now part of the social order.2 (Not for nothing are these events called conventions, eh?) I’m generally still a bit wary of how much fans dressed in costumes want to role-play a character or give a full-on performance since I prefer to be clear about who I’m interacting with. And it does seem that once fans are dressed as zombies, they have particular licence to behave as the Other. This is, I think, a real part of the attraction for younger con attendees as James describes it: they get to be messy and to behave in all sorts of ways that are uncharacteristic for the well brought-up children we would all like to believe that fannish parents produce, or who choose to become fans in their own right. But I don’t want to be especially Other myself; part of what I’m looking for in SF fandom is a community where I know I belong – even if, like lots of people’s hobbies, I can’t really talk about it outside because it will seem weird to those who don’t share my enthusiasms.

So I do not feel the call of the zombie; indeed, in part of my mind there are several different reasons that I find other fans dressed as zombies a bit threatening. James wouldn’t worry about any of that either, except insofar as it might worry him that I’m taking things too seriously and not enjoying myself. And whilst his good-conrunner head might be concerned that anyone could feel threatened by any of his activities, his loveable-Irish-rogue persona won’t really believe that anyone would seriously feel that way anyway, because it’s just a bit of fun, and didn’t everyone

2 As Farah Mendlesohn, the SF critic and fan, reportedly said at the 2005 Eastercon: ‘There were some zombies at breakfast. I thought they were a metaphor.’

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use to dress up at conventions? And his creative-conrunner head may well be thinking in the background that actually a bit of edginess and conflict is just what we all need to keep energy levels up. James himself, pulling it all together, will doubtless tell me that I’m making it far too complicated, but that he is a bit disappointed that I’m being rather negative.

More generally, saying this sort of thing can get misinterpreted as an excess of Boring Old Fartdom – not wanting people to have fun, or at least not outside the confines of what I personally consider to be fun – but while there are lots of fannish activities that I don’t find enjoyable and thus don’t feel a need to participate in, the only Boring Old Fart bit comes from not wanting any of them to be given so much attention that they drive out the core of what I think fandom’s really all about. And that, of course, is where Arnie Katz comes in. The ‘core’ question, that is, not the Boring Old Fart stuff, which is a description I’m only applying to myself here; I’m sure Corflu Silver will be thoroughly enjoyable on its own terms without me setting up a slanging match with Arnie as a spectator sport before we even get there.

I’ve been trying in the past few years to keep out of British fandom’s own potential slap-fight about ‘core’ values, which revolves around the purpose, constituency and size of the Eastercon, our national SF convention. This debate has been rumbling away in the background for the past couple of decades and thus got going before I felt it was anything really to do with me, so I’ve never thought my intervention at a late stage would make much difference or thus be of any practical value – except, perhaps, to provide another way of defining myself by defining what I think is core to fandom. Perhaps inevitably, what I define as the core is a part of fandom I now feel pretty comfortable in, although I feel much less comfortable when I realise that this means I’m also positioning myself centrally to it. There was a mediaeval model of the universe like that, and as a science fiction fan it seems important to have moved beyond it. For me, it’s also important to remember that what you think you’re looking at depends on where you are yourself.

When I was new to fandom, back when I was still having fun dressing up at cons even though I was a science fiction-reading fan, I was inclined to feel that it was neither safe nor necessary to leave the very small pond in which I was a rather unremarkable minnow at the time. But it was still clear to me that I was in a fringe fandom (Hitchhikers); that was an opinion shared at the time by both our group and the fannish mainstream, and that reinforced my belief that the mainstream didn’t want me/us and thus could have nothing to offer me anyway. I should add that I wasn’t even

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going to the Eastercon in those days; it really seemed to me then that the British national convention for science fiction fans wasn’t likely to be my sort of thing. Gradually it dawned on me that I was part of a fringe fandom with many things in common with the fannish mainstream; initially this made me all the more convinced I had nothing to gain from venturing out onto a similarly low rung of a much longer fannish ladder, and gradually it made me realise that it wasn’t so much a ladder as a hamster wheel, and the mainstream fandom wheel was much bigger and thus promised more scope to run around and accommodate more hamsters/fish/fans. And then it became apparent that mainstream fandom – science fiction, fanzines, big conventions, fan funds, fan history, men with (conceptual) beards – was increasingly what I was interested in.

And so I became much more comfortable about the idea that there was a core to British fandom and that I could be, or indeed now was, part of it. This might be an over-elaborate way of saying that I started to feel that I fitted in with fandom more widely than the group through which I entered fandom and thus the friends I made at the outset. That could be because I started out young and quite shy; I’m not prepared to say that it’s because I needed to grow up because that makes me feel I’m disrespecting my original fan friends and everything I first did in fandom. But I like to think it’s because I found in my first fan group and fan activities a microcosm of fandom itself, and that I then learned more about British SF fandom and its history, I found out how much I had in common with ‘Real Fans’ – those people at the core who I initially assumed that I could co-exist with, but our fannish experiences didn’t need to touch.

So what I thought of then as ‘mainstream’ fandom was clearly broader than what I was doing; then it turned out that it was also broader in practice than the parts of it I came to be most interested in. And so what I thought of from the fringes to be the mainstream turns out, like your home town or your parents when you go back to visit, to be much smaller than I thought. Because apparently it’s not the mainstream: it’s the core.

I don’t know how much of Arnie’s article is a role-play - given what he says up-front about the controversial nature of the question, was it all a thought experiment or agitprop or a deathly serious manifesto? Does it in any case have a different role to play in Askance than it did in SNAPS? – so once again, I’m not really sure who I’m interacting with. And I wonder how close my self-definition (as a science fiction-reading fan involved in a range of fannish activities, but with a significant preference for fanzines) really is to what Arnie describes as a core fan. It’s certainly not a perfect match, but I do feel I’m part of the same fandom as Arnie. I’m not particularly confrontational, so I’d prefer it if Arnie felt the same way; however, I’m reasonably confident these days about who and what I am, and if I don’t meet someone else’s standards then that’s something we’ll both have to deal with or just politely ignore. There are advantages to becoming a Boring Old Fart, or a grumpy old woman as I suspect is more relevant here, and feeling more secure myself.

But ten years ago I didn’t need much encouragement to worry that I still wasn’t quite acceptable. (I would have subdivided that into worries about not being a good enough fan writer, worries about having what some British fans purported to believe was a dodgy media fan background, and worries about being dismissed as insufficiently serious, which I concede still rumble away in the background sometimes.) Fifteen years ago I would have taken it even more personally than that and got angry. Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have noticed, but if told about it would probably have decided that it wasn’t worth coming out of my own bit of fandom because the rest of it seemed profoundly unwelcoming. I wouldn’t have realized that it felt like that at least partly

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because I hadn’t yet discovered what it was really about and didn’t know what it contained to be interested in.

And about a dozen years ago I was spending far too much time self-consciously working out what I felt about my fannishness all over the letters column of Attitude, and I wasn’t in the least bit confident about it, not least because I wasn’t sure that working it out for myself would be enough to let me belong. And that was the really important bit for me.

And now here I am, with my mental projections of Arnie on one shoulder and James on the other, and no clear idea about which of them is meant to be the Good Angel and which the Bad. It’s doubtless wrong of me to try to set them up in direct opposition to one another because in some ways they don’t disagree and they’re not always talking about the same fannish context – fandom in the US, UK, and Ireland are clearly all different, and the effect of numbers on the potential for polarisation between sub-groups shouldn’t be under-estimated – and both clearly have a Vision for the Future of Fandom. I don’t have a vision or even a dream, but on the basis of the two articles I’ve just read, Arnie and James are offering me two visions of fandom that fail equally; both have elements that I recognise and welcome, but one is too exclusive and one too expansive.

I suspect that James wants us to send out raiding parties, quite possibly dressed as zombies, not just with the hope of netting some proto-fans, but of working with whatever fresh blood and mangled brains they drag back to create whole new fans and, if necessary, a new fandom within which they will fit. Meanwhile, Arnie rejects ‘If you think you’re a fan then you’re a fan’, but really, who else gets to arbitrate on this? As Arnie said himself at one point, it’s all about the context. Some of those aspects of SF fandom I listed as ‘mainstream’ seem to me to be essential if you’re to have any hope of identifying people as actual science fiction fans, rather than just flinging open our doors to anyone who now accepts a little bit of science fiction in their lives. But for me it is about identification rather than definition; so, while regretting that more fans don’t share all my interests, I don’t feel I could insist on that in order to call them fans. And if this core of fandom is getting smaller, is that because of those of us inside it or those of us outside it, or indeed those of us who persist in seeing it as something with boundaries like that?

And yet I have to admit to sometimes needing a term to describe people who are fans in the sort of way that I am. This is complicated because there are still several facets to my own primary identity; depending on the specific context, I usually fall back on either ‘SF fans who actually read SF’, ‘fanzine fans’, or ‘fannish fans’. (I suspect it complicates this issue too much to bring SF

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into it, and I still personally think that’s a bit of a problem for ‘core fandom’, although I’d be delighted to be corrected.) Arnie said, ‘We call it “Core Fandom” because people get mad when we call it “Fandom”’; I do know exactly what he means, although I don’t choose to make the distinction quite that way myself. By way of contrast, I know some people who consider anyone who reads or watches SF a fan – and some of them take a rather dim view of being a fan in a more active way than that. Inevitably, this leads me to take a rather dim view of them since they seem to be setting up a position in which they look down on what I do or patronize me by ‘tolerating’ it. I may be wrong about what they think – I was, after all, about the Real Fans who turned out to be my people – but in this respect I’m still in the phase of preferring not to interact with that lot too much.

So I’m aiming consciously to avoid Arnie’s trap when I say that I reckon you’re a fan if you feel like you belong. The arguments break out again about whether we should reach out or retrench, go out and recruit, or wait for the right people to find us. Some of us have a natural urge to bring people in regardless of who they are, while some want only those people to join up who will definitely fit in; some think we must reach out or die; some think that death is not to be feared or even inevitable. But if eventually my sort of fandom runs its course and would have to change so much to continue that it isn’t my sort of fandom any more, then it will wither and die. The alternative is, perhaps, a different sort of zombie fandom, and I hope both James and Arnie would agree with me that isn’t a solution.

- CLAIRE BRIALEY

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Selected covers, part one

Over these ten years of fanzines, some of science fiction fandom’s finest artists have submitted truly splendid artwork that have graced the front cover of this fanzine. It was really hard for me to decide which ones were the ten best. So saying, I am going to start displaying these on the next few pages. Here are the first three I consider part of the ten best covers from the first ten years of Askance.

March 2007: The first issue

I requested the cover of the debut issue from renowned and multi-Hugo Award winning fan artist Brad Foster, and he responded with a cover that simply popped off the page when I printed color copies on white cardstock. This will always be one of my favorite covers, and I believe you can see why.

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January, 2008

I got the name of artist Kyle Hinton from Dave Locke after seeing some of Kyle’s work in Dave’s fanzine Time & Again. The cover for the sixth issue (here on the right) far exceeded my expectations, and is probably one of the more interesting and evocative covers I have published. I really would love to see more of Kyle’s work in the future. He is a real talent.

September 2008

Long before Steve Stiles became a Hugo Award winning artist – an honor long- deserved, too – he sent in the cover art for the tenth issue (left). What I loved about it immediately was not only the classic Stiles style (see what I did there?), but the loving and funny homage to a famous cover painting by the great science fiction artist, Ed Emshwiller. You just have to love this kind of stuff.

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From what I believe is the single-best issue I have ever produced – the ninth (July 2008) – comes this article from Gregory Benford, who is not only an award-winning filthy pro skiffy writer, but also an award- winning skiffy fan. There is really nothing more I need to say here except maybe that it came with header art (by Steve Stiles) and photos supplied by Mr. Benford himself.

An Odyssey Galactic by Gregory Benford copyright © 2007 by Abbenford Associates

I've written fiction about science, essays in national magazines, done newspaper interviews, talk radio...and television. Of them all, TV took the prize for roller coaster living.

In the late 1980s Japanese National Broadcasting (NHK) got in touch with me about a project they had in early planning stages. It was to be a big series show on modern science, stressing the astronomical connections.

I consulted for them, reviewed memos, went to innumerable dinners with passing squads of producers, directors, and scriptwriters. Eventually they asked me to help outline the show and I gave it a working title which stuck: A Galactic Odyssey.

They wanted to take a very different approach to the problem of popularizing -- using elements of drama alongside straight expositions, interviews, graphics and the like. What kind of

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frame could do that? Intriguing, I thought. I worked up a plan to shape the shows around the voyage of the starship Helios, on the first flight beyond our solar system.

Most of the air time would be in documentary format. In the sf frame, we would follow the adventures of the Helios crew of six as they visited sites in the Milky Way. The first 1.5-hour- long introductory segment was straight documentary. The next seven were hour-long shows, each with three dramatic scenes, at opening, middle and close, adding up to about twenty minutes.

Halfway into outlining the show, they asked me to write the fictional frames. I had my misgivings. A year before I had written a TV script which did get shot, but emerged mystifyingly different from my vision. This was standard for the business. Since I wanted to learn more about script writing, I took the job.

By now the show was behind schedule. I wasn't surprised, since NHK had spent a year and a half planning and fidgeting and re-planning. So when I received a visit about doing the scripts, they saved for last the fact that I had only a month in which to do them.

I learned something about writing under pressure. In TV writing, you must keep it simple, be direct, use sights instead of talk. I made the deadline, with two hours and twenty minutes of (estimated) drama screen time.

Writing such compact drama scripts was an education in brevity. I began to long for the elbow room of novels. There were compensations, though, in the freedom to let the audience see what you mean.

Using SF at all in the solemn format of upscale, top-ticket documentaries implies that science fictional devices are becoming commonplace vehicles. Still, I was somewhat surprised that NHK cheerfully accepted SF ideas; they saw that showing people visiting exotic sites was far more immediate than merely doing better computer graphics of them.

So I indulged myself. I stretched the physics a bit and had Helios fly by a star just as it goes supernova. Pretty unlikely, even though they had selected the star because it was close to that point. Great graphics, but how could they survive? I let them narrowly escape, using a trick: they used a Jovian-sized planet for a shield, speeding radially outward in its shadow.

This was a cheat, actually. The neutrino flux alone would have killed them, though, even with the Jovian trick. So I gave them a neutrino shield. Physics knows of nothing that can absorb neutrinos effectively, but there have been some theoretical speculations...so I yielded to temptation. A slight crack in my realism armor, perhaps, a step down the road that leads to the "wantum mechanics" of such shows as Star Trek -- you wantum, you gettum. Anything you want, boss, and consistency from show to show be damned. Drama, y'know.

Midway through the writing, NHK came visiting again. They had never decided how to handle the connecting up of all these elements. Perhaps it would be best to have an occasional on-camera commentator? Well, I said, that was one approach, sure. They looked pleased. And...would I please consider being this commentator?

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This was much more than I had bargained for. My imagination was fixed on the blithe abstractions of writing. Actual work in front of a camera was a decidedly daunting prospect. Still...

()()()

The starship Helios loomed large, a clean white sphere sprouting antennas. It glided away from a barren desert planet, heading into serene deep space...

DISSOLVE TO: Traffic. Horns. Gasoline stench. Gaudy neon.

Well, I thought, we wanted a jarring cut for the opener, and this certainly fit the bill.

I was a minute into the take when the bag lady came shuffling into my field of view. If she just moved across the camera angle and kept going, I thought, maybe things would be all right. I kept on talking

about alien life forms, a topic carefully selected for this location--a traffic island smack in the middle of Times Square.

"The sorts of aliens we could discover with our current approach bear a striking resemblance to the radio astronomers themselves--curious, devoted to the night sky, with lots of technology and energy. We--"

The bag lady swerved toward me and called jerkily, "Hey! Somebody's trying to start a war between us and Germany."

Well, maybe the mike wouldn't pick her up. I kept talking and got through the next sentence. If she would just keep moving—

"Don't you care? Somebody's trying to start a war between the United States and Germany!" I

shrugged. "Actually, lady, it's been done. Twice."

One of the cameramen came trotting across the traffic lanes. He waved the bag lady away, but since he spoke only Japanese, they got into a tangle of angry incomprehension.

After she had wandered off, and after a gang of Puerto Rican teenagers tried to persuade us to make them famous by letting them do their dance routine behind me, we did five more takes--seventeen in all. By that time I was feeling pretty alien myself.

()()()

Location shooting, I learned, is fraught with weirdness and accident. I had to shoot about thirty locations in six months for the series, which was running further and further behind schedule.

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This meant, for example, standing in the rotor wash of the camera helicopter as it lifted from the floor of Meteor Crater, Arizona, smiling numbly for five takes, as the sub- zero wind blew my hair around and turned my lips blue. I was clad in a sports jacket and light slacks, for the sake of clothes continuity with the preceding shot, which had been two months before and thirty degrees warmer.

Location shooting also meant trying to keep the script straight in my head atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, 13,700 feet. After a few hours of walking about, cold was the least of my problems. I found that oxygen deprivation kept snatching away bits of my memory. I would hit the end of a sentence and hang there, with no idea of what came next.

Oddly enough, it was fun.

()()()

The NHK producers were quite happy to spend, say, $300,000 creating a flyby of the black hole at the galactic center, complete with burnt-orange accretion disk and silvery jets. They even wanted me to talk about my own novels set there. Pulsars, neutron stars--anything astronomical was ok, fit for the computer graphics budget of several million dollars. This was big time TV, yes.

But aliens... Well, maybe Godzilla had spooked them.

They wanted a whole hour about life in the galaxy, but refused to ever show aliens. My entire script about planets as potential life sites was rewritten by a scientifically naïve director, to treat only dead worlds. So the crew spent its time in Death Valley digging holes for the camera.

Why? I asked. Prospecting for life, the director said.

Any biologist could have told them that the atmosphere, observed by Helios from space, would reveal signs of life. Chemical cycles for any gas-breathing life are constrained to a fairly narrow range. This argument had been used by James Lovelock to predict that Mars would reveal no life, back in the early 1970s.

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Such arguments got waved away. People could understand prospecting for life--it was just like digging for gold, see? I shook my head. Cultural mismatch.

()()()

While there is no detail whatever about how Helios worked, I did get away with basing the last hour show, "The Anvil of Time," on relativity. No super-duper faster-than-light space drive for us hardnosed types--so we got some pretty special effects of Helios zooming by stars at near-light speed. The crew used Einstein's time dilation to span the galaxy, so they had to pay the price.

We spent months debating whether the crew, seeing that thousands of years had passed Earthside, would return. People took rather fierce positions, some holding that the Helios crew would fly ever onward, drawn by mysteries. I made them return; an Odyssey has to come home. But then the directors refused to show the Earth or solar system altered after millennia. No orbital colonies, no signs of humans visible from space. No changes in the air, despite greenhouse effects.

Why? I asked. They frowned.

Anti-ecological. Tampering with the natural solar system. Bad vibes. "Such changes are disturbing." An enigmatic smile. The cultural thing again.

The Japanese took an aesthetic approach to much traditional scientific material. We opened the series with a shot of leafy glades and the line, "We love natural beauty, but what does it imply?" -- then cut to a rocket, the planets, and stars.

NHK spent huge sums developing a new type of camera, capable of shooting in mere moonlight. It gave high quality, fully colored pictures, so that while I walked by an observatory in Chile, you could see my red tie and also make out the bright colors of stars overhead, including Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system.

In that shot the director laughed out loud at the Carl Sagan reference when I said, "There aren't merely billions and billions of stars in our galaxy; there are a good fraction of a trillion-- and maybe more."

His laugh loused up the first take, which would've been perfect. On the other hand, on a later take they caught a meteor that flashed in startling yellow overhead as a punctuation, as I finished the last line.

It helped in dealing with the producers that I could switch from SF writer to scientist at the drop of a metaphor. I was scientific advisor, host, and drama script writer. When the drama director wrote in a scene in which the Helios engines failed, he didn't know that devising a wholly new kind of drive on the spot was both unlikely and a genre cliché.

Merely saying so didn't dissuade him, of course. So I pointed out that the big scene, in which they reach their difficult destination by withstanding 3-g acceleration for a full minute, would take Helios only a few more kilometers.

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Even a director could see that wasn't much on a galactic scale. So we tinkered, cut, made it not quite so askew.

The best thing about making a grueling show is the people you meet. I spent a day with Stephen Hawking, the first time I had seen him in years. He had prepared a long response to some questions I'd sent. We discussed on camera the philosophical implications of modern cosmology, and he remarked on the "argument from design" resurrected by Freeman Dyson and others of note. (They have used observations that the crucial numbers which govern natural laws, such as nuclear binding energies, seem extraordinarily finely tuned to the values which make life and intelligence possible. Maybe even suspiciously so.)

Hawking was skeptical. He remarked that this might provide solace for some, "but only for belief in a distant, cool, and indifferent God."

The working scientists were always a pleasure. The interminable delays for setup of lighting and cameras were great times to get caught up on shop talk. Astronomy and physics are now thoroughly worldwide activities, threaded through with sf fans. I found Aldiss and Anderson paperbacks stashed for a dull moment in the control room of the big telescope at Las Campanas, atop the Andes Mountains of Chile.

The woman director of the Mt. Wilson Observatory took me on a tour of the under- galleries of the 100 inch scope, where Hubble measured his plates and discovered the expansion of the universe. I got to do a shot sitting in the same rickety chair Hubble used for decades to discover the expansion of the universe. That was thrilling, as was the fifteen- foot plunge only inches away. Hubble had never fallen off; I came quite close twice in a single hour.

The director took all this for granted, of course. She then asked me if I knew Hal Clement or Joe Haldeman. What were they like?

We did a shot with me standing on the Bonneville Salt Flats, playing on the fact that in winter they look like a snow field. This was to suggest the freezing out of our atmosphere if the Earth were a bit further from the sun. Then we switched to the opposite possibility, that a nearer sun would evaporate away our oceans, leaving meters- deep salt plains.

"Very fantastic," the director said happily.

A Park Ranger with us said skeptically, "Sounds like science fiction to me."

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The director looked shocked and countered, "Oh, but it is! Of the very best kind--it is true!" The most imaginative element NHK would allow in the documentary was a series of paintings by Bill Hartmann, the astronomer-artist at Kitt Peak Observatory, a most pleasant fellow.

We worked out a water-world sporting only minor islands, with sea life just beginning to discover simple technology. A gloomy city loomed in the b ackground of his undersea painting. We shot a discussion between Bill and myself of the possibilities available in odd planets. A tide-locked world with a thin, life- supporting twilight zone. Twin inhabited planets-- one with an oxygen atmosphere, the other still methane-dominated. An inhabited moon. The documentary director wanted all these discussed, but the drama director would have no part of them in his show...

I learned a lot about how science and sf interact. The Los Angeles public television station, KCET, was producing a rival show, 'The Astronomers,' to air in fall 1990. I saw rushes from it, then the final show. While its desire to show the life of scientists was commendable, I was reminded that from the outside, watching us work is remarkably like a long, close scrutiny of paint drying. Still, the speculations of scientists are just as wild as anything we sf writers do; theirs are merely government-funded.

It's an unnerving experience, standing in a Los Angeles studio and watching actors play out scenes you've written, word for word. Quite solid and quite uncanny, like walking into one of your own dreams. It took far longer to shoot a script than it did to write one.

It's even stranger to turn from the set and look into the synthesizing eye of the monitors, where the set image was superimposed on the graphics, in real time. I could see beyond the Helios crew the swirling, technicolor disk of a monstrous black hole.

This ability to place frail human figures against the immensity of creation is powerful, and is only beginning to be dramatically realized. In counterpoint to all this techno-razzle- dazzle, I had to underline in the closing comments that our goal in understanding nature is in part to fathom ourselves, our uniquely human place in nature.

I found it doubly striking that the churn and dazzle of warped space-time is still an idea of ours -- a metaphor, if you will -- not yet truly confirmed by observation. Increasingly, the objects of high science are fictions toward which reason and inference lead us. They will remain unseen, glimpsed only with the lens of scrupulous deduction -- and with the telescope of our imaginations.

I ended the entire series with the only real indulgence the mass of producers and directors allowed. The NHK method was a sort of corporate mentality gone mad--each hour had a separate authority, with whom I negotiated the script. This is how I tried to sum it all up, with my own personal flavor:

Everything you know is wrong! The Firesign Theater says so.

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I hope that the interwoven strands of the sciences can lead to a philosophy for our century which will be of one piece, reflecting the seamless connection we have to this world that came out of nothingness and into something so vast and various.

A great astronomer, Harold Shapley, once said, "we are t he brothers of boulders, the companions of clouds." Astronomers know that we are also the sons of the stars.

Yet the stars are mortal, just as we. Our galaxy is the stage for a drama of worlds being born and dying, while even mighty galaxies collide, shatter, and merge. In grand diversity the action continues.

Biology teaches us that if somewhere along the way evolution had made a small change in the script, we humans would not be here. We are fragile-- but so, in the long run, is the universe.

The galaxy is still young, only 10 billion years old. Within 20 billion more the stars which nurtured life will ebb, growing cooler, redder. The giant blue stars will be gone forever. The galaxy will dim as black holes grow. There will be fewer warm spots for life. The milky way will witness the final act, a long twilight struggle, and if life remains anchored to planets, it is doomed.

I take a brighter view of the far future. Just as astrology once said that the stars rule the affairs of men, I believe, as Arthur Clarke put it, that the time will come when men rule the affairs of stars. Life's greatest challenge will be survival after the stars are gone. As Shakespeare said,

Now entertain conjecture of a time when creeping murmur and the poring dark fills the wide vessel of the universe.

Life -- that is, mind -- arose out of matter. The grandest philosophical question is, will all life's struggles come to naught? Can we survive the gathering cold and dark? Will the universe slow, contract, and collapse, reversing the big bang? Astronomer's quest for the shadowy dark matter will perhaps answer this question.

I believe that life will persist through the dimming of the galaxy, the growth of monstrous black holes, even through the eventual decay of matter itself into nothing more than electrons, their anti-particles, and light. I hope there will always be a role in the galaxy's evolution for beings capable of knowing joy. As the poet T.S. Eliot put it, "We are the music, while the music lasts."

We shot all that, but when the final editing got done, only about half got through. Still, NHK wedged a lot into the series, and it aired repeatedly in Japan, its first venue, in 1990 through 1991.

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It won the Japanese version of the Emmy for Best General Program. It showed in 1991 in Europe, in translation. NHK published a five-book series, full of gorgeous color photography, graphics, and with short introductions by myself. They sold well.

Then nothing happened. The show had ended up costing over $6 million, the biggest budget overrun NHK had ever had, and they needed to sell it in the U.S. market.

But the NHK structure took nearly all support money away from the program as soon as the final cut came out. Negotiations with U.S. networks were cordial, but the program needed editing. The Japanese style is alternately leisurely, with long panning shots, and then jerky. But there was no money for reediting.

So the entire project fell into a corporate hole, one step short of the major market that could make the whole enterprise profitable. KCET's "The Astronomers" had fallen on its face in the market, with a less than ten percent of the audience that Sagan's "Cosmos" garnered a decade earlier. The word was out

that astronomy shows didn't work.

This tendency of TV and films to ride on conventional wisdom about the market is notorious, and amusing. Once I saw a letter written on luxurious stationery by as studio maven, about buying an option on a novel of mine about Greek archeology, Artifact. "Nobody goes to movies about archeology," he said. "Too intellectual and dry." This was a year after release of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And nothing kept on happening.

So A Galactic Odyssey never showed in the U.S. The Carnegie Institute did re-edit the first episode for brief showings, but not the series. NHK broke up the entire team and the project is now solely in the hands of marketing, which means, no creative people involved. They have shown it around and it is reasonably well received, I hear. But it would need reworking for the more sophisticated American market, and there's nobody around any longer to do that delicate job.

People ask me about it, and I just shake my head. What did I learn from the fully three year involvement, finally?

First, novelists don't fit well in intensely committee-dominated projects. Decisions about showing aliens, or even categorizing civilizations by their energy consumption (somehow, not an ecologically virtuous point of view), were made by faceless executives--most of whom had no scientific training whatever. And don't think that's important.

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Novelists think in larger chunks. Hard sf novelists probably don't make the best diplomats, either, about scientific facts. Or at least, this novelist didn't.

Second, don't let the scientific content get compromised for schedule or convenience. Realize that just about nobody has the same commitment to the material that scientists do--but apply pressure at the essential points.

Third, use a particular rhythm in presenting science, to draw out its human aspects. This rhythm runs, philosophy-->science-->philosophy. Begin with a grand overview, posing certain human or social problems as they relate to science. Then go to the science, the technical true grit that can then lead back to those deep philosophical issues. Offer a response, maybe even a solution, on the basis of the scientific content just detailed.

This rhythm opens the sciences, imbuing large human issues with the flagrant excitement of the new, the fresh, the real. You can even yield to calls for a new vision or morality, speaking from the solidity of scientific pulpit.

In both visual and print media, this has been the style of the best broad scientific popularizations of the last few decades. Recall Steven Weinberg's The First Three Minutes, Douglas Hofstader's Godel, Escher, Bach, Sagan's Cosmos, E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature, and many others.

Lastly, have some input in editing. Much of A Galactic Odyssey got rearranged, slanted and cut by people who knew little or nothing of the technical material. Such power is hard to get, but essential.

A minor point: never do location shooting without firm guidelines. Otherwise, you are the tool of the lighting, camera and sound crews. I waited atop Mt. Wilson from 9 P.M. until 2 A.M. for the crews to set up. It was a chilly January night and after rehearsing, there wasn't much to do. Then I had to do moving- and-speaking shots over precarious walkways outside the big dome of the observatory, while worn out. We finished at 4 A.M. I looked pretty awful on camera, too, and nearly went off a hundred foot drop; but the lighting was perfect...

Science is harder to popularize than most areas, because its material is arcane, dense, and for many, forbidding or even frightening. But scientists themselves must keep trying. Of course, much of the process is, for the scientific mind, disagreeable.

But what's the alternative? - Gregory Benford

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Selected Covers, Part Two September 2009

Another one-timer appeared on the Askance cover of the 16th issue, Isaura Simon. Much like Kyle Hinton’s

cover on the sixth issue, I came across her name by perusing the Deviant Art website, and fell in love with this particular piece. Faunching after it as a potential cover, I wrote

to her and asked for reprint permission, and she graciously agreed. The colors on this painting are muted yet glorious, and I love the haunting effect between the primary figure and the castle ruins in the background.

November 2008

For a long, long time I wanted a cover by the talented LA-based fan artist, Marc Schirmeister. Thanks to Toronto-based fan artist Taral Wayne, I finally did get a Schirm cover as the two of them tag- teamed to create the cover of the 11th issue (November 2008). The end result was essentially a two panel comic strip with a great punchline. So much fun!

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July 2008

Taral Wayne is another long- time fan artist who deserves recognition for a lifetime of contributions to fanzines. The cover he created for the ninth issue (right) – in my opinion, the best single issue of Askance produced so far – is phenomenal for its use of colors, perspective, shadow, and eye-popping details. Somebody, please get this man a Hugo Award!

March 2011

Alan White is another artist who has appeared on the covers multiple times, and his cover for the 22nd issue is phenomenal for its detail. I could stare at this for over an hour and still

not see everything he included. Alan keeps getting better all the time, and one of these years he should get the recognition he deserves. For that matter, anybody remember his fanzine Delineator?

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On the previous pages you saw the artistic side of Taral Wayne. The truth is that he is also a fine writer, too. The following article also comes from that glorious ninth issue (July 2008), and displays Taral’s gift for humorous expression while making astute observations about human behavior. It is a good one, for sure.

Clair De Loon

by Taral Wayne

Hendrik Willem van Loon was a pretty odd character. For years I’ve described him as the Isaac Asimov of his day, except that he generally wrote about history and the arts rather than science. He wrote books on American History, European history, music, the arts, the history of the arts, the bible, on Peter Stuyvesant, on his school books, on himself especially, and on mankind’s struggle for liberation. In light of certain remarks the author has made that I’ll discuss later, the last is highly ironic.

My first exposure to the writer was many years ago, when Susan Wood wrote in Energumen about his odd collection of biographies. The book was named Van Loon’s Lives (in memory of Plutarch I suppose). Susan awoke a desire to read the book, but at the time had no expectation of ever finding a copy. To my surprise, I did. In fact, over the years I’ve found two[i], and a sizable number of other titles by van Loon.[ii]

Many are very handsome productions. They were clearly prestige publications in their day, having elaborate dust wrappers in some cases that unfolded into maps or diagrams. Van Loon himself did the illustrations. His colour plates are amateurish to a degree, but also vibrant, bold, and have a virtuous simplicity that reinforces the basic message.

Most of van Loon’s book are out of date, and were not very perceptive to begin with. They cannot be read for any other purpose than the enjoyment of their peculiar charm. You almost never overhear the name Hendrik van Loon at sophisticated martini parties, on fashionable websites, at Hollywood opening nights, nor during the drunken antics usually celebrated amid the strewn trash under traffic overpasses around Pasadena. Therefore it was much to my surprise to encounter Hendrik van Loon for a second time in a fanzine. (The issue before last of Askance to be precise.)

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The book was Invasion. This is a strange work, even for van Loon. Published in 1940, supposedly written in 1960, it tells the wholly fictional account of the WWII invasion of New York City. To hear van Loon tell it, tracking down and liquidating van Loon himself was almost the paramount reason for the invasion. In fact, he was on a Nazi death list, along with many other European intellectuals, but one must wonder if he even made the top hundred. One senses a well developed ego in the author’s belief in his nuisance value. He liked to make out that he had fled Europe to escape the threat of the Third Reich, but in fact he had left as early as 1909 to attend university in the United States, and was a permanent resident as well as citizen by 1919.

There is the expected volume of Nazi bashing in the book. They are justly denounced as thugs, oppressors, murderers and liars. The curious thing is not that van Loon places them firmly on the side of evil, but where the author stands himself. In opposing fascism he doesn’t seem to have any understanding of just what it is that fascism stands for. By his own repeated admissions, he leans in the direction of many of the totalitarian practices he claims to deplore.

Van Loon states clearly that he favours the suspension of the constitution so that American Bundists and Nazi sympathizers can be rounded up without habeas corpus or rights to a fair trial. From page 41 of the Grosset & Dunlap first edition he expressed subtle disappointment that the freedom of speech is protected in the United States:

“All the work I had done to make the American people wake up had been just so much waste of time and energy. No matter what any of us said, no matter how convincing the proofs we placed directly underneath our neighbor’s eyes, they invariably mumbled something about Democracy and the Bill of Rights and what Voltaire had once said about the other fellow’s right to express his opinions (which Voltaire had never meant quite that way) and there-upon they returned to their bridge and their baseball.“

But just did Voltaire mean, then? Unless van Loon feared people would mistake Voltaire to mean one did have the right freedom of speech, why bring it up? What sort of freedom of speech did van Loon believe in?

A few paragraphs later van Loon relates a news story about a Bundist claiming there was no difference between the action of the United States and fascist Italy, and correctly points out that it was not against any law to do so. The emphasis was unusual.

It sounded to me as though the author thought it too bad that making unfavorable comments comparing America to fascist Italy was not illegal.

Still, earlier on page 22, van Loon relates a brutal action by patriots:

“For when the Jersey State Militia had finally re-established order and had come upon a play-garden where more than thirty children lay dead (the work of a single bomb) they had promptly forgotten about all the beautiful constitutional guarantees which our citizens (even the Fifth Columnists) were supposed to enjoy. They had rounded up every man who had ever been known to deal with the Bund’s headquarters in New York and had shot him at sight.”

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While literally correct, there is a subtle tone of sarcasm in phrases like “”Beautiful constitutional guarantees” and “even the Fifth Columnists” that is more than a little ambivalent. One imagines a wistful author wishing it were not necessary to have such obstacles in the way of justice, and could still live in a democracy.

Back on page 37, we find van Loon making a number of slighting remarks about groups he apparently doesn’t like: “On the one side, endless cunning, careful planning, a complete lack of scruples and the twenty-four-hour day. At home, starry-eyed politicians, ditto sentimentalists, Youth Congress boys and girls having the run of the White House and booing the President of the United States, Nazis, Bolshies, evangelists, nudists, teetotalers and labor union grafters, using this most welcome opportunity to help their dear friend Stalin.… but we let communists hold high offices in all the departments of the government.” Doesn’t sound terribly tolerant. Rather, it sounds as though he wishes these people were not free to act and speak as they wished.

There is even a touch of mild anti-Semitism, as on page 44:

He said, “Jimmie is always claiming that all our pacifists and Bolshevists are Jews. She ought to go and visit some of our New England colleges. Then she would know better. They are full of the best families, but red as hell! And whooping it up for some nice liberal idea hat will give them a free ride on the Treasury…” I can understand the Jews feeling that way. They have a pretty lousy time as it is, but those others are mostly too damn lazy to work.

It is sympathetic to American Jews, but I’m suspicious of the ideas it presumes to put into their head. Were not, in fact, many Jews also Bolshevists and pacifists? Not just New England blue-bloods and college eggheads? To my mind, it is equally a cartoon to depict Jews as being all of one mind about political issues, especially when it flies in the face of historical facts as this does.

There is a disturbingly Nazi tone to the expression “Parlor Pinks”, just now found at random.

While I cannot site specific instances of more statements of this nature, the notes I made in the covers of Invasion make it clear that I had had been left with profound misgivings about the book after reading it. My final penciled note from the inside covers:

“Basically van Loon is little different from the Nazi Party in so far as his conception of liberty. He is a typical European Liberal, not a Libertarian in the sense of Jefferson.“

If I haven’t made a strong case for van Loon as a closet fascist – which is not my intention - at least there is a case that the author’s mindset is fundamentally illiberal. His was not a New World mind, but an Old World one, classically educated and brought intact from the ivy towers

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of his birthplace in Rotterdam. It would be well to remember it when reading any of his books, and re-evaluate any statement he might make on the meaning of the arts, history, or liberty.

- Taral Wayne

[i] Since it was lacking one, I made a custom dust jacket for the second copy. Instead of illustrating the figures from European history that Van Loon wrote about having tea with, I drew various fictional characters from fandom. It matched a story I had written along the same lines.

[ii] Items in my collection Van Loon’s Lives Van Loon’s Geography America The Arts The Story of Mankind (a mere paperback reprint) Life and Times of Peter Stuyvesant Report to Saint Peter The Liberation of Mankind Invasion My School Books

NOTE: In February of this year, Taral Wayne suffered a stroke, from which he is making a remarkable recovery. From me, and all of sf fandom, all the best for your continued and full recovery, Taral.

I have never met Steve Stiles, but I am convinced the man is completely out of his mind. Plus, he is one of the most self-less people I have ever not known, always willing to send

artwork to faneditors old and new who ask for artwork.

So last year he sent in one of his illustrations that had appeared in another fanzine – I forget which one – but Steve was kind enough to let me use it again as the cover of my one-shot, Shitgibbon: the Rant- Thology, (published in November

2016) available on efanzines.com, pictured on the next page. Thank you, Steve, for having such a warped Steve Stiles, receiving his Hugo Award for Best Fan sense of humor. Artist at MidAmeriCon II last summer.

43 ASKANCE #40 – TENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE shitgibbon

the rant-thology

2016

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One of the best things about producing a fanzine is receiving articles from well-established fans, especially those who have a large body of their own zines to their credit. Arnie Katz is one such icon of fanzine fandom. He has been involved in this nuthouse since the early 1960s, working on fanzines and conventions ever since – with some time off because we all need a break – and he was kind enough to send this article which is based on one of his many hobby interests, Old Time Radio. This first appeared in the 36th issue, dated March 2016.

Two Gentlemen from Arkansas

by Arnie Katz

Old time radio is one of my long-time interests. Joyce also enjoys classics from the golden age of network radio, so OTR has become one of our most enjoyable shared activities. It’s a pleasurable alternative to TV’s reality shows and talent contests, which we never watch.

We’re always looking for more series. Variety is a plus and increasing our roster of choices keeps us from burning out favorite series with too much repetition. We discovered some entertaining series this year, including Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Broadway Is My Beat and Mystery Theater (Canadian Broadcast Corp.)

Yet one series we found in ’15 stands above all the others, Lum and Abner. This isn’t “merely” a good show; I rank it with the all- time great comedies. Once we overcame our initial reticence, Lum and Abner quickly became one of Joyce’s and my favorite listens.

Why, you may wonder, “reticence?” We’d probably have sampled the show years earlier, if the brief description

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hadn’t repelled us sophisticated urbanites. Here’s more or less what we knew before we actually heard an episode:

Lum and Abner chronicles the escapades of two aging gentlemen. The pair are lifelong friends and have been partners in the Jot ‘em Down Store in the rural backwater of Pine Ridge.

A blurb like that won’t start a stampede for Lum and Abmer streaming audio. And though it’s true as far as it goes, it doesn’t go far enough. I hope this article can tempt you with a more detailed, and appealing, introduction to this outstanding radio program. Chester Lauck and Findlay Norris Goff invented the old gentlemen for a 1931 flood relief drive broadcast. The two comedians, then in their late 20s, had no inkling of what the future might hold, because they didn’t even name the characters until just before the microphones went live at KTHS in Hot Springs, AR. The April 26th broadcast led to a month at KTHS, refining the act. Lauck and Goff successfully auditioned for CBS in Chicago and the 15-minute daily live serial soon began its 25-year radio run, a staggering total of nearly 5,000 episodes.

Lum and Abner was the first broadcast from New York’s Radio City. The show also did the first trans-Atlantic simulcast when World War II fundraising temporarily put them on opposite sides of the ocean. The show moved to Hollywood in 1939, so Lauck and Goff could bring Lum and Abmer to the movies. They did six features during the 1940’s. In a 1950’s interview, Lauck recalled that it took two hours to get Nelson and him into make-up and costumes for each day’s shooting. Lauck wrapped up that reminiscence by observing that he could now play Lum without much paint.

Lauck and Goff based the village of Pine Ridge, AR, and its residents on Waters, AR. After Lum and Abner became popular, Waters voted to rename itself Pine Ridge.

Lum and Abmer is a remarkably pure example of the situation comedy. The show’s humor arises from the characters and situations, not from an incessant barrage of trenchant one-liners. Lun and Abner makes me laugh, but conversations don’t sound like backstage on “open mic” night at the comedy club.

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Lum Edwards (Lauck) and Abner Peabody (Goff) had many arguments and misunderstandings over the years, but their loyalty and affection united them against danger threatens.

The two gentlemen always have honorable intentions, but their personality quirks repeatedly land them in trouble. And then, as likely as not, their well-meant efforts to solve the latest problem only made a bad situation into an outright catastrophe.

Lum yearns for fame, glory and riches. In calmer moments, he concedes that he’d be better off sticking to the Jot ‘em Down Store, but that lucid moment evaporates when the next grandiose pipe dream ensnares him/ Lum. He became enthralled with some real beauts, too, such as: drilling for oil, opening a bank and operating an unlicensed radio station.

Lum simply can’t resist anything that might get him a title, a parade or a statue. At one point, to cite a sample Edwards Excess, circumstances made Lum the owner of over 5,000 hogs, which he believed would make him a millionaire. In expectation of this never-to-happen windfall he decided to commission a statue of himself and present it to Pine Ridge at an afternoon event that would also be an opportunity for one of his verbose self-congratulatory speeches. The cherry on the sundae was that he had it inscribed, “Lum Edwards, King of Hogs.”

A bachelor, Lum believes he has a way with women. Usually, it’s the wrong way. His courtships seldom advance far enough that the object of his infatuation became aware of it. Lum could fall in love with a photo and become a willing slave to any woman who cared to hustle him.

Lum also loves to make speeches, the longer the better. Most of them start, “The harp-strings of memory strike a tender chord,” and go on much longer than anyone except Lum desires.

As a self-acknowledged “good out-loud talker,” Lum likes to lard his every-day conversations with quotations. This plays directly into Abner’s most obvious foible, literal-mindedness.

All it took is one apparently innocuous Old Edwards saying to send Abner’s mind careening in some bizarre direction as earnest, eager-to-please Abner gropes for a literal meaning for Lum’s figurative phase, It’s almost impossible not to laugh as Lum tries to wean his diminutive sidekick from whatever mistaken idea has seized Peabody’s brain.

These routines are great, bur Abner’s odd mental habits also come out in more subtle ways. When Abner gets an idea, something inside his head turns it into a fact. To this wobbly foundation he then adds new irrational ideas that, in turn, transform into facts. Abner becomes totally consumed by whatever fantasy he has constructed; until Lum jolts him out of his delusion.

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Abner is the more lovable of the two old fellows and draws listeners’ sympathy when Lum bullies his meek buddy into doing all the work or accepting a subordinate role in a 50-50 partnership.

Lauck and Goff played all the Pine Ridge citizens through most of the radio show’s run. That changed when Frigidaire sponsored a weekly half-hour version in the late 1940’s, the cast expanded to include Andy Devine, Clarence Hartzel, OP Cates and Zazu Pitts.

These additions had their merits, especially Hartzel as the perpetually distracted Ben Withers, but none of the latecomers can hold a candle to Lauck and Goff’s secondary characters.

Squire MK Skimp (Goff) is the series’ rogue, a smooth-talking schemer who fools most of the Pine Ridgers most of the time. When Squire rhapsodizes about all his fine old friends, listeners know that Skimp has a plan to separate them from their money and valuables.

Cedric Wehunt (Lauck) is as sweet-natured, honest and helpful as Squire is venal and self- serving. Alas, the brawny son of the local blacksmith is the only person with a Social Security card in the Third Reader.

On the other hand, Grandpappy Spears is a voracious reader. Mostly, he reads out-of-dare almanacs and then insists on reading random trivial entries aloud to anyone within range. Since Grandpappy’s short-term memory is just about non-existent, he’s likely to forget the item as soon as he finishes reading it – and start reading it to the same person, again.

Not that the crusty Spears is a one-dimensional character. He drives hard bargains, often helps extricate Lum and Abner from the latest menace and perpetually fights with Abner over their checker games. (Each accuses the other of cheating to cover their own illegal moves.)

And, in one of the series’ multi-week story arc, Grandpappy’s personality did a 180-degre turn. Grandpappy Spears got a knock on the head that caused amnesia. He saw the label on his underwear, thought it was a monogram and assumed the new identity of super salesman Buster V. Davenport.

Joyce is partial to one of the series’ later additions, Llewellyn Snavely Gray, better known as “Mousey.” Whether he’s trying to become a detective, writing a cliffhanging novel or communing with a friendly owl, Mousey (Goff) is one of the most original comedic characters in radio and TV history.

The storylines usually unfolded over several weeks of daily episodes. The plots showed both imagination and variety. Some grew out of rural Arkansas life, like the election of a school board president or starting a new business. Other stories came roaring out of left field, such as the campaign of Diogenes Jones to make Pine Ridge the hub of his “wonderful world”.

There are even science fiction yarns. Two of the series’ major stories involve the construction of a rocket to Mars and a rampaging robot.

There’s even a minor link to Fandom. Joe Station, fine fan cartoonist of the 1960’s and early 1970’s, has drawn a gorgeously evocative Lum and Abner comic strip. Giving the connection a

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personal spin is that Joe created the “Arnie the Kat” character that has represented me in fanzines (and in at least two entries in World SF Con art shows.)

Lum and Abner lasted until the mid 1950’s. It was well-poised to jump to television, except that Nelson Goff had developed a serious heart condition and didn’t have the physical strength for such a project.

Another factor may be Lum and Abner Abroad, made in Europe for the TV market. They hated it so much that they were reluctant to try television again so soon after their European TV trauma.

The Old Fellows no longer welcome visitors to the Jot ‘em Down Store. Lum and Abner no longer stroll the dusty streets of Pine Ridge. Even Squire Skimp’s relentless avarice has run its course. Chester Lauck and Nelson Goff are gone, but their legacy remains. As they might put it down in Pine Ridge: “By grannies, you ortta go to Internet Archives Old Time Radio and listen to a mess of them radio programs about those two fine old gentlemen from Pine Ridge, AR. I’d be proud iffen you did.”

-- Arnie Katz

The story of my meeting Bill Fischer, the creative and artistic mind behind the FIgby comic strip and the Wikiphilia articles- such as the one coming up on the next few pages - that have appeared in this fanzine, is worth telling.

We met in a second quarter Russian language class at the University of Minnesota in January 1975. I had just transferred down to the Minneapolis campus to start my junior year of college (first two years were at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, as a music major on trumpet), and needed to fulfil the foreign language requirement. Since I had a full year of Russian in high school, I tested out of the first quarter – yes, the U of M was using that archaic quarterly system back then – I was able to move straight into the next class, and that’s where I met Bill.

To say he’s a nut is an understatement. Like me, Bill read science fiction and also played guitar. In fact, he and his friend Michael Johnson (not the recording artist Michael Johnson of “Rooty-Toot-Toot for the Moon” fame; this is Minnesota, remember, where Johnsons are as numerous as mosquitoes) had a folk duo, calling themselves Johnson and Fish. After I jammed with them a couple of times, discovering our three voices meshed very nicely, they invited me to join them, and thus was birthed Johnson, Fish & Company (I was company).

All of that is fine and good, but Bill also drew little characters in the margins of his notebooks, and that’s how Figby began. Bill and I collaborated on those, and our little science cartoons were eventually published in the Minnesota Technolog, the student I.T. publication. We even won an award for “Figby” (Best Recurring Feature, Third Place) in the national association of university Institute of Technology journals. Go figure. Bill has a very fannish sense of humor, with a love for the absurd and terrible puns. Here is one of his many Wikiphilia articles. This one appeared in the 11th issue (November 2008).

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ORGANIZED MIME wikiphilia article (noun): "ORG-uh-nyzd MEYM"

DEFINITION

While mime has been around ever since prehistoric times in the form of "street mime" or "blue- collar mime" as an activity of individuals, Organized refers to the carefully constructed, organizations engaged in mime as a business who have terrorized law abiding citizens for years. Organized mime is especially pernicious because where there is usually a clear demarcation from the individual mime's activity and acceptable social behavior, organized mime insinuates itself into hithero legitimate endeavours of society such as business, show business, organized labor, and government.

EARLY HISTORY

There have certainly been miminal gangs terrorizing communities for years. Even Biblical scripture refer to "dens of thieves" and the famed "Good Samaritan" parable tells us of a man who was accosted by people who, in all likelihood, subjected him to stupid "invisible box" and "pull myself along an invisible rope" bits until he was forced to throw them all of his shekels to make them go away. They then left him for bored, and a good Samaritan came along and took him home.

[Figure 1. Helpless Victim of Biblical Mimes]

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In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in France, Germany, and England, bands of mimes terrorized the travelers and bounties were constantly placed on their heads by the princes and rulers of the era. The mimes would typically respond with a corny, "Oh! look at this invisible weight on my head!" bit which, if not terrorizing villagers and travelers, would almost certainly annoy them. Penalties for mime were severe in Victorian England where a mime might be "hanged severally by his neckes until he be dead." In fact this rarely proved fatal because the rope was always imaginary and the mime would simply mimic contortions of being strangled then "sway" on his tiptoes with his tongue hanging out until the people would simply say something like, "It's over: the poor fellow's gone." and then the villagers and hangman would go back into the local pub, allowing the clever mime to escape and commit another mime elsewhere. According to tradition, during the Napoleonic occupation of Sicily in the early, 19th century, bands of mimes would get together and swear dark and secret oaths. Nobody knows, of course, how dark and secret the oaths actually were because no one could hear them. This became known as the "code of silence". By 1805 the mimes had organized into a shadowy, underworld group known loosely as "Mimes Against French Intransigent Waiters", or "MAFIW" for short. With the large wave of European immigration in the late 1800's into the U.S., came the MAFIW or "MAFIEWSI" as they were called. The first lucrative market they infiltrated was street busking, then later, vaudeville and general carnival stuff.

[Figure 2. Boss Tweed being bribed by organized mime]

PROHIBITION

The advent of the Volstead Act (1919) which prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. had the opposite effect it's authors intended: instead of getting everybody to stop drinking and go back to church a thriving black market developed in "bootlegged" liquor. This was the heyday of organized mime. The MAFIW would carry out turf wars in which rival gangs of mimes would strut by a restaurant or business storefront with their hands in a steering wheel position while another mime would "rake" the building with imaginary machine gun fire. In spite of the code of silence among the brotherhood of mimes, certain gangland terms leaked into public awareness, such as "he's gone to walk the invisible dog". Many mime informants found themselves "silenced".

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[Figure 3. Luigi "Big Dummy" Albigensia being "rubbed out" outside of a Chicago brothel. Feb 1927]

Authorities found it terribly difficult to prosecute organized mime figures for liquor possession as the bottles were imaginary and frequently there wasn't actually anything in them. Many a speakeasy raiding party stood by helplessly as a silently laughing mime "emptied" the nonexistent hooch down a drain in front of them, destroying all nonexistent evidence.

DEPRESSION

The massive, international collapse of banking and securities markets in the 1930's saw the repeal of the hated prohibition act and the collapse of some lucrative, organized mime leaders, most notably Al, "Paintface" Barone who was indicted for income tax evasion and performance of a really, really bad "invisible box" bit. These gangs, however were quickly replaced by others, who, deprived of their lucrative bootlegging business slid easily into prostitution and gambling. Gambling, it should be noted, was never a good business for organized mime because the croupier could never hear them over the other players placing their chips and the mimes were frequently drowned out by the racket of the slot machine bells and chimes. The advent of the Second World War (1939-1945) had a cooling effect on organized mime for two reasons. First, the government was in no mood for their foolishness, what with a war to fight, etc. and the "Capos Di Tutti Frutti" of the murky underworld of organized mime took the hint and laid low. Second, many in organized mime felt patriotic and enlisted and left behind their mime-ridden pasts and served with distinction in the war. One of the most decorated mimes of the European Theater of Operations, Sergeant Audie "Slappy" Murfree, single handedly led a commando raid into Berlin and annoyed many high ranking Nazi officials with his lame "drinking the invisible glass of water" bit so much that Hitler finally just shot himself.

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[Figure 4. Captured Axis Footage of Murfree's raid on Berlin, May 1945]

One of the most heroic episodes of the Second World War was when a handful of brave mimes waded ashore on a small atoll seething with suicidal Japanese. In spite of the fact that they were outnumbered 1000 to 1, they made it to the top of a central mountain and mimicked raising a non-existent flag. Unfortunately, the amphibious task force of Marines were still waiting offshore for the order to deploy and so the five mimes found themselves overwhelmed in the end by two battalions of enraged Japanese. Running out of ammo for their imaginary guns they were eventually cut down to the last mime. Said a Marine colonel during the mop-up operation a few days later "Gee, too bad we didn't get a picture of that!".

[Figure 5. Only known photograph of Mime slipping behind Japanese garrison to plant invisible flag]

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POST WWII

The early 1950's saw a rise in organized mime again in the U.S. The old "Mustache Marcels" of the 1920's and 1930's were aging and getting out of the business but had garnered enough wealth to be able to send their progeny to ivy league colleges. Organized mime was going legit - Gone were the speakeasies and brothels but the legalized gambling in growing towns like Las Vegas and Reno and Havana beckoned and there were always the renaissance festivals. Much of this came to a peak with congressional hearings. These were also some of the first televised hearings. The Senate Sub-committee On Organized Mime, or SSCOOM, for short, attempted to subpoena crime boss Frank Costello. Unfortunately a glitch in the card catalog system at the Justice Department caused the subpoena to be issued to Lou Costello. This proved very embarrassing for the government as Lou Costello was a great comic but had never been involved in mime. A transcript of the televised hearings exposes the government's frustration:

[Sen. Kevaufer]:"Mr. Costello you were at a Korean restaurant in Yonkers, NY on the night of July 14, 1954. Is that correct?" [Mr. Costello]:"Yes, Senator." [Sen. Kevaufer]:"And do you remember who the waiter was?" [Mr. Costello]:"Hu." [Sen. Kevaufer]:"Who? Him?" [Mr. Costello]:"No, Him was the busboy". [Sen. Kefauver]:"No, I meant the waiter. What was his name?" [Mr. Costello]:"I just said: Hu." [Sen. Kefauver]:"Yes, that's what I mean! Who was the waiter??" [Mr. Costello]:"Yes." [Sen. Kefauver]:"Never mind." (points to a photo) "Who is She?" [Mr. Costello]:"No, Hu was the waiter. Shi was the cook." [Sen. Kefauver]:"Her??" [Mr. Costello]:"No, Hrr was the cashier. He was Laotian, though, not Korean." [Sen. Kefauver, understandably upset]:"Mr. Costello, are you toying with this Commission?"

Although they failed to garner enough evidence to secure an indictment, Mr. Costello was cited for contempt of Congress and spent 120 hours in an anger management and parenting class. During his absence, Universal Studios cast mob boss "Big Frank" Costello opposite Bud Abbott in the zany comedy "Abbott And Costello Meet Carrot Top". Lou Costello never recovered from this betrayal and died in 1959.

[Figure 6 (right). Theater Poster from 1956 movie; Lou Costello never recovered from this betrayal]

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Senator Kefauver was admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital a year later suffering from delusions that he was one of Maimie Eisenhower's dress shields.

LABOR UNIONS

Although organized mime had begun infiltrating the labor movement as early as the 1890's, the 1950's saw an uptick in raqueteering by local mime bosses. This opportunity was made available when labor leaders realized that they could lure the mime goons away from management (who had been employed as strikebreakers) with more lucrative deals of control and union revenues. The first union so infiltrated was the tennis pros' union local #334 at the Grosse Point, MI. Country and Tennis Club in 1952. By 1953 mimes had silently taken over the towel locker, the showers and even the Pro Shoppe and had a stranglehold on the distribution of tennis racquets, hence the term, "raqueteering". By 1954, Mrs. Suzanne "Bitsy" Keeplehoffer was horrified to look up from delivering her 2nd child and see three, white-faced mimes pretending to be "obstetricians" hovering over her. It became evident that organized mime had found it's way into labor. By the early 1960's, the U.S. Attorney's Office with a lot of assistance from the Congress passed the "Racquets, Imbeciles, Clowns Omnibus", or "RICO" act which gave both state and federal authorities tools to pry mimes out of the labor room and the racquet clubs. Mimes didn't take this without a fight but by 1970 many organized mime figures were standing against the black curtain with their hands around invisible "bars" looking out of their imaginary cells.

[Fig 7. Mimes doing hard time in imaginary wing at Allentown, Pa. Facility]

POST-COMMUNIST BLOC

After the collapse of the Soviet Union (c. 1990) the fledgling, Russian Federation became virtually an open society for every type of entrepreneur: mimes stepped up to the plate. Within a few years the feared, "Russian MAFIW" had cornered every vice in Western Russia and Eastern Europe. Although Russian and East European police were very aggressive and very vigilant in

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seizing a number of stolen vices, many shop tools were still missing. Once again, the old, mime ploy of using "invisible" tools stymied many a police inspector who was confronted with non- existent evidence, even when they caught the mime red-handed "sawing" an invisible piece of wood. Besides conventional vices, mimes are also found in human trafficking, sometimes stuffing as many as 12 or 14 mimes at a time into a tiny car and then jumping out in traffic.

[Fig 8. Mime trafficking in children]

LEGACY

Organized Mime has taken on many shapes - a waterfall, a soaring bird, a soldier, a dancer, etc. but it's nefarious hold on communities world wide is still firm. With the advent of better policing technology and more international cooperation between countries (InterPol, FBI, Scotland Yard, CSI: Wadi Monsour, etc.) dents are still being made in localized mime "empires" but vigilance is historically proven to be the best deterrent to organized mime.

See Also

biblical invisible box Victorian England MAFIW MAFIEWSI depression bootlegging Bud Abbot Soviet Union - Bill Fischer ------

Like I said earlier, Bill is also the man responsible for “Figby,” a popular series of cartoons that appeared regularly in Askance’s first decade that poked fun at popular topics such as biology, evolution, and pompous research scientists. Here are some blasts from that past.

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I always enjoy getting reminiscence articles from fans – we are time-binders, ‘tis true – and we all share a love of books. Many fans had their first taste of science fiction and fantasy in school or public libraries. Here is one such example from the 22nd issue (March 2011). LONG AGO

AND FAR ROCKAWAY

A reminiscence of sorts by George Kenneth Berger

The problem of Far Rockaway is this: it's quite beautiful there. After the War, the bosses of NYC decided that those unsightly, poor folks in Manhattan should be dumped in the Rockaways, of which Far Rockaway is the easternmost part and the beginning of Long Island. They decided to wait until the people then living there became more prosperous and left for up-market places. They also arranged for the construction of several attractive housing projects with rather low rents. This was about 1956. The goal was to dump the unsightly in those projects and in those parts of the Rockaways that became less and less inhabited as our parents moved away.

The plan worked. The Rockaways is now one of the poorest, most violent parts of NYC. The housing projects are neglected and people live under the famous six-mile long Boardwalk. I did not know about this until several years ago, when two people (a Columbia sociologist and his social worker wife, I think) wrote a book about this. Now, my thoroughly unconfirmed hypothesis is that after the great old library burned down, its replacement was deliberately built cheaply, since "of course" the young people won't use it very intensively and do not need such things (supposedly). To make my story complete, the once-great Far Rockaway high school was formally abolished about three years ago. Its building is now a sort of professional school, where the young men and women are, in my humble opinion, sidelined into low-paid jobs without their knowing much about alternatives. To preserve appearances, there is a small "Academy" built-in, with a track leading to higher education. But most of the young people don't attend it. I wonder if

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primary education in the Rockaways prepares them adequately. Again, in my humble opinion, it's a shame.

Well, there it is: a reduced neighborhood with a disappeared high school. The latter had four Nobel winners, one of whom was Richard Feynman (he lived several blocks from my home). Right before its abolishment, the high school had police in its halls. Oh well.

- GEORGE KENNETH BERGER

Visual humor has always been popular in fanzines, and the recent development of cartoons becoming a regular feature in Askance has been enthusiastically welcomed. Here are two installments of “CHAT, the 4th Fannish Ghod” courtesy of Teddy Harvia (a.k.a., David Thayer), yet another Best Fan Artist Hugo Winner. This strip used to appear in Dick and Nicki Lynch’s fanzine Mimosa for many years, and now resides in this fanzine, for which I am indeed honored.

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Taral Wayne’s good friend Walt Wentz has appeared in this fanzine a few times. Here is a collaborative effort from these two gents north of the border that first appeared in the 35th issue (March 2016).

Non-Visual Manga Presents: Fun-eral Music … a Japanese Suicide Comedy

written by Walt Wentz art by Taral Wayne

Scene: a cliff edge with a short railing, and a sign reading: “Vertiginous Viewpoint, no leaping, please.” A trashcan labeled, "Please to depositing trash here."

A depressed-looking artistic type holding a violin stands at the edge, striking a despairing pose: “Alas, my music is unappreciated… this cold world will not support true artistry…”

As he continues to complain, “Farewell, cold world! With my demise, I deprive you of a great artist…” a Haggard-looking character behind him breaks in: “Hey, could you just get on with it? Some people here are waiting…”

Violinist: “Oh, excuse it, please… Go ahead.” (stands aside)

The Haggard type takes his place at the cliff edge: “Hah! So she rejects me, the proud beauty! When she hears of this, she’ll be sorry… If only there were some suitably dramatic music to accompany this poetic tragedy of my death…” The violinist, standing behind him, is struck by an idea…

The Haggard type continues, “Because of my honest poverty, my love is thrown away like trash, as I…” looks back at the Violinist, who is fiddling away… beside him a hat on the ground and a hastily lettered sign: “I will Play Sad Music while you commit suicide… 500 Yen.”

Haggard type waves his arms furiously and yells: “Do you MIND? You are totally RUINING the mood here!”

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Violinist (sullenly): “I am doing my best..."

Haggard: “Your BEST? Your lousy playing shows me there are even worse things in the world than my own rotten life! I could play better music on a KAZOO!”

Violinist (glaring sidelong): “Hah! Prove it!”

As Haggard and the Violinist are glaring, tootling and fiddling away at each other, a thin, balding Businessman staggers up to the cliff edge, bawling, “RUINED! RUINED! I’ve lost everything… I cannot face my family…”

As Businessman assumes a diving pose on the edge, the Violinist bows politely and points to his sign: “Excuse it please, sir… will you pay for our service now, or may we go through your pockets after your honorable demise?”

Businessman: ”Ah, my most abject apologies, young sir… I haven’t a yen left to my name…” Violinist: “Well then, can you fill in on the drums?”

A fat wad of cash is thrown into the hat from offstage… the Businessman goggles at the money, his eyes bulging...

The Businessman has eagerly joined the group, drumming on the upturned trashcan as the others fiddle and squawk … a tubby, flashy producer-looking type waddles in, weeping, and saying, “Play me something showbiz for my big exit, lads… My little recording company is finished, Toho and the big boys have monopolized all the talent… I haven’t had a hit all year…”

Violinist: “Our first paying customer, boys! Let’s do “Flight of the Bumblebee” in ragtime…”

Producer stands on the edge, blubbering, while the group fiddle and drum and bleat away…

Producer assumes a startled expression as the music continues…

Producer turns around, snickering, as the band blasts away…

Producer laughs hysterically, stamping his feet: “Stop, you’re killin’ me, lads! You’re the funniest comedy group since The Three Honorable Stooges… We’re gonna make a million, I tell ya, a Million!” The band members look at each other, grinning gleefully…

Last panel… the cliff edge has collapsed, leaving a ragged edge and taking everyone down with it…

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Way back in the 10th issue I reviewed the book Chicon II Proceedings, the 1962 World SF Convention that Earl Kemp chaired, and who then produced this book. Reading that review of mine provoked Earl to write the following article (issue #11), which I am honored to share again. 1962 All Over Again

Centerfolds, Dueling Egos, and Big Oil Bucks

By Earl Kemp

John Purcell stroked my memory and turned me on real good. He asked about the 1962 SF WorldCon and The Proceedings of same. Naturally, that forced me to dig up my reading copy and look it over again after a number of years of not having seen it.

I said my ―reading copy‖ because I also have a ―good‖ copy somewhere, carefully put away for posterity. I no longer remember where, when, or how I received that reading copy. Whoever it belonged to had thoroughly devoured the contents. The book is dog-eared with many turned-down page corners, a practice that croggles my imagination, and one that I detest mightily. It is also riddled throughout with marginal notes, in ink, apparently written to another third person.

There are notes like ―start reading here‖ and ―end here.‖ ―Read this entire section.‖ Another practice that I find completely unacceptable, but then it wasn‘t my book, except in spirit and intent.

After I overcame my annoyance about the former owner and their treatment of the book, I began looking it over carefully, concentrating on the contents.

Gosh! What a fantastic book. Rereading it, even casually, sure made me wish I had done something like that myself. It made me wonder who that person was Chairing the convention, and how he held up through all that glorious celebration of what was surely a Golden Age period not only for sf fandom, but for all of science fiction itself.

I, of course, was much too busy during 1962 to participate in any of that foolishness. In fact, I seem to have missed the entire convention, running all over Chicago for needless reasons, day

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and night, without rest or sleep. One entire very long weekend zipping past in the blink of an eye.

Things not included in The Proceedings kept popping into my mind, some of them long forgotten and some of them written about to an exhaustive extent in various fan publications over the years. Most notably ―Heinlein Happens‖ that was written for Alexei Panshin‘s Website Abyss of Wonder and was printed in Marty Cantor‘s No Award 10, fall 2001. A few of those things were lightly hinted at in The Proceedings but unexplained.

One was the involvement of LIFE Magazine. Very early on they contacted the Chicago committee asking permission and cooperation in covering the entire convention for a major article to appear in their magazine. At that time, LIFE was a very large, very successful, prestige publication and we were delighted to open all doors for them and encouraged them to follow through with their plans.

And they did, sending Arthur Shea, a crackerjack photographer, and a reporter to cover the affair. And cover it they did, taking several hundred photographs, all very high quality and high definition for 1962. Then, at the very last minute, for reasons never known to us, they decided not to go through with their original plans to publish a story about the convention. Needless to say, we were all disappointed.

However, they did the next best thing, gave us access to their photo coverage of the convention and permission to use a number of their very best images. They appear not only on the covers of The Proceedings but throughout the issue as well, augmenting the convention committee‘s own photo coverage done by Dean Grennell, Richard Hickey and Jean Grant (who went on to a very Back cover photo of Sylvia Dees. successful career as an assignment photographer for National Geographic). (Time Magazine)

There were three major time-wasting problems facing me during ChiCon III. The first, and least significant, was Texas oil mega-magnate H.L. Hunt. At the time he was a stumble- footed, about-to-collapse-at-any-minute old codger, already well into senility. He occupied a plush suite in the Pick- Congress staffed by his own servants who traveled with him. Hunt had written ―a science fiction novel,‖ he said, named Alpaca, and was seeking help in promoting it. He gave me a copy of his self-published book…an abomination of a print job…and

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I couldn‘t force myself to read much of it regardless of how hard I tried. No photographs of him turned up in the mess of pictures from the convention.

The second major time-wasting problem was super control freak and out-of-control ego Robert Anson Heinlein. He had an endless list of requirements and conditions attached to his even appearing at the convention…starting with an absolute guarantee that he would be presented with a Hugo for Stranger in a Strange Land. He extorted the thing that he had won fair and square. His next requirement was total attention to his plans that included quite an elaborate scam whereby he would seem to appear miraculously at the very last minute in a blaze of glory, trumpets, and drum rolls. His plan was rehearsed thoroughly, figured out to the exact minute, and he was costumed, groomed, and ready for the spotlights to go on at his command.

And he did, making his spontaneous rehearsed approach to the convention ballroom through basement service hallways, into the kitchen, and into the ballroom through the service door at the rear of the huge room. To gasping applause…exactly as he wanted it all to work out.

In retrospect, I should have not only locked that door but barred it at the very last minute, leaving super- ego-freak to stew in his own juices outside the view of his worshipful, anticipated audience.

I fought with myself very much trying to avoid most of Heinlein‘s bullshit, but in the end decided that his presence at the convention would be a prestige event that I needed to maintain for the benefit ofeveryone there. Heinlein had been, before he began his series of demands, extremely high on my personal list of favorite authors. He lost his position very quickly, however, through his own rampant greed.

The third most time-consuming thing was Playboy and its boss Hugh Marston Hefner. For years, secretly, I had been a stand-by asset of Playboy‘s. As Little Mr. Science Fiction, I was the on-call man for anything related to the genre. Names, real names, addresses, phone numbers, that sort of thing.

At the time, because my boss was William Hamling, Hefner thought it best that there should appear to be no contact between the two of us, for my job‘s safety if nothing more. There was some sort of unresolved major conflict between the two old co-workers and friends who had, together, planned their ―perfect‖ men‘s magazine…and doing all that in Hamling‘s basement where he and Francis produced Imagination…and making their page layout mock- ups on Hamling‘s kitchen table.

By 1962, neither would even speak to the other.

Secret arrangements were made to have my contact at Playboy be Hefner‘s right-hand man, Spec…A.C. Spectorsky, who spoke directly for Hefner. Spec, in turn, made Murray Fisher the

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go-between, running messages from me to Spec. At the time I thought that Murray was nothing more than a high-paid flunky, but was I ever wrong.

Murray was something else entirely. ―Murray the Fish.‖ ―The walking drug store.‖ ―Executive privilege pure pharmaceuticals free for the taking.‖ ―Uppers, downers, the company special Dexies…whatever gets you through the night.‖ I don‘t think I ever saw Murray when he didn‘t whip out his candy bag, open it, and urge me to take whatever I wanted and enjoy it to the fullest. I never did, though I later told Hefner than I had, and thanked him for the trips, but I lied.

In reality, I was pure as the driven snow. I wouldn‘t touch anything remotely close to drugs, while all around me my friends and coworkers were into pot with a vengeance. I never even tried that until after I had moved to California. But then California was in a totally different universe from Illinois. I often chastise myself for having missed out on all that good, free stuff floating around Chicago in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Eventually Hefner‘s personal secretary took the fall for ―inappropriate actions‖ and they tried to clean up the corporate image a bit…and then moved to California….

During ChiCon III, Playboy was in heavy evidence all over the place, and almost all of that totally clandestinely, secretly, and invisibly. Hefner had a huge list of things to accomplish during the convention, categorized by value to him and his organization. I was given those lists and asked to arrange everything well before the convention itself started. And I did. And everything was cloaked in deepest secrecy so as to not upset the delicate egos of the people—especially the very big-name professionals—who were not included in any of Hefner‘s lists.

During the entire convention Hefner‘s limousine was running shuttle services from the Pick- Congress to the Playboy Building to the original bunny-hutch and Hefner‘s residence at 1300 North State Parkway day and night. Picking up pros and taking them to various meeting places important to Hefner…newspapers, radio and television studios, and private offices, etc.

In exchange for my services, my demand was that Hefner would personally make a walk- through appearance at ChiCon III and that I would be included in the invitation list for a very special party at Hefner‘s house. It was admission by engraved invitation only and every name was checked off on the invitation list before any entry into the mansion. The party ran throughout most of the night, following the close of the convention for that day, and ended with a very elaborate breakfast that finished just in time for the partygoers to get back to the Pick-Congress for the start of the day‘s convention activities.

Everyone was so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after all the outrageous consuming and lie- swapping they had been doing throughout the night, getting no sleep, etc.

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And Hefner did indeed make an appearance at the convention, along with his retinue that consisted of the incomparable Shel Silverstein, Paul Krasner, a gaggle of centerfold bunnies as eye candy, and the ever- popular Murray Fisher, who was working the convention overtime as well as the rest of us.

Murray had a suite in the Pick-Congress and throughout the convention kept quietly stealing away one pro after another to interview them for unknown future purposes inside that suite. It turns out that Murray was the major interviewer for Playboy, doing all the really big-time Q&A sessions. Most notably with Alex Haley, with whom Murray worked in refocusing Haley‘s vast segments for his mega epic Roots, winding up with a smooth-flowing, continuous manuscript that was an incredibly fantastic bestseller…followed by an exceptionally good TV series.

And all of those things were going on simultaneously throughout the WorldCon.

Now, all these many years later, revisiting The Proceedings, these and many more wonderful memories are coming to mind. Just skimming through the pages and looking at the photographs, pausing now and then to read the words of dozens of Famous Writers That I Have Known…far too many of them and beloved BNFs as well, now long since departed from this world…makes me sad and glad that I had the opportunity to know them and, in many cases, to call them dear friends if not bosom buddies.

I think I‘ll make myself a promise: I‘ll pick The Proceedings up again, my reading copy, in another 45 years, and relive the whole sordid experience all over again.

- Earl Kemp

Throughout this retrospective issue I have attempted to maintain the original layout of each article, especially using the illustrations that accompanied these articles. Unfortunately, recreating the initial layout has proven to be bothersome at times, so I beg your forgiveness.

This also means that there are times when a sizeable block of empty page is left at the end of an article, like this one, which then means I end up nattering to fill out the page with extended explanations – like this one – to make the new page layout look all nice and purty. I really do hope you folks appreciate my efforts.

Or do I? This is MY fanzine, dagnabbit, so I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do to finish it! Got that? Good.

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Selected Covers, Part 3

November 2009

Taral Wayne produced what I consider the most stunning cover art I have ever seen. I mean, th using black to such an extent is a real gamble, but Taral’s cover for the 17 issue (November 2009) is a prime example of his talent. This is an eye-catcher, definitely. Honestly, I cannot understand how he could not have won the Best Fan Artist Hugo Award yet. It’s inexcusable.

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October 2016

Alan White is a master at photo- shop, or photo-art, if you’d rather call it that. Whatever, he creates some really awesome eye candy, such From as this cover the for the 38th issue Hinterlandsfrom last fall. It is rather future war in essence, which works for me. No matter what you want to call it, Alan is a

wonderful artist who should really be

on the short list for Fan Artist Hugo. Seriously, people. How can you deny this talent?

March 2012

For the first anniversary issue I put out one of those “Who wants to do the cover art?” announcement, and someone I had never heard of, Greg Rieves, sent this in.

Very stfnal, very fun, and totally perfect. I could not have asked for anything better. I hope that Greg is willing to submit more artwork in the future because he is a fine artist who deserves wider exposure. In the meantime, here is a prime example of fun stfnal art.

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Since it is Hugo Award voting time, here is an appropriate cartoon from the team of Thayer and Harvia, which first appeared in the 37th issue.

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From the Hinterlands

Well, every issue has a letter column, thus here are some missives that came in response to the 39th issue. Let’s kick things off with a loc from someone I hope to see in a few months when I head over to England on the first leg of my TAFF trip this year. In fact, the picture leading off the loccol is courtesy of Google imaging “Helsinki, Finland.” Such a beautiful city. This is starting to get very exciting. Anyway, here’s Skel:

Paul Skelton 122 Mile End Lane Stockport, Cheshire United Kingdom SK2 6BY

March 8, 2017

Ah yes, I remember Rune...very fondly in fact. Of course at the start mine were the Fred Haskell years...Minneapolis in ’73, the Bozo Bus Company, Ken Fletcher’s fantastically fannish illos...what’s not to recall fondly through the haze of years? Oddly though I don’t seem to have kept any of them, which suggests to me that their appeal was transient, being a sort of explosion of fannish joie de vivre upon opening the envelope but that when I first came to rationalise my collection and looked more closely and coldly at their contents, they didn’t make the cut. Then of course there were your reprinted covers, which included Beyond the Enchanted Duplicator...To the Enchanted Convention, with ‘by Walt Willis & James White’ clearly displayed, with you having written near the bottom of the preceding page, “again written by legendary fans Walt Willis and Bob Shaw”. Now obviously I’m not an expert, but shouldn’t being able to read be a prerequisite skill set for anyone teaching English?

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Mind you, writing about old fanzines might be infectious. Just a while back I read an old fapazine by Royal H. Drummond (DUCKSPEAK 3, May 1952) and felt compelled to write about it (sort of ‘I Have No Zine and I Must LoC’) in a closed chat-group. Plus of course, with all the old fanzines I’ve been reading lately, I have usually managed to find some connection with the current zines I’ve been LoCing...though obviously not in this instance with Askance 39. Obviously John, one of us isn’t trying hard enough.

I could of course claim that I just couldn’t get my teeth into this particular issue.

That would of course be untrue to the extent that I don’t have any significant problems with my teeth. That in turn though would only be because I don’t have that many teeth with which to have problems in the first place. Many, many years ago, back in the early Cretaceous I think it was, I had crowns fitted to five of my upper front incisors. These served me faithfully for many years, allowing me to smile again without first having to stick a paper bag over my head. No, my main problem is with chewing, in that I have for most of the time had only one lower molar that matches with an upper meaning that my incisors have to do a lot more incising to offset the deficiencies on the chewing front.

The result of this was that the tooth-base for the rightmost crown, having a gap rather than a protective tooth on its outside, suffered too much sideways strain and crumbled around the supporting pin. This left a double-gap, which needed a bridge.

Now whilst I had no problem wearing the bridge as a purely cosmetic device, I found that when it came to eating it changed the places in my mouth where I experienced taste, and spoiled the pleasure of eating. Then, afterwards, you had to take the bugger out and clean it because all sorts of shit got stuck behind it. So I gave up wearing it for eating and, being retired and having few occasions when I need to flash a set of gleaming faultless gnashers at folk, gave up wearing it period.

As time moves on, so does your mouth and an unworn denture ceases to fit. Sic transit significant sums of money. Fortunately my gaps are not as blatant as yours were so I am toughing it out and getting by. I note, in closing, that Jim Mowatt’s illustrations of your expressions all show you without your teeth in.

Skipping for the nonce to the letters, I note Lloyd Penney writing that “I certainly agree with you on Steve Stiles and Mike Glyer being deserving of their Hugos, and on Taral Wayne getting one next year.” Sadly, I’m afraid Taral will never win a Hugo. I know I’ve always appeared to underrate his ability in the past, based upon my lack of interest in the type of material he mostly produces, but even accepting his undoubted technical ability and accomplishments, it’s not going to happen. Looking at the Fan Hugos lately I suspect that last year’s wins for Steve Stiles and Mike Glyer were ‘The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde’ in this respect. Say ‘Goodbye’ to the Fan Hugos, Gracie!

As with the Fan Hugos, possibly also with TAFF. Obviously I am the last one who should complain about the current shift in emphasis, given that I was the one who actually nominated convention fan Martha Beck for TAFF, back in the day, partly on the basis that if you are prepared to take convention fans’ money you should allow them a shot at the prize, but now

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realise what I suspect everyone else did at the time, that if you once allow the spotlight to drift away from fanzine fandom then it is easily swamped and marginalised.

So it is I have this horrible worry about this year’s TAFF race. You wrote...

“I think fanzine fans will always hang out with and take care of each other. That probably explains why I have this sneaking suspicion that I’m going to be this year’s TAFF delegate.”

I think the first part of that is certainly true, but I worry that fanzine fandom isn’t really that big anymore and whilst I have no real idea what constituencies the other candidates can draw on, you only have to look at what usually goes down in terms of Fan Hugos (or in some cases even TAFF) to see how things could gang agley. I do however keep trying to assure myself that surely neither of the other candidates will be able to pick up 20% of the UK votes.

Evenso, I read your plans and cannot but think how difficult it must be trying to plan ahead in such circumstances when you’ll only get a few months’ notice of whether or not it’s all going to happen. I really hope it works out for you John.

Oh, by the way, I just checked and YOU omitted the closing ‘ from my Ted White quote, causing you, and possibly others, to attribute the second of his paragraphs to me.

In closing let me say how poignant and sad it was to read Taral’s hopefully upbeat ending to his first hospitalisation from a stroke knowing that at the time of reading he’d recently been hospitalised again with what was reported to be a significantly more serious one. I am glad to hear that he is once again on the path to recovery.

Skel

{Rune was the first fanzine I ever received. Back in the early 70s a Minicon membership included getting on the clubzine’s mailing list, thus attendees would receive the next issue a month or so later. This was a really cool thing to me, so I starting contributing book reviews and writing locs. Now look at me. The fault is squarely on Chuck Holst’s shoulders (I believe he was the Rune editor in 1973). (*) Skel, you can take your first paragraph’s comments to the Bureau of Redundancy Bureau. They will be only too glad to show you the way out. (*) Your TAFF concerns nearly came true: the voting results were so close partially because fanzine fandom’s numbers are decreasing, but also because Alissa McKersie had Chris Garcia as one of her nominators, and he knows how to work social media to the max. Plus Alissa has worked on quite a few worldcons in recent years, so I am sure a lot of folks voted for her because they knew Alissa from those cons.

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{I am so with you about wishing Taral Wayne a full recovery from the stroke he suffered a few months ago. He is writing again, which is phenomenal. He is doing remarkably well, and I am so happy to hear of his progress.}

Lloyd Penney 1706-24 Eva Rd. Etobicoke, ON CANADA M9C 2B2

March 14, 2017

I can finally now get to issue 39 of Askance. Got a busy day and a busy week ahead, finally got some work. But, there’s time to get onto another zine, so here goes.

Well, we voted in the newest TAFF race! And yes, we voted for you. We’d better, we nominated you, hm? We will tag along vicariously, and see what happens, and wait for that great report. I still have most of my teeth, but hard scrubbing has kept what I have left there. I keep seeing ads here and there for replacement teeth that are literally screwed into your jawbone, is that what you endured?

The RIP section of Ansible is indeed depressing, for the size of that section gets closer to a full page with each issue. The world around us is granular, with each granule being a friend, an import name in your fandom, an artist, writer, creator, or just someone who makes part of that vivid background of your life. We are losing a lot of granules these days. The rest of you, stay healthy, okay? I didn’t get a chance to meet Peter Weston, and I wanted to.

Our common friend Steve Baldassarra has been keeping us apprised of your health challenges, Taral, so it is good to see things are coming back to you as you recover from the stroke. You have an excellent friend in Steven, please tell him that. I have spent some time in the hospital lately, too…not as a patient, but as a concerned in-law as Yvonne’s mother fights to get out of Toronto Western Hospital. The prognosis, to be honest, is not good, but this challenge was not unexpected. Gabrielle Klein-Robert is 94, and she was at one time a pillar of the local French- Canadian community in Toronto.

I might not have gotten many copies of Rune, but I remember them well. It seldom happens that any group can be as cohesive as a good Worldcon bid, or a vibrant club, or a good committee. Let’s see…I don’t have my collection handy right now, but based on the covers you reproduce here… 79, 78..I probably got the final dozen or so issues. Good, thick fanzines with lots of articles. Back when I got into fandom, Toronto fandom has lots of contacts with the fannish folks in Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis and Columbus, so there’s more than a few familiar names here. I also have that Willis/White edition of Duplicator…Convention.

The locol…I sure could use a slice of that pizza on page 24. Perhaps religion might not disappear if extraterrestrials were found, but the reaction of those who are extremely religious would be spectacular. I suspect they would call the ET’s devil spawn, and try to declare a religious war on them. And, I am still not employed. Too many companies offer jobs that never seem to be filled,

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too many people are going for each individual job, and in many cases, the simplest jobs seem to require qualifications that not even PhDs can deliver upon.

We’ve had one show so far this year, Genrecon in the town of Guelph, to the northwest. Sales were poor because the convention took a year off, and I can’t think of a better way to shake your year-after-year attendees. Still, we had a good time. Coming up shortly is CostumeCon 35, the costumers’ annual rotational convention, this year in nearby Mississauga, and we have a dealers’ table there. For the record, Nasdaq Canada showed some interest in me, but did not hire me. What else is new…

I’ve made it past the first page, and I’ve run out of gas, or at least brain sparks to add some more paragraphs to the loc. These days, I spend so much time on the computer searching, I have to allow time to write for the locol. Thank you for this issue, and I look forward to seeing the 40th issue, RSN. Take care, and see you then.

Lloyd Penney

{Thank you for casting the deciding vote, Lloyd. Or was it somebody else? Who knows? (the Shadow knows…) (*) Best of luck in your continuing job search, Lloyd. We are all pulling for you! {My wife’s grandmother just hit the century mark last Halloween. In her 100 years on this earth grandma has certainly witnessed some pretty incredible events. Also, I understand that since your letter was received Yvonne’s mother passed away. Our deepest condolences to everyone in the family. {Valerie is making some smallish Steampunk things to bring with us for the Fan Fund auction in Helsinki. After we return there will be local arts and crafts shows, plus cons to display at. Good luck with Penney’s Emporium!}

Al Bouchard 586 Kinglet Street Rochester Hills, MI 48309

6 March 2017

I have mostly skimmed Askance 39 tonight, mainly because my PDF reader is going wonky (an older technical term from my days in computer school), and I don't know when it had planned to crap out again. What the hell, it's free...

Taral Wayne's telling of his hospital encounters while having mini-strokes is funny, touching, and seriously disturbing, in my opinion. I, too, am one of those aging-in-place ol' phartz, as well as being a relative neo in fannish circles. The dichotomy can be reconciled by my "advanced age" (early twenties) at entry into fandom.

Lloyd Penney's account of the Toronto room parties at Chicago is, as is his usual custom, insightful, considered, and funny where it should be. Seems to me Lloyd has taken up the mantle of The Canadian Loccer, which was left open since the death of the estimable Mike Glicksohn a few years back.

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This is not a Bad Thing.

The tale of all your dental "adventures" (I use the term advisedly) was happy for your cats, painful for you, and something of a warning to those of us who still have most of our own teeth. I still am not as diligent as I should be about them, but they're still there, despite me.

Once again, I have been trying to do too much, working on scripts for shorter movie projects, getting more comfortable with my new choice of editing and compositing software, writing a fanzine, trying to help my Dearly Beloved Wife with the daily chores of survival, as well as attempting to sell many excess things around the house to afford a convention this fall (our first in a while). It appears to my befuddled brain that if I'm not too busy, I run a risk of becoming bored. This Must Not Be Allowed!

Al

{Yes, Lloyd’s loc-writing output is prodigious, and so were those ChiCon parties he described last issue. They sounded epic, and made me wish I could have been there. (*) Boredom is not an option. When in doubt, pub yer ish, that’s my motto.}

Ray Palm P.O. Box 2 Plattsburgh, NY 12901-0002 [email protected]

March 2, 2017

Sorry to hear about the death of your friend Sarah Prince. By coincidence she was living in the same neck of the woods as me. Her obituary mentioned she graduated from a nearby community college last year with a degree in environmental science. Too bad I never crossed paths with her. This area can be small at times, people who know people. Her obituary paints her as a very interesting person, active in many different areas: photographer, church choir member, fire department volunteer.

I noticed that two LOC writers raised the question about Dr. Robin Bright's true motives behind his essay in Askance #38. I also wonder if his dense long-winded piece is supposed to be satire. You're not using a pseudonym to write that stuff, are you? I hate academic writing, but the Doc's incoherent rambling goes way beyond that. It's more like a big heaping of word salad.

Back in the 1970s, the movies Star Wars and Superman were big hits. Of course some guy came along and had to find deep symbolism or hidden meanings in each one. Star Wars (now subtitled as The New Hope) was really The Wizard of Oz motif – you know, R2 D2 represented the little dog Toto. The same clown claimed that the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie was about Clark Kent hallucinating that he was a super hero – Superman didn’t exist. Bright’s writing reminds me of this type of speculation but with a thick intellectual veneer.

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Good to hear that Taral was able to get through his health crisis and that you toughed it out to get your dentures. Yes, there is a connection between increasing age and increasing health problems especially when your health wasn't A-1 from the start. Me: anxiety, insomnia, and maybe a thyroid problem. Have you ever gone to the doctor and lie down flat on an examination bed that suddenly flips backward end to end, leaving you upside down, curled up in the corner? Bad design for someone my size. Really helps to relieve anxiety. Now I supposed to trust someone to stick a needle in my neck to check out my thyroid. Sure. My health adventure continues.

I enjoyed Lloyd Penney’s recollection of bringing beer from the Great White North to the Chicago con. Apparently that border area wasn’t as strict as the one here. Decades ago I met some Canadian writers and artists at a comic book convention in Vermont. They had no comics to sell because they didn’t have the proper paperwork and so their work stayed at the border.

Gee, according to the local TV news a lot of people lacking US citizenship are illegally crossing the border on foot to get into Canada. Do they feel unwelcome for some reason? Like SCROTUS Trump?

Ray

{Ray, I had no idea Sarah had moved to upstate New York. And yes, she was a very interesting person to know. She was a good artist, too, who contributed to assorted fanzines back in the late 70s and on through most of the 80s. She is greatly missed by those who knew her well. {The stories I have heard of Canada-US border guards in the last year verge on the ridiculous. It is all one gigantic knee-jerk reactionaryism to unfounded fears. Okay, I take part of that back: there are some valid reasons. But comic book vendors from Canada? Must be that explosive invisible ink being used. “Proper paperwork,” indeed. Sheesh…}

Milt Stevens 6325 Keystone St. Simi Valley, CA 93063 [email protected]

February 28, 2017

Dear John,

In Askance #39, the subject of recreational mathematics is mentioned in relation to Jason Burnett’s article. While I haven’t exactly engaged in recreational mathematics, I did use math to kill time at work. This was back in the era when calculators didn’t do anything beyond simple arithmetic. When things were really slow at work I would calculate the square rood of my social security number. The process made me look really industrious while goofing off. Once I was through with the calculations, I’d toss out the results. so I could do the whole thing over the next time I got bored. Years later, I got a Texas Instruments calculator which would do square root and cube root automatically. That killed that form of goofing off. The Texas Instruments calculator had 137 functions. I don’t think I have 137 functions.

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In the process of goofing off, I thought of something which might be useful to people who are always forgetting their passwords. They could use a password that was either the square ore square root of a number which was in plain sight on their desks. I don’t think most people who might want to hack into a computer would think of that approach.

Which brings me to the subject of recreational dentistry. No, I’m not quite odd enough to have dental work done for the fun of it. In fact, dental work used to really scare me. That was before I discovered nitrous oxide. I never did any recreational drugs, so nitrous oxide was quite an experience for me when I first encountered it. Of course, you have to remember to breathe through your nose. When You can’t figure out which one is your nose anymore you’ve had enough.

I remember Rune. It was the fanzine that appeared about once every geological age. I once noticed I had LoCs in two issues which were about ten years apart. In each letter, I comment that it has been an awfully long time since the last issue.

Richard Dengrove doubts the Bible mentions aliens on other worlds. There is the section forbidding idolatry which says something like you shouldn’t make graven images of any creature which dwells on the earth, or beneath it, or in the seas, or in the heavens. I presume that tells us not to worship outer space aliens. I didn’t really want to worship outer space aliens anyway.

Milt

{In our household, math is a four letter word. But seriously, folks, I rarely indulge in “recreational mathematics.” That sounds like way too much work to consider as fun. Now spending a full month or so to produce a fanzine, and get it ready for either posting online or mailing to recipients, that I consider a… Uh-oh…. (Ancient Aliens are likely to blame for all of our modern day problems. This guy here says so:

WAHF:

Nic Farey (submitting article for issue #41), Brad Foster (sending in this issue’s cover art), Robert Lichtman, Paul Skelton, Shelby Vick (announcing that Planetary Stories #39 is delayed).

Then there were all the fanzines sent via email or snail mail. I thank all of those fan editors who took the time to produce their zines and mail them out. These are always appreciated.

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Exactly what will happen in the next issue and when is a very good question, and I have a fairly decent idea of how to answer it.

First off, the early July 2017 issue will be a preview of my TAFF trip to the Helsinki, Finland World Science Fiction Convention, so naturally the basic itinerary will be included, along with projected stop-overs and visits with fans in England, Wales, and elsewhere as Valerie and I wend our way through the highways, byways, and waterways of Europe. As of this writing – the morning of May 15, 2017 – the plan is to depart from Houston’s Bush International Airport in mid-July and we will be returning there in the third week of August. Since Valerie is an artist, she really wants to see Paris – well, so do I! – and if time and funds warrant it, Italy. I have fannish contacts all over Europe, so meeting fans is not going to be a problem. Fitting as much in as we can is the problem, and that is what we are working on right now. Therefore, stay tuned for further developments.

Content-wise, there are already three articles on file for the 41st issue: Nic Farey and Chuck Serface have written a fan arkle and review, respectively, plus Guy H. Lillian III (he of Challenger and Spartacus fanzine fame) has one in the works, too. Once again Robin Bright, PhD, has sent two serconish articles, and like Ray Palm wrote in his loc (see page 77), I have wondered if these are meant to be send-ups of academia, much along the lines of what PDQ Bach has done to classical music. All the next issue needs now is a cover, but I have files of artwork by Ditmar and A.B. Kynock to choose from, so that problem is, well, covered.

Oh, before I forget: since I am the OE (Official Editor) of this year’s WOOF (WorldCon Order Of Fan-eds) apa in Helsinki, here are the requirements for that, if any readers are interested in being involved: • Copy count of 50 • Total text pages recommended at 10 (5 sheets of paper, double-side printed) • Please send a PDF of your WOOF-zine to me ([email protected]) so I can assemble an e-apa version to send out to contributors • Attending contributors bring your WOOF-zine to the fanzine lounge during worldcon Anything else I think of will be posted to Facebook (my page, also to TAFF, FAAN-EDS, FANEDS, & FANHISTORY pages on Facebook), and in Askew #20 (June 2017). For now, that’s what I’ve got. See you folks next issue.

JOHN PURCELL

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