This is issue #22 of FLAG, an occasional fanzine published by Andy Hooper, member fwa, at 11032 30th Ave. NE Seattle, WA 98125, email to [email protected]. This is a Drag Bunt Press Production. First copies shared March 13th, 2020. FLAG appears initially in printed form, and is available for trade, graphic artwork and cartoons, written contribution solicited by the editor and letters of comment.

The next issue will appear. The large number of contributor credits for this issue has forced me to move their index to Page 27. Heroic UK Duplicator and Distributors: Mark Plummer & Claire Brialey. Typing and Proof-Reading Support by Carrie Root. Spirit Animal: Billy Wolfenbarger

------I should like to confess now that I lied to you once, and only once, during my introduction. ------The Hatch Opens

One of the more important principles for a fan historian to understand is the role which inertia plays in the creation of fanzines, conventions and other concrete expressions of fan activity. Fanzines with a regular publishing schedule will tend to maintain that schedule until some opposing force acts to stop them. Fanzines which are not “in motion,” which have no intended deadline for publication, may remain inert in perpetuity. And there is no end to the opposing forces in the way of publishing any given fanzine. Jobs, kids, diseases, death. However, all these obstacles can be surmounted, as FLAG #22 is here to demonstrate. Like most fanzine publishers, I am overambitious, and commit to creating too many things at once. So, the honest reason that this fanzine comes more than a year and a half after #21 is that I could not make myself write another editorial explaining why issue #26 of CHUNGA had still not been published, or why the anthology of writing by the late Randy Byers, THY LIFE’S A MIRACLE, had not appeared after the Toronto Corflu as promised. I also have a multi-year tradition of monthly contribution to the Turbo-Charged Party-Animal Amateur Press Association (I know; it was the 1980s). In 2019, I began posting the title I publish there, CAPTAIN FLASHBACK, online through eFanzines.com, which finally exposed that work to a wider audience than the tiny membership of the TCPAAPA. As all of these long-standing obligations were resolved across the march of months, my commitment to FLAG contributors and correspondents finally became the most compelling unfulfilled promise, and thus was the inertia broken. Going forward, carl juarez has agreed to help me wind down CHUNGA with two more issues; it would be delightful to see #27 published before the end of 2020. I hope to present some little-known material by Randy, and to solicit further memories of him from some of his friends in andom. It has been over two years since he [Continued on page 2] ------I can assure you, however, that I remain a reliable narrator. ------

1

------A Key to the linos published in FLAG #21: Page 1: “Oh Make me Over – I’m All I Wanna Be.” & Page 1: “A Walking Study in Demonology.” Lyrics, “Celebrity Skin” by Hole, 1998 Page 3: “Talking with Paul is like having an Out-of-Brain Experience.” Dialogue from ill-recalled reality TV program of two years in the past. Is this how you meant to spend your life? Page 4: “It is Wonderful how Preposterously the Affairs of this World are Managed.” Attributed to Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Page 5: “Playing is just about feeling. It isn’t necessarily about misery.” Attributed to American musician Janice Lyn Joplin (1943 – 1970). Page 6: “Great gathering, Jonas. It’s the leaky gazebo all over again.” Malcontent teen, “Uncle Teddy,” S4 Ep14, Bob’s Burgers & Page 7: “Of course, Royals wear more hats in general than we Americans.” Comment by an MSNBC reporter forced to cover a Royal Wedding. Page 8: “And mortal me, without a mortal bottle to slake my mortal thirst.” “Miles Hamilula” laments his situation in “Who Goes Where?” a play by Milton Rothman, circa 1950. Page 9: “…I devote my time to embarrassing our 3 or 4 15-year-old fringe fans who come to discuss Star Trek.” “How I Entered Fandom and Altered my Ego” Kay Anderson, SOUTH NORWALK Special All-Female Issue March, 1970. Page 10: “The movie is a fantastic trip in a way that totally puts 2001 to shame.” Excerpt from Ted White’s review of Frank Zappa’s film 200 Motels, from EGOBOO #16, August 1972 Page 11: “It’s crazy! Cavemen and doctors and disappearing bloody police boxes!” Waris Hussein (Sacha Dhawan) comments on the genesis of Dr. Who, An Adventure in Space in Time (2013) “I don’t sort things by color because I’m not a mouse in a European children’s book.” Rick Sanchez defends his filing system, “Morty’s Mind Blowers,” S3 Ep8, Rick and Morty    ------The Hatch Opens, continued: FLAG #22 proves is that that quality and volume of he left us; frankly, that’s not very long. But it might correspondence alone is a sufficient reason to go on be long enough that the sorrow and the sheer publishing a paper fanzine. unfairness of his death can give way to the deep The Return of Johnny Toronto pleasure of having been his friend, and the gift of his It is not entirely accurate to say that it has taken me eloquent fannish voice. If you want to contribute more than five years to read Richard Toronto’s book something to the “KaleidoByers Randyscope” (or to War over Lemuria, issued by Macfarland Publishing talk me out of using that title), please do! in 2013. There were many points in my assault on And thus, what of CAPTAIN FLAGBACK? FLAG this history of the principle players in the notorious is still primarily composed to be a paper fanzine, “Shaver Mystery” when I set the book aside for presented in a traditional format come down to us weeks and months in vexation or exhaustion. After from our pioneer forebears and their mighty leaving off my third attempt to read the book around Selectrics. CAPTAIN FLASHBACK is usually the 100-page mark in 2017, I was determined to limited to a printed edition of 20, and routinely finish it and read several chapters on the flight to sprawls out for 20 pages or more. I think the only Detroit before the Toronto Corflu in the Spring of way that they can co-exist is if the monthly schedule 2018. I complained to hospitality suite listeners that of CF is occasionally interrupted by an issue of at the current point in the narrative, Toronto had FLAG. What CAPTAIN FLASHBACK has proven, issued a blanket indictment of the Futurian Society like innumerable online fanzines before it, is that as Communist malcontents and pilloried fandom in readers do not respond to electronic-only fan activity general for its failure to see either the genius of in the way that they reply to a paper fanzine. What Richard Shaver or the primacy of

2 under the direction of Raymond A. Palmer. Falling into the wild-eyed fanaticism that assails everyone who becomes embroiled in this saga, I opined that Ray Palmer had lived decades ahead of his time; he would have been completely at home in the era of fake news and pseudo-science. “Who the Hell is Johnny Toronto?” asked Mark Olson, approaching from the other side of the room. I hastened to correct the author’s name, but it was too late; thanks to incorrigible types like Nigel Rowe and Danny McGrath, references to the “Further Adventures of Johnny Toronto” were scattered into conversation for the rest of the weekend. However, I made no further progress on the book, and ended up bringing it along on our trip to Brooklyn and Silver Spring for Corflu 36. I finished Toronto’s last chapter, “The Inner Circle’s Last Stand” on the flight home from Maryland and spent a few more days muttering over his notes after I got home. Richard Shaver’s “mythos” of ancient civilizations and languages, malign subterranean forces and War over Lemuria is composed of at least three impossibly advanced technology is a masterwork of major narratives: The life and work of Richard S. science fiction, and the question of its objective Shaver, ditto the story of Raymond A. Palmer, and reality somewhat tangential to its place in the history that of Amazing Stories, most venerable of science of the genre. Toronto is fairly rigorous in his fiction pulp magazines, after it passed into the hands observation of the delusional nature of Shaver’s of Ziff-Davis Publications, and moved its editorial stories, or at least the lack of evidence to support offices to Chicago. Most of Toronto’s primary them; but he seems just as contemptuous of source material was obtained through interviews and fandom’s reaction to the Shaver Mystery as Ray correspondence with the members of the Ziff-Davis Palmer was in his editorials on the subject. In “Inner Circle,” including William L. Hamling, Toronto’s estimation, both fandom and critics as Chester S. Gaier and . He also leans mundane as Cleveland Amory were unforgivably heavily on material originally published in the pages closed-minded toward Shaver, and the proliferation of SHAVERTRON, an online fanzine that began as of pranks, refutations and denunciations of his work a xeroxed newsletter in 1979. One might, in fact, call were little better than bullying. Richard Toronto the heir to or at least the executor of the Shaver Mystery; he has certainly devoted Following ’s life story, it is more energy and a higher word count to the subject difficult not to develop a genuine sympathy for him. than any other modern writer. Toronto’s use of contemporary digital vital records creates some understanding of what really happened It is no surprise, therefore, that Toronto’s sympathy to Shaver and his family. His life was visited by real for his subject borders on partisanship, neither tragedy, including the unexpected death of a beloved would he make any apology for that. In his eyes, older brother, and the loss of his first wife and child ------And this is tragedy in its most quietly devastating costume. ------

3 ------So many people seem to me not to be either bad or good, but simply, you know, very silly. ------during his first extended period of confinement in until he got tangled up in the wheels of a beer truck the Michigan mental health system. She was an artist at age seven and suffered injuries that included a who had met his delusional ideas with sympathy, but fractured spine. Several cycles of surgery, recovery her family had convinced her to have him and infection would consume most of the next committed. While he was away, she tipped an decade, keeping Palmer out of school and leaving electric heater into the bathtub, apparently by him to educate himself solely by reading. He accident, and was electrocuted. Shaver’s daughter embraced fantastic fiction as soon as he encountered grew up with no knowledge of him but created it; Amazing Stories first appeared when Palmer as artwork that was weirdly reminiscent of images 16 years old. drawn or “discovered” by her father. Toronto makes In 1930, Palmer joined Walter Dennis in editing a convincing case that Shaver should never have THE COMET, official organ of the Science been institutionalized, that he was never any danger Correspondence Club, and a contender for the title to himself or others. He responded to his of the first sf fanzine ever published. It predated the convictions, delusional though they might have first issue of THE PLANET, perpetrated by New been, like any honest American citizen; he shared York’s “Scienceers” by at most two months; but it his experience and tried to find some way to make a contained a majority of material about astronomy living from it. and other sciences rather than fantastic fiction, I’d be perfectly happy to call Raymond A. Palmer muddying the question beyond resolution. Palmer’s the real villain of the story, but he too has a first professional short story, “The Time Ray of biography that invites sympathy. He was the Jandra,” appeared in Wonder Stories in June of perfectly normal child of a Milwaukee firefighter 1930. By June 1938, his credits as an author and editor were sufficient for Bernard Davis to give him a chance as editor of Amazing Stories. Palmer nurtured a clutch of writers who would become habitual contributors to Amazing and other Ziff- Davis pulps and Richard Shaver would join this group in September of 1943.

Over the next six years, the controversy over Shaver’s stories would travel as far afield as Harper’s Magazine, where William S. Baring-Gould derided Shaver’s memoirs to a national audience. Fandom spent equal time in making fun of the Shaver mythos and trying to force Palmer to stop publishing it, which only increased his resolve to continue. A lot of importance was placed on the question of whether Palmer believed in the Shaver mystery himself, or if he was cynically peddling hokum to a gullible public. His subsequent career with titles like Fate, Mystic and Flying Saucers magazine showed that Palmer’s fascination with the

4 supernatural was a lifelong interest which came to of wonder in the whole affair. Back to the dustbin of dominate his professional career. Richard Shaver imagination, Johnny Toronto! had no patience for Palmer’s own spiritual and supernatural beliefs and resisted all efforts to The Fan Who Watched Liberty Valance conflate them with his experiences. Our Christmas Day celebration for 2019 was convivial and indolent; our friends Luke and Julie Palmer left Ziff-Davis in 1949 and would spend the McGuff and Hal and Ulrika O’Brien indulged us in a remaining 28 years of his life publishing material round of the board game “Evolution,” then Jerry that was often far less rational than the Shaver Kaufman and Suzanne Tompkins joined us for Mystery. Richard Shaver found a new permutation dinner at the Yu Shan Northern Chinese restaurant. of the hidden world: he became convinced that texts Our meal was delicious but left everyone with room and art created by an ancient race could be found for a slice of Carrie’s homemade, backyard-sourced inside seemingly ordinary rocks, and he devoted the apple cake. Everyone was on their way home before remainder of his life to sawing, sectioning, painting, 8:00 pm, allowing Carrie to beat me senseless in photographing and interpreting them. Independent of four consecutive games of another holiday present, its alleged origin, Shaver’s work is now most the brisk and breezy “Ticket to Ride: New York.” appreciated in the community that documents and Flipping around network television channels seemed collects “Outsider Art.” like an appropriately nostalgic way to wind down War over Lemuria meanders and drifts to this Christmas evening, and we lighted momentarily on conclusion through an extended series of codas and the annual broadcast of Frank Capra’s movie “It’s a fourth acts; like most fan historians, Toronto has a Wonderful Life.” We tuned in at the film’s most lot of difficulty leaving anything out. Palmer’s long problematic scene, from the perspective of a modern denouement was characterized by an increasing audience: the moment when Jimmy Stewart steps on reliance on small press and self-publishing. But both the hem of Donna Reed’s robe, leaving her Palmer and Shaver were peripherally involved in the apparently naked or nearly-so behind a convenient Federal prosecution of Greenleaf Press on obscenity shrub. Stewart’s George Bailey hesitates to return charges in 1966. While that story was central to the the garment; the moment is on the verge of later career of former Palmer circle insider William becoming irretrievably creepy when a car pulls up to L. Hamling, it was little more than an let George know that he has already been punished embarrassment to Palmer and Shaver and would be for this transgression: His father has suffered a contained in a sidebar or footnote in a better- stroke, which will shortly end his life. Before the designed and organized book. soundtrack’s desperate variation of “Buffalo Gals” could run to its conclusion, I suggested to Carrie that Earl Kemp, who knew more about Federal obscenity we watch a different Jimmy Stewart film, John prosecution than anyone would ever want to, wrote a Ford’s 1962 western “The Man Who Shot Liberty review of this book in 2013 and noted that it was Valance.” condensed from a much longer manuscript, one even This proved to be an easy transition; although less organized than the MacFarland edition. The idea “Liberty Valance” was made 16 years after “It’s A that War over Lemuria might have been even more Wonderful Life,” it was also shot in black and white, difficult to finish is the one thing to excite my sense and presented a similarly stylized version of the past.

------You! What planet is this? ------

5 ------They say you were shot in the Tabloids. ------But the cynicism that makes up only isolated reaction may be colored by the guilty knowledge of moments of Capra’s movie is stitched into every his affection for Hallie. scene of “Liberty.” The story offers to unravel a very The election of delegates to a convention on long-running lie about the origins of a famous man, statehood sees Stoddard pitted against Liberty a man far more heralded than the modest George Valance. Tom Doniphan nominates him “because he Bailey. Stewart portrays Governor, Senator and knows the law and because he throws a mean Ambassador Ransom Stoddard, apparently one of punch.” Valance loses to Stoddard; he responds by the most revered men in the brief history of the state beating newspaper editor Dutton Peabody (Edmund of Arizona. As the movie opens, he and his wife are O’Brien), destroying his press and leaving him for returning to where his career in public life began, the dead. The grieving, enraged Stoddard calls Valance fictional town of Shinbone. Stoddard is there to out into the street. After casually wounding “bury an old friend” but prowling newspaper men Stoddard’s right arm, Valance invites him to pick up smell a bigger story and corner him for an interview. his weapon and take his best shot with his left hand. He replies by telling them the saga of his early days Stoddard is barely able to lift his gun; but as Liberty in Arizona Territory, dominated by two men, the prepares to deliver a shot between his eyes, bullying outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and Stoddard’s gun fires, and Valance falls in the street, the tough, honest rancher Tom Doniphan, played by a mortal wound in his chest. John Wayne. While this elevates Stoddard dramatically in the eyes Stoddard is an earnest young lawyer with a of his neighbors, it threatens to derail his nascent suspiciously weary face; on his journey to Shinbone, political career. Opponents correctly note that his his stagecoach is robbed by Liberty Valance and his sole claim to notoriety is the execution of another sidekicks Floyd (Strother Martin) and Reese (Lee human being, and Stoddard is inclined to agree with Van Cleef). When Stoddard expresses his desire to them. At this point, Tom Doniphan re-appears; now see Valance in jail, the latter beats him senseless resigned to the loss of his relationship with Hallie, with the butt of his whip. Stoddard is rescued by he explains that he was the man who shot Liberty Hallie (Vera Miles), daughter of a local rancher, and Valance. Happening upon the scene just as the Tom Doniphan, her presumed fiancé. Against their outlaw prepared to kill Stoddard, Doniphan fired his advice, Stoddard opens a legal office in Shinbone, rifle from a convenient shadow; in the confusion, no determined to demonstrate that the authority of the one noticed that he had delivered the fatal wound. law cannot be abrogated with brute force. He begins Knowing this would mean the end of his teaching school for anyone will attend, and this engagement to Hallie, he then went on a terrible kindles a sub rosa relationship with the previously bender, climaxed by burning down the unfinished illiterate Hallie. house in which he had planned to live with her. He is repeatedly threatened and insulted by Liberty Many years later, it is Tom Doniphan’s death that Valance, who cannot abide any challenge to his brings Ransom and Hallie Stoddard back to Arizona reign of terror. Learning that Stoddard is practicing for the first time in many years. Told the true story shooting with an old revolver, Tom Doniphan offers of Doniphan and his part in statehood, the reporter to help him; this ends up with Stoddard splattered wads up his notes and tosses them into the stove. with paint and provoked into knocking Doniphan “This is the West,” he explains, “When the legend down with a punch to the jaw. One suspects that his becomes fact, print the legend.” After the funeral,

6 the Stoddards begin their return journey to Washington DC, but Ransom asks Hallie if she would like to return to Arizona permanently, and she replies that it has been her dream for many years. The film ends on a medium-long shot of the steam train puffing along against a series of grassy hills, steadily receding into the past. Although I have omitted a number of characters and significant plot incidents, the reader may still reasonably ask why I have provided such a detailed synopsis of a 1962 Western feature in a science fiction fanzine. The answer is that I have agreed to write a faannish play based upon the film for performance at Corflu 37, under the working title of “The Fan Who Shot Liberty Campbell.” One might say that this is the next obligation that I hope to retire – I want to have the script in John Purcell’s his arm; but Ford sems even less sympathetic toward hands at least two months before the date of the him than Capra, Clifford Odets, Marc Connelly and convention (Editor’s note: Ha!), which means I only the rest of the writers that worked on “It’s A have about two weeks to progress from my current Wonderful Life.” rough outline to the finished play. I guess I had better wrap this up soon…. Meanwhile, Tom Doniphan’s perpetually unfinished house reminded me of Gene Hackman’s portrayal of There are a number of ironies in and around the “Little Bill” Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s movie that give me suggestions about where I want “Unforgiven.” His house never gets finished either. to go in my play. There are some interesting flashes of déjà vu between “Liberty Valance” and By 1962, John Ford was one of Hollywood’s most “Wonderful Life” -- the relationship between decorated directors, but had also become cynical to Stoddard and Edmund O’Brien’s Dutton Peabody the point of toxicity and would manipulate his cast seems to echo that between George Bailey and his in cruel ways. While filming “Liberty Valance” he Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell); and John needled John Wayne about the actor’s failure to Carradine’s stentorian Cassius P. Starbuckle is a fine serve in the military during World War II, sharing analog of Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Potter, the war stories with Stewart, who had been a bomber slumlord of Bedford Falls. Ransom Stoddard is pilot over Europe. Ford had been wounded by bomb driven to a crisis of faith as profound as George splinters while filming the Japanese attack on Bailey’s desperate prayer on the snowy bridge; but Midway Island. Wayne, with a wife and several Stoddard’s deliverance ends up puncturing his children, had been restricted to portraying soldiers naivete forever, making him fit for life in onscreen, and Ford never let him forget it. He also Washington DC. In his own way, Stoddard is just as took pains to celebrate the athletic accomplishments condescending and paternal toward Hallie as George of Woody Strode, the former football star who Bailey was with Donna Reed’s robe looped around portrayed Tom Doniphan’s faithful servant Pompey,

------They never got near my Tabloids. ------

7 ------Her bosom heaved, and she was just the guy to do it. ------(Postscript, March 9th 2020: All these editorials were composed in the last week of December, 2019; and predictably, the obligation of completing “The Fan Who Shot Liberty Campbell” delayed this issue for another eight weeks. I shifted the setting from the State of Arizona to the Land of Trufandom, known from “The Enchanted Duplicator.” The town of Slipsheet stands on the edge of the Desert of Indifference, not far from the Canyon of Criticism. The story still follows that of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” pretty closely, but there are a few twists those familiar with the film should find surprising. It should premiere at Corflu this Friday.) Genealogy with Julia I’ve been spending a lot of time with another of my while pointing out that Wayne was never a first- ancestors lately and thought it would be appropriate string player. And when Jimmy Stewart dared to take a few paragraphs to introduce you to Mrs. express the opinion that Strode’s costume was Julia McMahan Armbrecht (1886-1953). Julia was racially demeaning, Ford humiliated him by raising my Great-Grandmother, or the mother of my his point in front of the entire crew. The ploy mother’s mother, if you like. Julia was the 7th of 12 backfired, however, as most of them quietly shared children of Owen Thomas McMahan (1834-1917) Stewart’s opinion. and Catherine Finnegan (1852-1925). (I’ve recently It may be a challenge to adapt many of the points of discovered that Senator Joe Biden’s mother was also the plot to a fannish context, and I anticipate a major named Catherine Finnegan – but the two Catherines transformation between Lee Marvin’s portrayal of don’t seem to be directly related.) Liberty Valance and my Liberty W. Campbell Jr. They spent most of their married life on a farm near Marvin plays Valance as a surly drunk, perpetually the town of Clyde in Wisconsin’s Iowa County. several pulls into a bottle, but still steady enough to Owen was a native of County Longford, Ireland, and beat or shoot anyone who gets in his way. Oddly, served in an Illinois volunteer cavalry regiment I’m not sure he actually kills anyone on camera, during the civil war. Family lore holds that Owen although he – and we – believe Dutton Peabody to was paid to enlist as a substitute for another draftee; be dead when Valance leaves him in the wreckage of he left the regiment without permission at least twice his office. The only named character to die during during his three years of service. Catherine was born the extended flashback is Valance himself. And with in Pennsylvania, but her parents were both natives of the demise of Tom Doniphan, one of the last Ireland. (And no matter whether spelled McMahan remaining people who could tell the truth of the or McMahon, it’s always pronounced “Mick-Man.”) story is gone as well. Some details, characters and settings will probably change; but if I can marry a Julia McMahan married my Great-Grandfather little of Ford’s cynical mindset to a few recent Henry Armbrecht on the 9th of September 1913. By events in science fiction fandom, the results should this time, Julia had already given birth to her only be entertaining. child, my grandmother Josephine Violet Armbrecht

8 Oakey, who was born on the 4th of July 1913. This Julia was also a postcard hobbyist, one of the rather scandalous sequence of events was not known millions of people all over the world who exchanged to my mother or myself before I began poking and collected cards sent by other postcard fans, around on Ancestry.com, but as I have learned just a between the turn of the 20th Century and the little more about Julia, it all seems quite in character. beginning of World War One.

As you can imagine, there are dozens of other And while the collection includes holiday cards of descendants of Owen and Catherine McMahan out all sorts, and the usual souvenir landscapes, it seems there, and they have shared a wonderful selection of that Julia’s favorite cards were of the saucy sort – photographs and stories that have helped to not actually “French” types with nudity, but the sort introduce me to this huge trunk on my family tree. It of references that a young lady would not normally is hard to guess why Julia and Henry had no more be expected to make. Little poems that could be children, but from what I know about Julia’s long summarized as saying, “Darling, I’ll be glad when experience with diabetes, it may have been a minor we’re married so I can tell your Mother to go home miracle that she was able to carry my grandmother at ten o’clock.” A picture of a girl in a lovely pink to term. Her daughter Jo developed the disease later and white frock, with a straw hat held across her in her life, and from all appearances, passed a midsection; a hand-written note on the back reads tendency toward diabetes down to me. When my “Leave your hat to the house next time please.” grandmother was 20 years old, her Aunt Annie Some of them are just puns that made sense in 1907 McDermott McMahan died, about a year after giving – a photo of a man with two squirmy babies in a birth to the 11th child of John Joseph McMahan, who pram is captioned “Driving his own Carriage and was Julia’s younger brother. Little Francis Vincent Pair.” Julia and her younger sister Matilda seem to McMahan came to live with Henry and Julia in their have been the riot grrls in the family. Tilly later house at 844 East Dayton Street in Madison in 1933 married a sailor named John Stevens, and had photos and would eventually inherit the property from them. taken of herself in an outfit that was a version of his Francis will turn 88 in February; he and his wife dress blues cut for her shape. Rosemarie still live in the house at 844 East Dayton. Postmarks and addresses are giving me a picture of One of my most precious assets in knowing Julia’s travels before she married Henry – she something about Julia, who sadly died 9 years before moved from Clyde to Mazomanie to Spring Green I was born, is a large, dilapidated postcard album. and briefly Dubuque, Iowa. Just how she ended up This was apparently inherited by Jo when Julia died, with Henry in Bremen, Indiana in July 1913 when passed on to my mother in 1990, and then shipped my grandmother was born must have something to off to me during the first decade of the 21st Century. do with Henry’s work as a well-driller. They were I had investigated the contents rather gingerly over married by a judge in Freeport, Illinois. But within a the years, but recently decided to scan all the cards year they were back in Madison and would live there and create a more stable and accessible permanent for the rest of their lives. Julia may have been home for the originals. Some of the cards included slowed down a bit by marriage and motherhood, but family correspondence, and a precious section of she always retained this collection of postcards; I “Real Photo” cards had actual portraits of several of fancy they were a memento of a time when her life Julia’s sisters and their families. But it is clear that and the world seemed to be a great deal of fun. ------Don’t be silly, a wince is what you pull buckets out of a well with. ------

9 ------If we could share this world below, we’d need no world above. ------The Way of the Tulpa 4 rich life. Defeat is switched to victory. by Ray Nelson Aristotle named one of the things the switch might consist of. Anagnorisis. We can translate this as A hut in Spring. discovery. If a detective solves a mystery, that’s a There is nothing in it. discovery. There is everything. If someone realizes some important truth, that’s a Sodo discovery. If someone realizes a defeat, that’s a (1641-1716) discovery. In poetry the popular format called the Italian sonnet If you want to be a writer, the fourth most important often locates the discovery around the point where tool in your literary tool kit is also one of the oldest. we change from a four line form to a three line form. It was, in fact, named by the ancient Greek This point is called the volta. We can translate this philosopher, Aristotle. After studying the most as the jump. important plays of his time, he called it peripeteia. Ernest Hemmingway earned a Nobel prize with a We call it the peripety, or more informally the novel entitled The Old Man and the Sea. The story switch. If a story seems headed for an unhappy follows an old fisherman as he goes to sea hoping to ending, a switch will change it to a happy ending. If catch a really big fish. We root for him as he it seems headed for a happy ending, the switch will struggles and finally succeeds in catching a really change it to an un happy ending. Victory changes to big fish. If the story ended here it would be a story defeat sand defeat into victory. This structure can be of triumph, but Hemingway carries the story past the used in fiction, but also in nonfiction, poetry and moment of victory. On the voyage home, sharks song. attack the really big fish and when the fisherman The verse above is a translation of an ancient Zen finally docks, there is nothing left of it. Like most haiku, but in spite of its brevity, it beautifully stories, this take can portray a victory or a defeat illustrates how a switch works. The first line gives depending on when it ends. Without the switch, we us our setting and the second a condition of extreme would have a routine fish story. With the switch we poverty. After the switch we see that even in have a classic. poverty, one can still meditate and live a spiritually The story of Christ is another good example of a switch. There is reason to believe that in its earliest version, we follow Jesus from his arrest to his crucifixion, and there the story ends. Someone realized that with that ending it was just one more martyr story in a long tradition of martyr stories. It needed a switch, and what more of a switch could there be than Christ rising from the dead? The telling of the events of the resurrection is rather awkward and unbelievable, but never mind. After all this time the tulpa of Christ haunts us all.

10 COLOR PARTY: complaining about their treatment by middle-aged Readers’ Letters to FLAG white men. No one understands how tough it is to be [A Brief Estuarial Note: Despite delaying publication us. of these letters to FLAG for at least 18 months, I find Men’s issues, by the way, are not just men’s issues. the conversation they produce still feels quite They are human issues. “current.” You must judge for yourself. Your letters are presented in Mongolian Baiti, like this, while my Now I’d like to have a word with you about your comments are expressed in Ebrima, like this. fight to overcome your urge to hoard. You’re not Oh, and instead of leaving “I Also Heard Froms” to fighting at all, from what I read in FLAG 21. Don’t the end; I also received a letter from Howard tell me you’re not a hoarder and don’t try to hide Waldrop, but I can’t seem to lay my hands on it at behind the excuse of raising “money” for good press time. Hopefully, I will be able to apologize to “causes.” My father is a hoarder. I’ve known many him in person while we’re in Texas.] other hoarders. When my wife’s cousin David died

suddenly in his 50s, one of his brothers took on the Steve Bieler st task of excavating all the books, zines, and records 7667 SE 21 Ave. in his apartment. At the end of the first week he Portland OR 97202 made a discovery: A door. A door into another [email protected] room. A door into another room filled with more I’m writing to you on a bright Monday morning, the books, zines, and records. Because I don’t want this third day of the Memorial Day weekend, my favorite fate to befall you (and Carrie), I’m sending you a holiday. To repurpose a phrase from Wilfrid Sheed book that I hope will help, or, at least, illuminate this in My Life as a Fan, I love Memorial Day because long plastic trench of your soul where hoarders run it’s the holiday with a whole summer up its sleeve. free and organizers die like dogs. When last I wrote to you about FLAG, I It’s probably a mistake to send something to a congratulated you for providing men with a safe hoarder that he will invariably hoard… space where we could be ourselves and disparage everyone else. But in FLAG 21 you allowed two Thank you as always for keeping me on the mailing females into the lettercol. Excellent females, list. Randy’s passing haunts me, even though I certainly, exemplars of their species, but still didn’t really know him. It’s so good to read how discernibly female. Has FLAG abandoned its loved he was. mission of becoming a Fortress of White Male Yours, Steve Privilege? (An excellent band name – they could [signature and postscript using] “Pencils from Dad’s headline Trump’s second inauguration ball.) office supplies bunker (circa 1962).” However, I was pleased to see that the remaining [APH: There’s no particular point in denying your beleaguered, middle-aged white men (my people!) are behaving in our time-tested manner. They ongoing accusation that I’m a hoarder – just because bemoan the unwillingness of youngsters to work I have a very healthy rate of exchange going on old hard. They are all downsizing, looking for ways to science fiction fanzines doesn’t mean that there are dump their suddenly excess stuff, perhaps on each not many other areas of collecting in which I remain other. At least one appears to be complaining that helplessly degenerate. Postcards, certainly – I’m people who aren’t middle-aged white men are open to acquisitions in the areas of World’s Fair ------Have men ever brought back more happiness from the stars? ------

11 ------And in the moment of aiming, the plonker becomes a dowser’s wand ------[APH, Continued: cards, naval subjects, European number of dusty inverted box lids full of 28mm colonial military scenes, view cards of Seattle, Bengal lancers and Chinese Tiger Men scattered in Madison, Detroit, Scotland, Gloucestershire, and random places on top of bookshelves around the railway locomotives. The primary goal remains the house. I feel I made a lot of progress when I stopped identification and documentation of my great- acquiring more unpainted lead over ten years ago, grandmother’s cards, but I can hardly be expected to but there still like twenty or thirty pounds of the stuff stop acquiring other cards, merely because that around. particular set of 400 cards remains unfiled. And for once, we’re not even going to talk about Sadly, the active, thriving collections are lain over a books from Osprey Publishing. How can one have a strata of now-forgotten and dormant obsessions of problem if the weight of the books still hasn’t caused the past. Boxes of comics, baseball cards, wargames, one’s abode to fall into the Earth’s core? magazines with wargames in them, model aircraft, In any event, thank you for Stuff: Compulsive action figures and other juvenilia provide the Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Gail understrata for the more active collections. Steketee. I can see myself in some of the people and In fact, it’s a little bit more encouraging to note the hoards described in the book; the differences are many things which I do not collect. I’ve never been mostly a matter of scale. The book is in the pile of interested in Breweryana or old Automotive parts or unfiled volumes on the white shelf next to the sliding oil cans or any of the dirty and inconvenient things door, which was overflow from the unfiled books associated with transportation collections. I left stuck on the lower level of the coffee table, which model railroads behind at the age of 12 – they had got started after the books that came from my been a gateway drug for modeling of all kinds, but parents’ place filled all the remaining shelves in my the solitary nature of the hobby was clear even then. bedroom closet. Toy soldiers had a more enduring appeal, and other Anyway, White Male Privilege should certainly play a obsessives would gather in student unions and double bill with Toxic Masculinity. I see them both as community centers to push them around on tables Norwegian Death Metal bands, but really, isn’t together. Miniature wargaming started to crowd out everything a Norwegian Death Metal band?] slot cars and kit modelling and rockhounding over 40 year ago, and I’m still building armies to this day. Paul DiFilippo 197 Medway Street One issue with spending so much time selling Providence RI 02906 fanzines is that it completely stalled my efforts to get rid of the unpainted lead figures that fill dozens of FLAG #21 was the usual superlative read. Just a drawers on the shelves in my basement. Since my couple of quick thoughts – eyesight declined in the 2000s, I’ve done very little  You captured the bitter-sweet sensation of painting of my own. And unless I pass these figures sorting zines in a vivid manner. on to someone else, they’ll likely end up in a landfill  You have the best commenters around – myself when I’m gone. Also, if all those drawers were excluded! opened up, there would be dramatically more room Cheers! for painted figures, allowing me to cut down on the

12 Kate Schaefer (wisdom even) that we could not put into our 4012 Interlake Ave. N. Seattle, WA 98103 fanzines twenty or forty years ago. That’s one of the [email protected] reasons why I find some of the current crop of fanzines such energizing reading (for an old person, I laughed out loud when I got to the Elmer Perdue anyhow).) reference. There can’t be a lot of people still alive who have read as much Elmer Perdue as I have. For Your longish essay on storing, sorting and selling some reason, I found his FAPAzines from the forties fanzines was fascinating. I still find it difficult to compelling reading back in the late 70s/early 80s. imagine that something that I and other fans gave Perdue was not a sparkling writer, but I read away for ‘the usual’ now has a monetary value, everything of his in Gary Farber’s fairly complete which seems to me unfannish. Still, it’s the modern collection. His FAPAzines tended to be submitted at age when everything has a price and you can find it the last minute, sometimes through the OE’s on ebay, so I can’t complain. I suppose I should be window, open or not, and his subject was whatever happy that there are people out there who want to came to mind as he filled his minimum number of own and preserve what we once did. I personally pages. I think I found his style soothing at a time like to find fanzine collections in university libraries when I needed some soothe. where they are freely available to be looked at and fondled if you know where to look and who to [APH: I find piles pf FAPAzines to be a consistent ask. That way I can have the pleasure of their source of entertainment. Redd Boggs may be my materiality without the responsibility. It was nice to favorite long-time FAPA contributor, but I keep go to Murdoch University and see my fanzine discovering news ones as examples of their output collection sitting on the shelves, rarely disturbed but appear in piles of fan pubs sent to me for auction.] looked after for these past thirty years without me having to look after it or move it when we moved. It Leigh Edmonds is a truism that most things from the past survive [email protected] into the future through being ignored and forgotten, Flag 21 has been sitting in my backpack waiting for which is the fate I would like for most fanzine an opportunity for me to read it for some weeks but collections, until they are needed again of course. since I haven’t been down to Melbourne in the train You may find me unlike others, but what I treasure for a month of two my fanzine reading has banked in fanzines is the little black marks that represent up a little. Today, however, I had occasion to be in words and illos. The paper itself is of little interest to Melbourne, so I spent a few hours reading some me. At the moment I have between 800 and 900 fabulous fanzines, including Flag. Much happiness fanzines in this room with me but they are only as a result. virtual fanzines because they are all scans that I’ve downloaded from the internet or photographs of I’d entirely forgotten that I’d loced (my three fanzines I’ve taken in university libraries. It might dictionaries don’t tell me whether it’s ‘loced’ or be nice to handle a fanzine occasionally but I also ‘locced’) your previous issue. In it I see that I’ve recall with some horror spending a few days used the word ‘elegant’ to describe your writing and, researching Western Australia in the 1920s and despite the fear of repeating myself, I’ll say it 1930s by reading the newspapers of the time and again. Your writing is elegant. It reads as though it finding, at the end of the day, myself and my has flowed fully shaped from a brain that would surroundings littered with little bits of old have found its home in one of those glorious French newspapers. As much as I dislike using microfilm, I chateaus at the dawn of The Enlightenment. (This prefer that to damaging the originals simply be idea having just formed itself in my mind reminds handling them. The same when I’ve spent a day me of something that occurred to me while I was photographing old fanzines from the 1940s to the reading yours and a couple of other fnz today, that 1970s. I justify what is happening to them by telling one of the few advantages of getting to be our age is myself that, by photographing them, it saves me that we often not only write from a fairly educated from having to handle them again. base but we also write with a little bit of experience

13 Mark Olson, Joe Siclari and Edie Stern have done preserving fanzines at Fanac.org makes me feel a lot better about selling some too.] Lloyd Penney 1706-24 Eva Road Etobicoke ON M9C 2B2 CANADA [email protected] Believe it or not, this is the third time I have tried to get to sit down and write a letter of comment to you on Flag 21. Very often, I cannot deny that there is a material fascination in my time is not my own, and others commandeer it, the original artefacts. I came across a copy of Le and that gets tiring. I seem to have the time now, so Zombie in the State Library of Victoria, from 1941 seize it I will, and get some writing done. or 42 if I remember rightly. There is a certain feeling I see you’re making many good efforts to spread the of time binding in holding it and knowing that egoboo around for many people with long Tucker’s own hands collated and stapled the issue association with fanzine fandom, and I heartily I’m holding, but I think that what really counts for applaud you and your team for your efforts. I did fandom, which is a written culture, is the words on enjoy Corflu this year, mostly because it was in the page rather than the page itself. There is also, I Toronto, but my current circumstances make it think, a certain responsibility in owning old and certain it will be a very long time before I get to significant fanzines. I have, in another room and another. Vicarious living will be it for me. well protected, a copy of the first issue of Ultra which was the first regular fanzine produced in The idea of a tulpa universe is interesting, especially Australia, in 1939. There were only 15 copies and for a set of stories for Oz. In this day and age, while I feel very privileged to have one, I also feel perhaps there might have to be some form of canon very responsible that it is in my care. One of these to give that tulpa universe some direction, but that days I will pass it on to one of the university might hinder the popularity of the Oz stories and libraries and feel happily free of the responsibility, push some fans away. It looks like Oz is a bit of a but not just yet ... blank slate, waiting for things to happen there, and characters to make those things happen. That blank Thanks also for your essay on Randy Byers. He is a slate might deter or encourage others to join in to fan that I did not know personally in any way but make their corner of an unlimited Oz their own. what I’m reading about him now here and in other fnz is a much better obituary than most people are You’ve had to dispose of two fanzine collections, ever likely to get. They bring him to life (so to and I find myself musing about my own collection. I speak) as a much loved person. can think of a few people here who might be interested, but they have their own collections to [APH: As I commented to Charles Rector in the letter worry about. I have not many rarities, and I suspect column of issue #21, I am doing my best to balance that even if my collection is accepted by someone or my fanzine sales with scanning items for posterity some organization, a lot of what I have is going to be and sending copies to editors and artists who do not dumpstered. I had thought that with all the clubs have copies of their own work. And all the work that who have graciously sent me copies of their

14 clubzines over the years, I would offer the zines conditioning. So now when I look after some time at back to them, as long as postage isn’t overwhelming. some treasured book or other item (including The idea of a fannish role-playing game does remind electronics) I know very well it is just as likely to be me of If I Ran the Zoo Con, which I believe was destroyed. issued in time for the bidding for the 1989 Worldcon, Noreascon 3. Responding to all the Since 2014 I have been scanning my little surviving publications from N3 was probably one of the most paperwork (and everything commercial and new) enjoyable times of letter writing I ever had. I would using a Fujitsu ScanSnap sheet feed scanner. like to think that our correspondence made the Although not suitable for everything, it is Worldcon that year just a little bit better. remarkably competent at what it can handle. So as Claire Brialey, I sometimes feel that my letters are well as producing a colour PDF, it also executes an rushed and inadequate, mostly because I am trying OCR rendering (it comes with the software) to to juggle the time needed to read the zine, consider produce a searchable PDF. To my surprise, it even what to say, and then type it up, with time needed handles mimeograph fanzines. I never used for the jobhunt, creating jewelry for our table, Twilltone, so I have no idea how well it does that, looking after the apartment while Yvonne is at work, and a dozen or more activities that pull at my but I was surprised how well it handled my stencil available time. If I had my way, each issue would fanzines on more even paper. I even recommended get individual attention, but because fanzines have the product to Joe Siclari at Corflu. Alas, it is not a piled up for me, I am forced to respond to two or cheap product, but mine now has four years of use, more issues that have piled up in one loc, which and still works fine. IMHO is not fair to the faned who created the two or more issues. I guess I have to remind myself that we You writing of stacking fanzine boxes reminds me do what we can with the time we can devote, and that for much of my life, moving to a new location just sally forth, and write what I can. There is meant building new bookcases, or moving filing usually some measure of appreciation. cabinets. I no longer even have a filing cabinet. I Eric Lindsay have finally realised I may never again build a [email protected] custom bookcase. First because another move is increasingly unlikely, and second because the books I am sure Bruce Gillespie will be thrilled by his and DVDs are now decreasing, not increasing. Lifetime Achievement award. I really only contact Bruce with regard to ANZAPA, which he valiantly [APH: Since Bruce was recognized in 2018, the holds together as Official Bloody Editor. Plus in Lifetime Achievement Award was bestowed on Paul 2017 and 2018, first I held my birthday party in Skelton in 2019, and will go to another very Melbourne, and Jean did the same. since Bruce deserving veteran fan in 2020. The tradition shares the month with us, he was one of the guests. continues.] While Bruce did not get me in to fandom (John Jerry Kaufman P.O. Box 25075 Seattle, WA 98165 Bangsund is to blame for that) Bruce has helped me [email protected] continue, at least in ANZAPA. Thanks for bringing Flag to Corflu for many Alas, continuing in fandom has not included keeping reasons, including the exciting drama of the Lifetime hold of fanzines. I sent as much as I could to the Achievement Award. If the award were given for the Melbourne Science Fiction Society before we moved amount of paper one has caused words to be printed to Queensland last Century. Especially as we were on, by the way, I expect you to get it one of these moving from two houses to a three-room apartment. years. In sorting out fanzines covering the years from around 1990 to now, I'm close to filling a box The Tropics are remarkably unkind to paper solely with Hooper zines (solo or collaborative). products, especially when you do not usually run air And the Best Of collection we'll produce in your

15 honor or memory will be hard to winnow to a fanzine collection, a process which has been happily reasonable 200 pages. profitable for both of us. I think Ray Nelson’s use of “balderdash” is pretty close to my own definition of As I've said elsewhere, I had forgotten that Corflu “hokum,” although I find the latter often results from has been handing out these Lifetime awards since conspiracy, while sheer balderdash frequently originates 2010 - or ever. They're nice bits of egoboo, but from the mind or heart of one individual. Others’ obviously they didn't make much of an impression experience may differ.] on me. Maybe they'd make more if we designed a good Certificate and had Dan Steffan do a caricature William Breiding of each winner to add each year. (We have that 3507 Santa Rita #1 Tucson AZ 85719 drawing Dan did for, I don't know, maybe a Trap [email protected] Door, with its depiction of Aldiss, Silverberg, and I'm just now getting to the fanzines that came in Harrison. It's terrific.) after Corflu. Flag 21--the fannish Andy takes Ray Nelson's "The Way of the Tulpa" ends with his precedence. Frank Denton as Spirit Animal. I let out prescription about the amount of balderdash to a huff of recognition at the rightness of it--this is include in one's story. "Balderdash" sounds a lot like exactly what Frank has been to a number of us. your own "hokum." Would you say they're the same After all that build up I had to go check FAAn thing, or is there a subtle difference? webpage to see who'd won the Lifetime Enjoyed, in a melancholy way, your notes on the Achievement Award. Bruce Gillespie, of course. various aftermath's of Randy's death. Some day The perfect choice. A good year for the undaunted you'll get to help Suzle with my stuff, too, you Mr. Gillespie, a man who was born to pub his Ish. know. I'm sure my sister and brother-in-law will be I saw myself in your musing on Randy's collections, here too, for that. So you'll get to see how the with the exception of the descriptive "incredibly Kaufman family, or what's left of it, is like. choice"-- I'll pick up any old dogged eared eldritch I made a couple of checkmarks near the end of your tome and put it on the shelf. The anti-collector; piece about "Fandom, the Role-Playing Game," but modest in size, ragamuffin, erratic, readable. I've lost I'm already unsure why. Probably the last mark, next the majority of my fanzine collection, which was all to your final sentence, was to remind me to ask if primary source. With all the movement in my life, you intend to write faan fiction using the idea of and the occasional dastardly event (let's not go role-playing, or to illustrate Arnie's Seven Schools, there), everything from the early 70s to the early 90s or in some other way? is gone. Sometimes the soul twinges. But mostly I accept the consequences of my erratic life, and do Charles Rector says, "There are a great many gaps in not rail; emitting, maybe, a quiet sob as the sensitive the collections at E-Fanzines." I think Charles may not understand the purpose of eFanzines - or I may fannish mouth quails. not. I don't think Bill intended or expected to have The section on fandom as a role playing game all fanzines stored there, although he plainly seemed an existential exercise at best. But the ability welcomes scans of older zines. I think Bill meant to to be able to think like that is what piqued my facilitate the distribution of currently published interest. The critical depth, the differentiation, as zines. (There's probably a mission statement on well as the connectivity, reflects a turn of mind that I eFanzines that I've never managed to read, huh?) do not have, and doubt I could acquire. Along with I look forward to Larry Bigman's completion of the the fine sentence structure and turn of phrase, it's Joanna Russ project. It would be tremendous to have what Leigh Edmonds was talking about. How do I learn to write like that indeed! I think about this all her short fiction in a couple of volumes (how because I'm working on an essay right now that many would it take, I wonder). If and when we could use these distinctive qualities, and I'm doing a publish a new Littlebrook, Larry will be on our bare minimum at it because I'm bereft. I think the mailing list. piece is about reading and intellectual capacity, but [APH: Since you wrote this letter in 2018, we’ve made I'll let you know when I get there. some laudable progress in reducing the size of your

16 A striking letter column, and deservedly so. I wasn't the only one who saw beauty in those linked essays. [APH: Your praise has been extremely generous, Bill; I feel like your anthology and the two issues of PORTABLE STORAGE that I have seen are a major component of the positive feelings I’ve felt about the persistence of fanzine fandom in recent years, so the feeling is mutual.]

Brad Foster P. O. Box 165246 Irvine TX 75018 [email protected] Got in the new and embiggened Flag this weekend, #21- legal to drink in all states at last! And speaking of aging gracefully, I actually managed to finish up a couple of new toons this week, first real drawing I've done in several weeks. Steve Jeffery And one of them is all about getting old. It all seems to be coming together, so I attach that one here for 44 White Way Kidlington Oxon OX5 2XA United Kingdom your hopeful amusement and use. [email protected] While I am always a touch saddened to see zines Are your interlineations getting more obscure or am these days reusing old toons and fillos (it just I just getting more and more out of touch? There's reminds me how there are apparently zero new only one I can really place in this issue, on page 11, artists interested in contributing to these anymore), it which I suspect is a reference to Dr Who, but I is also sadly sweet to see again the work of such definitely couldn't give you chapter and version as to amazing folks as Joe Mayhew again. which episode, book or comic it comes from. Enjoyed your look at the workings of the FAAN There's an interesting and eclectic range of artists in awards. I am sure you were a staunch supporter of this issue. I don't think I've come across Bill Böst or my own name in those early rounds of discussions Gil Geier before and neither is Greg Smith a familiar on "Lifetime Achievement", and it is only my name. Brad Foster later mentions another name I've astonishing youth that kept me from what is, clearly, not heard of, Stephen Fox, but doesn't say when he rightfully mine. Some day... some day.... was active as a fan artist. Oh, and have a note next to the illo from Gil The bit that made me sit up though was this sentence on pg 11. When I first turned to that page, the quick in Rawhide!, "Finding any given title required me to glance looked like it was a robot with a large rummage in the boxes piled up next to the furnace." rectangular box head, getting a firm double-handed This seems to ill-advised on so many counts that I grip on it's long nose and trying to pull it off. lose fingers. Unless, that is, you have massively Knowing it is -not- that still doesn't change that, insured your fanzine collection and are waiting for each time I flip past that page, that’s still what I see. the inevitable Accident to Happen. But that seems a perilous and rather unpredictable way of either Always like your zine reviews in the back. And coping with the problem of space, filing and sorting yeah, totally blown away by Alan White's 2 issues of or shortcutting the process of raising cash by selling Skyline. What a visual explosion! I think in those them on e-Bay. alone he makes up for the severe lack of artwork in most fanzines for the past year or two! Which sort of brings me to e-Bay (though not literally, since I've never used it). I was sort of aware [APH: After the proliferation of reprinted art in issue that people posted fanzines for sale online, but I #21, I hope you will find the array of original didn't realise you could get as much as $15 - $20 for cartoons in this number more encouraging!] them or is that by the boxload rather than for

17 individual items. Obviously you can get a decent amount if, as you say, selling of parts of your I had to grin at you final comment to Claire. She collection helped you finance the Corflu Zed really needs to take note that she's in a minority of convention. one when it comes to an assessment of her fanwriting, as any number of fanwriter polls and Your filing system, incidentally, sounds like mine. Nova Awards will attest. (Well, apart from the furnace.) There are a bunch of older fanzines, magazines and apas boxed up in the Thanks for FLAG, Andy. It was a nice way to spare room, but the main and current repository is an brighten my week. untidy growing pile in the study under my Yamaha [APH: There are a few bankers boxes within five to six feet keyboard (which means I now play it sidesaddle). I of the furnace, true, but I think you would generally find should sort them out, and tidy them into boxes, my storage arrangements reasonably secure; the boxes are but it all seems like work, like the inevitable trawl all standing on wooden freight pallets, which raises them through the pile of utility bills, bank and tax above the level of the basement floor. Flood is a far more statements that pile up over weeks or months until likely agent of disaster than fire, at least when it comes to the next big sort out between filing and shredding. basements. Steven Fox was a very active African-American Mention of a filing system based on tabs, folders and fan artist who contributed to dozens of fanzines between post-it notes sounds terribly low tech in the 21st 1977 and about 1986. You probably have seen examples century. surely a database would do a better (and of his work, but he hasn’t been active for a long time.] more easily searchable) job. Then all you have to is number the boxes and the database will point you at Kim Huett the correct box for whtever you're looking for. You 40 36 Glenorchy Street can probably even get an app for this that will run on Lyons, ACT 2606 Australia a phone. (Don't ask me though, I've still never Kim.huett@gmail,com owned a mobile phone.) Ah, 'Devil Girl From Mars'! I watched that one only Mind you, I did have really good intentions of the other week and while I can't tell that it's a great cataloging both my CDs and book this way, but after flick, neither can I label it as terrible. If I had to give a couple of weekends scanning barcodes it all it a one word rating I'd choose unambitious. Yet in a seemed like hard work, especially for the books, way this lack of ambition is what made it interesting most of which are shelved in the same room as the to me. There was the tendency for overplayed PC anyway, so why not just look up. Better perhaps melodrama of the sort so expertly lampooned on with half remembered stories in sf anthologies, but, 'Round the Horne' by Betty Marsden, as Dame Celia as I quickly discovered, those fine folks at ISFDB Molestrangler, and Hugh Paddick, as ageing juvenile have already done most of the hard work for me. It Binkie Huckaback: could do with a better search engine (after so many Binkie: I know. years as a developer, I suspect SQL hs actually Celia: I know, you know. become my first language, and English my second) Binkie: I know you know I know. but it's surprising and astonishing just how Celia: I know. Then why can’t you give it to me? comprehensive it is. Binkie: It’s not easy Fiona. And whaddya know, I just fired it up and typed a Celia: It’s not hard Charles. If you try. And now fanzine title (purely at random, you understand) into you’re going. the search box and got back "A search for 'chunga' Binkie: I have to. This is something I should have found 267 matches " Isn't technology (and other done a long time ago. people's hard work and dedication) wonderful? Celie: Is it her? Daphne? Binkie: Yes, Fiona. I must go. She needs me. I knew there were punk rock fanzines (I used to do Celia: I need you. Does this mean nothing? one) but I hadn't realised there were skiffle fanzines, Binkie: Daphne needs me more. Much more. But I although it does go along with the whole amateur, shall think of you all the time I am with her. home-made ethos of skiffle, rather than glossy pop Celia: I’ll wait for you Charles. You will come back magazines aimed (mostly) at teenage girls. to me won’t you?

18 Please say you’ll come back to me. Adelaide since it seemed likely he would enjoy Binkie: I always come back don’t I? (and takes the Breiding's prose more than I did. dog for a walk). Where we have more in common is the matter of Even more interesting is the basic premise of a fanzine collections. I've also managed to sort my female alien from Mars who has come to Earth in collection into a reasonable state as can be seen from search for males to take back home so they might the attached PDF file. The collection fills nearly 40 help replenish the Martian race. Her dialogue storage boxes, some of which can be seen in the suggests the script started life as a story about attached photographs. It's possibly the largest members of a Nazi spy ring taking the residents of a collection of science fiction fanzines in Australia. I remote hotel in the Scottish Highlands hostage can only suggest possibly because significant during WWII. Tweaked this plot a little and you collections are also held by the National Library in have a crash-landed alien taking the residents Canberra, and university libraries in Sydney, hostage instead and spouting the sort of lines about Melbourne, and Perth. For example as previously superiority and purity that a decade earlier Nazi mentioned to you the Fisher Libray at the University officers threw at plucky British heroes. of Sydney holds the Don Wollheim fanzine collection bought from him by Ron Grahame. Indeed it is fascinating to see an almost unbroken chain of pseudo-Nazi villains in British science [APH: I was not aware of that last fact; I’ll keep in fiction films and television. We all know the Daleks mind while composing “Wollheim’s Worldcon” later are based on them and clearly the evil government in this year. It might be worth circling back to mention Blake's Seven was too, as was the fascist that all our interest arose from the late Octavia government of Britain in 1990. Heck, even in Space Butler’s childhood disdain for Devil Girl from Mars, 1999 they encountered a planet where individuals which inspired her to become an sf author. Perhaps with any physical deformity were 'eliminated'. she too thought the Devil Girl’s difficulties arose Which is not to say every villain used in in such from an imperfect marketing plan.] outings was an umpteenth generation SS officer but the Nazis clearly have always been the default Ian Millsted villain for British script writers. What makes this 7 Rudhall Grove, Farm Manor doubly interesting is that every Brit the Devil Girl Bristol BS10 5AJ United Kingdom encounters is determined to thwart her plan despite it [email protected] essentially revolving around her recruiting a suitable enthusiastic group of men to move to Mars for Thanks for the copy of Flag 21. I hope you breeding purposes. As the Devil Girl describes it her encourage Mark Plummer to submit the ‘scurrilous plan seems largely harmless to Earth interests but limericks’ about John Brunner and Brian Burgess for because she is cast as an arrogant and supercilious publication. Can’t be that bad surely? I’m also Nazi clone the rest of the cast have no choice but to intrigued by Howard Waldrop’s Wallace/ oppose her. Looking back from the future this seems Vidal/Capote/Ben Hur story. That may be easier to like a short-sighted response but it clearly played track down. well to audiences at the time. Wrangling fanzines seems a fine way to spend some As you can see from the attached jpegs I found on time. I hope they all behave for you and don’t Trove the film had a very positive reception in develop herding instincts all their own. Australia. Not only did it garner positive reviews but [APH: Howard Waldrop’s story “Till the Cows Come Home was also shown alongside films that have retained a To Roost” appeared in issue #37 of Lady Churchill’s higher reputation.Food for thought, eh? Rosebud Wristlet in the Spring of 2018.] I'm not the Breiding sort of writer it has to be said, not even slightly. When I received a copy of 'Rose Motel' I read three of the articles and felt no twinge of interest at all. I ended up repackaging the collection and sending it to Roman Orszanski in

19

Dan Steffan Uncle Ike was a notoriously handsy guy. He 2015 NE 50th Ave. Portland OR 97213 disguised it as part of greetings -- an introduction of [email protected] somebody's wife that leads to a full-body hug and one of his big paws on her ass. It meant that he As per your completely reasonable assumption about never stood around by himself, but always had one the authorship of the Wally “The Snake” Mind or, preferably, two young women in his bear-like articles on Facebook. I was the author of all of grip. His hands roamed openly, groping and Wally's articles. The ones in PONG were written by grabbing whatever they could. He seemed equally me with Ted's occasional additions done while he comfortable with either tit or buttock. He was typed the stencils. There were couple others, like generous like that. You could, as I did, watch him the one in (I think) TRAP DOOR 1 or 2 that are do this to many different women in the course of a entirely mine. I wanted an extra voice that could be hour's Meet the Authors gathering or just while more satirical because everything it said came from hanging out between panels. Whenever a woman a worm -- a cartoon worm, yet. Who could object to would jump or screech we knew to look in Asimov's Mr. Mind's self-absorbed nephew's fannish direction to see who he was with now. Some guys ranting? Of course, I forgot that some people just brought over their wives and girlfriends for the don't have a sense of humor...I thought you might expressed purpose of getting felt up by The Good appreciate knowing about Wally's secret identity -- Doctor. though it was never really kept secret. Okay? Good. Of course I do believe the story told by someone -- Hmm, while I'm here, I do want to mention a topic Greg Benford? -- about Asimov's flaking out when published in the last FLAG (and previous issues of actually offered a shot in the sack. I believe that he BANANA WINGS), namely the inappropriate was too much of a (ahem) pussy to go through with behavior of some of our forefathers like Asimov and anything more sexual than public groping. That may Forry. be why so many women put up with it -- he was a Early in my fan career I regularly went to the annual cuddly ol' jewish uncle with a naughty sense of Lunacons in NYC. Both of the above gentlemen humor and that gave him more than enough (ahem) were in regular attendance at that con and opportunity to get a handful of braless hippy both were also painfully obvious about their bad bazoom, or two. No less a sexual being that my behavior. I was a neofan with no direct connection mentor Vaughn Bode once told me that he thought to either of them, but I still witnessed several Asimov was "the horniest guy I've ever met." instances of inappropriate shenanigans that took As for Forry, well, I'm of the opinion that he was a place in public spaces at this con -- in the mezzanine full-blown perve who, fortunately, did NOT include and other convention spaces. young boys amongst his fetishes. He was, to my experience -- again as nothing more that a bystander at, say, a Lunacon -- a true dirty old man and a creepy quasi-predator. Again, all my early experience witnessing Forry's behavior was in conventions settings, often in public. In the course of a couple of years I watched him lech over Heidi Saha, who Forry made into a teenaged stroke icon by publishing a sleazy book of teenaged photos of Heidi during his days with Warren Publishing. He encouraged her to go to cons dressed as Vampirella and sold posters and other shit that showed off her adolescent sexuality in all it's sadness. It was all done with her parents approval. They hoped she would become a film star and took her to every convention they could and put her on display for all to see and, more importantly, pay for. By the time

20 she was 18 she was overripe and used and is now off even more than they wanted egoboo. Guys remembered only for her sleazy past. bringing their wives up to be groped by Asimov – Anyway, Forry would come to NYC to promote hopefully everyone knew what they were getting Heidi and to spend time with her. On more than one into there. But obviously, it’s a different issue with occasion I saw them together and Forry just hung on minors. As long as I have been a part of it, fandom her. He would stroke her and nuzzle her when has been full of young people, aching to have sex sitting or standing around the hotel lobby or the with anyone who wants them. Very few of them are huckster room. I once saw them sitting together on a as attractive as Heidi Saha, but her experience is just small love seat, his arm around her as they looked at a public version of things that happened to a lot of a large scrapbook together -- it covered both of their us. Your account makes it clear you felt victimized by laps (eww). The scrapbook itself was full of pictures the way that their public canoodling invited you to of women that he had cut out of magazines. Some be a co-conspirator – aren’t we naughty? Aren’t you were of two women together, others were just 40s naughty too? and 50s pinup photos. Forry would guide her bored stare across the big pages, lingering to point out The problem is that most of fandom is pretty some particular photo's highlights while speaking to naughty. It’s interesting to contrast the reputations her in low tones, or simply whispering in her ear. I of Ackerman and Asimov with those of Tucker and know this because I spent quite a while standing Rotsler. Tucker didn’t just grope young women at right behind them on their love seat -- which was conventions – he fucked quite a few of them. And located not in some intimate corner, but by a column they liked it. He was willing to get naked and in the middle of the large mezzanine. I wasn't the ridiculous in front of them, in a way that Asimov only one, there were people all around them, but generally avoided. And then Rotsler – well Rotsler they seemed to be in a world of their own. Or Forry was damn near a “pornographer,” but I’ve never did -- frankly, Heidi seemed immensely bored or heavily sedated, which could be a possibility too. heard any woman seriously complain about his attentions toward her. Perhaps I too am a sheltered It was downright creepy and, as I witnessed Forry's waif, but there is something to the notion of acting behavior on other occasions, I quickly came to the like you’ve been there before that makes one a lot conclusion that he was not the guy I thought he more seductive.] would be when I was reading his monster mag in my childhood. He was seedy. He was the epitome of Dan Steffan Replies: what I would in other circumstances assume to be a I appreciated your comments on the subject of our dirty pornographer or criminal. Of course, I'm not icky forefathers and I must admit that I hadn't addressing anything he may have done as a patron of actually thought it through to the point where I'd the arts or a collector or otherwise. I'm just talking figured out that final step -- that their exhibitionism about the creepy guy I used to witness at cons where was also meant to implicate me (and the other casual he was hardly the only one who could make your witnesses) in their game as part of the whole skin crawl. And not all of them were men, either. event/experience. That makes me suspect all the I was a horribly sheltered and inexperienced kid who more about the state of Heidi's consciousness. On used to take the train down to NYC in the early 70s another occasion a few years later, I was in a room and explore the dark corners of the city. I went into party where Heidi made a memorable appearance. stores and theaters and neighborhoods in Manhattan We were all sitting around gabbing, as you do, when that horrify me in retrospect, but they didn't phase all of a sudden the bathroom door was flung open me when I was 19. But watching Forry ooze all over and out stepped a clearly inebriated Heidi -- eye Heidi brought me up short. It made NYC a scary makeup smeared and dressed in a bathing suit -- place in a way I'd never contemplated. with toilet paper wrapped around her forearms that she had set aflame. She stepped into the room, [APH: Wow, what a letter! Fandom has a recurring everyone gasped when they saw her, and she issue with underage sexuality. It’s inevitable, as all yelled/slurred "Okay, which one of you want to fuck these lonely-ill-socialized characters wanted to get me now?"

21 Moments later a pal of hers put her out and ushered of big boobed beautiful women. The combination of her out of the party. Conversation quickly resumed his interest in film and his interest in strippers and as if nothing happened. other entertainers was a natural evolution of who he was and the lifestyle he lived. He met all those Your comparison of Forry/Asimov and women when he photographed them and they all Tucker/Rotsler is an interesting one. Obviously, I started hanging out together away from work -- Bill knew the latter jiants much better than the always had the best party house with a pool, a bar, former. But what you say about Tucker is and a stash of acid -- they partied together, they absolutely correct. He used to call it The Fountain tripped together, they fucked together. It was very of Youth. But as you say, I never knew anyone who much a product of the Sixties in Los Angeles and objected to it. As far as I know he never forced Bill embraced it wholeheartedly. Eventually it all led himself on anyone, nor did he focus his attention on to making movies. A few of them were even made children. The mystery of teen sexuality is a murky at the house, around the pool, during some of the puddle to be sure, but I don't think -- I'm guessing parties. here -- that it intrigued him much. By the time I met him in the early '70s he was already middle aged or I truly believe that for Bill it was a kind of shangri- more and the youngsters that I saw him engaged la. In his later years he lamented the loss of those with were almost always in their twenties or so -- days and those people and wistfully longed for their young women who, as you note, knew what they return. The idea of being Almost A Pornographer were getting into. Plus, Bob was a sweet man and I was fine with him. Most of his sex photography is never saw anyone who didn't feel that way. Perhaps not really explicit, they were more a celebration of you, being of midwestern lineage and locale, have the nakkid woman than hard core sexuality. His heard otherwise? movies -- the few I've seen -- were never any more explicit than his photo spreads and it was obvious Your comment that Rotsler was nearly a that he was really much more interested in actually pornographer is not wrong, but the distinction was making actual movies with a storyline, wry dialog, very important to him. Bill became a filmmaker and things like sets and other kinds of art after he became a photographer. He was a partner in direction. For one of his movies he turned part of a media agency in the late '50s/early60s which led his family's walnut farm in Camarillo into an him into working with film. At the same time and Arabian set for one of the films. The truth is that after he used his photographic skills and his love of Bill Rotsler made movies that imitated the style and women to create a career for himself as a chronicler content of his director hero Russ Meyer. They have plots, lots of big tits, and -- if you look closely -- the occasional cameo by fans like Dean Grennell and, I think, Harlan, and others. Like Burt Reynolds' character in BOOGIE NIGHTS, Bill didn't want to go hardcore. He didn't want to switch from film to video. And like Reynolds' character -- I've always thought that he was in many ways, a version of Bill -- his somewhat less that reputable moneymen left him behind when the business changed. Like his hero, his kind of skin flick lost its audience to the next generation of Pink performers and magazine publishers. After that he used the industry to make enough of a living to pay his rent -- he wrote two video review columns for a friend's porn mags that paid all his bills -- and he spent the rest of his time doing all the fun things he wanted to without anybody tellling him not to.

22 As you might imagine, I know of nobody who knew the autumn of 2004 that wardrobe was quickly him who didn't admire and love him. I considered pressed into service as a walk-in fanzine library. myself truly lucky to call him my friend and, We'd each brought our own personal collections, frankly, something of a hero, too. He achieved at an plus a collection passed on from Maureen Speller early point in his life a way of living which is the and Paul Kincaid, none of which was properly dream of most freelance people. He lived his life ordered. We unpacked boxes into gradually and it worked well for him, to say the least. As far alphabetized stacks around the room, weeding as fandom is concerned, his sex life was irrellevant - duplicates and slowly sorting and shelving into - he always had the most amazing looking girlfriends cardboard magazine holders until we briefly attained and rarely lacked for that kind of companionship. a state of order. Though in his last years he did regret that he hadn't It was all very satisfying but since then we've slowly managed to hold onto one of them and lamented that degenerated to a point probably not unlike the he wasn't likely to find one at that point in his situation you describe at the beginning of 'Rawhide'. life. It's too bad, really. I'm sure that his painful The original as-at-late-2004 ordered sequence is still passing would have been easier if he'd had a loved there, albeit odd titles and runs have since been one by his side. Although, now that I think about it, extracted and not necessarily refiled. I'm sure there he did after all. His best friend Paul Turner took him has has been some refiling and integration of in and cared for him until he left us -- I know Bill subsequent acquisitions, but mostly the more recent loved him and I'm sure Turner felt the same. arrivals are stacked in front of the shelves. Pace the Mark Plummer Dent argument, I do maintain a kind of mental map 59 Shirley Road, Croydon CR0 7ES United Kingdom of what might be found where, but I admit it is [email protected] frustrating that I can't immediately lay my hands on a particular title or everything by a particular editor On the flight to Toronto I was reading Nina Allan's if the mood takes me. After all, what's the point of novel The Rift. A minor character called Stephen maintaining a fanzine collection if you're not going Dent has his books stored in no particular order, to look at some of it from time to time? 'novels stacked next to dictionaries, mathematics textbooks intermingled with biographies of Dickens I wish I could say, then, that your article provided and Einstein and Chekhov'. His friend Selena the additional spur to just get on with it and wonders, 'How do you remember where anything reintroduce order to our fanzine filing. It certainly is?' Dent explains 'When you shelve books in seemed like a message from the universe, alphabetical order you stop noticing them.' Over encouraging me in the direction in which I was time Selena becomes convinced by this argument: already thinking of moving. Instead, though, we 'Stephen's books were more interesting to look at devoted the time between our return from Toronto because you could never predict what you were and my return to work to... umm, actually I'm not going to find. And the strange thing was that in spite sure. Sitting on the sofa and binging on Netflix of the random arrangement it really wasn’t difficult probably. We got as far as buying some plastic to remember where a particular book was, if you crates in anticipation of the need to archive some of needed to find it again. Selena soon learned that the the collection to the garage, but no further. Bad fans. book about black holes was shelved next to the Actually, though, you do provoke me to wonder tragedies of Aeschylus, that the Collins Guide to about the order that does exist in our collection when British Butterflies could be found tucked in next to you say that you file your fanzines by editor. We've Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.' always filed by title and the more I think about this I think I read this after I'd floated the idea with the more I wonder why because it's surely counter- Claire of an immediately post-Corflu project to sort intuitive. For all that I like the idea of Dentesque out some of the storage on the top floor of our random storage, we do in fact generally aim to keep house, whether the boxes of spare books, the back- all our stuff in some sort of sequence. Novels are issues cupboard or the main fanzine filing. There's filed by author and CDs by artist, and it would never just the one room up there with a built-in wardrobe occur to me to store either by title so why do we running along one wall, and when we moved here in store fanzines that way? I'm not expecting you to

23 answer that, by the way. The only example I can Also, two years along, Randy’s copies of BANANA WINGS think of that uses the title approach is the sf have been sold, and raised a remarkable amount of money magazines. So does that mean, my fannish therapists for TAFF and the Corflu 50. I can croggle you with the asks me, that I see our fanzines as aspirational numbers privately.] prozines? John Purcell The description of sorting Randy's fannish effects 3744 Marielene Circle College Station, TX 77845 was quite moving, and I'm ridiculously flattered to [email protected] hear that Banana Wings was seemingly stored as a Well, another Corflu has come and gone, so once 'treasured title'. You said it was a surprise that again we have a listing of FAAn Award winners, Randy's collection was no better organized than your which usually leads into a round of discussions own. Why was it surprising? Was it that you thought regarding the results. I have to say that I definitely Randy would be a more organised kind of person? agree with this year's selection of Bruce Gillespie for Again in saying that you sensed there had been a the Lifetime Achievement Award. What he has done plan to combine all the boxes into a coherent filing over the decades to keep his wonderful fanzine system you further encourage me to think that we Science Fiction Commentary in the forefront of of really should find the time. But it didn't happen this hobby interest is nothing short of remarkable. when I had a few days holiday, and now it seems the Bruce has maintained a high standard of quality in kind of task that's incompatible with being at work. all aspects for 96 issues, which is staggering. Well This makes me feel rather feeble. I'm sure earlier done, Bruce, and well chosen, "Jedi Council." I most generations managed to find time in the day for both approve of your choice. mundane and fannish tasks. Bruce joins quite the elite group of individuals. Yes, Good commentary on the Lifetime Achievement there is a touch of regionalism at play in some of the Award. I like the idea of trying to put some choices for the Lifetime Achievement Award, but I parameters on it and fifty years seems about right. cannot complain. Now I am wondering who will be It's clear that we're never going to catch up on the tenth individual to be named next year? Do keep seriously credible candidates, and something like a the tradition alive of bestowing this award to a living rolling fifty year eligibility is a helpful reminder that recipient. I agree with you that this makes the award we shouldn't rule some people out just because there for meaningful, especially if the honoree is in are longer-serving names still in contention. attendance. And your explanation to Steve Jeffery about Drag As for the rest of this year's FAAn winners, Bunt Press... you know, I've been seeing that in your excellent choices all around, although I definitely colophons since Apak days, twenty years back now, have a problem with John Thiel's zines and name and while I never knew what it meant somehow I appearing so close to the top of the Genzine, just accepted it. Now that you've explained it... well, Perzine, and Fan Writer categories, and a Thiel- it's not as if some of the mystery has gone out of the related artist (Ramos Fumes) coming in third for Fan world because it seems like the kind of explanation Artist. My guess is that a bit of bloc voting from that's unlikely to lodge in my brain beyond me N3Fers got involved due to a bit of, shall we say, hitting [Send] on this email. possible encouragement from Mr. Thiel, who enjoys [APH: And now this fanzine will serve to jog your memory, a prominent position in the NFFF at present. In his and a little echo of that discovery will reverberate through defense, though, John has been producing fanzines your limbic system. And, one wonders, has the passage of since the 1970s, which is a danged long time, and two years improved your filing system? I made some that says something about his dedication to fanzines; progress, but now another two years of acquisitions sit in a plus, being active in the N3F is okay by me, even squat haystack on a repurposed microwave stand across though I am not. Frankly, I am amazed that the N3F the room from me. And then, when someone recently is still running and seems to be doing well. Ah, me. wanted to consult my copy of D. West’s PERFORMANCE, The bottom line is asking a question that is damned it was missing. I know I lent it to Randy sometime in the difficult to answer: how can bloc voting be early part of the Century, but I was quite certain he had discouraged in order to ensure that the FAAn returned it. It certainly vexes me that I can’t ask him. Awards can be a merit-based honor rather than a

24 popularity contest? I know, this is a common criticism of the FAAns, that it is a closed, inclusive community with a dwindling population, with the result being the same people keep winning. No easy answers here. But it is worth considering. [APH: And now, as if by magic, two years have passed and you have been privy to the deliberations of a Jedi Council, and have had the pleasure of rebuilding the awards as a whole following the mutation crisis of Corflu 36. Plus you have the special privilege of chairing the convention in the middle of the Covid-19 viral epidemic. All I can think is that you must have some serious karmic burdens to redeem. Do you have recurring dreams of being a seal clubber or a Molestrangler?] David Redd Beracah House, Redstock, Johnston $23.50. This may be a problem for us here. Made Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire SA62 3HN UK a diary note to try again after a few months. [email protected] Mind you, I think the real world can often match Many thanks for Flag 21, received safely via fandom for quirky publications, especially when I Croydon, thanks in that direction too. see such as Visiting Cards of Violinists, or on a The Way of the Tulpa III: Mark Twain could have similar theme a DVD of putting a Stradivarius used the Balderdash Quotient when writing of though an MRI scanner. But the fanzine weirdness “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences”. Twain is our weirdness. wrote, “In one place in The Deerslayer, and in the Afterthought on “Tulpa” – Leigh Edmonds and all restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has might enjoy a good short story which briefly and scored 114 offences against literary art out of a properly credits Madam David-Neel’s use of the possible 115. It breaks the record.” Had Twain term: “Mrs Byres and the Dragon” by Keith Roberts known of Ray Nelson’s breakthrough Twain could (Asimov’s August 1990, an excellent issue, thank have written simply “BQ 99%”, indicating that you Gardner, RIP.) Cooper had at least passed the test of being consistent from beginning to end. But what Twain Bob Jennings actually wrote was more fun – and more 29 Whiting Road Oxford MA01540-2035 instructive. As is Tulpa III here. [email protected] Brilliant letter column, especially from William Received Flag #21 a week ago, thanks for sending it Breiding. However, did you cut out some of Claire along. I could identify with your urge to sort and Brialey’s best and most characteristic writing to organize your fanzine collection; a similar condition squeeze in her letter? Saved for next issue? of urgent impending need to organize hovers over the heads of most of us who collect comic books. It Sad pages about dealing with the collections of folk seems that whenever the collection is more of less who have passed on. Done with integrity, notably – organized, more stuff comes in, and suddenly the I’ve heard of a lot worse from executors. Also thank problem has reestablished itself. you for the note on finding sf fanzines on ebay. I tried your suggestions and found no [APH] I used to try to organize fanzines by editor/title, but I currently. Unfortunately none of my targets were gave it up. There has always been too much volume there either, and the moderately interesting stuff was and variety to keep up with. I admire your generally priced USA $4.50, postage to UK determination to pull out material you want to save

25 and really organize it into folders and filing cabinet lands of the fictional old west of gunfighters and storage. outlaws, or the age of piracy on the high seas, or fighting the monsters and gods of the Cthulhu These days I pile fanzines into a box in the order I Mythos, or living the life of a vampire, or becoming receive them. When the box is full I label it with the a super hero in a universe populated by costumed month(s) the material arrived, and stack the box. If I comic book super heroes and super villains. ever need to locate a back issue I usually have a general idea of when it showed up, so I can There are all high adventure escapes offering generally locate it with no great difficulty. imaginary thrills dramatically removed from the real world. What would be the motivation for a role Now that fewer fanzines are coming out in print playing game based on SF fandom? The connection format, the boxes are taking a lot longer to fill up with the real world is too solid to attract many these days. Sometime in the distant figure I may get players. around to organizing the things into longer continuous runs, but I doubt it, unless I have a strong The reality is that science fiction fans are already urge/need to do some research. Then organization involved in a fantasy role playing game. In real life would become a necessity I suppose. fans are students, mechanics, clerks, salesmen, factory workers, teachers, lab techs, secretaries, or I was intrigued by your comments about trying to are otherwise engaged in some mundane occupation create a role playing game based on science fiction like the millions of other people in modern society. fandom. Tongue planted firmly in cheek or not, it is an interesting idea, but I doubt that any kind of SF But, at the end of each workday, when these people fandom role playing game could ever be established. return home, they can immediately become involved in a fantasy role-playing situation where they can Most role playing games concentrate on larger than become critics, or authors of fiction, or humorists, or life situations. Players role-play in fantastic science cosplayers, or costume designers, or convention fiction/fantasy or adventure settings. The largest organizers, or publishers of small press fanzines, or category, including games such as Dungeons & political commentators, or connect via the internet or Dragons, Runequest, Tunnel & Trolls etc., bring traditional correspondence with hundreds of other players into the fantasy world of dangerous sword people who share similar interests, including a and sorcery adventure. Other role playing games shared interest in SF/fantasy related offer imaginary worlds of pure future science fiction literature/movies/TV/games. thrills, or post apocalypse worlds, or living in the This is a unique alternate universe world so bizarre that when fans try to explain it to mundane types those regular world people often cannot comprehend or even accept the idea that people would be involved in such activities. It is almost like you were trying to explain your character’s actions in a D&D adventure to somebody who had never heard of sword and sorcery fantasy. Real world mundane types generally regard SF fandom and the people who are active in it as weirdo kooks, possibly harmless, but often fans are regarded as borderline lunatics who are potentially dangerous. The disconnect is so large that SF fans often consider themselves as total outsiders. The term “it’s a proud and lonely thing to be a fan” is based on real life experience. It’s impossible to build a role-playing game on SF fandom, because SF fandom is already a role- playing game.

26 On the other hand I see great potential for a board game based on science fiction fandom. Players Contributor Credits: That’s a fine thing to say about the 12th. most could establish themselves as one of the prototype Brad Foster: Page 17 main fan types you mentioned. Players could roll Lynne Anne Morse: Title calligrahy dice and advance around the board trying to accumulate egoboo points, possibly working toward Ray Nelson: “The Way of the Tulpa 4” the ultimate goal of becoming a Big Name Fan, or Art on Page 10, 28, 30, 31, 32 even a Fannish Ghod/Living Legend. Other perks might involve being nominated for or actually Ulrika O’Brien: Page 1, 7, 19, 26 winning FAAn Awards, or Hugo Awards, or being Marc Schirmeister: Page 8, 14, 25 elected head of local fan groups, or perhaps being called on to run a big convention (with bonus points Dan Steffan: Page 3, 4, 20, 22 for each successful activity achieved). Steve Stiles: Page 34 Along the way pitfalls might include things like feuds, convention backstabbing, bad fanzine reviews, being snubbed/insulted by established BNFs. Other potential penalties might involve real That’s a fine thing to say about the 12th. Most world problems such as not having enuf money to popular perzine in this year’s Fan Awards! Or are attend an important convention, or your printer craps you going to stand there and let Dale dismiss me as out just as your apazine is due. one of “a couple of apahacks” left in the country? I imagine that Dale has taken me literally to mean Things such as your boss in real life piling on extra that Rat Sass is an apazine, merely because I work so you lose two weeks of fanac time could lead distribute it at the same time as Rowrbrazzle, and to you losing points by missing a significant event, include a page or two of mailing comments? What or failing to keep up successful fan contacts. Trick of the superior quality fanwriting that sparkles on the cards with bonus points or penalties could be added other 16 or 18 pages? Or the remarkably diverse with such things as your cat hacks up a big hairball portfolios by yours truly? Where is it preordained on your autographed first edition hardback, your that Broken Toys or some other incarnation of my internet connection crosses your emails so that a persona will not reappear? One might as well snide DNQuote comment you make shows up in the overlook Opuntia as a mere travelogue of local email of the editor of a fanzine you’ve always sights in Alberta, with capsule book reviews. My loathed. The possibilities are endless. lawyers will hear about this shortly... [APH: I hardly want to undermine your lovely argument Reverting to a more serious mode, I was left with that fans are already involved in a role-playing game, but much to think about on the subject of tulpas ... all the great ideas you have for a board game indicate how though I think I have not encountered the word either format could be very entertaining. I think I need to before. Clearly, though, I have lived much of my finally follow up on this idea – so look for something in life sharing my thoughts about a number of FLAG #23, whenever it finally appears.] tulpas. It has enriched my life in various ways, but at what cost I sometimes wonder. Might I have Taral Wayne worked harder on realizing my own wishes and 245 Dunn Ave. #2111 intentions if I was not able to conjure them so easily into being within my mind? Would I today be a Toronto M6K 1S8 Canada loudmouthed sci-fi pro on the convention circuit, [email protected] with three ex-wives to support and a pressing I don’t believe I heard my ears right... that is, or read deadline on my next book? Is that anything I would my eye-tracks correctly. “As far as I know, I am the want? Whatever I ought to have done with my life, I last zinester in Canada who regularly publishes a sometimes worry about those imaginary beings in perszine. There are a few clubzines and a couple of my mind. I spend a lot of time with them, most often apahacks, but everyone else has gone to the blogs.” every night. I write about them and have shared both adventures and intimate moments with them. I

27 care about them. And it disturbs me profoundly that My favorite part of this Flag was your article about when at last I can no longer care for them, they will fandom as a role-playing game – I was actually vanish with me. If I cannot live beyond my own disappointed to not find actual rules at the end of the measure of years, I want them to survive beyond article. Of course, if your character generation me. But it won’t happen ... not unless, by some process is going to be based on Traveller, you’ve left diabolic act, the Disney corporation will take out one of the most interesting possibilities: The all possession of my other souls. Perhaps there is too real chance that our character could gafiate something worse than death... before the start of play and you have to start the process all over again. By all means try to include more art from Schirm. He doesn’t seem to exert himself, and most [APH: The possibility of gafiation and getting drafted or of his work seems to end up in Alexiad, where it is married would all be potential ends for a fan’s career. I shoehorned into 1/10 of the space it deserves and definitely have you in mind as a play-tester. Again, the requires a magnifying glass to make out miracle of delaying two years between issues means that clearly. Although only a small amount of Schirm’s you may already have the job you were thinking of when work appears where it could be widely seen, in fact you wrote this.] he is as busy turning it out as though he were a Terry Kemp demented elf addicted by Santa to his work. P.O, Box 6642 I think this would be a good place for me to stop, Kingman, AZ 66402 and rue another day absorbed by FaceBook. [email protected]

[APH: I hope the new cartoons from Schirm in these pages Long time and all that. At a guess I'd bet you don't will meet with your approval. One can’t hang on to them remember me at all, except tangentially as Earl forever, as the pen he uses has visibly faded while waiting Kemp's son...sigh! After Coflu 2012 I tried to get two years to be published. And Dale Speirs is an iron man many, nearly all, of those attending to send me their of modern fandom, but I only find myself agreeing with fanzines, and sent them mine. You were the only one him once in a while. I take your side in the matter: you who put me on their (apparently permanent) mailing definitely still exist.] list. Thank you. Jason Burnett I truly enjoy both Flag and Chunga, reading through [email protected] them immediately after they arrive. By far I like Flag It’s always a pleasure to receive a new issue of Flag, the most as it resonates on a different level but this one was particularly welcome as it provided reminding me of all those stacks of Pop's zines I a means of taking a mental break during this read through as a kid. Your recent tales of selling, semester’s final slog through producing an academic sorting, and preserving zines struck close to my paper. (I don’t believe I had gone back to school heart, making me laugh, sigh, and almost cry at when we met at WisCon. I’m currently back in grad times. school studying art history and museum studies, Collecting is a curse, a damn fine one, but still a with a goal of eventually working at one of the local wicked addiction. After amassing and cherishing museums.) those things (like zines, comics, and books) all of us so addicted are faced with those final stages...preserving, and then finally disposing of them in some fashion. Those of us who are lucky have interested relatives to pass them onto. Those not so lucky must either find them a new home, or in too many cases, our nearest and dearest will set them out with the trash the day after we depart, or sell what we once held so precious cheap.

28 Luckily, I don't have the zine collecting bug, and [APH: Terry, I can assure you that I have never kept recently sold all my comic books, weeping and anyone on my mailing list because I didn’t remember who ripping a new hole in my soul where they once they were. I enjoyed our meeting at the Las Vegas Corflu resided. But I am a slave to my book collection. of 2012 and always assumed that we would run across one However, these last few years I've been trying another again, but I am somewhat stunned to realize that desperately to stop buying yet another one. And was eight years ago already. Maybe a few more people will every time I try, I'm sucked right back in, finding put you on their mailing list – paper or electronic – after one more gem. they see this letter of comment from you. Of note, I recently purchased (at a bargain basement Things generally like that signed Michicon Program price) a large stack of old semi-pro sci-fi catalogs, Booklet have passed through my hands during the years etc. Stuck in the middle was a complete set of all of that I’ve been selling stuff on eBay. Such items as Elmer the Michicon Program/Booklets that were produced Perdue’s first contribution to FAPA (which is where we by the Slan Shack group during WWII. And all of came in), wartime issues of SHAGGY, playscripts from the 1950s, issues of early titles like FANTASY MAGAZINE and them were signed by the attendees. So once again I Walt Leibscher’s CHANTICLEER, monster zines from the was back in the groove, there was a young Frank early 1960s, far many more things than I can describe or Robinson signing next to his first crush, Ken even remember. Auctioning all these things off still feels Krueger. There was Claude Degler of the Cosmic like it has been some kind of fabulous confidence game, in Circle. And there I am, drinking from the well of which I get to read all these ancient fanzines, but don’t First Fandom once again, the elixir of life, the stuff have to spend money on them myself, and eventually I get of dreams. rid of them completely. What could be better?

Makes you wonder, doesn't it, what future I’m sorry to close by noting the passing of your Dad generations will think of us. Will they read through a following a fall at the beginning of February. As I noted Flag, or a Banana Wings, and roll their eyes earlier in this issue, I recently had occasion to read his wistfully wishing they'd been there, during that review of Richard Toronto’s War Over Lemuria, and as fantastic heyday when true Jiants still walked the usual, he gave me some critical clues. I’ll miss him.] earth.

st st FANZINE COUNTDOWN, January 1 , 2019 to December 31 , 2019:

1.) PORTABLE STORAGE #1 & #2, William I was charmed by Aljo Svoboda’s “Imperfect Breiding, 3507 North Santa Rita Avenue, Tucson, Recollections” and Breiding’s “Musings of an AZ 85719. Email [email protected]. The Unliterary Man.” But issue #2 is absolutely jammed arrival of PORTABLE STORAGE #1 was the to the roof with excellent writing – “Oh No!” by highlight of 2019 for me, and I was even more Cheryl Cline, “In Search of Devils Food” by Don impressed by issue #2, which had a distinctly more Herron, and “Twilight of the APAs” by Svoboda, to “fannish” tone than #1. Bill has several unique name just three from a dozen. And it was wonderful qualities as a fanzine editor, and a talented and to see “From Pages Cast” from the inimitable Billy eclectic circle of writers, artists and correspondents Wolfenbarger, who has long been associated with who all contribute brilliantly to PORTABLE Breiding’s fanzines. Issue #3 is already done and I STORAGE. I am not completely enamored of the am looking forward to it. results of “print-on-demand” zine publishing (see 2.) THYLIFE’S A MIRACLE, edited by Luke my remarks on RANDOM JOTTINGS below), but th McGuff, c/o Andy Hooper 11032 30 Ave. NE Bill’s design is perfect for the medium, and I found Seattle, WA 98125. Luke McGuff took the lead on the thing a delight to read. I found myself reading this project to collect the work of the late Randy one piece at a time, then putting the zine down to let Byers, but a number of fans helped to make it the writer’s voice resonate in my head, then happen, and more than a dozen contributed the returning the next day to read one more, like a kid money needed to make printed copies of what was rationing the best pieces of Halloween candy. In #1, originally to be strictly an electronic presentation.

29 Ulrika’s O’Brien’s fantastic sea turtle art was my backward among the many groups of people in favorite cover of the year. I still have a handful of which Pete feels at home. In issue #16, he conducts a copies, and if you are reading this, you might get one virtual tour of Mexico City through the vehicle of by asking; if you’re not reading this, it will cost you recent Mexican literature, a scene which frankly $20.00. makes the Norteamericano market seem rather dull by comparison. But I think I am even more 3.) LOFGEORNOST #134 - #137, Fred Lerner, 81 impressed by “On Private Libraries: A Letter Across Worcester Avenue, White River Junction, VT time to Leigh Hunt,” which begins by introducing 05001. Email [email protected]. Even though the the 19th Century Critic and his standards, then Internet allows relatively painless distribution, true connects to Pete’s late father and indeed, every self- personal fanzines are an endangered species in the st styled bibliophile on his mailing list, which is all of 21 Century. One can understand why; why wait us. three months for feedback in the next FAPA mailing, when a blog can be ignored by the entire 5.) SF COMMENTARY #98 - #100, Bruce world instantaneously? I wrote a more detailed Gillespie, 5 Howard St., Greensborough, Victoria appreciation of Fred’s recent issues in issue #15 of 3088 Australia, email at [email protected]. It CAPTAIN FLASHBACK, readily available at took Bruce three spectacular issues to celebrate the efanzines, com. Recent editorial excursions into the 50th anniversary of this remarkable science fiction fate of lost Carthaginians and the attractions of fanzine. Bruce has a well-deserved reputation for Lyon, France, as well as a review of FORTY publishing criticism and appreciation of science YEARS persistence under the same title. I believe I fiction and other fields of art. I think people are less admire Fred as much as any living fan editor, aware of the amount of personal and fannish memoir that appears there as well. Issue #100 is dominated 4.) THE WHITE NOTEBOOKS #16, Pete Young, by review of a multitude of books and fanzines, with 136/200 Emerald Hill Village, Soi 6 Hua Him, lists that Bill Bowers would admire. #99 contains a Frachuap Khiri Khan 77110 Thailand. Email staggering wealth of correspondence, with Bruce’s Peteyoung.uk @gmail.com. Pete Young is one of personal history of the Nova Mob. #98 has a superb those most precious and uncommon people who are series of excerpts from earlier issues, tracing the fans of all part sof science fiction, those being both development of the fanzine, and there is a superb science and fiction; and perhaps more importantly, variety of reviews and a history of Norstrilla Press. he is simply inexhaustibly curious about people, But the entire triptych is colored by the series of places and literature. There may be ,any similar memorial tributes in #98 and #99, remembering documents in the world, but very few of them are Randy Byers, Derek Kew, June Moffatt, Steve shared with science fiction fans, surely the most Sneyd, Milt Stevens and Kate Wilhelm. That Bruce was connected to all these people is a measure of what SF COMMENTARY has meant in turn to science fiction and fandom. 6.) A TAFF GUIDE TO BEER, Claire Brialey, Mark Plummer and Geri Sullivan, 59 Shirley Road, Croydon CR0 7ES UK and 37 Monson Road, Wales MA 01081, email to [email protected]. The title is at least slightly misleading, as this excellent fanthology is mostly about the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund, and only intermittently about beer. There are contributions from a remarkable variety of living and former TAFF delegates, starting with the front cover, with art by Sue Mason and calligraphy by

30 Teresa Nielsen-Hayden (and doesn’t THAT take me back!). Many of these are excerpted from published trip reports, which ought to make any reader croggle at the sheer variety of experiences that have been documented through this venerable and most persistent of fannish travel funds. There is a real spark to this extremely attractive publication that a lot of contemporary fanac lacks – thank Ghu Geri Sullivan has finally brought her personal mojo to the TAFF narrative, as I find my enthusiasm mysteriously restored. 7.) BEAM #14, Nic Farey and Ulrika O’Brien, 2567 Rungstead St., Las Vegas, NV 89142/418 Hazel Ave. N. Kent, WA 98030: BEAM is the American Counterpart to SCIENCE FICTION 8.) RANDOM JOTTINGS #17 “The Corflu Fiawol COMMENTARY, with the same mix of personal Fanthology” Michael Dobson, email to and aesthetic or literary material, with a level of [email protected]. Huge anthology of presentation that borders on public art. It is fan writing and art selected and submitted by singularly appropriate that the cover of #14 features members of Corflu 36. This collection was only a remarkable photograph taken in Seville’s railway possible because of Dobson’s application of print- station by Roy Kettle; metaphorically, the fanzines on-demand tech, but there re times when it struggles could be used as a stained glass window or hung to deal with the volunteer layout submitted by more from the ceiling over an airport escalator. Nic Farey than a dozen contributors. Still, I think you can open has always provided a very muscular editorial at any point and get lost. New an reprint material by presence, but Ulrika O’Brien has been every bit as Kim Huett, Leigh Edmonds, Steve Stiles, Ted eloquent since joining the masthead. Here she White, Paul Kincaid, Sandra Bond…art portfolios attacked John Scalzi in theory and practice, vis his by Canfield, Kinney, Steffan and Stiles…gloriously successful courtship of the Hugo Award for Best aimless and aimlessly glorious. Fan Writer, which made her the darling of 9.) SKYLINE #6 - #8, Alan White, 6244 Chinook File770.com for a few weeks. I was mostly struck by Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89108. Online at how closely Scalzi seems to resemble Arnie Katz. I eFanzines.com. The 2019 issues of Alan White’s also suspect that Ulrika might have solicited “The fanzine shifted its focus from a mixture of Diva Diaries” by Soprano Stacy Tappan, and “King contemporary and historic material to an emphasis County Clinic, 2018” by Julie McGuff, Either editor on memories and experiences from various depths in might have asked Christina Lake for “Foolish Banter the past. #6 is a memoir of various form of excess st (and the riddle of 21 Century Fannish Etiquette), an and illumination popular in previous eras of fandom. address presented when the author was Guest of #7 is a tribute to the late Malcolm Willets, collector, Honor at the 2018 Eastercon. This joins material by publisher, bookseller, author and historian of comics less unusual suspects including Simon Ounsley, and cartoons, with some fantastic examples of the John Hardin and Jacq Monohan. Alan Rosenthal’s man’s work. And in #8, Alan to succumbs to the “The Five Stages of Being a Corflu GoH” was a fine fashion for genealogy, with a profile of his insight in fandom’s most random honor. Because grandmothers. Fantastic looking stuff as always, but only a handful of paper copies get printed, the layout increasingly thought-provoking and well-written. is as lavish as a despot’s palace, with huge fonts and Alan has a unique view of fandom that is very margins that could accommodate an entire issue of different from someone like Bill Breiding, for WING WINDOW. 66 pages of decadent opulence. example, but his circle is equally real, with a similar

31 significant reads of 2019, and I wanted to review it. Robert Silverberg’s “The FAPA Project” covers a combo platter of topics close to my heart; the history and significance of FAPA, notable contributors and titles, and Bob’s highly fannish quest to actual collect a complete run in the 21st Century. Greg Benford’s “Sober Benford Chatter” describes memories around the death of John Lennon and a variety of passions and obsessions. Fandom brush with Ted Kaczynski, better known as “The reinvents itself in an endless series of parallels, Unabomber.” Gary Hubbard’s column “The Cracked which is one reason why no one can really Eye” continues his tradition of sharing memorably understand it completely or ever attempt to be its eccentric characters. Wonderful art by Craig Smith, master. Dan Steffan and Steve Stiles. More than any other fanzine, TRAP DOOR feels like it connects the 10.) THIS HERE #16 - #23, Nic Farey, 2567 reader to various golden ages of science fiction Rungstead St., Las Vegas, NV 89142, email to fandom, and always makes me feel good about being [email protected]. Nic’s personal fanzine had part of it, lain dormant for about three years before lurching back into monthly life in May. He shares his 13.) BANANA WINGS #72 - #75 Claire Brialey, thoughts on a variety of issues concerning fandom, Mark Plummer, 59 Shirley Road, Croydon CR0 7ES the English Premier League, and permutations of UK, email to [email protected]. It appears that Jamaican music in “Radio Winston,” which is the fishlifters have also made the transition to print- always my favorite part. THIS HERE also provides on-demand, with very good results. The latest issues a home for Graham Charnock’s “America the are easy-to-read, and the paper does not appear to Damned” series of stories, which are always have been recycled from takeaway containers. engagingly lurid. It’s taken the place of Charnock’s Caroline Mullan has emerged as the fanzine’s most VIBRATOR as the fanzine I always want to respond faithful outside contributor. After two issues that to, but which always appears again before I can pull were primarily composed by the editors, Mullan the trigger. dominates #75 with her piece “Remembering James White for an Irish Worldcon,” which considers his 11.) RAUCOUS CAUCUS #6, Pat Charnock, 45 novels in and the universe in which they are set in Kimberley Gardens, Harringay, London N4 1LD UK comprehensive detail, Her coverage of the Dublin /Email [email protected]. Steve Stiles’ cover Worldcon in #76 is simply exhausting; this has as for this issue was one of his best – a kind of much to do with the nature of the convention as it emotional self-portrait. I thought the highlight of this does Mullan’s writing. Editorial matter is generally issue was the letter-column, which has the engrossing. My favorite piece of the year was Fred mellifluous title of “Quorum Sensing.” “Not Exactly Smith’s “The Wasp That Stung Twice” in #72, my TAFF Trip” by Liz Phillips was also intriguing, which inspired an article from me in reply; so yes, as we have had relatively few reports from the all of this is just shames logrolling. spouses or partners of TAFF delegates. Pat’s “The Art of the Gestetner” is very old school 14.) CHALLENGER #42, Guy and Rosie Lillian, entertainment, with photos, and the issue closes with 1390 Holly Avenue, Merritt Island, FL 32952, email the requisite ct anecdote. 48 pages of fun stuff. [email protected]. An impressive roster of writers contributed to this issue, focused on the 12.) TRAP DOOR #34, Robert Lichtman11037 general themse of and Artificial Intelligence. Broadway Terrace, Oakland CA 94611-1948. Email Greg Benford, Mike Resnick, Chris Garcia, Dick [email protected]. Although issue #34 is Lynch, Joseph R, Green, Michelle Bennett, Steven dated December 2018, it was one of my more Silver, and quite a few more, I was impressed with

32 Jim Ivers’ analysis of Ira Levin’s novel The Stepford (1889). Plott’s analysis looks a bit more closely at Wives. And here is that man Nic Farey again with the time travel aspects of each story than the “Artificial Insouciance,” an interesting look at the baseball elements, but I still found it uniquely issues involved with autonomous vehicles from entertaining and it was a delightful surprise finding someone who will have to deal with them as a Las it post on eFanzines without any particular warning. Vegas taxi driver, I thought this was a remarkably 18.) FADEAWAY #63, Robert Jennings, 29 good issue, generally free of crap despite the Whiting Road, Oxford, MA 01540-2035. Email proliferation of old white men in the ToC (including, [email protected]. FADEAWAY has now once again. me. Roll on, Big Log!). transitioned into an online publication, allowing 15.) TAFFish #1, Johan Anglemark and Geri Robert to decorate its pages with broad blocks of Sullivan, available at eFanzines.com. This snappy color. I always find at least one or two pieces of little fanzine provided interviews with Mike Lowrey interest in each issue. In #63, I was delighted to read and Ann Totusek, the two candidates in the recent Bob’s impressions of Quatermas and the Pit, one of North America to Europe race, won by Lowery. my favorite works of science fiction cinema. And Despite much tut-tutting, I think Ann sounds like an Gary Casey’s lengthy essay “Storming the Fort” was interesting character, and I hope we hear more from an entertaining reminder of how pervasive and her. Coverage of the Fan Fund Auction at the Dublin influential the has been ins cience fiction Worldcon is by far the most positive report from that and fandom. I always enjoy a fanzine that manages convention which I have read to date; the smiling to be about something, and Bob is master of that art. faces featured in the photographs prove that 19.) INCA #16, Rob Jackson, Chinthay, Nightingale someone was having fun. And Justin Ackroyd is Lane, Hambrook, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 gradually turning into Art Widner! U8H United Kingdom Email robjackson60@ 16.) WAVE WITHOUT A SHORE #3, Tom Becker, gmail.com. Corflu, the convention for fanzine fans, 2034 San Luis Ave. #1, Mountain View, CA 94043, is in transition; after 37 years, the generation of fans email to [email protected]. As one would expect, Mr, which created it is rapidly passing away, and it is an Becker takes several pages considering more open question if another, presumably younger group pressing issues such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, of fans will continue it. The most important material efforts to preserve the legacy of Susan Wood, and in INCA #16 is meant to make that continuation the improvements to infrastructure at fanac.org, possible – a crowd-sourced collection of “Notes for before eventually giving a few inches to the a Corflu Conrunner.” It would be lovely to see a diagnosis and treatment of his Hodgkin’s companion piece talking about the chemistry and Lymphoma. Cancer seems to have become an tone of the convention, but these bites are valuable involuntary shared interest of a lot of us in fandom on their own, and as Rob says, might help put on any now; I hope Tom will do another issue this year to sort of small convention. Some other favorite parts let us know how things are going. include Taral’s childhood memoir “There was a Hard Rain,” a fine folio of writing and art by Harry 17.) BASEBALL AND TIME TRAVEL, Bill Plott, Bell, “Pie in the Sky 2” and Dan Steffan’s brilliant 190 Crestview Circle, Montevallo, AL 35115, email cover. A good-humored issue. Brief Memo to Ian to [email protected]. Bill Plott is a longtime Maule: ALL zines are full of dead people now. contributor to SFPA, and several dozen copies have been posted a eFanzines.com. This was a one-shot 20.) CHUNGA #26, edited by Byers, Hooper and considering thre novels involving the subjects juarez: Roll, ye vast and treacherous log. What I mentioned in the title. These are Daryl Brock’s If I would point out to those who have not seen this Never Get Back (1990), W. P. Kinsella’s The Iowa issue is “Home is Like No Place There,” Randy’s Baseball Confederacy (1986) and A Connecticut account of his last trip to Micronesia. The version Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain available at eFanzines.com includes color photos.

Turpentine? Asinine? Calamine? Write to 11032 30th Ave. NE Seattle, WA 98125, or email [email protected].

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