Portable Storage One
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PORTABLE STORAGE ONE Portable Storage One Cover by Tracy Nusser Portable Storage One Editorial (3) Imperfect Recollections by ALJO SVOBODA (6) Warning: here be sercon Sort of Like Tolkien by DALE NELSON (13) Musings of an Unliterary Man by WILLIAM BREIDING (30) The Pivot Point by JOHN FUGAZZI (44) Blue by JANET K. MILLER (50) Not a Good Day to Die by VINCENT MCHARDY (57) LOC$ (62) The Gorgon of Poses by G. SUTTON BREIDING (68) Edited by William Breiding. Available in hard copy for the usual: letters of comment, trade, contributions of writing and visuals, or, if hard-pressed, five bucks. It is also available at the world’s largest online retailer, and, eventually, may be hung at eFanzine.com; also available as a .pdf upon request from: [email protected] Please send letters of comment and submissions of all kinds to: [email protected]. Hard copy trades: street address was on your mailing envelope, barring that use [email protected] for further enquiry. Artists this issue: Grant Canfield (2), G. Sutton Breiding (w/ help from Niven & Farmer) (3), Jim Shull (5), William Breiding (30, 31, 35, 40, 42, 52, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62, 70), Dale Nelson (43, 67), Frank Vacanti (44), Janet K. Miller (50). All others fair use internet capture. Entire contents © 2019 William M. Breiding. All rights revert to contributors upon publication. Crow’s Caw William Breiding Although my fannish origins began in the trufan camp, and as a neofan I reveled in faannish hijinks, I’ve always been a closet sercon fan. I started collecting sf criticism fairly early on (Blish, Knight, etc.) but kept it stashed away in secret spots as though it were porn. It took about twenty years for me to come out, when I subscribed to Bruce Gillespie’s SF Commentary and David Hartwell’s New York Review of Science Fiction, and had locs published in both. Strictly speaking, that’s not really true. I’ve been striped from the beginning. From the first issue of Starfire, published in February of 1974, but brain-childed during late 1973, I ran a piece by Gary Warne about the necessity of fantastic literature’s ability to instill wonder and create beauty in our lives. From there I went on to publish more general criticism and reviews, all surrounded by personal essays, humor, poetry, and yes, even fiction, stories by such fannish luminaries as Donn Brazier and Dale C. Donaldson. I’d also scheduled the appearance of Ben Indick’s gloriously romantic “Maeve by Moonlight”, but I must have typed it on a bunch of old stencils; they deteriorated rapidly as the ink hit them, and the imprint on the fuzzy Fibertone paper became nothing but a big inky blob. Never the perfectionist (understatement) I ran the issue with a big hole between pages 26 and 41, and never got around to publishing Ben’s story. In this regard I harkened back to the EO-fannish ways of First Fandom, where fiction was considered a natural part of a fanzine. And I may publish fiction in future issues of Portable Storage. Just saying. And yes, this is the first issue of a new run of a fanzine. It took some convincing. I was reluctant to make the commitment. To the future. To the editorial state of mind. To the financial drain. But after issuing Rose Motel I knew that publishing my ish was a now or never situation. At the moment Print on Demand (POD) technology is at its most streamlined and will probably never get any cheaper. Of course you have to buy into the format, which feels unfannish to some. But hey! It’s the 21st century. Mutate or die! The urgent combination of aging (I’m now 62) and still having a (somewhat) discretionary income (highly unlikely when I retire) is propelling me. You might ask, why not just do a digital fanzine. Answer: I’m not a digital kind of guy. I have this problem with reading on- screen, one that I’ve come to understand is a general population problem: scrolling causes skimming. Any digital fanzine I want to read, and take seriously, I have to print out, hence, I read very few digital fanzines, and remain limited and old school in my fanzine reading, and ideas of production (hard copy). I have been forcing myself, with the acquisition of an iPad, to spend more time with digital fanzines, attempting to rewire my brain, so that I can enjoy such great digital fanzines as Peter Young’s White Pages and Big Sky. And when Bruce Gillespie’s fanzines go entirely digital I would be bereft without them. So: mutate or die. I would like to say Portable Storage is the first of a projected long run of a fanzine, and I hope that it is. (Someone one in the Bay Area Punk-Fan crowd has to pick up where Rich Coad left off!) I have no idea of frequence, but I’m hoping for at least twice yearly. Like Starfire of old, I hope to publish a real genzine, one that encompasses all of my varied interests. This first issue is by design top-heavy with sercon, dominated by Dale Nelson’s Tolkien- related piece, my own piece discussing six different books, and John Fugazzi’s piece on the Beatles. Book and music talk is high on my list of pleasurable things. If an author can also pull in personal thoughts, as well as ones bookish or musical, so much the better. Receiving Alva Svoboda’s fannish memoir of the Moffatts, and the Outlander Los Angeles scene of the early 1970s, pretty much knocked my socks off. It was the ideal submission, and Page | 4 completely unexpected, and I was thrilled to get it. The other pieces by Janet, Vince, and Sutton hit all the buttons: personal essays and poetic screeds. In future issues I hope to also include fanzine reviews, humor, fan history, more things bookish and musical, and always, the personal essay. Fanzines are a labor of love, given away for free, at the expense of their publisher. Coin of the realm—you know the drill—is feedback: locs—letters of comment—and trades, not necessarily of just other fanzines, but all kinds of groovy things. And of course, contributing to upcoming issues: essays, art, photos, and cover paintings (yes, please!). I take the obligations of fanzining seriously—it’s a call and response—as an editor it is what you thrive on. Which brings me to the sticky question of how to CONTACT me. Being of the old school, as I am, I’m loathe to forego the inclusion of a street address, my own and the contributors, and letter writers—it’s a fannish tradition and means much to those who remember when it was a proud and lonely thing to be a science fiction fan—but it may be necessary to forego, since Portable Storage will be available through online retailers and probably at some point hung at eFanzine.com. Privacy issues, as well as hacking, and identity theft are serious and real. But email addresses only make certain types of CONTACT one step harder. If you want to send me your hard copy fanzine (yes, please!) you have to email me to get a mailing address; if I run across your name in a fanzine and it has only your email I have to CONTACT you for a street address. You get the idea. Of course, to all of you receiving Portable Storage, my return address will be on the envelope. Be sure to save it if you want to send me a fanzine (yes, please!). Future Letter Writers (yes, please!): only your email address will appear in this fanzine unless you specifically request I publish your street address. Future Fanzine Reviewers (yes, please!): include only my email address in your review for further inquiry. CONTACT! [email protected] Page | 5 1972 would have been the year Aljo Svoboda was fourteen. I would have been fifteen and yet to have discovered fandom, living in the mountains of southern West Virginia. By the time our paths crossed Aljo had already established himself as a fannish boywonder (and gotten over it). It’s possible we met in the flesh before 1976—I have a vague memory of a tall, slim, shadowy figure on a dark, wet stairwell in San Francisco—but certainly we shook hands and smiled selfconsciously at each other at the Worldcon—Big MAC—in 1976. Since then our friendship has been punctuated by long silences and moments of rhapsody and startlement. Imperfect Recollections: June Moffatt Aljo Svoboda We’re All Bozos on this Bus Getting to know the Moffatts is tangled in my memories with getting to know about Los Angeles in the early 1970s, of course. I knew the industrial landscapes and wastelands courtesy of my dad’s peripatetic shopwork, but the city itself (the cities, really) was revealed only through my increasing involvement in fandom at age fourteen. Via a couple of Placentia fans, Ed Green and Connor Cochran (then Freff), I made physical contact with fandom and ultimately was introduced to the marvelous Moffatts. My first clear recollection of Len and June’s company is sitting in their living room with Ed and Freff listening to excerpts of the Firesign Theater and Emerson Lake and Palmer eagerly curated by Freff, who asserted that ELP was the modern equivalent of Bach and Beethoven combined. At that age, I had nothing to say to my elders (and I spent a lot of time saying so), but the equanimity with which they all treated me, and especially the hospitality of Len and June, went an enormous way toward making me feel a grown-up (of sorts).