Sf Commentary 84
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SF COMMENTARY 84 November 2012 80 pages IN THIS ISSUE: Brian ALDISS Merv & Helena BINNS Russell BLACKFORD David BOUTLAND DITMAR (Dick JENSSEN) Bruce GILLESPIE Carol KEWLEY Tim MARION Mark PLUMMER Colin STEELE Ray WOOD Cover: Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) SF COMMENTARY 84 November 2012 80 pages SF COMMENTARY No. 84, November 2012, is edited and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard Street, Greensborough, VIC 3068, Australia. Phone: 61-3-9435 7786. Preferred means of distribution .PDF file from eFanzines.com at http://efanzines.com/SFC/SFC84P.PDF or from my email address: [email protected]. Front and back covers: Ditmar (Dick Jenssen): ‘The Aliens’ A version of the back cover first appeared as the front cover of SFC 80A, which did not have a print edition, and was posted only as a PDF file on eFanzines.com. At that time, Dick Jenssen gave it the title ‘The Alien’. It was based on an idea by Vida Weiss (Yvonne Rousseau’s daughter). She set the following problem: ‘If you stood at the centre of a (regular) pentagonal room with mirrored walls, how would your reflection appear?’ Dick answered this by using Vue 8 graphic mod- elling software. The result reminded Dick of Murray Leinster’s classic SF tale ‘The Aliens’. A full explanation of both the process involved in producing the graphics and the stories they suggest can be found in SF Commentary 80A, pp. 5–6. Graphics Grant Gittus (p. 9); Robert Mizerek (p. 11); Anders Sandberg (p. 12); Sheila White (p. 14); Carol Kewley (p. 26); Jack Kirby (p. 52). Photographs Mervyn Binns (pp. 3, 5, 7); George Turner Collection (p. 6); Jennifer Bryce (p. 8); Helena Binns (p. 8); David Boutland (p. 13); Peter Weston (p. 16). 3 I MUST BE TALKING ABOUT MY FRIENDS 19 BRUCE GILLESPIE’S FANZINES, 1968–2012: Editor THE COMPLETE CATALOGUE 8 Damien Broderick Mark Plummer Editor Russell Blackford 26 DARK MATTER IN THE U.S. FILM LET ME IN 13 David Boutland Ray Wood David Boutland The Editor 43 THE PRISONER RECAPTURED: 15 Other pioneers A REVIEW OF THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY The Editor COLLECTOR’S EDITION DVD SET OF 16 Tribute to Harry Harrison (1925–2012) THE PRISONER Brian Aldiss Tim Marion Bruce Gillespie 53 THE FIELD 17 THE STRANGE CASE OF BRUCE R. GILLESPIE Colin Steele Mark Plummer Bruce Gillespie 2 I must be talking about my friends At school in 1961, I had two friends. One was the co- Gully, inviting me to meet the gang — the editorial publisher of my first fanzine, before I had heard of collective of ASFR — a few weeks later. In December science fiction fanzines. After our family moved from the 1967, I met many of the people who would have the most city to the country, I lost contact with that friend, but influence on my life for the next 45 years. kept in touch with the other until he left for Sydney in During that weekend, John Bangsund was amiable, 1972. I didn’t hear from him again, but I discovered that but I found it hard to talk to him. Lee Harding, a he died in 1994. published author, and one of the best writers for ASFR, At Melbourne University, 1965 to 1967, I had two was delighted to meet me. I stayed at his place on the friends. We would meet for coffee in the afternoon at the weekend when his wife Carla was in hospital, having just Baillieu Library coffee shop. One of them kept in touch given birth to their third child. Rob Gerrand was my age, until his marriage broke up in 1979. During the 1980s friendly. He had just been appointed assistant editor of he cut contacts with all his old friends. The other lived ASFR. Damien Broderick seemed inscrutable. George in my area. We would meet occasionally on the street in Turner was the star critic of ASFR, and a published Fitzroy, but we moved to the suburbs in 2004, but I’ve novelist. His face and manner were craggy, and he was not seen him since. very difficult to talk to. John Bangsund’s delightful first Late in 1967, the year I finished my degree at Mel- wife Diane, however, had no trouble talking to George. bourne University, I wrote to John Bangsund, the editor The next day I met ASFR co-editor John Foyster and of the magazine Australian Science Fiction Review, enclos- his first wife Elizabeth for the first time, and they seemed ing two articles I had written about the works of Philip hard to talk to. I got along well with Tony Thomas, who K. Dick. John rang me at Bacchus Marsh from Ferntree was engaged to John Foyster’s sister Myfanwy. Auctioneer Dick Jenssen (standing), 1968 Melbourne SF Conference held at the Melbourne SF Club; with (l. to r.): Tony Thomas, Lee Harding, John Foyster. The name tags show the penny-farthing symbol from the Patrick McGoohan Prisoner TV show. (Photo: Mervyn Binns.) 3 Was there ever such a group as this? Not in my girlfriend, and enthused about many of the books and experience. Australia has had groups of writers, usually records I enjoyed. He published a good fanzine, Rata- centred on university departments or the literary maga- plan, and he had Big Plans. In 1968 he started ANZAPA zines. It has had readers’ groups, usually meeting as (the Australian and New Zealand Amateur Publishing Council of Adult Education book clubs. The science Association), and included me as a member, although I fiction world has been unique: writers mixing with read- still had no way to print my own fanzines. ers; readers publishing their own amateur magazines, called ‘fanzines’. Most of the people who were not pub- In 1969 I was sent to Ararat Technical School to attempt lished authors called themselves ‘fans’. ASFR, a fanzine, to teach secondary school. This was my first real job, so was also an authoritative journal of fine writing about its I hoped I would have the money to start my own fanzine. field, the very model of the type of magazine I wanted to Most of the articles and reviews were kindly donated by find a way to publish. John Bangsund, who was in the process of closing ASFR During Easter 1968 I attended my first SF convention, and starting a new fanzine, Scythrop. George Turner was called the Melbourne SF Conference. Everybody’s name the first writer to send me newly written reviews. John tag showed the shape of the penny farthing bike, the Bangsund offered me his mailing list. However, I still did publicity image for Patrick McGoohan’s TV series The not own a duplicator that I could use to print the issue. Prisoner, some of whose episodes I had been able to watch I typed 66 stencils for the first issue of SF Commentary. Lee at a friend’s place in Bacchus Marsh late the previous Harding, John Foyster and Leigh Edmonds actually year. I witnessed for the first time panel discussions and printed, collated, and sent out the first and second issues the auction conducted by Dr Dick Jenssen, an efferves- — a mighty task, a debt of time and effort I could never cent wit. I tried talking to the members of the ASFR team, repay. the only people I knew, but they were too busy during I wanted to publish a fanzine that reached out to the the convention to talk to a neofan such as me. I made SF community throughout the world. More than half the some new friends, including Tom Newlyn and Alf van addresses that John Bangsund had given me were in der Poorten from Sydney, and Pedr Gurteen from Mel- America, Britain, and Europe. At first SF Commentary was bourne. I lost contact with Tom in 1971, and Alf died a meant to be a touchstone critical magazine, but I didn’t few years ago. Pedr popped upon Facebook recently. have the resources to make it look like Peter Weston’s At that convention, most of us were fans, people who Speculation or John Bangsund’s ASFR, let alone the daz- published fanzines, went to conventions, and and hung zling layout and artwork of Richard Bergeron’s Warhoon. out together at places such as the Melbourne SF Club or SF Commentary looked modest, aimed not so much at the the front counter of McGill’s Newsagency, presided over fledgling academic critics of the early 1970s as at the by Merv Binns, president of the Club, or around John ordinary readers who wanted something much more Bangsund’s kitchen table. substantial written about their favourite reading matter The few published authors at the convention tended than the puffery found in newspaper or prozine reviews to gather in a corner, conducting vigorous conversa- columns. tions, laughing a lot, or glowering at each other. They The rewards of publication were quick and startling. included David Boutland (who published under the SF Commentary 1 had been mailed out a few weeks before name David Rome), Lee Harding, Wynne Whiteford (a my second convention, the 1969 Easter Convention, freelance journalist whose first published story had ap- held both at the Melbourne SF Club and out at the Capri peared in the 1930s), Damien Broderick, and Jack Wod- Theatre, Murrumbeena. As I walked up the narrow hams, who had travelled from Brisbane to be the Guest wooden stairs to the clubrooms on my first day of that of Honour. He was being published regularly in John convention, local fan Bernie Bernhouse announced Campbell’s Analog magazine, based in New York, a clear from the top of the stairs: ‘Here’s Bruce Gillespie!’ The step above being published in Britain in Ted Carnell’s year before, nobody knew who I was.