The Art of Garthness #1 April 2015 Colophon THE ART OF GARTHNESS #1 is the retitled personalzine of Garth Spencer produced in April 2015, which is Garth’s and belongs to him and is his fanzine. Garth is moving and has changed his email to [email protected] and is in the process of rebuilding his website at http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~gartho. This fanzine is mostly set in Baskerville Old Face 12 point. This fanzine is not the fanzine you were looking for, but may be the fanzine you need. This fanzine offers to Odin, Thor and Bugs Bunny. This little fanzine went wee wee wee all the way home. This fanzine is available by email for locs, trade, contributions, a word that rhymes with orange, a naughty in the bushes, or simply by download from efanzines.com. Contents Since Our Last Episode ........................................................................................................................ 1 The Karma List ..................................................................................................................................... 3 The Secret Lore of Our Tribe .............................................................................................................. 4 Join the Anarcho-Surrealist Party! ...................................................................................................... 15 What I Recall About Formal Logic .................................................................................................... 18 Asatru ................................................................................................................................................... 22 The Problem of Magic ........................................................................................................................ 27 The Gelded Age .................................................................................................................................. 28 Art Credits Steve Stiles ...................................................................................................................................... cover The Internet (map of the drowned future Earth) ............................................................................ p. 1 The Internet (machine for kicking yourself in the ass) .................................................................... p. 2 The Internet (The Rules for Being Human) ................................................................................... p. 3 Photos of BCSFA members (no idea who took them – any hints welcome!) ......................... pp. 4, 9 VCON 3 program book cover .......................................................................................................... p. 9 Spider Robinson (who took this?) .................................................................................................. p. 11 WCSFA logo ................................................................................................................................... p. 14 Internet (Viking cat) ........................................................................................................................ p. 22 Internet (“Shieldwall!”) .................................................................................................................... p. 23 Internet (Norse board game) .......................................................................................................... p. 24 Internet (Nine Virtues) .................................................................................................................... p. 24 Internet (Elder Futhark) .................................................................................................................. p. 25 William Rotsler ...................................................................................................................... pp. 26, 29 ii SINCE OUR LAST EPISODE I apologize for being so long out of touch, without letting correspondents have a chance receive replies to their letters, or to receive something for the fanzines they sent me. I also apologize for not featuring fanzine reviews in this issue; I will spend the whole next issue on nothing else. # Things have been happening to our world, and to science fiction fandom, and last and least importantly, to me. Not all changes have been positive. If current affairs are anything to go by, then I understand why my father was such a committed union man, and where his drive and anger came from. Probably it’s time to be an active citizen … but how? Or, more specifically, who and what are the targets, and what is the strategy to apply to them? In science fiction fandom we have lost too many good people, for one thing, people such as Jeanne Robinson, Art Widner, Andrew Brechin, Darryl Huber, and a host of others. And disturbingly, the kind of aggressively deceitful movement we have seen in mundane politics has surfaced in science fiction, effectively taking over the Hugo Award nomination process. We have now to see who takes up arms against this effort at ballot-stuffing, and how. My own life has been pretty quiet – living in shared rental accommodations, working part-time as a secretary, looking after people’s homes and cats when they went away. But a sub-minimum income isn’t secure, and it is time to make future plans, if only to make some inept preparations for being old; and, perhaps, for the financial collapse of civilization. One of my perennial attempts to form a social group is to rejoin the Society for Creative Anachronism. Another is my correspondence and meetings with local members of the Asatru community, Heathen House on Facebook and Heathen Freehold of B.C. Several attempts to be individual, or at least not to Be Old, include founding the Anarcho- Surrealist Party on Facebook (among several other absurd groups); maintaining the B.C. Science Fiction Association website; joining the West Coast SF Association as a member-at-large; obtaining an instant online ordination in the Universal Life Church; opening a wikispaces account to post Canadian fanhistory online, in a form people can extend and revise; and other hobbies which, I begin to realize, distract me from my real goals, and diffuse my energies. What should I be doing with my life? By my definition of “should”, and nobody else’s? (from The Lost Patents: a machine for kicking yourself in the ass) # It has taken until my fifties to decide I have to live my own life, my own way, for my own purposes. The way I was raised convinced me, deep down, that life wasn’t about living your own life, so any statements to that effect just sounded as meaningless as a lot of things people say. This is not delayed adolescence. This is the sound of a natural conservative, feeling betrayed that nobody would come right out and say in plain English what everybody wants. Maybe I’m just obtuse. The Edwardian conventions of my parents were outdated when I was born, anyway; and for that matter, the usual career and life plan of the Eisenhower decade I was born into is not attainable for everybody, in the 21st century. In fact, some of us are seriously anticipating the breakdown of the high-energy civilization we inherited, for reasons of international finance as much as other threats. So I need to improvise my own design for living, in any case. One paradigm for making a life is the Maslow hierarchy – first a human will concentrate on your material needs, then on your social needs, then on something Maslow called “self-actualization”. It’s a problem to earn a living, as long as the local society holds together. But I have transferable skills and strengths. I think I can advertise my services as an editor, and maybe learn to be a web designer. This is a solvable problem. It’s a problem to find a community to belong to and a social position within it. In a left-handed, inadvertent way I have acquired a lot of acquaintances, and some real friends, but I really must learn to return hospitality and to be more sociable. This also is solvable, though my strengths are not in this area. See my silly hobby list above. Yes, I know I’m spreading myself too thin. Perhaps the most important problem is the one I keep deferring: a question of self-fulfilment, or accomplishing my purpose, or seeking something greater than self. Sometimes, I can remember my own purpose: To get things said, instead of obscured and falsified and concealed with diversions. To connect some dots. Maybe, to solve some problems, for myself and for others. So I The Art of Garthness #1 Page 2 April 2015 must make time to write, both stories and articles, in the time I have left. And yes, I realize I will have to set priorities. THE KARMA LIST Readers of my previous personalzines, such as One Swell Foop, all deserve an apology for the long lapse of time since my last publication. It took this long to get clear in my mind some of the issues I will express here. # Paul Carpentier asked at VCON, a couple of years ago, what it meant when I complained that people don’t tell me what they expect. Well, normal people normally expect others to come The Art of Garthness #1 Page 3 April 2015 equipped with a normal background of world knowledge, common folklore including outright nonsense, and an understanding of how normal people act – the kind of thing that, really, only sociologists or anthropologists perceive explicitly – and these are just the things I keep missing, or not picking up unless they’re pointed out. Maybe I should have understood better how I saw people talk and act, or maybe