Treasure 1 June 2013 Mervyn R. Binns Jennifer Bryce Elaine Cochrane Ditmar Bruce Gillespie Dora Levakis John Litchen Malcolm McHarg Yvonne Rousseau Casey Wolf and many others DJ Fractal by Ditmar Treasure No. 1 June 2013 First publication: June 2013 mailing of ANZAPA. Written and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard St., Greensborough VIC 3088. Phone: (03) 9435 7786. Email: [email protected]. Member fwa. 3 Editorial: Dive into the Treasure chest — Bruce Gillespie, plus Elaine Cochrane and Mervyn R. Binns 15 Journey to Tuva — Dora Levakis 29 Postscript: My second trip to Tuva, July 2012 — Dora Levakis 32 Good horn, good brakes, good luck: A month in India — Jennifer Bryce 48 The sound of different drums: My life and science fiction, part 5 — John Litchen 55 Letters of comment Taral Wayne :: Tim Marion :: Steve Sneyd :: Andrew Darlington :: Alan Sandercock :: Ned Brooks :: Gillian Polack :: Dora Levakis :: Jerry Kaufman :: Andy Robson :: Elaine Cochrane :: Robert Elordieta :: Tony Thomas :: Kaaron Warren :: Werner Koopmann :: Patrick McGuire :: Lloyd Penney :: Jenny Bryce :: Steve Jeffery :: Doug Barbour :: Tara Judah :: Ron Drummond :: Murray MacLachlan :: & We Also Heard From 100 Feature letters: The real story of Harry Potter and Voldemort — Yvonne Rousseau The loc that would not die — Casey Wolf ‘High Society’ and John Hammond — Malcolm McHarg Illustrations Front cover: DJ Fractal by Ditmar (Dick Jenssen). Back cover: ‘Sunset on out houseboat, Kerala’ by Jennifer Bryce. Photographs: p. 5, 82: Elaine Cochrane. Pp. 6, 8, 82: Dick Jenssen. P. 9: Irwin Hirsh. P. 10: Jeanette Gillespie. Pp. 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27: Dora Levakis. Pp. 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 87: Jennifer Bryce. Pp. 49, 51, 54, 66, 67, 69, 70: John Litchen. P. 85: Bruce Gillespie. Pp. 92, 93: Werner Koopmann. 2 Editorial: Dive into the Treasure chest Why change the name of this fanzine? Because it’s had three names since the late 1990s. After 22 years, good sense What links them all? They contain mainly material that is usually not about will prevail. SF or fantasy, but otherwise may be of interest to SF/fantasy fans and other indulgent friends. It’s stuff that I treasure, so I assume everybody else will First there was *brg*, my paper fanzine for ANZAPA (Australia and New treasure it as well. Zealand Amateur Publishing Association). My fanzine under that name began in 1991, although I had been a member of ANZAPA, off and on, since Scratch Pad, *brg*, and Cosmic Donut contain all my own non-SF writing from 1968. more than two decades, plus a wealth of material from correspondents such as John Litchen and Jennifer Bryce. *brg* and Cosmic Donut have been written In 1995 I joined the British apa Acnestis with a paper fanzine called The Great primarily for the apas that contain them, including mailing comments. In Cosmic Donut of Life. (taken from the title of a Ray Nelson short story from Scratch Pad, I have been deleting the mailing comments. the 1960s). That fanzine continued until the death of Acnestis in 2005. What’s the problem? The problem is the confusion about numbering. Scratch When Bill Burns began his website eFanzines.com, which hosts a vast number Pad has always had a sequence different from that of the two fanzines it of fanzines in PDF format, I took all the good bits from both paper fanzines contains. It seems much easier to drop *brg* as my ANZAPAzine of general and wrapped them up into a fanzine called Scratch Pad. material, and restrict the title to my apazine of mailing comments. Hence: a bright new fanzine called Treasure. 3 Why Treasure? Life is a treasure hunt. I’ve written that often enough. Not for money treasure, small British publisher. It’s a fine novel, which would have been Brian’s of course, but for all those precious items that furnish a mind: evidence of a bestseller if it had been published in the 1970s just after the Horatio Stubbs life well lived. Elaine and I have a house full of books, fanzines, other types books. When I tried to find it on the Internet, it had disappeared. Therefore of magazines, photographs, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and LPs. They pose a I was very pleased when John Litchen sent me his own copy. Thanks very storage problem, but if I let them go, I would be letting go bits of my life. much, John. Often their most treasured feature has been the effort taken to find them. I spent nearly 50 years waiting to find a copy of ‘Memories of Maria’, one of Every year David Russell sends, or often brings, from Warrnambool to only a few songs written by Roy Orbison for other people, in this case the Greensborough, gifts for my birthday. He has a telepathic ability to pick guitarist Jerry Byrd. I didn’t buy the single in 1962 because I did not have the presents that I will find really interesting. A few years ago he presented me spare cash. I did not hear it again until about five years ago, when it turned with a small coffee grinder that Elaine and I have been using ever since. If up on a CD of Jerry Byrd’s best singles. More recently, I borrowed from Tim David chooses DVDs as gifts, they will be DVDs I had been meaning to buy. Train one of Brian Aldiss’s recent novels, The Cretan Teat, issued by a very David offers more than gifts, I think: he elevates gifts to the status of treasure. Dip into Treasure 1 ... Treasure 1 is not quite the treasure chest I intended this time around. It was find here: travel articles by Dora Levakis, who usually lives in Yarraville, going to feature my annual roundup of Favourite Books, Short Stories, CDs, Victoria, but is currently teaching in the Top End of the Northern Territory; Films, and Music. However, my favourites lists for 2012 have already appeared Jennifer Bryce, long-time friend, fine writer, and traveller to exotic places; in ANZAPA, so you will have to wait for the next issue of SF Commentary. and John Litchen, with the latest chapter of his life and times. The letter Meanwhile, sitting at the top of this issue’s treasure chest are the articles you column is also very enjoyable. The trouble with In-Your-Facebook is that you may be talking to your Friends, Facebook. They’re in ANZAPA, or on the various e-lists or the SF Commentary but you don’t often talk to your friends. You send a random message into the mailing list. So here are some matters I’ve jotted on Facebooks or in the aether; it’s seen by some of your Friends, but most of your friends are not on ANZAPA-only edition of *brg*, but not yet covered elsewhere. 4 2012: sad notes Elaine Cochrane writes, on Saturday, 9 June 2012: A few days ago I found the receipt from the local animal shelter, dated 22 June 2006, for ‘One kitten’. That purry black kitten grew to be our huge, fluffy, beautiful, sweet Archie. In late 2007 Archie had his first bout of acute kidney disease. He spent a week on a drip at the vet’s and although he would have had some permanent kidney damage he seemed to make a complete recovery and he soon regained all the joie de vivre a young cat should have. A few weeks ago his kidneys malfunctioned (Top) Archie’s baby photos, 2006. (Bottom:) More recent pictures: Archie (l.) 2008 and (r.) 2011. again. Again a week on a drip and his blood tests seemed to indicate a return to within, or close to, normal, but this time he just didn’t bounce back. We tried everything we could to start and keep him eating but it reached the stage where it would have been cruel as well as pointless to keep trying. Yesterday I had the vet make a housecall to save him the terror of the final trip. He is buried near the bay tree. Give all your beasties a cuddle from me. Elaine 5 Thanks to friends who sent commiserations on the death of Archie. He’s Bruno Kautzner is someone I would never have heard of if he had not actually been missed most by Flicker, Harry, and Polly. They all became fussy bumped into Dick Jenssen on the street in Carnegie in the 1990s. Bruno had about their food for months. Nobody would eat the usual beef strips, so we been a member of the Melbourne SF Club many years ago, but had lost had to try other things, including cans of the luxury food we had bought to contact with everybody from those days. Dick encouraged him and his wife try to tempt Archie to eat during his final fortnight. Later, they wanted only Keren to join the monthly film group hosted by Race and Iola Mathews. We meat bought from Safeway. had dinners with them in Carnegie and they visited us at Greensborough. It was a great shock to find that somebody so filled with energy should have Polly went on strike altogether. Was she suffering from the same problems become very ill very fast, struggled to return to normal life, then have been that killed Archie? No. Her kidneys were functioning normally, but she had knocked out by acute kidney failure over one weekend. some kind of infection, and some kind of liver dysfunction. She had suffered from lots of bouts of cystisis of the bladder when she was very young.