Head! #9 Porpoise Song Contents It’s the sunday before Corflu. Outside the sun is shining, boats sail carefree and indolent on Novas, Nazis and Natural Selection 3 the blue waters of the harbour. Even the seagulls Christina Lake are out having fun, gliding across the sky, in- stead of bickering with each other on the rooftops Waking the Kraken 7 of the student flats opposite. Only I’m left in- Doug Bell side, trying to finish off the fanzine (and Doug too, of course, but he’s got his PS3 to play, so How to make a Science Fiction Movie 11 doesn’t mind about the boats and the gulls.) Pete Crump Yes, it’s a proud and foolishly time-consuming thing to be a faned! Bof! The Secret History of France 16 according to the Metro Sometimes I feel a bit cut off from fandom Christina Lake down here in Cornwall. In spite of the Internet, there’s nothing to beat face to face conversa- LOCS 19 tions with fellow fans to spark off ideas and pre- You lot! vent the day-to-day reality of work and other responsibilities from taking over. It’s that con- Art versation which is essential for the making of Covers - the One, the Only, Brad Foster! fanzines. Without it, the best intentions in the Headings on page 3 and 7 by ace fanboy, TAFF world will wilt and die (a bit like my Farmville plants, winner and all-round great guy Steve Green. once I got bored after Christmas!) and our plan We are please to welcome back, albeit from to produce two issues a year of Head! (and the far side of the world now John Toon, whose maybe a couple of perzines on the side) comes artwork brightens up pages 5, 20 and 25. to be revealed as delusional as my plans to lose Artwork on pages 15, 19 , 21 and 22 by the weight without cutting down on drinking beer! legendary William Rostler (as last ish kindly And perhaps that’s why we always seem to be donated by Sandra Bond). Anyone sitting on writing about conventions. Well, they are our a stack of un-used Rostlers let us know and only real contact with other fans, so they’re we’ll take them off your hands! bound to make a big impression. I’m not sure The Jeff Hawke strip on Pg 8 is of course by how we’re going to cope with two conventions Sydney Jordan. only a fortnight apart; it will either blow our poor Photos on pages 12-14 by kind permission of parochial minds, or turn us into publishing Pete Crump from his film “Harvest”. supergiants! Allt the other stuff is the fault of the Headitors. Luckily we continue to be on the mailing list for a Head! #9 was thrown together for Corflu Co- number of brilliant and inspiring fanzines. Is it balt and Odyssey 2010 by Christina Lake and just me, or is the quality of fanzines going up, Doug Bell somewhere between Olympic Ice- despite the much discussed decline in numbers? Hockey and the end of March. As every fan of Maybe this is something to investigate for a fu- 60’s psych-popsters The Zombies knows, this ture issue? year’s Eastercon committee can’t spell the name of their con correctly - it should be Odessey. Well, what have we got here to justify this little exercise in self-denial? All the usual fripperies from Drop us a line at: Doug and I. A few snippets on the last Novacon, a little bit of Wyndham, and a quirky soupcon of [email protected] hot air from the Paris metro. Then we have [email protected] Pete Crump, narrating the dramatic saga of his venture into science fiction film-making. Steve Or with locs, letters, love and liquor to: Green has come through with some great page headings, despite the lamentably short notice 35 Gyllyng Street we gave him and Brad Foster has yet again Falmouth amazed and gratified us with another fabulous Cornwall cover! TR11 3EL, UK. - Christina 2 Porpoise Song Conventions March 2010 Last year Novacon finally moved to a new venue in Nottingham which was a widely welcomed and positive move, but seemed to add a signficant amount of time to the drive from Cornwall. Train fares to Nottingham are astronomical, and it was not till after we’d done the drive that I realised that maybe we ‘d reached the tipping point in the viability of the two day Novacon... It was Friday night at Novacon and I was trying Nevertheless, I was pleased to be there at to explain to my friend Juli why I’d driven all the Novacon. Doug and I had arrived a couple way from Cornwall to Nottingham in some frankly of hours earlier, and we’d quickly hooked up quite dodgy weather to attend this particular with Pete Crump, smug from his bargain convention. First Class journey from London, Lennart Uhlin, Doug’s Swedish best buddy, and “What’s the big attraction?” asked Juli, trying to Clarrie and Tim, the fannish heart of the be diplomatic. From her tone, I guessed what Bristol SF Group. The new hotel seemed she really meant to say was, “What on earth to promise all kinds of possibilities of possessed you!” reconfiguration of the Novacon experience, even if the bar staff didn’t seem too I’ve known Juli since we were at university comfortable with handling the real ale (the together. I’ve even taken her to a con before. Baa Baa Black Sheep, which like Mary’s lamb How hard could it be to explain? “Uhm, Justina had followed us from Walsall) or meeting Robson, she’s the guest of honour. I’ve read the unexpectedly high demand for drinks one of her books.” Okay, I didn’t like it as much from their new guests. as I’d hoped I might, but that’s not the point. I did want to give Justina another chance. “And The bottom line was I felt at home and then there’s a woman talking about Darwin. And happy to be back at Novacon. But how to a book room...” communicate that to Juli? I’ve driven all the way to Nottingham to stand in a beer queue, I could feel myself running out of steam. We talk to a Swede and see some friends who were sitting in the hotel restaurant, and Juli could we could see any time in Bristol? see for herself that this wasn’t a glamorous occasion. And although my friends had been Doug later supplied the word I was lacking. there when she arrived, no-one since had shown Community. It’s not about seeing friends, any evidence that they knew me, let alone that but about reconnecting with the community. they might constitute a reason for driving six hours to be there. Maybe fandom was easier to explain in the 80s. Perhaps I should ask Juli what she Usually I think of Novacon as a well earned thought of the convention she attended: break, after the toughest months of my working the post-Worldcon relaxacon in Leicester calendar. But this year, I’d been to Paris with where we re-enacted the Worldcon with the Doug in October, and taken several days off help of soft toys (interpretive dance not the week before to help out my mother, as having been invented as a fannish she’d broken her hip. In fact, the real break I communication medium at that point!) I needed was a quiet weekend at home. think I had fanzines as my justification back Conventions 3 Head! #9 Conventions then. I was a fanzine writer and I believed to clean certain parts of her anatomy. I could that fanzines were important. But I could hardly see there were some fans round the table say that at Novacon, where fanzines were quite happy to put up with the fixed showerhead invisible, and the death of the Novas was high in exchange for the image of Kate’s on the agenda. handstands, but even they had to agree that the lack of a bath might be a handicap to After Juli had gone home, I rejoined the gang stocking beer for a room party. Dave Hicks just in time to hear Steve Green suggest that reminisced about how his partner Cat had what we needed was a NaNoWriMo for fanzines. imagined the beer being poured straight into We could hold it in September so the fanzines the bath when she first heard about the could be published in time to be eligible for the legendary American bath tubs full of beer. Now Novas. I was full of enthusiasm for the idea. it would all run away down the plug hole. Not How difficult could it be for fan editors all around that there seemed any danger of a room party the country to devote the month of September breaking out. An invitation to a private wine to pubbing their ish? After all, wasn’t that the tasting seemed far more likely. norm in Leeds back in the ‘80s? Anyway, it couldn’t be as hard as writing a novel in a month. Next morning I was still pondering how to explain There was only one barrier to the success of the attraction of Novacon, especially considering the concept. What to call it? Somehow, that the only item on the morning’s programme NaFaWriMo, didn’t have much of a ring to it.