TREASURE 1 June 2013 Mervyn R. Binns Jennifer Bryce Elaine Cochrane Ditmar Bruce Gillespie Dora Levakis John Litchen Malcolm McHarg Yvonne Rousseau Casey Wolfe and many others DJ Fractal by Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) TREASURE No. 1 June 2013 A fanzine published for the June 2013 mailing of ANZAPA and a few others The electronic version, available as a PDF file on http://efanzines.com, replaces the fanzine known as Scratch Pad. Edited and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard St., Greensborough VIC 3088. Phone: (03) 9435 7786. Email: [email protected]. Member fwa. Contents 3, 72 Editorial: Dive into the Treasure chest — Bruce Gillespie, with Elaine Cochrane and Mervyn Binns 5 Journey to Tuva — Dora Levakis 15 Postscript: My second visit to Tuva, July 2012 — Dora Levakis 17 Good horn, good brakes, good luck: A month in India — Jennifer Bryce 27 The sound of different drums: My life and science fiction, part 5 — John Litchen 43 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 Eliordeta :: Tony Thomas :: Kaaron Warren Patrick McGuire :: Lloyd Penney :: Jenny Bryce :: Steve Jeffery :: Doug Barbour Tara Judah :: Werner Koopmann :: Ron Drummond :: Murray MacLachlan & We Also Heard From 62 Feature letters of comment 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 our houseboat, Kerala’: photo by Jennifer Bryce. Photographs: As supplied by the authors of articles. 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 be of interest to SF/fantasy fans and other indulgent 22 years, good sense will prevail. friends. It’s stuff that I treasure, so I assume everybody First there was *brg*, my paper fanzine for ANZAPA else will treasure it as well. (Australia and New Zealand Amateur Publishing Asso- Scratch Pad, *brg*, and Cosmic Donut contain all my ciation). My fanzine under that name began in 1991, own non-SF writing from more than two decades, plus a although I had been a member of ANZAPA, off and on, wealth of material from correspondents such as John since 1968. Litchen and Jennifer Bryce. *brg* and Cosmic Donut have In 1995 I joined the British apa Acnestis with a paper been written primarily for the apas that contain them, fanzine called The Great Cosmic Donut of Life. (taken from including mailing comments. In Scratch Pad, I have been the title of a Ray Nelson short story from the 1960s). That deleting the mailing comments. fanzine continued until the death of Acnestis in 2005. What’s the problem? The problem is the confusion When Bill Burns began his website eFanzines.com, about numbering. Scratch Pad has always had a sequence which hosts a vast number of fanzines in PDF format, I different from that of the two fanzines it contains. It took all the good bits from both paper fanzines and seems much easier to drop *brg* as my ANZAPAzine of wrapped them up into a fanzine called Scratch Pad. general material, and restrict the title to my apazine of What links them all? They contain mainly material mailing comments. Hence: a bright new fanzine called that is usually not about SF or fantasy, but otherwise may Treasure. Why Treasure? Life is a treasure hunt. I’ve written that often enough. one of Brian Aldiss’s recent novels, The Cretan Teat, issued Not for money treasure, of course, but for all those by a very small British publisher. It’s a fine novel, which precious items that furnish a mind: evidence of a life well would have been Brian’s bestseller if it had been pub- lived. Elaine and I have a house full of books, fanzines, lished in the 1970s just after the Horatio Stubbs books. other types of magazines, photographs, CDs, DVDs, Blu- When I tried to find it on the Internet, it had disap- rays, and LPs. They pose a storage problem, but if I let peared. Therefore I was very pleased when John Litchen them go, I would be letting go bits of my life. Often their sent me his own copy. Thanks very much, John. most treasured feature has been the effort taken to find Every year David Russell sends, or often brings, from them. I spent nearly 50 years waiting to find a copy of Warrnambool to Greensborough, gifts for my birthday. ‘Memories of Maria’, one of only a few songs written by He has a telepathic ability to pick presents that I will find Roy Orbison for other people, in this case the guitarist really interesting. A few years ago he presented me with Jerry Byrd. I didn’t buy the single in 1962 because I did a small coffee grinder that Elaine and I have been using not have the spare cash. I did not hear it again until about ever since. If David chooses DVDs as gifts, they will be five years ago, when it turned up on a CD of Jerry Byrd’s DVDs I had been meaning to buy. David offers more than best singles. More recently, I borrowed from Tim Train 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 However, my favourites lists for 2012 have already ap- time around. It was going to feature my annual roundup peared in ANZAPA, so you will have to wait for the next of Favourite Books, Short Stories, CDs, Films, and Music. issue of SF Commentary. Meanwhile, sitting at the top of 3 this issue’s treasure chest are the articles you find here: friend, fine writer, and traveller to exotic places; and travel articles by Dora Levakis, who usually lives in John Litchen with the latest chapter of his life and times. Yarraville, Victoria, but is currently teaching in the Top The letter column is also very enjoyable. End of the Northern Territory; Jennifer Bryce, long-time 2012: sad notes Archie’s baby photos, 2006. Elaine 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 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 More recent pictures: Archie (l.) 2008 and (r.) 2011. 4 Continued on Page 72 Dora Levakis is a visual artist, project manager, and teacher involving individuals and communities in what she does. Journey to Tuva by Dora Levakis far reaches of their greatest wish and to go for it. Why Tuva? Why throatsinging? I wondered how, through habit, we easily become comfortable if not trapped within the parameters of what we regard as our greatest pain and our Life happens. But some years provide delightful greatest pleasure, nobly declaring one must know surprises when everything seems to fall into one’s limits. place. 1996 and 2010 were such delights. 1996 On a practical level I provided means by which saw me pulling out shelved information on a short students could gain results quickly. For most this course regarding breathing and meditation. It enabled them to become confident enough to was the Vibrational Breath Therapy technique, become responsible for undertaking more in- four lessons on how to A-U-M, taught in Mel- volved tasks. bourne by Sri Bala Ratnam. Also, during 1996 I became aware of Tuvan throatsinging. Access All 2010 saw me in Tuva. Fourteen years following Areas, fronted by Paul Grabowsky, an ABC TV my first encounter with the Tuvans, I was there. series on the voice, had aired. One episode fea- I was in the Republic of Tuva and had private tured male singers atop horseback in Tuva, a music lessons in its capital city of Kyzyl: four with place in remote Siberia, creating sounds that Zhenya Saryglar, a male member of the Tuvan seemed to emanate from deep within to surround National Orchestra, followed by ten with the space and yet, at the same time, to split into Choduraa Tumat, the founder of the first ever two, three, or more voices. I marvelled at this. all-female throatsinging group, Tyva Kyzy Where was the sound coming from? How on earth (Daughters of Tuva). did they do it? Before the lessons with Choduraa, I’d spent I played with my throat, pumping through some days in the countryside with her and a U-U-U sounds in rapid succession, as I was now handful of others, driving across the steppe, look- doing when checking for a relaxed throat while ing at yurts dotted in the far distance, staying chanting A-U-M.