PORTABLE STORAGE TWO Portable Storage Two Autumn 2019 AMAZING STORIES For Eggheads 3…. Editorial 8…. Twilight of the APAs By Alva Svoboda 15…. Oh No! By Cheryl Cline 22…. The Quest for Devil’s Food By Don Herron 27…. Reality, Viewed From Providence By Rich Coad 32…. All the Times I Didn’t Meet R.E.M. By James C. Bodie 37…. From Pages Cast By Billy Wolfenbarger 40…. Inquiring Minds By Dale Nelson 50…. Punctuated Equilibrium and the Heart Sutra By Jeanne N. Bowman 52…. LOC$ 56…. Lifecycle of a Fanzine Fan By Michael Bracken 72…. The Gorgon of Poses By G. Sutton Breiding Unsolved Mystery (throughout) By AC Kolthoff Edited by William Breiding. Available in hard copy for the usual: letters of comment, trade, contributions of writing and visuals, or endowments of cash. Available as a pdf download at efanizines.com. Please send letters of comment and submissions of all kinds to: [email protected]. Hard copy trades: street ad- dress is on your mailing envelope. Thanks to Mustafa for last minute technical advice. Portable Storage is a semi-annual publication. The submission deadline for the Spring 2020 issue is January 31, 2020. Entire contents © 2019 William Breiding. All rights revert to contributors upon publication. 2 Artists in this issue Simon K. Agree (front cover) William Breiding (3-left, 6, 39) Guy Péne du Boise (3-right) Collage Werks: by Fernando Villa Senór (7, 31, 35) Kurt Erichsen (4) Dave Barnett (8) Steve Stiles (22, 36) Banksy (37) Dale Nelson (41, 42, 47) Jeanne N. Bowman (50, 51) AC Kolthoff (52, 73) Harry 0. Morris (72) Crow’s Caw Portrait Project: William M. Breiding Kent Moomaw by Dan Steffan (76) Go to efanzines.com and check out Alan White’s Sky- liner. You will witness the future of fanzine publish- Kent Johnson (Back Cover) ing, as jumpy, fervent, and evocative as a snake han- dler. As old fans and tired continue to fall like flies in All others fair use internet an autumn frost, hopefully a younger, more savvy gen- eration of fans will use the hyper effervescent (and al- so evanescent) Alan White zines as a guidepost. Full use of color, crazy, offbeat layout afforded by various cap- ture. types of publishing software, hyperlinks going every which way; you name it, it’s stuffed in there. And un- accountable enthusiasm. When geezer Alan finally goes, his zombie reincarnation will return to eat your brains—and pub its ish. Most fanzines on efanzines.com are predicated in style on the old hardcopy method. While some of them re- main very pretty in-state, they are also static. Portable Storage will cop that plea—but I’m doing it by design: 3 flogging the horse unto death, old school and sometimes resistant to change. My per- style. sonality has never been computer-friendly and I’ve had difficulty adjusting to efan- “This is clearly the next step in the evolution zines. I will always prefer hardcopy. But now of fanzine production, so let’s ride this suck- that 2020 is just a few months away it be- er”—Brad Foster, from the locs, talking came obvious that I needed to let go of the about the look and feel of Portable Storage. concepts that formed my personality in the Actually, Alan White is that next step in the 20th century. I own a computer. I own a digi- evolution. But here’s the things. Various tal notebook that allows me to freely access types of evolutionary mutation frequently the web, and do all kinds of stuff that would live side-by-side until the dominant wins have been a pain in the ass just twenty years out. Fanzine publishing ago—in the great has mostly hopped from and fearful year of hardcopy to digital over a Y2K! long, squirmy period of Michael Dobson adjustment, as original introduced me to fans (now mostly gone, the concept of alas), and their Boomer Print On Demand compatriots try to come as a viable way to to terms with the discom- pub yer ish at the fort of actually having 31st Corflu in Rich- arrived in the 21st century mond, Virginia, in and the devastations of 2014. I was well cultural devolution it has aware of Print on brought with it. Demand, but (Something sf writers thought of it as a have been predicting, way to publish right along with jet- books, not fan- packs.) zines. Michael had Between ditto, mimeo a fine example to and Xerography and the show us—a huge computer-germinated all eight and a half by -pixilated fanzine there is eleven profession- a step that most fans editors are ignoring: ally printed magazine with a full color wrap- Print On Demand technology. around cover—his fanzine, Random Jot- For those caught out by the swift evolution- tings. I was agog. His consistent mantra ary full-throttle charge of technology Print through the convention was “it’s ridiculously On Demand seems like a no-brainer. As cheap!” to produce your fanzine this way. soon as I became aware of the implications Michael was not lying. He gave no figures as of Print On Demand I immediately started to cost, but in a few lines both of us will, so planning to pub my ish. I am slow to evolve, that a point can be proven to you producers 4 of Big Fat Fanzines—also known as the gen- with new forms, we might even make per- zine. sonal magazines cool again…but I’m not holding my breath.” End Quote. Amazon’s Print on Demand service is what Michael and I have both chosen to use, orig- Most reading this editorial will have seen inally called CreateSpace, now called Kindle both my Rose Motel collection and Portable Direct. A good thing or a bad thing about Storage One. You’ll have seen they are using Amazon’s service: it’s automatically things of beauty, both to have and to hold. available through Amazon, pretty much the How much do you suppose it cost me to same day you submit it and order your hard produce these “books”? Hold on to your copies. I, personally, find this to be a boon. hats. Others may not. Another problem some see Rose Motel, a 210 page paperback, cost in Print On Demand is the look and feel, $3.50 a copy to produce. The first ish of which does not look or feel much like a fan- Portable Storage, a 76 page zine, cost $2.15 zine as we have known it in the past. The a copy to produce. Including postage for fact that I can’t print anything on the inside each issue ($1.90, domestic) and an enve- of the cover is a particular annoyance. I’ve lope, the entire production of Portable Stor- considered doing tipped-in plates, which age came out to about $4.50 a copy to I’ve done in other of my fanzines (Starfire 5 reach your (appreciative, right?) hands and had an entire binding and fold-out that was eyes. In 2019/2020 that is pretty damned glued in, like a Rube Goldberg fanzine ex- cheap, and you know it. periment). But I can learn to live with blank interior covers. Michael Dobson’s figures run like this: Ran- dom Jottings 9: $2.24/copy; Random Jot- Michael Dobson and I have been having a tings 17: $2.82/copy. If you’ve seen these conversation about why fan editors seem issues you know they are big, expansive fan- resistant to Print On Demand when so zines with full color covers—awesomely many things, both cool and beautiful, can be cheap for that kind of production. Michael’s done so cheaply. Following is a quote Mi- Random Jottings 11 was a digest-sized fan- chael gave me permission to print, with zine costing him $2.15/copy. some hesitance. I think about Guy Lillian’s Challenger, Nic “Given how easy this was, I’d love to see Farey’s BEAM, Rich Coad’s Sense of Won- some others give it a try (Fanac.org could do der Stories, Andy Hooper and carl juarez’s a whole set of them [Fanthologies] as a Chunga, and any of the various, larger fan- fundraiser), but I don’t expect it. You’re the zines, and I wonder: why aren’t they using only person other than me I know who’s Print On Demand? Why aren’t they flogging been motivated to experiment with the Cre- the horse of hard copy before it’s too late for ateSpace platform. Of course, for all their any of us to flog it at all? (You international stfnal time-binding minds, fans tend to be producers of hefty hardcopy fanzines—and ultra-conservative when it comes to protect- you know who you are!—you should start ing the precious bodily fluids of their com- doing research into Print On Demand in munity. It’s one of the reasons we’re dying your various countries for your next issues— out. If more people started experimenting right now!) There might be the worry that 5 all fanzines will begin to look alike. Not like- art for Sutton’s column may just be a mud- ly. Portable Storage will never be mistaken dled mess when it comes back from the for Random Jottings. Nor BEAM for printer. But Harry was game to see the limi- Chunga, or Challenger for Sense of Wonder tations of Print On Demand. Hopefully we Stories. Robert Lichtman’s Trapdoor is sui didn’t get too screwed.