Event Horizon #2 October 2019 An efanzines exclusive & A Ninth Fandom Publication Fandom is a Way of Life—for Dogs and Other Trash----Squink Blog Fandom is jest a goddamn hobby—you’ll find them in Hell, working at what they cannot accomplish, suffering utter damnation in blind unknowingness. The above quotations, although they may add quality to our publication as headings due to their literary nature and link to fannish tradition, are not true and lack nobility; what are their authors but those lacking true enlightenment? This is a publication wrought by Oort Cloud Publications/VacHume Press, intended for circulation in fandom. Anyone not liking it does not respect the publisher or the press. The editor is John Thiel, 30 N. 19th Street, Lafayette, Indiana 47904, who may be accessed by email at [email protected] . The cover shows a fearless spaceman who has elected to be in outer space in the visible vicinity of a black hole. We need men like him. Of course a Live Coward has something to be said for him also, but will anyone say it? It is unintended matter that a live coward has banked up for him. But are we in fandom more like the live coward or the dead hero? We are more like the live cowards, and we write the reports, etc. Anyone who goes near a black hole isn’t going to come back arguing about what we say about him. But, again, doesn’t a black hole somewhat resemble the world we live in? We lie around in our bunks, searching for an event horizon that will be the sign of our emergence from this so-called “black hole” that we are metaphorically to be found in. And if we have this metaphor, the thing to do is to make use of it and find out more about where, existentially, we are at. Here, then, is a purpose to which this fanzine is set. Representation of the Universe, not giving it any disreputable black holes that obscure its significance and the cosmic beauty of it all. The artist has done his best to convey the probable wonder of it. Let us ponder this if we have not already done so, and if we have, let us expand our own best contemplations and gain greater knowledge of where we are at. Where, In Fact, Are We At? In the opening words of this issue I gave the impression that where we were at is in a black hole, conceivably and with luck viewing the event horizon. Well, this existential view is not existentially sound, and is merely an interpretation of the significance of black holes, what they might mean to people, studied from the superstitious perspective. But better philosophical speculation leads to better philosophical results, and I think taking a perspective on the situation we may all be in, given that we are evaluating our entire culture, is more rewarding than to think of ourselves as being in a black hole, a computer simulation, or a tangential universe. If we are in the universe we are in, what is elsewhere is tangential to us; we could not really have it otherwise and be ourselves. Taking an alien perspective loses us the track of our thinking. Well, existentialism is surely confounded by modern circumstances, especially without the most notable existentialist philosophers still being around to consider them in terms of the philosophy they had evolved. But they laid it in solid, and we must needs be considering the existential effects of our current world situation. Some of the existential questions posed are “Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?” Their point in posing these questions is that we don’t know the answers except in standard labelling. People don’t know how to express who they are in meaningful terms, even to themselves. They don’t know where the whole human race comes from, let alone themselves. And they have no idea what purpose may be found for their existence in the future, and even if they found a purpose for themselves, they are mortal, and mortality ends in death in a shorter time than they need to consider these things, which might not be worth considering in the face of this coming death, as it nullifies everything about them and leaves them unable to proceed beyond their brief mortal span. That is tough luck, but it leaves everybody unable to complain in a way that would have any positive results in terms of the situation complained of. There is nobody to complain to as there is nobody who can conquer this problem. People point out that there is God, but he hasn’t conquered the problem and therefore wouldn’t, if, in fact, he could, but of that we have only the say-so of people no more learned than ourselves. In Jeffrey Redmond’s article in this issue we get an expression of the philosophical and scientific and religious materials available. We’re not very well provided for. The secret? There may not have been a provider. Things just got here, including us. Well, it’s easy to reach this conclusion, but it’s just as easy to reach something else. There must have been something prior if there is a now, and that holds on down the line to infinity and eternity. We can easily understand how there wouldn’t have been anything, but we can’t grasp why there is anything now, limited as it may be from an individual perspective. You might ask, “How long are we gonna last?” with all the wars and mayhem shooting. Some people don’t make it past five or six due to disease. Nobody makes it much more than a century, even bypassing all the dangers. Life seems not much oriented toward its furtherance, aside from such impulses as may exist within it. Life causes us to do things, even though we know the doing is futile, and in scrutinizing it we find it seems to have this quality of furtherance, but not enough, surely, to accomplish anything worthy of itself and its dreams of doing. (Key to this sentence: life has its dreams of doing.) Now, nothing is more mutt feraund than a philosopher expounding his philosophies at length in an inappropriate medium, with an unheeding vacuum around him, and, if you read it, with you as a sole occupant of the cave in which he lives and has expounded, you reading his antiquated-sounding words while he is elsewhere doing something else. (A netzine can be visualized as a cave in the sky.) But consider this: mortality is a philosophy, hedonism is a philosophy, materialism is a philosophy, and existentialism, well-nigh played out by there being a new century with nothing but neo- existentialists still writing, is a philosophy, and even nihilism is a philosophy, or Nietzsche is no philosopher. These may be seen as philosophies that have done nothing for us but stall us in quicksands of non-progress, whereas we who concern ourselves with science fiction are progressive, on the whole. Should there not be evolved by science fiction a progressive, open-ended philosophy which will, perhaps, release us from the morbidity of the prior philosophies, or the earth-boundness of the philosophies preceding the 20th Century philosophers? And should this evolution not be proposed here, considering that there is nowhere else to suggest it? Robert Bloch once suggested that fans take the place of beatniks (who tend to be either nihilists or reactors to nihilism), which is not much like what I am saying except in form, but it does have an impulse. I would say of the article in which he said this that he planted a seed. It suggested a progress which we all might want considering how bad things are in the world of today, the world as it stands at present. The editor of the fanzine Prodigenius said, “I see the light, and that light is the future.” Shall we forget the words of these men? No matter how shallow their proposals may have been, we should not let any spark of enlightenment die, and I might add that shallowness has its virtues; when things get too deep we may get mired in them, as I have suggested above (not to heaven, I mean above on this page). What is enlightening is good matter, which I think compares favorably to bad matter, and thus I store my veritable thoughts, thinking and therefore being, in a place where they may not even be read, but if they are read anywhere efanzines is the most likely place to inscript an outlook which I myself consider worth the consideration and even preservation, such as it may be. Yes, I think the impulse toward enlightenment lurks in science fiction, from the early Rosicrucian ads so many of the magazines had to the March 2007 issue of Analog, where there is an ad saying “What if everything you know is wrong? Discover the truth!” But as far as I know the book they were selling has been unrecognized and forgotten. (Or it may have devotees we don’t see around online much any more.) So, that may just be where we are at. Kolob—Star or Planet? By Jeffrey Redmond An esoteric look at the Universe Kolob is a star or planet described in Mormon scripture. References to Kolob are found in the Book of Abraham, a work that is traditionally held by adherents of the Mormon faith as having been translated from an ancient Egyptian papyrus scroll by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saints movement.