1 June 2016 ASKANCE Volume IX, Number 2 Whole Number 37 Edited and published by John Purcell, 3744 Marielene Circle, College Station, TX 77845‐3926 USA Proofreading services rendered by Katrina Templeton. Many thanks! Contents © 2016 by John A. Purcell. Contact information: [email protected] Even so, all rights revert to original artists and authors upon publication. Disclaimers are a dirty business, but are always included. What you have here in your hands (or on screen) is another Mythical Publication. Copies of this fine, sort of semi‐ quarterly fanzine can be had for The Usual, which means expressed interest, submission and eventual inclusion of articles and artwork, letters of comment, expressed interest, and cold hard cash in the amount of $3.00 USD. Bribes are also accepted. Of course, if you send in locs, articles, and artwork, you just earned a life‐time free subscription. Not a bad deal, if you ask me. Contents Bemused Natterings………………………………….…..……….3 In Full Retreat, by John Purcell………………………...…….5 Fun‐eral Music, by Walt Wentz………………………….…….9 Notes of Little Note, by Taral Wayne…………..….…….11 The Stars Talk Hugo Awards, by David Thayer and Teddy Harvia………….………...14 Figby, by Bill Fischer……………………………………..………..15 Chat, the 4th Fannish Ghod, by Teddy Harvia….……..16 Fanzines! ……………………………………………………….………16 From the Hinterlands, loccol………………………….….……18 Regional Convention Calendar………………………..….….31 What’s Next……………………………………………………………38 ART CREDITS: cover by Al Sirois Sheryl Birkhead – 2; Rob Williams – photo, 3; Harry Bell – 4; John Purcell – photos, 5, 6, 7, 8; Taral Wayne – 9, 10; Clip art – 11, 32; nicked from Internet – 18, 26, 35; Joe Mayhew – 31 (found on the Internet); picture of Glenn Frey, taken from the Internet – 38. Member: FWA (since 2007!) 2 Hey, mister, that’s me up on the jukebox Over the years I have made no attempt to hide the fact that I play guitar and attempt to sing. Of these two skills, my personal assessment is that I am decent guitar player (need to improve as on lead solos, improvisation skills, and so on), and as a singer… Well, let’s just say I have never had proper vocal training and leave it at that. At the very least I am capable of carrying a tune without the use of a bucket. One of the fun things about living in the College Station/Bryan, Texas area is that this being a college town (two cities, actually) there are a lot of coffee houses, bars, and restaurants offering live music, and quite a few of them have open microphone nights. Since the fall of 2014, I have been playing at two of these weekly jams or open stages: both are on Thursday nights, but since the blues/rock jam at the Chicken Oil Company starts at 7 PM, I can go to that one first, then go five minutes up the road to Village Inn in downtown Bryan where the Singer‐Songwriter open mic night runs from 8 to 11 PM, often ending closer to midnight. The photograph above was taken at the Village Inn on the evening of April 28, 2016. In fact, I have been more of a regular at the Village Inn than the other Thursday night jam this year so often that I now have developed three set lists of 10 to 12 songs apiece. This means I actually have enough material to do a couple hours worth of playing: my own full gig! This has long been a goal of mine, and it appears to be within my grasp – a mere 52 years after getting my first guitar as a Christmas gift in 1964 when I was ten years old. (Go ahead, do the math. I know I’m old.) My tagline: an overnight sensation, decades in the making. More rain than necessary The monsoon season returned with a vengeance in early May. The College Station/Bryan area received at least nine inches of rain in one 24‐hour period. As a result, half of our backyard became a pond, and from that same storm, our older daughter’s home in the Woodlands (a northern suburb of Houston) was threatened by rising water to the point where she and her boyfriend began acquiring sand bags Just In Case, and there was flooding all over the southeastern part of Texas. There were at least a dozen deaths attributed to the flooding, which is tragic. The garden that Valerie and I put in was blasted by two weeks of constant rain, somehow surviving (sort of), and it took almost a full week of hot, windy, non‐rainy weather to dry out the yard enough to mow. I had to do it in two shifts: did most of the front yard on a Sunday afternoon, then three days later I was able to get the lawn mower into the backyard so I could mow that tropical rainforest. Now it is officially summer. Let the massive heat commence! *bleagh!* Life in the fast lane A somewhat surprising thought hitSurely me make you lose your mind Life in the fast lane, everything all the time Fortunately I ducked, so it was only a glancing blow. 3 While putting together this issue, it suddenly dawned on me that two and half pages ‐ specifically, pages 14 through 16 – are essentially the Askance equivalent of a newspaper’s Sunday Funnies section. I am not complaining, mind you, but then I started thinking along the lines of “Gee, I wonder which other fan artists would like to get in on this?”, then started jotting names down, like Marc Schirmeister, Ken Fletcher, Charlie Williams, Kurt Erichsen, Taral Wayne...at which point my mind went blank, an all too common occurrence these days. This is definitely reminiscent of when Steven H Silver asked me to cobble together a “Sunday Funnies” publication for ChiCon 7 in honor of that WorldCom’s fan guest of honor, Peggy Rae Pavlat. Steven (no period after the H, thank you very much) told me about conversations he had had with Peggy Rae over the years about fan artists putting out special WorldCon artwork in comic strip format. Hence, Steve’s inspiration for the ChiCon Funnies. When I couldn’t attend, I passed along what I had to Steven, who then finished the project. From what I hear, Peggy Rae was delighted. So it will be interesting to see which other fan artists feel like contributing occasional fannish comic strips to Askance in the future. Having a funny pages section in this fanzine sounds like a fun idea to me. Who is in this issue Bill Fischer Once again, our favorite lab assistant is back, traipsing through the dense jungles of deepest, darkest Africa – which apparently resemble the insides of Bill’s head. Teddy Harvia Not to be out‐done, Teddy Harvia likewise returns with yet another installment of “Chat, the 4th Fannish Ghod”, and also illustrating a text written by his good friend, David Thayer. Over the years their collaborations have produced many wonderful results. David Thayer Many years have gone by since David produced an issue of Nebulousfan, his fanzine from the late 1970s, mainly because he has concentrating on other more serious writing projects. I hope to be at FenCon later this year to see him and his lovely wife Diane again. Taral Wayne This issue has a two‐fer from Taral: an article and artwork for Walt Wentz’s article. Sometime in the next few weeks the last issue of his fanzine Broken Toys will be posted to efanzines.com, which will be a sad state of affairs, but I believe he has ideas for another fanzine to ease the pain. Then again, he can always write for other fanzines. Sounds like a win‐win for all of us. Walt Wentz Walt has appeared in these pages before ‐ “A Complaint to Hanes” in Askance #30 (Dec. 2013)– and this particular contribution happens to be one of those things that I enjoy. My hope is that readers will share that enjoyment. I hope that future issues will have more contributions from him, too. Thank you one and all, now let’s get on with the show, shall we? 4 Three and a half months ago, I had the distinct pleasure – as In Full Retreat that cliché goes – of presenting an abridged version of my doctoral research on a reading motivation study at a Texas higher educational conference known as the 17th Annual Wakonse South Teacher’s Conference. It was held once again at the Canyon of the Eagles Resort on the western shore of Lake Buchanan, about an hour west of Austin, Texas. Here is my shadowy form on the deck of my cabin, which had a marvelous view of the lake. As is my wont, what follows is yet another fannish report on a professional conference. You might say this is a look askance at it. by John Purcell One would normally think that presenting one’s research at a professional conference, attended by other educators who probably have more funny letters after their last name than I do, would make the presenter, shall we say, a mite nervous. Apoplectic? Incoherent? I could go on like this, but for some reason these feelings never hit me. Oh, sure, I was a bit nervous, as if I was defending my dissertation, but not as much as I honestly thought. In fact, overall I felt quite assured of my presentation, scheduled for 2:30 – 3:30 PM on Saturday afternoon, April 2nd, and actually looked forward to it. More on this later. For now, allow me to present an argument as to what contributed to my peace of mind in the face of what could have been a full‐blown mental breakdown.