2 April 2013 for display on eFanzines at: www.efanzines.com Feedback encouraged Please e-mail your letter of comment to: [email protected] Forever the optimist "Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favours the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own." -- H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) Contents This issue’s cover ........................................................................................................................................................ 3 Letter from North America .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Information on Australian Fan Funds as at Conflux 9 (25-28 April 2013) ................................................................. 5 The first science fiction convention ............................................................................................................................. 6 Conventions on the horizon ......................................................................................................................................... 7 Hugo Award Nomination Period Is Open .................................................................................................................. 12 Book Review: Leopard Dreaming by A. A. Bell ...................................................................................................... 16 Amazon’s anticompetitive perfidy exposed............................................................................................................... 17 Stefan zone ................................................................................................................................................................. 18 Fitzrovia ..................................................................................................................................................................... 22 Art, etc. credits… Cover: Graphic by Ditmar Page 2 Photos of Bill Wright and Dick Jenssen Page 17 Photo of Pages & Pages Booksellers Page 3 Graphic of the Bridge of U.S.S Voyager Photo of Court proceedings Page 5 Photograph of 2013 GUFF winner Page 17 Photo of Pages & Pages Booksellers Page 6 Photo of fans at first ever SF convention Photo of Court proceedings Pages 7 to 15 Convention logos, photos and illustrations Page 20 Illustration of Episcopal prostitution Page 16 Book cover: Leopard Dreaming Page 22 Photo of Fizrovia Restaurant in St Kilda Illustration by Ian Gunn Illustration of hog on a spit roast 3 This issue’s cover V’ger to be… Cover and notes by Dick Jenssen I suspect that I must be in a very small minority when it comes to Star Trek the original series. Firstly, science fiction fans are a small minority of readers, secondly, TV SF fans are a minority of TV viewers, and, thirdly, ST_TOS fans are a small minority of even the latter group. And – finally – I am in an even more minuscule subset in that I believe that Star Trek, the Motion Picture is one of the best films of the Star Trek franchise. Top of the list is First Contact (The Next Generation), then The Voyage Home, and then The Motion Picture. And, frankly, they’re the only ones I would – and have – watched more than once. Yes…that puts me even more in a vanishing small class since I think Wrath of Khan is pretty average… As all IRS readers will know, The Motion Picture deals with a super-intelligent mechanical entity which – or should that be who? – is searching for its creator, and whose quest has led it to Earth. If the Creator does not contact the entity – V’ger – it threatens to destroy our planet. Of course Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty and Sulu must save the day. No spoilers here, because all you reading this know the plot, V’ger turns out to be a NASA Voyager spacecraft. Somehow it got caught in a wormhole, was flushed to a far region of the galaxy (perhaps even to another one) where it was severely damaged, but rescued by aliens who comprise a mechanoid civilisation. It was repaired, and its mission brief was intensified – now it no longer is a piece of equipment, but a sentient being, exploring the universe, and determined to gain as much knowledge as possible. Part of that drive is to meld with its creator. In a way, the plot is a basic ST_TOS one, but what makes the film, for me, so enjoyable (and I must have seen it at least five times) is the fusion of sight and sound – especially the combination of Jerry Goldsmith’s music and the long, slow visuals as the Enterprise enters V’ger’s realm and moves towards its centre where V’ger awaits its creator. Here is where I part company with the majority of viewers who renamed the movie Star Trek, the Motionless Picture. For me, music and image are rather beautiful. As images go, I see a lot of Virgil Finlay in the scenes where Decker and Ilia merge with each other – Ilia already being part of (or wholly?) V’ger. A light show with “bubbles” of light so frequently depicted by Finlay. But, be that as it may – the cover illustration depicts the immanent destruction of Voyager an instant before it is rescued by the mechanoids. About to succumb to the harsh and inimical molten moon into whose gravity it has been sucked, Voyager is burnt, blackened, and on the verge of losing all its, admittedly fairly primitive, computer facilities. But, mindlessness will soon be replaced by sentience and an irresistible urge to meet The Creator. U.S.S. Voyager’s bridge (Nothing at all to do with NASA’s space probe Voyager, but nice to look at just the same. Ed.} Technical Notes The cover graphic’s image was created in E-on’s Vue Complete. The landscape was ‘painted’ using a Mandelbrot image created by djFractals. Filters in PhotoShop CS6 supplied the smoke and steam, and enabled final tweaking. Ditmar 4 Letter from North America Loc from Lloyd Penney Lloyd Penney is a well-known Canadian letter-hack and fanzine editor. He has won the FAAn Award for Best Letterhack four times for his LoCs, which are widely enjoyed by science fiction fanzine editors and their readers. 1706-24 Eva Rd., Etobicoke, Ontario, CANADA M9C 2B2 February 21, 2013 Dear Bill: Thank you, good sir, for continuing to put out issues of Interstellar Ramjet Scoop. They aren't going into ANZAPA any more, are they? Oh, well, if it's not an apazine any more, it will do just fine as a regular zine. I've got here the February 2013 issue, and it's time for some commentary. Lawrence of Arabia is one of Yvonne's favourite movies, but we haven't seen it in a while. We've got a DVD of the movie at home, and that seems to mean you have it, so you don't need to see it again. That's the collector in us coming out, I think. I never met Michael Waite, but I did get some of his fanzines over the years. I never had any e-mail conversations with him, either; we don't travel much these days. My computer's in the shop right now, but I am sure I never received any issues of Trial and Air, and that's my loss. Thank you for reprinting those pages from previous issues. (That list of obituaries on page 25 is quite depressing.) My letter...lately, we've been seeing more reports of flooding in Australia, and the reports of worse heat aren't good. If temperatures exceed 50°C, will parts of Australia be simply uninhabitable? I'd think that there wouldn't be any more doubts about climate change, but there's no convincing some people. This year's TAFF race is interesting, and it's been a little nasty here and there. I think it comes down to older fans not being happy with the fact there are newer fans around who are creating their own traditions. Also, those older fans are too eager to take some swipes at the newer fans. We all have problems remembering our own neofannish days. I was a supporting member of last year's Chicon 7, and we are attending members of next year's Loncon 3, but we didn't get anything for this year's LoneStarcon 3. However, with new rules for who can nominate, we can nominate this year, too. With dwindling numbers, we need to be more inclusive in many ways. I will need to find another way to get this to you, probably through my Gmail back-up account, and the computer at my evening job. Hope it's not in the shop too long! Thanks for this issue, and I look forward to the next one. Yours, Lloyd Penney P.S. Keep me in mind for the FAAn Awards! That I will, Lloyd. For the benefit of readers who might not have heard of the FAAn Awards, they are the Fan Activity Achievement (FAAn) Awards continuing a tradition almost as old as fanzine fandom itself. Many big name fans have turned poll-taker over the years to help dispense egoboo to all the fine writers, artists, publishers and website posters who do so much to entertain us by editing, publishing and contributing to fanzines. In mid-February Bill Burns reminded me that the ballot for the 2013 Fan Activity Achievement (FAAn) Awards was online at http://corflu.org, that the deadline for voting was April 6th, 2013, and that voting was open to all fans, not just attendees at Corflu, the fanzine editors worldcon. I had only sporadic connections with the Internet then, and I don’t think I managed to get my votes in. I’m sorry if I didn’t get to vote for you, but at least my intentions were good. Anyhow, Corflu Gliter was held at Las Vegas, Nevada, on 20-22 April 2013. As at 24th April 2014 when this zine was closed off for publication, Andy Hooper hadn’t posted the 2013 FAAn Awards results announced at that convention. This year, there was a new category, Best Fanzine Cover. To help voters decide on contenders for this interesting new award, Bill Burns prepared a gallery of cover images of both electronic and paper fanzines published in 2012 and posted it on eFanzines at http://efanzines.com/covers2012.htm.