Corflu Members Will Get Daangerous Visions, A Faanfiction Faanthology

By Sandra Bond: Faanfiction! (Not to be confused with fanfiction.)

Stories written by sf fans, published for sf fans, and with fans as characters and fandom as a setting. Those are pretty much the only parameters; apart from that, anything else goes. And over the seventy years from 1939 to 2009, in the heyday of science fiction fanzines, anything else did.

Charles Burbee shows that fandom could — after a fashion – survive even a nuclear holocaust; Jim Barker and Kevin Smith depict a fan forever trapped in the prison of an unending convention; Chris Hughes and Terry Carr (writing as Carl Brandon) give us fandom’s take on Lewis Carroll and on J. G. Ballard.

This anthology, fully illustrated throughout, collects fifteen tales and a comic strip with fans and fandom as their theme, all originally published in fanzines — many of them among the most notable of their day, such as Quandry, Orion, Quip and This Never Happens. They go to show the countless entertaining changes that can be rung on the old adage: “The proper study of fankind is fan”.

This year’s Corflu fanthology (as usual with Corflu) is free to all members, including supporting members. Supporting membership just £15 UK or $20 US. See corflu.org for details.

New Volume from Ansible Editions Completes Bob Shaw Collection

Slow Pint Glass, the final volume of Bob Shaw’s collected fanwriting compiled by Rob Jackson and David Langford for Ansible Editions, is available today as a free download in multiple formats at the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund website (where they hope you’ll make a little donation to the fund if you please.) Find it here.

The cover art is by Jim Barker, a July 2020 reworking of his memorial piece for Bob Shaw first published in Tyne Capsule (March 2015; TAFF ebook September 2019).

Slow Pint Glass contains 167,000 words of Bob Shaw’s other fan and fan-adjacent writing not already included in The Enchanted Duplicator (1954 with Walt Willis; much reprinted; TAFF ebook May 2015), The Serious Scientific Talks (TAFF ebook November 2019) and The Full Glass Bushel (TAFF ebook June 2020). Together these volumes represent Shaw’s complete fanwriting.

And Langford’s Introduction shows what fans will get with Slow Pint Glass:

Most of the humorists for which Bob shows admiration in the articles that follow – Patrick Campbell, Stephen Leacock, S.J. Perelman, James Thurber, Mark Twain – cultivated an air of bemusement at the vagaries of the weird world we live in. This was an attitude that Bob himself could always carry off brilliantly. What other writer, struggling with deadlines, would find himself fatally distracted by a noisy invasion of hot air balloons? Or be a fascinated eye-witness on the utterly memorable night when Brian Aldiss broke the bed? Or, in a perfectly ordinary visit to the loo at an SF convention, become entangled in the embarrassing toils of the Penis Fly Trap? See “The Writer’s Year”, “Once Upon a Tyne” and “Wetfoot in the Head” respectively.

[Thanks to David Langford for the story.]

Memories of “Rondo”

By Steve Vertlieb: With the excitement this week regarding the announcement of this year’s marvelous crop of deserving new winners of the prestigious annual Rondo Awards, I’m happily reminded of my own encounter with the announcement and subsequent award ceremony just four years ago. Here I am being presented with the Rondo Hall of Fame Award for a precious lifetime of journalism and achievement by David Colton, former editor of USA Today, on Saturday evening, June 4th, 2016, in Louisville, Kentucky.

David Colton and Steve Vertlieb

The proudest moment of my seventy four years…winning the coveted “Rondo Hall Of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award” for more than half a century of genre writing and publishing in a variety of books, magazines, journals, tabloids, and on the worldwide “web” (with apologies to Spiderman).

I’d like to humbly offer my sincere best wishes and congratulations to those worthy souls and winners of this year’s assortment of Rondo Award winners, as well as my eternal gratitude to the thousands of writers, directors, composers, actors, and special effects technicians whose work in film bathed my dreams, and my own meager accomplishments these past five plus decades in their creative shadow.

My work remains merely a pale reflection of the love and admiration that they so generously inspired in me, and in the millions of fans around the world who continue to love and respect the art of motion pictures, as well as those wondrous souls who inhabit them.

To all of you, I can only offer my profound and enduring gratitude for being permitted to share the love, inspiration, and joyous wonder of films and music.

Fanziners Too Convene

Illo created by Teddy Harvia and Brad Foster for Corflu Heatwave publications.

By John Hertz:  The only current annual fanziners’ convention I know of is Corflu.  Another called Ditto having run two decades, not always annually, fell asleep.  An attempt at another called Toner lasted, if memory serves, two years.

Corflu is mimeograph correction fluid, once indispensable.  The Mimeograph was a 19th Century invention for making inexpensive copies by forcing ink through stencils held on a rotating drum.  In the United States, “Mimeograph” was a registered trademark of A.B. Dick Co., but was allowed to become generic.

Bob Tucker with a mimeograph in the 1940s. Collection of Toni Weisskopf

Gestetner-brand machines appeared a few years later.  With Roneo-brand machines you could change drums to change the color of ink.  Rex Rotary was another brand.  I’m not sure how widely mimeograph or mimeo was used as a generic term outside the U.S.

Many thought this the Grade A technology for fanzine publication until cheap photocopying arrived.  Corflu was essential so as to cure misteaks.

Spirit duplication, which always sounded to me like something out of a fantasy story, was a 1920s tech.  Writing on a master sheet pressed the master against a second, inked sheet; the master, duly inked on its back side, and attached to a drum, was rolled over a wick holding an alcohol-based solvent that transferred ink onto paper.

The Ditto brand was best known; another was Heyer.  You could correct errors with skillful use of a razor blade, or an X-Acto knife, and rewriting (or even retyping).

Each of these had various advantages, disadvantages, and know-how.  Generally mimeo could reproduce more copies, spirit duplication was cheaper.

Toner is the powdery ink used in laser printers and many photocopiers.

As Paul Skelton recently quoted from Marshall McLuhan in Raucous Caucus 7, when technology becomes obsolete it reshapes into an art form.  Actually McLuhan also said obsolescence isn’t an ending, it’s a beginning.  Speaking for myself I’m big on Right tool for right task.

Corflu XXXVII was March 13-15, 2020, at College Station, Texas, U.S.A. (some cons get names; this one was “Corflu Heatwave”).  Corflu XXXVIII is scheduled for March 26-28, 2021, at Bristol, England, U.K. (“Corflu Concorde”).  Seldom able to attend in person, I’ve been a faithful Supporting Member, and happily recommend membership in either kind.

If you’re electronic you can start here; or you can always write to me, 236 S. Coronado St., No. 409, Los Angeles, CA 90057, U.S.A.

Suppose I Do Care What Other People Think

by John Hertz:  (mostly reprinted from No Direction Home 20)  “People,” I often hear, “love to watch people making things.”  So I’ll open this window.

Spikecon was held on July 4-7, 2019, at Layton, Utah, combining Westercon LXXII (yearly; regional), the 13th NASFiC (North America Science Fiction Convention, held when the Worldcon is not in North America), Manticon 2019 (yearly; fans of David Weber’s Honor Harrington series and its Royal Manticoran Navy, i.e. Space navy), 1632 Minicon (yearly; fans of Eric Flint’s 1632 series).

The name “Spikecon” honored the 150th anniversary of the Final Spike completing the Transcontinental Railroad near the con site.

One of my adventures was conducting three Classics of SF discussions, as I have at various cons for a while.

I got to choose the three.  Then – I knew the job was dangerous when I took it – I had to write a short note about each, ideally following my own rule “Reliable for the ignorant, amusing for the knowledgeable”.  Man! – actually I don’t know your gender, so instead I’ll say Fan! – that’s hard.  However, Castiglione (1478-1529) reminds us of the pleasure which is had when we achieve difficult things.

After blood, sweat, and tears, I thought I’d managed.  Maybe you saw here what I felt content with.

But Spikecon wasn’t.  Concerned to invite people who didn’t already know all about everything, the con asked me to revise.  Not to dumb things down, I was told, just to be kinder.

This was a banner I’d long waved.  I liked (and still do) the ones Our Gracious Host posted here and didn’t ask they be changed.  But as to Spikecon, I accepted the reproof and tried again.  My second version was accepted.

Now we’ve had the con, and the discussions, and all.  You might not have seen both versions.  You might like to.  What do you think?

* * *

Kuttner & Moore, “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” (1943)

first version

The authors each said, after they married, anything under their names or their various pseudonyms was by both.  Decades later, Tim Powers is known for explaining the real – i.e. SF – reason for something in history; here’s the real – i.e. SF – reason for something in fantasy; yet even that’s hardly the greatest element.  The title alludes to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1871), as we – maybe – eventually understand.

second version

First published under one of the authors’ pseudonyms, it’s on this year’s Retro-Hugo ballot.  The title is from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1871).  Here, strange toys arrive, and the children playing with them get stranger.  Eventually we are made to wonder if children are really caterpillars, in which case they – but that would be telling.

Heinlein, Rocket Ship “Galileo” (1947)

first version

We’ve also come to the golden anniversary of the Glorious 20th, when humankind first set foot on the Moon.  Decades earlier came this speculation.  It isn’t, incidentally, a rocket ship built in a back yard; and as A.J. Budrys used to demand, it answers “Why are they telling us this?”  Nor are these pioneers the first – nor yet the second.

second version

We’ve come to the 50th anniversary of July 20, 1969, when humankind first set foot on the Moon.  Decades earlier came the speculation of this book.  What if someone put together a rocket ship capable of Moon travel, outside big government, big business, big everything?  How might that happen?  Then what?

Hoyle, October the First Is Too Late (1966)

first version

This first-rate astronomer – he was knighted six years later – also wrote SF.  In both fields he was famously willing to propose speculations far from others’.  In science one may someday be proved right or wrong; fiction doesn’t work that way.  We might say of this story It’s about time.  Only maybe it isn’t.  Maybe time isn’t.

second version

This author, also a first-rate astronomer, was famous for proposing speculations far from others’.  If you’ve seen that mad juggling troupe the Flying Karamazov Brothers, you know one of their wisecracks is “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”  What if that wasn’t true – if everything was happening at once?

* * *

Speaking of reminders, here are two from Kelly Freas: Art is about communication, and (the only criterion, he said, for judging an illustration) It has to make you want to read the book.

Broken Hearts and Hugos

Ulrika O’Brien launches BEAM 14 with an editorial that might have gone unnoticed outside the circle of FAAn Award voters if she hadn’t (1) given John Scalzi the KTF treatment and (2) Scalzi hadn’t tweeted a link to the zine to his 165,000 Twitter followers.

…But once a year, like clockwork, the Fan Hugo short list comes out and somehow I can never quite avoid seeing it. When I do see it, I increasingly find a bunch of total strangers who’ve not visibly participated in fandom, and I see red all over again. I will inevitably be told that the failing is in me, that were I to educate myself, I would discover their merit. As often as not, whatever merit is involved, what I actually discover are more neo-pros doing nothing remotely to do with fandom as we know it, or if they do, only in pursuit of making money off us. So thanks, Scalzi. Fuck you. Wait, what now? Why am I still on about John Scalzi’s Fan Writer Hugo, eleven years after the parade? Because it was John Scalzi who finally broke the Fan Hugos, that’s why. And he didn’t do the rest of the Hugos any favors, either, as it turns out….

John Scalzi’s mild answer starts here.

Responses include Camestros Felapton’s “I Guess I’m Talking About John Scalzi Today”.

Taking two steps back and looking at the bigger picture and the actual societal changes occuring in the relevant time period, what do we see? Nothing mysterious and nothing secretly controlled by John Scalzi but rather the increasing and inevitable online nature of fandom, along with generational change. The period of 2000 to 2020, was always going to be one in which fandom would have the kind of generational change that fandom is always having because people get older and people from a younger generation become more influential. To use tired generational-terms, a shift from Baby Boomers to Gen-X with (now) more Millennials (and younger).

The accompanying shift was technological with blogs, blogging networks (particularly Live Journal at one point), social media platforms and commerical pop-culture media sites changing where fan-related discourse was happening. This was a cross-generational change (e.g. GRRM’s Live Journal or how influential Mike Glyer’s File770 fanzine-turned-blog became during the Puppy Debarkle).

Doc Rocket’s tweet is especially interesting for its “no one, really” conclusion —

Alexandra Erin’s thread starts here.

Michi Trota observed:

And Kameron Hurley doesn’t want to be left out –

In fact, seeing people say they’re sorry that Ulrika didn’t cuss them out, too, reminds me of the Watergate days when everyone wanted to be added to Nixon’s enemies list!

ANZAPA at 50

Down Under they celebrated the 50th anniversary of the amateur press association ANZAPA on October 7 in Melbourne. Here’s a report from Bruce Gillespie —

Thanks to everybody who turned up to the ANZAPA 50th Anniversary celebration at the Mail Exchange Hotel, 2-6 p.m., Sunday 7 October 2018. An exhilarating occasion, with quite a few interstate members and ex-members, including Gary Mason (last met at the 25th Anniversary gathering). Thanks in particular to Carey Handfield for making all the arrangements. Thanks to Breanna Handfield for baking and decorating the much-appreciated cake. No final numbers yet, but at least 30 people turned up.

Sorry that some people could not make it, especially Leanne Frahm and Cath Ortlieb. And it was good to talk by Skype to Spike in California and Christina in Cornwall. Onward to the 60th …

Attending: Bruce Gillespie, Carey Handfield, Jean Weber, Eric Lindsay, Roman Orszanski, Perry Middlemiss, Gary Mason, Bill Wright, David Grigg, Irwin Hirsh, Alan Stewart, Murray MacLachlan, Nataiie MacLachlan, Leigh Edmonds, Jack Herman, Leanne Frahm, KRin Pender Gunn, Marc Ortlieb, Gerald Smith, Terry Morris, Hung, Justin Ackroyd, Mervyn Binns, Helena Binns, Robin Johnson, Sally Yeoland, Michael Green, LynC, James ‘Jocko’ Allen, David Russell, Stephen Campbell.

All part of the celebrations, but a surprise to many (including me, a week ago), was the offer by Carey Handfield and Justin Ackroyd to raise funds for me to get to Wellington in 2020 for the worldcon. Much gratitude from me, although suggestions about motivations were made — a one-way trip? a dunking in the Tasman on the way over? Remember, it’s Carey’s and Justin’s idea. I just have to renew my passport.

Bruce Gillespie says ANZAPA currently has 22 members. Average page count per mailing: 240.

And He Should Know

By John Hertz: Patrick Nielsen Hayden has long said fanwriting is not a “junior varsity” for pro writing.  It’s a different artform.  And he should know.

Here’s Bernard Shaw.

Amateur art is discredited art in so far only as the amateur is known as the ape of commercial art….  smitten with an infatuate ambition to reproduce … what they see the great professional artists doing….  mostly foredoomed to failure and ridicule.  Here and there one of them succeeds, only to be absorbed by the commercial….  But the countryside is full of stout characters with no such folly and no such ambition…. demonstrating that the laughter of fools is as the crackling of thorns under a pot!

Shaw, The Complete Wagnerite (4th ed. 1923; closing paragraph)

                             

Thorns under a pot, Ecclesiastes 7:6

Diversity again

By John Hertz: Where I live it’s the first day of spring. For Bruce Gillespie, the New Zealand for 2020 Worldcon bid, and like that, it’s fall. Diversity again. Easier said than done, but worthy of both.

I like to think science fiction has to do with diversity. John Campbell and Larry Niven, among others, have said our essential element is Minds as good as you but different. Easier said than done, but worthy of both.

The other day I saw a hundred folks had reported their Hugo nominations here (nice photo of Hugo trophies, thanks). Someone said “I am struck by how very * different * all our tastes are”. I didn’t happen to think so. The reports looked very similar to me. Another said “if [people are finding] mostly works by [X], it would indicate to me that either 1) the sources they are using … are extremely insular, or 2) they are – consciously or unconsciously – self-selecting for things written by [X].” Of course that’s neither complete nor conclusive. But it’s an important indicator.

It often seems “What’s incorrectly included?” shows up more easily than “What’s incorrectly omitted?” To see that something’s been left out you have to get the big picture. You have to be bigger than your immediate adventure. I once said that to Jon Singer, who is no dope; he said “How?”

Friends can help; in particular, diverse friends. If everyone I hang out with is just like me, who’ll point out what I’ve been missing? Of course it’s a strain. You find yourself thinking “How could you do such a thing?” This is a question better answered than brandished. If we only mean by it “Too strange, gotta go” we don’t learn anything.

One of the sandboxes I play in is Fanzineland. People have been pouring in new sand. It’s fascinating. Not so long ago fanzines were on paper – mostly; according to legend there’ve been slices of bologna, or worse – don’t ask me what I saw in Bruce Pelz’ refrigerator – but then came electronic media, and we had to think it out again.

All of us. Not just the folks upon whom new stuff poured, but the folks who poured in with it. Diversity can’t just be You have to accommodate me, but I don’t have to accommodate you.

Well then. Here are some fine fanzines, fanwriters, fanartists, of 2017, whose names leapt to my mind, conspicuously omitted by those hundred folks (and of course neither complete nor conclusive). Some of them can be found on-line, e.g. through Bill Burns’ eFanzines; that doesn’t matter much to me, it may to you. I couldn’t begin to guess which, if any, will appear on the Hugo ballot; that’s not why I’m writing. Let’s say that next time you get to How do I love thee? you count the ways. Or, not to top that, because I can’t, let’s consider Love your neighbors, for they are not like you. Or let’s just say I like to share my toys with friends.

Fanzines

  • Alexiad
  • Askance
  • Askew
  • Banana Wings
  • Beam
  • Chunga
  • Counterclock
  • Enter at Your Own Risk
  • Flag
  • Inca
  • Iota
  • Littlebrook
  • Lofgeornost
  • The MT Void
  • Nice Distinctions
  • Opuntia
  • Purrsonal Mewsings
  • Raucous Caucus
  • Trap Door
  • The White Notebooks
  • The Zine Dump

Fanwriters

  • Sandra Bond
  • William Breiding
  • Claire Brialey
  • Randy Byers
  • Graham Charnock
  • Pat Charnock
  • Leigh Edmonds
  • Lilian Edwards
  • Nic Farey
  • Janice Gelb
  • Steve Green
  • Rob Hansen
  • Andy Hooper
  • Kim Huett
  • Lucy Huntzinger
  • Jerry Kaufman
  • Steve Jeffery
  • Sue Jones
  • Christina Lake
  • Evelyn Leeper
  • Mark Leeper
  • Fred Lerner
  • Robert Lichtman
  • Rich Lynch
  • Joseph Major
  • Lisa Major
  • Mike Meara
  • Jacqueline Monahan
  • Murray Moore
  • Joseph Nicholas
  • Ulrika O’Brien
  • Roman Orszanski
  • Lloyd Penney
  • Mark Plummer
  • John Purcell
  • David Redd
  • Yvonne Rousseau
  • Yvonne Rowse
  • Darrell Schweitzer
  • Paul Skelton
  • Fred Smith
  • Ylva Spangberg (imagine a ring over the second “a”)
  • Dale Speirs
  • Garth Spencer
  • Milt Stevens
  • Suzanne Tompkins
  • Philip Turner
  • R-Laurraine Tutihasi
  • Pete Young

Fanartists

  • Harry Bell
  • Sheryl Birkhead
  • Ditmar
  • Kurt Erichsen
  • Brad Foster
  • Alexis Gilliland
  • Jeanne Gomoll
  • Teddy Harvia
  • Sue Mason
  • Ray Nelson
  • Ulrika O’Brien
  • Taral Wayne
  • Alan White

Humpty Dumpty tells Alice (Through the Looking-Glass, ch. 6) “You’re so exactly like other people…. two eyes, so – nose in the middle, mouth under. “It’s always the same.” Alice says any other way might not look nice. He answers – and these are his last words – “Wait till you’ve tried.” Of course it doesn’t occur to him that he falls under the same description himself.

Remembering Shirley Maiewski

By Carl Slaughter: Shirley Maiewski (1920-2004) was known as “Grandma Trek.”

She served as chairman of the Star Trek Welcome Committee, acting as a liaison between the corporate world and the fan community.  She kept the franchise flame alive between cancellation of the show and the start of the movie series.

Maiewski also wrote one of the most popular fan fic stories, “Mindsifter.”  It appeared in Bantam’s Star Trek: The New Voyages (1976), edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, the second of the Star Trek anthologies commissioned by Frederik Pohl.

She didn’t write any more fan fiction for 2 reasons:  1) “Mindsifter” was revised without her knowledge or permission.  2) Reviewers deconstructed it.  She was so upset with Bantam, she called for a boycott.  Because of her status in the fan community, Bantam’s source of fan fic manuscripts dried up.

After 40 years, “Mindsifter” finally got a screen adaptation. It wasn’t New Voyages best episode and the print version is much better.

  • Star Trek:  New Voyages:

  • Director’s commentary: