By John Hertz: WOOF is the World Organization Of Faneditors, an amateur press association whose publication is collated and distributed annually at the World Science Fiction Convention.

The 2014 Worldcon, Loncon III, was August 14-18. In closing it duly turned over operations to Sasquan, the 2015 Worldcon, August 19-23 at Spokane, Washington, U.S.A.

Sasquan with commendable alacrity — a fine word, even if not very fannish — meaning alacrity, not commendable — has already posted Randy Byers as host of its Fanzine Lounge. This too should be jes’ fine.

Through various exchanges with Byers and Andy Hooper his frequent co-operator I learn, and am authorized to say, that Hooper in his typical acuity has taken the torch and will be the Official Collator for the 2015 WOOF.

WOOF began in 1976. Its sole officer is an Official Collator; but this place has at times been vacant. WOOF has now and then missed Worldcons — whether or not Worldcons have missed WOOF (although 1990s Business Meetings considered a proposal to make WOOF an official publication) — but so far has risen again.

There was alas no WOOF collation at Loncon III, possibly due in part to “Aren’t you doing it?” “I thought you were doing it!” One regular contributor who could not attend sent his WOOFzine via global overnight delivery, followed by messages via telephone, E-mail, electronic text, and courier, in hopes of answering the eternal question What the Foucault is going on? (The contributor is a physicist. Of course I only paraphrase.) That’s fandom, folks.

WOOF is a Bruce Pelz invention. Suford Lewis offered the two best proposed epitaphs for him I’ve heard, Si monumentum requiris, circumspice (“If you seek his monument, look around you”, alluding to Sir Christopher Wren) and He had a fruitful imagination. It may be worth mentioning that from Radio Station WOOF, Hoople, Southern North Dakota, Peter Schickele while ignorant of WOOF the apa so far as I know has broadcast music of the composer he discovered to the world, P.D.Q. Bach. I knew Pelz, and have been associated awhile with this WOOF, but it would take a less trepid fan than I (I am not, however, a tepid fan) to venture whether it, younger than Schickele’s, was named ignorantly of him.