Tag Archives: Andrew Porter

I Guess This Isn’t News

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By Andrew Porter: I tried to get a press pass for Book Expo America, coming up the end of this month, but couldn’t qualify.

Apparently when I send links and news items to the people, news blogs and interested parties on my list (what I think of as my Usual Suspects), it’s not news, nor is it anything that Book Expo’s registration forms can categorize.

So I won’t be there. I will be at a party Baen Books is running on May 31 for Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, authors of the Liaden Universe series. Baen tells me that I don’t need a badge to attend their party.

Most of the people I worked for are all dead, anyway; among the most recent was Walter Zacharius, publisher of Lancer Books when I worked there in 1967-68. I’d liked to have given a whole bunch of photos I’d taken over the years of Peter Workman to his family (I guess I can do this directly at the company, any time).

My first BEA — then called the American Booksellers Association, ABA convention — was during a Disclave some time in the 60s or 70s, when both were held simultaneously in Washington’s Sheraton and Shoreham Hotels. I remember when the exhibits were little card tables, set up by publishers in the Shoreham’s garage. ABA grew, of course, and the first one I actually registered for was in 1975.

I have my memories of glorious parties at the conventions, for instance the party for The Name of the Rose at the Washington DC mansion of the Italian Ambassador to the US, canapes served around a swimming pool set in a hillside; DAW’s 10th anniversary party on a riverboat in New Orleans; watching the first performance of the Rock Bottom Remainders, with Amy Tan in a silver lamé dress, and famous writers belting it out (recently rediscovered several rolls of color photos of the performance); the Playboy parties at the Mansion in Chicago, and in 1992 at Hugh Hefner’s house in LA (and the horror when everyone who worked at Playboy Press was killed when their DC-8 crashed on take-off from Chicago, en route to ABA in LA); and the press party for Newt Gingrich’s Tor book, Window of Opportunity, in the Capitol Building’s Mike Mansfield caucus room, during the 1984 ABA.

Present were Gingrich, Tom Doherty (see my photo of the pair on page 22 of the August 1984 SFC), various authors, and Reagan-era politico Lynn Nofziger. There was an awkward moment when Nofziger enthusiastically asked the room whether everyone was going to get behind President Reagan’s re-election bid. Dead silence greeted this, and Nofziger suddenly realized that the room was full of liberal New York publishing types, not dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. He left shortly after.

Memories: Bantam changing the color of their booth each day; the tiger at the Brigham Young University Press booth; McGraw-Hill’s enormous sand castle, finished minutes before the end of the convention; lots of press screenings of upcoming films, including Alien, before release, before anyone knew about John Hurt’s chest-bursting scene (I shut my eyes); Goonies, before the pirate ship was inserted in the closing scene, and the actors starred in amazement at an empty horizon; all the Star Wars films; and countless others.

I used to do a guide to the SF/Fantasy/Horror on display at the convention, complete list lists of genre authors signing, relevant freebies, and other facts, done by going to the Publishers Weekly offices where PW allowed me evening access to their original publisher forms. Where are Genevieve Stuttaford, Barbara Bannon, Sybil Steinberg, Sonja Bolle, the wonderful photographer Helen Marcus, now? (I still have incriminating photos of a much younger Calvin Reid and thousands of others, and my “Honorary Important Person” badge as authorized and signed by a passing Garrison Keillor.)

Eventually my guide, which started at several pages, shrank to two, then finally one. The number of SF publishers and relevant booths dwindled; genre authors fell to a handful; most editors stopped coming. I did the 20th and last Guide in 2002, the same year I was fired from the magazine I started in 1979, Science Fiction Chronicle.

I find it inexplicable that I’m still doing news, still sending out links and articles more than 50 years since I was a columnist in Science Fiction Times — is it an obsession or just a disease?

Oh well. A nice run. See some of you at (some) of the parties.

– Andrew I Porter

PS: Hey, look, it’s that young lad, Calvin!

Calvin Reid. Photo by and copyright © 2013 Andrew Porter.

Calvin Reid. Photo by and copyright © 2013 Andrew Porter.

Lookout Shreveport!

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The only kind of “incoming” fanzine editor Guy Lillian III ordinarily watches for are letters of comment on Challenger. But the Shreveport resident might have a new worry, suggests Andrew Porter – North Korean missles! The Washington Post reports —  

The latest ridiculous North Korean propaganda video includes threats to launch … missiles at four U.S. cities: Washington, Colorado Springs, Colo., Los Angeles and Honolulu.

The only problem is that the video, released by the state-run media organization Uriminzokkiri, misidentifies Colorado Springs’ location by about 1,000 miles. As the voice-over excitedly discusses North Korea’s plan to launch a missile at the home of a number of important military installations, as well as the U.S. Air Force Academy, a dot on a map meant to indicate the city actually appears somewhere over the deep south.

You can hear the narrator mention Colorado Springs at about 1 minute, 20 seconds into the video, as a scary-looking line is shown shooting out from North Korea and landing somewhere in the vicinity of Shreveport, La., a 900-mile drive southeast from the intended target.

Better keep watching the skies there, Guy.

The North Korean video had already alarmed another friend of mine who awoke to it playing on the news one morning. His company creates collections of synthesizer music for use in the film industry, and the video’s soundtrack is their composition.   

 

Paul Williams (1948-2013)

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Paul Williams 1988 American Booksellers Assn photo by and copyright c 2013 Andrew Porter

Paul Williams at the 1988 American Booksellers Assn. Photo by and copyright © 2013 Andrew Porter.

Paul Williams, who began publishing fanzines as a teenager and at age 17 founded the legendary rock zine Crawdaddy!, died March 27 at the age of 64. He had been in hospice care since February suffering from early-onset dementia, attributed to the brain trauma he suffered in a 1995 bicycle accident.

Williams published Crawdaddy! from 1966 to 1968, the magazine’s distribution rapidly growing from 500 to 25,000 copies. Those historic issues can be accessed here.

Then, Williams ended the magazine and began a new phase of his life, as described in Billboard:

Following the initial success of Crawdaddy!, Williams closed up shop in New York and moved to Mendocino, Calif. where he traveled with Timothy Leary and “ended up at John and Yoko’s Bed-In for Peace in Montreal.” It was also around this time that Williams struck up a friendship with the influential science fiction author Philip K. Dick, a relationship that continued after Dick’s death, when Williams was named his literary executor. Williams is credited with helping to secure Dick’s literary legacy.

It took a long time for Dick’s reputation to gain its current stature. As Malcolm Edwards explains in his fine appreciation, Williams was instrumental in starting it on the way.

As an sf reader, which I assume you probably are, you should honour him as one of the two principal figures who kept the name of Philip K. Dick alive in the decades following his death. Paul was a close friend of Dick’s, and his 1975 Rolling Stone article “The True Stories of Philip K. Dick” was the most significant piece of writing about him published during his lifetime. (It later formed the basis of a book, Only Apparently Real, which was in turn the first book about Dick.) When Dick died in 1982, Paul was named his Literary Executor, and he worked tirelessly in conjunction with Dick’s long-time literary agent Russ Galen (the other hero of this story) to keep his name alive. Paul founded and ran the Philip K. Dick Society, which attracted hundreds of members in scores of countries. The small publishing company he ran together with David Hartwell published Dick’s novel Confessions of a Crap Artist– the first time any of Dick’s non-sf novels from the 1950s saw the light of day.

Gregory Benford paid Williams this tribute: “He was a stone sf fan from junior high, deflected into rock, but with the instincts of a fan and the smarts to see where rock could go, following the curve of sf and jazz and earlier American inventions. His kind of cross-conversation invigorated all fields he touched, from Dylan to Sturgeon to Phil Dick to all those idiosyncratic visionaries who lurk among us, bless them all in their fevered pace.”

[Thanks to Gregory Benford for the story.]

A Short History of Porter Tuckerizations

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“Tuckerization” is the practice of giving a real person’s name to a character, place or artifact in a story. The term was inspired by Wilson “Bob” Tucker’s sly habit of sneaking friends’ names into his work. Sometimes this is easy for a fan to recognize, as I’m sure Tucker’s close friends did. Other times, if the subject’s name is not uncommon, it’s an open question whether a Tuckerization was intended.

Lately Andrew Porter has been reading all of Larry Niven’s “Known Space” stories, including some in paperbacks he acquired decades ago but had never opened until now.

Porter realizes he should have read them a lot sooner, explaining –

Niven is a known serial-Tuckerizer, known best for his Fallen Angels, in which dozens of fans are named in transparent, easy to recognize ways. In his Flatlander, I’ve already come across one character named “Lowndes”. But I was stunned to read in his short story “ARM”, a reference to “Andrew Porter, Janice Sinclair’s lover…”

So if Niven wrote this in 1974 or so, and it was first published in 1975 — in something called Epic, which I vaguely remember — I’m wondering whether it was random, or deliberate.

And I’m amazed that however it happened, I’m getting 38-years-delayed egoboo!

I checked with Larry Niven, who made it official –

I don’t actually remember, but I don’t doubt that was a reference to the fan Andy Porter. A tuckerism.

Porter obviously knew about a second example:

I was, of course, Tuckerized by Robert Sawyer in his Mindscan, as a major character who is not only recognizably me, but appears throughout much of the book. This was deliberate; I paid for the Tuckerization via a fan-fund auction held during a Toronto convention.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Porter: Appreciation for Richard E. Geis (1927-2013)

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This photo of Geis, taken in 1983 by Rick Hawes, shows him at the age of 56.

By Andrew Porter: Hugo award winning fanwriter and fanzine publisher Richard E. Geis died February 4th in Portland, Oregon. He was 85. No cause of death is known.

His death is recorded here.

Richard E. Geis was one of the finest fan writers and fanzine publishers SF fandom ever produced. His own writings, primarily in his schizophrenic “Alter-Ego” editorial role in his numerous fanzines, which were notoriously wont to change their names in mid-publication, are famous in the field. They gained him numerous Hugo Award nominations and many wins. His fanzines, which became focal point fanzines attracting numerous contributions from the finest writers, professional and fannish, and artists, also gained him numerous Hugo nominations and wins.

Geis was a Fan Writer Hugo nominee in 1970 and 1971, and every year from 1973 to 1986, winning Best Fan Writer Hugos in 1982 and 1983. His fanzines were Hugo nominees from 1968 to 1971, and 1974 to 1983. His Science Fiction Review won the Fanzine Hugo in 1969, 1970, 1977 and 1979. The Alien Critic won the Fanzine Hugo in 1974 (tied with Andrew Porter’s Algol), and in 1975. Altogether, he received 30 nominations for the Hugo award, winning eight times.

Geis was a legendary recluse, living his early and later life in Portland, Oregon, and in Venice, California, during his period of hyper-activity in the 1960s and 70s. Even when he lived in the Los Angeles area, he did not attend local fan meetings or conventions. I met him, once, in 1975, in Portland, at his home, while travelling the West Coast after WesterCon, accompanied by Jon Singer.

Geis was also known for his soft-core pornographic novels, of which he claimed authorship of 110, most done as work-for-hire for the major paperback erotic publishers of the day. Many were done under the name Peggy Swenson. He had another four novels published in other genres.

Many of his recent writings are available on eFanzines.com.

Deckinger Passing Learned

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Mike Deckinger in August 2011. Photo by and Copyright © 2013 Andrew Porter.

Mike Deckinger, a longtime fanzine fan, died at home in San Francisco on February 12, 2012 but his death went unreported within fandom until today when Robert Lichtman received back the latest mailing of Trap Door marked “deceased.”

A notice in the San Francisco Chronicle last February read:

Michael Deckinger Passed away peacefully at home on 02/02/12. Mike died as quietly as he lived. Sandi, his wife of 47 years, Eric and Merrill, his brothers, and his many friends from work, the neighborhood, and the science fiction world will miss him. His unique sense of humor will be missed by many. Mike’s cat companions added joy to his life for many years. Mike didn’t like a fuss and hated crowds, for this reason, a private memorial service is planned at a future date. In remembrance of Mike’s life, donations can be made to the San Francisco SPCA, 2500 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103.

Mike came into fandom in the 1950s. He was a member of the Eastern Science Fiction Association (ESFA) from then until he moved to the West Coast in 1971. Most of that time EFSA met in Newark, where Mike lived seven years beginning in 1964. He served a term as director which came with the responsibility of finding speakers for the evening’s program. Among the guest speakers he recruited were Samuel Delany (a “beardless youth, just out of his teens”) and Joanna Russ.

Mike got active in fanzines at the same time — he cited the Coulsons’ Yandro as the first fanzine he ever received – and became a sufficiently notable faneditor that Roger Ebert paid him respect in a well-known reminiscence called “Thought Experiments: How Propeller-heads, BNFs, Sercon Geeks, Newbies, Recovering GAFIATors, and Kids in Basements Invented the World Wide Web, all Except the Delivery System” (available at Asimov’s):

But for the years of their existence, what a brave new world fanzines created! There was a rough democracy at work; no one knew how old you were unless you told them, and locs made it clear that you either had it or you didn’t. First, of course, was the hurdle of getting your stuff accepted. When Lupoff or Coulson or Deckinger printed something by me, that was recognition of a kind that my world otherwise completely lacked.

During the past decade Deckinger wrote two autobiographical articles for Earl Kemp’s eI, one about his days in ESFA, and another, “How I Almost Became Ivar Jorgensen”, recalling when he almost became a pseudonymous collaborator with pulp writer and editor Paul W. Fairman, who lived half a block away.

Mike is survived by his wife, Sandy (spelled this way in the Wikipedia). Her own fannish credits include a contribution to the original issue of Spockanalia, the first all-Star Trek fanzine, published when the series was still in its first season on NBC.

Mike Deckinger with part of his pulp magazine collection.

[Thanks to Robert Lichtman and Andrew Porter for the story.]

Update 01/16/2013: Corrected date of death per comment.

Porter: Gryphon Books Inventory, Collection
Destroyed by Sandy

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By Andrew Porter: Publisher Gary Lovisi writes: “We were hit hard here in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, with 6+ feet of water in the basement, that ruined everything. The water almost came up to the first floor of our house, and the windows cracked upstairs but did not break. Things were a lot worse for our neighbors and people in other areas, so we are thankful we were not hurt and that we were able to save a few things.

“I have lived in this home for over 20 years and we never had any water before. Last year, during Hurricane Irene, we got 2″ of water, which was the first time ever for any water. People in the area 50 years never had water like this before, no one ever had water more than a few inches in the worse hurricanes or storms.

“The basement was a total loss. I used the basement as my stock room. All 16,000 books I sell on internet sites were destroyed; I have taken down my listings. Almost all Gryphon Books — which I’ve been publishing the last 30 years — were destroyed.

“Worse yet, my collection of comic books, pulps, magazines, science fiction paperbacks — vintage Avons, Bantams, Pocket Books, Ballantines, more, — many signed, and hardcovers were soaked and destroyed. All gone. It is tragic and very stressful, and took my wife Lucille and me 10 days (with the help of teams of 2 contractors we had to pay) to throw it all in the back of several garbage trucks.

“The expenses were incredible: new electric, new furnace; it is a major job and we are not done yet but we will recover and rebuild.

“I hope nothing like this ever happens again to us or to anyone. It is hard for collectors like myself, but not everything is about money, or the value of things. I grew up reading all these authors, I grew up with these exact books, I remember purchasing each one and what I was doing then and where I was when I was reading each particular books — what girl friend I was spending time with, what friends I was hanging out with, where I was in school, college, work, and even what concerts and bands I was seeing back then; a lot of memories. And of course then there are the memories of the great books themselves, the great stories they tell and the cover art by the artists, and the fact that as years went on I was privileged to meet and even be friends with some of these authors and artists.

“Many I interviewed in Paperback Parade, many I had as guests at my NYC book show which ran 24 years. All very wonderful. I count myself very lucky. It is sad they are all gone now, but I am looking forward, and I believe that out of adversity comes great strength.”

The Gryphon Books website is here.

Fanartist Alan Hunter Dies

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Alan Hunter. Photograph by and copyright © Andrew Porter.

British fanartist Alan Hunter died August 1 after a long illness. Ned Brooks learned of his passing from Alan’s son.

Andrew Porter published many pieces of Hunter art in Algol/Starship and Science Fiction Chronicle and recalls that the back cover on the final issue of Starship was by him. Porter visited him in Bournemouth on a trip to the UK in 1993 and says, “A really nice guy and a wonderful artist, who should have been an artist guest of honor somewhere. But now it’s too late.”

Here are three examples of Hunter’s art which appeared in Science Fiction Chronicle as headers above Porter’s editorials.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

More Bradbury Tributes

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Joe Hill meets Ray Bradbury for the first time at 2009 Comic-Con. Photo by John King Tarpinian.

Joe Hill
Wired
Sci-Fi Scribes on Ray Bradbury: ‘Storyteller, Showman and Alchemist’

I met him in San Diego a few years ago. He was being pushed along in a wheelchair, surrounded by people who were in glory to see him, and hear his voice. We were at Comic-Con, marooned among booths selling ray guns and comic books and maps of Martian worlds. Every third person who walked by wore a cape.

“All this,” I said, pointing around us, “is your fault.” I had to shout to be heard. His hearing wasn’t good.

He laughed — it was one hell of a laugh — and nodded and said, “You know, some of it probably is.”

(At the same link are quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin, Daniel Wilson, Jonathan Maberry, Mort Castle, Gordon Van Gelder, Robin Hobb, Elizabeth Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, David Morrell, Greg Bear, R. A. Salvatore, Lev Grossman.)

Michael Dirda
Washington Post
Ray Bradbury dies: Appreciation for an author who will ‘live forever’

But he always remained, in the hearts of many, America’s greatest science fiction writer, eventually being honored by a special Pulitzer Prize for his lifetime achievement. In truth, though, Bradbury’s fantasy, horror and science fiction did more than merely entertain. In all his work, he explored loneliness and the troubled human heart and our deep-seated fear of otherness. In that regard, he became what he always wanted to be — a great storyteller, sometimes even a mythmaker, a true American classic. Live forever, Mr. Bradbury.

Orson Scott Card
National Review
Thoughts on Ray Bradbury

Five years later, a young woman who lived across the street had to wear eyepatches for several days, making her effectively blind. I went over to her house to help her pass the time. I brought that hardcover of I Sing the Body Electric. I read to her.

That was when I realized that Bradbury’s stories were not meant to be read silently. Your lips have to move, your voice has to produce those words, the cadences of his language have to rise out of your own throat.

What counted in the Whitman quote Bradbury used for his title was not the word “electric.” Not even “body.” It was “sing.”

The girl I was reading to married me. Talk about a book changing your life! (She assures me that it was me, not Bradbury, she fell in love with.)

Keith Wagstaff
Time Magazine / Techland
Ray Bradbury Didn’t Love All Tech, but He Loved What Mattered Most

In the 1940s, when a young Ray Bradbury began a series of stories that would eventually become The Martian Chronicles, man had yet to even send a satellite into space. Since then, six U.S.-launched landers have touched down on Mars, with a seventh, Curiosity, due to land in 60 days.

The first images sent back by Viking 1 in 1976 confirmed what scientists already knew — nothing like the advanced Martian societies of Bradbury’s imagination existed on the planet. Still, scientists are hopeful that we’ll find signs of past life; more importantly, many of them were inspired to explore Mars in the first place thanks to works like The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man.

One of those people was Ashley Stroupe. She first read his work as a 10-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Today she holds a job with the charmingly prosaic title of “Mars Rover Driver.”

Andrew Porter

Interesting that the various media websites that include photos show him after he became famous, such as at the White House or at mainstream author events. But of course there are no photos of him at the many SF conventions that he attended, because back then he was just some dumb sci-fi geek/nerd.

Note: I published Bradbury’s 1986 Atlanta World SF Convention Guest of Honor speech, in the December 1986 issue of my Science Fiction Chronicle; I taped his speech and had it transcribed. AFAIK, this was the only place it appeared in print.

Jeff Stahler
Editorial cartoonist
Bradbury Transits Mars – click on link, and if necessary, search June 7, 2012.

Porter: How Raccoons Boosted Schoenherr’s Career

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By Andrew Porter: According to a Nature program on PBS last evening — Raccoon Nation — when Sterling North’s novel Rascal, about a boy and his raccoon, with cover and interior illustrations by SF artist John Schoenherr, was published, it set off a chain of events which were to lead to ecological disaster in Japan. Made into an anime, thousands of Japanese children implored their parents to buy them a pet raccoon. Pet importers brought them into Japan, where they are not native. When they became mature they were destructive and unmanageable, and they ended up being released into forests across the country.

Raccoons have bred into an enormous population, unchecked by natural predators. Their predilection for roosting in trees has meant they have moved en masse into Japanese temples, where, according to the program, they’ve done more damage in the last few decades than in the previous 700 years, tearing up roofs, destroying timbers and turning centuries-old wooden floors into urine and feces-soaked nests.

From Wikipedia:

North published his most famous work, Rascal, in 1963. The book is a remembrance of a year in his childhood when he raised a baby raccoon which he named Rascal. It received a Newbery Honor in 1964, a Sequoyah Book Award in 1966, and a Young Reader’s Choice Award in 1966. It was made into the Disney movie of the same name in 1969. Additionally, it was made into a 52-episode Japanese anime entitled Araiguma Rasukaru.?Araiguma Rascal means Racoon Rascal. The success of the anime was responsible for the unfortunate introduction of the North American Raccoon into Japan.

The success of Rascal was good news for Schoenherr. The success of the book launched a new career illustrating books, and within several years he ceased to illustrate science fiction.