Jerry Lapidus Remembered

[Editor’s Introduction: Fanzine fan Jerry Lapidus (1948-2023) died April 19 at home in Ormond Beach, Florida. Tim Marion and he were both members of the same amateur publishing association (apa) years ago, and Tim says the final version of this tribute will appear in another apa, FLAP.]

By Tim Marion: Jerry Lapidus began his fannish career in the late 1960s while still a student at Syracuse University.  There, he was part of a group of fans that included Lisa Tuttle, who became a fellow member of SLANAPA with him.  He published the most adventurously beautiful and graphic fanzine of its time, Tomorrow And…, which was probably the first place that ever published Dan Steffan art (who later became one of, if not the, best artists in SF fandom).  He was a multi-apan in the early 70s and a member of APA-45, FAPA, and The Cult, as well as a charter member of SLANAPA.  For all of these apas he did a “catch-all” apazine of personal material, as well as an individual mailing comments zine.

When Jerry went away to Amsterdam to study theatre, Bob Vardeman kindly typed up and reproduced his trip reports so that he did not miss a single monthly mailing of SLANAPA.  When he returned to the U.S. four months later, Jerry himself published a massive, 20pp zine of nothing but mailing comments to everyone.  Although pure text, it was a joy to look at and fun to read — again, 20pp of text; reproduced using blue mimeo ink on lime green paper.  (The blue text of this issue is inspired by Jerry’s catch-up apazine.)  I thought of Jerry as a “trublufan” for all of this.

Since it was blue ink that he used, us relatively unsophisticated Newport News fen, who mainly used ditto, were mystified, and assumed that he was using ditto to print on lime green paper.  So we tried it, with significantly inferior results.

Later, in the late 1970s, I was again in SLANAPA and got a kick out of using blue ink for text with my Rex Rotary M4 mimeo, and preferred lime green paper.  Along about this time I threw the Rex in the trunk of my car and decided to move from Newport News, Virginia, to New York City.  Jerry was one of the first people I contacted here. 

I recall going to The Cloisters (museum of medieval reliquaries) with him, his wife Anita, and Lisa Tuttle.  I wish I had thought to bring a camera.  Normally museums wear me out utterly, but I was fascinated by The Cloisters, as well as The Unicorn Tapestries which were on display.  Also glad to finally meet Jerry, as well as Lisa (who had dropped out of SLANAPA a few years before).  These were fun times, made only slightly vague now with the passage of (almost exactly) 45 years…

It would seem to me that in the Perfect World, Jerry would still be alive and publishing Tomorrow And… and once again electrifying fandom with his daring layouts and beautiful graphics.  That accomplishment is how I would like to remember Jerry.  I don’t care to remember the times that he was angry at me (I felt unfairly); no, I would rather remember that later he passed along his entire fanzine collection to me for what was really a pittance.  I got to read a lot of zines I had only ever heard of before, including his zines.  As pathetic as it must sound, this old fanzine fan actually had some of the best times of his life going through those boxes of fanzines.  Thank you, Jerry.

DisCon II 1974: Mike Wood, Jerry & Anita Lapidus, Mike Dobson, Unknown, George Beahm, Eddie Ferrell, Ned Brooks, Laurine White, Bob Roehm, Irvin Koch. Photo by George Beahm’s camera. Via Fana.org.

Ned Brooks: A Pair of Obituaries by Tim Marion

Ned Brooks around 1971.

Ned Brooks around 1976.

Ned Brooks: subjective obituary

By Tim Marion: I can’t believe it. This must surely be a hoax, ’cause Ned just loved hoaxes. He even liked death hoaxes, as long as they weren’t carried too far.

Just got news on Facebook that Ned (Cuyler Warnell Brooks Jr.) passed away while attempting to repair the roof of his house; he apparently fell, sustaining a fatal injury. What a waste! He used to brag that he would probably live to over 100, like his mother did. I used to joke that he could leave me this or that in his will, as I am slightly over 20 years younger than him. “How do you know I won’t live longer than you?” he would rejoinder.

Although I recall some hand-scrawled correspondence with another Doc Savage fan, for whose fanzine I wrote comic book reviews (a zine which never materialized, as far I know), it wasn’t until several months later that I met the first fan I ever knew, Ned Brooks, in October 1970. A mutual acquaintance had told me of a man whose house was filled with science fiction books and I became very much inspired to meet this fellow. Upon entering his house, I saw stacks of ERBdom on a tabletop. “Wow, ERBdom! Do you have any other fanzines?” I asked excitedly. At this point, he gave me an extra copy of the final issue of his genzine, The New Newport News News (a title that played on the name of the city we lived in, Newport News, Virginia).

Over the years we had our ups and down with each other, and our failures to understand one another, but basically, he introduced me to fandom and published, on his ditto machine, my first several fanzines and apazines. More recently, he has helped me with both my art collection and in other ways, while I have, in the midst of collecting fanzine collections, filled in holes in his. Even during these days we still have had trouble understanding each other on occasion, but have remained friends. I will continue to think of him that way, just a friend now whom I can no longer write, call, or, alas, visit.

Have a good time at that Worldcon in Brownsville, Ned — I’ll join you when I can.

Ned Brooks: objective obituary

By Tim Marion: Cuyler Warnell Brooks, Jr., was born in Montana and was the son of Cuyler Warnell Brooks Sr., who was also nicknamed “Ned.” Ned never did discover the origin of the nickname. Ned once boasted that at the age of five, he had the sense to leave Montana. A military brat, his family moved to Chile, where Ned spent his childhood. There, Ned learned to read Spanish, although he never really spoke it all that fluently.

Ned went to school at Georgia Tech where he graduated with a 2.5 grade average and a degree in physics. He went to work for NASA, in Hampton, Virginia, in 1959, during which time he rented a room on Briarfield Road in Newport News, Virginia. Somehow he got a hold of an issue of Buck Coulson’s fanzine Yandro and started subscribing to fanzines from there. At one point or another, Ned was quite a proficient letterhack. However, his accumulation of books grew to the point that the people he was staying with had to say, “It’s either you or your books…!” and so Ned purchased the now mildly famous house at 713 Paul Street (on which he, years later, had still more additional rooms built in order to hold his continually burgeoning collection).

Ned met Vaughn Bodé at a convention in the mid-1960s. Vaughn had a strong interest in science fiction and a brilliant cartoony style that was perfect for fanzines. At Vaughn’s request, Ned gave Vaughn the names and addresses of a bunch of prominent fanzine publishers. This was the beginning of Vaughn being “discovered.” In the early 1970s Ned, with George Beahm, started The Bodé Collectors, a mail order company designed to cheaply and affordably offer Bode products to his growing legion of fans, as well as to prepare the way for The Vaughn Bodé Illustration Index, which George compiled and published in 1976 (which unfortunately shortly followed Vaughn’s death). Years later, the two also collaborated on Kirk’s Works, a complete (at the time) listing of all appearances of Tim Kirk’s art.

Ned worked for NASA for 39 years, then retired to Lilburn, Georgia, in order to be closer to his relatives. He purchased and arranged a large house with room for all his books and there was even a separate room for his antique typewriter collection.

Ned also published a lot of fanzines — besides being a member of SFPA since the late 1960s and SLANAPA since 1970 (during which he had a perfect attendance record for each mailing) and a member of N’APA and Apanage (the latter which he named) briefly, he was also a member of the N3F and published ten issues of Collectors’ Bulletin for them, a mighty bibliographic effort each time. He also did five issues of a ditto’d genzine, The New Newport News News, as well as 26 issues of It Comes in the Mail (personalzine listing and reviewing the interesting and fan-related mail he received), and most recently, 36 issues of It Goes on the Shelf (personalzine reviewing books he had picked up). He also published the Hannes Bok Illustration Index in the 1960s and, much later, several small-press books in magazine format, including an edition of C.L. Moore’s and Henry Kuttner’s story “Quest of the Starstone” which was illustrated by Alan Hunter (book entitled Quest for the Green Hills of Earth). He has been popular in the N3F, Southern Fandom (where he won both Rebel and Rubble Awards at different times), and fanzine fandom in general.

He is survived by his sister Mary and her son Joe.

Tim Marion Zines Available

The other day Tim Marion says he “passed a black-and-white Verizon pick-up truck which had, emblazoned on it side, ‘KING of Fandom!’ And I wasn’t even in the truck! (How did they know I would be passing by at that point?)”

Wasn’t it in your fanzine, Tim? All knowledge is in fanzines, as you know.

Anyone can tap into Tim’s kingly wisdom by reading his zines Terminal Eyes or So It Goes. He has over a dozen copies of recent issues for sale at $10@ ($16 outside of North America). 

So It Goes #17 has a portfolio of serious (rather than cartoony) art by Bill Rotsler and also has the first-ever 3-D  cover on a fanzine.

So It Goes #18  has much rare, reprinted art by Steve Fabian and Marcus Boas, as well as an overview of Robert E. Howard fanzines. The issue also boasts reprints of Aljo Svoboda articles from the early Seventies (a fanwriter well worth remembering), and Michael Shoemaker’s first letter of comment to a fanzine in years. Names to reckon with, I tell you!

To arrange purchase, contact Tim via e-mail — timothy.marion (at) rocketmail (dot) com

File 770 30th Anniversary Issue

File 770’s 30th Anniversary issue is now available at eFanzines.com. Thanks to the indefatigable Bill Burns for taking time out from his Eastercon trip to post it.

Here you can read John Hertz chronicling the Nippon 2007 Worldcon. There’s a classic photo of John Pomeranz in Japanese formal clothing next to George Takei at the Hugo ceremony. And Bruce Gillespie adds his salute to Big Heart Award winner Robin Johnson.

Chris Garcia, Taral Wayne, Mark Leeper, Marie Rengstorff, James Bacon and Francis Hamit celebrate the anniversary with their own special features.

Tim Marion tells about the massive project to organize his old fanzines and his nostalgic rediscovery of apas populated by New York City fans of the 1970s, in “Fannish Archiving Blues.”

Brad Foster’s cover on this issue is also his 71st contribution to File 770, going back to 1984.

The PDF file contains information about how to subscribe to the paper edition, too.