Pat Lupoff (1937-2018)

Pat and Dick Lupoff in 1958

Pat Lupoff, the second woman to win a Hugo award, died October 17. She and Richard (Dick) Lupoff, whom she married in 1958, and Bhob Stewart co-edited the 1963 Best Fanzine Hugo winner Xero.

Xero’s discussion of comics sparked other fans to create their own specialty comics fanzines and organize the spinoff comics fandom of the Sixties that has grown so huge today. And when a collection of articles from their historic zine, The Best of Xero, was published in 2004, John Hertz’ review described the fanzine’s early days and named some of now-famous contributors:

Pat & Dick Lupoff typed stencils in their Manhattan apartment, printed them on a machine in Noreen & Larry Shaw’s basement, collated by hand, and lugged the results to s-f cons or stuffed them in mailboxes. The machine had not been given by Damon Knight, A.J. Budrys explained in a letter after a while, but lent. Eventually drawings could be scanned by electro-stencil, a higher tech. Colored ink joined colored paper, sometimes wildly colored. Xero could be spectacular.

…You’ll also see Anthony Boucher, Harlan Ellison, Ethel Lindsay, Fred Pohl, Rick Sneary, Bob Tucker as “Hoy Ping Pong”, Harry Warner — fans and pros mixing it up. Roger Ebert, later a movie critic, contributed poetry, often free-style, or formal and funny…

The Best of Xero won the Best Related Book Hugo in 2005.

Even before starting Xero, the Lupoffs paid tribute to comics in their iconic costumes for the 1960 Worldcon masquerade, as Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel.

The Lupoffs also hosted meetings of the (Second) Futurian Society of New York in their Manhattan apartment in the early Sixties — til the guests’ manners became intolerable, and the couple helped found a schismatic new group, the Fanoclasts.

Pat and Dick had their first child, Kenneth, in 1961.

Pat and Dick Lupoff in 2011

Update 10/21/2018: Corrected to show that Pat Lupoff was the second woman to win a Hugo, the first having been Elinor Busby, co-editor of Cry of the Nameless, the Hugo-winning fanzine in 1960.

8 thoughts on “Pat Lupoff (1937-2018)

  1. I am so glad to have known Pat, a wonderful person. She and Dick befriended me when I was just getting into fandom. Words are inadequate for this loss.

  2. I remember first seeing them when they won the Hugo at the 1963 Worldcon, my first. Later I got to know both of them when I was a member of the Fanoclasts. I saw Pat many times over the years, first in NYC, later in Poughkeepsie, seldom after they moved to California.

    I saw Pat and Dick in 2011 when I visited with them, driven over to their house by Mike McInerney, when I was in the Bay Area before the Reno worldcon. Pat was more frail then, and I worried about her.

    I tried to arrange a visit when I was in San Jose for the worldcon a few months ago, but e couldn’t arrange a meeting. Now I’m sorry I didn’t put more effort into it.

    But I’m glad to have known her for all these years, and am greatly saddened by her passing.

  3. According to the long list, Xero, co-edited by Pat Lupoff, won the Fanzine Hugo in 1963. Cry of the Nameless, co-edited by Elinor Busby, won the same award in 1960, which would make Lupoff the second woman to win in that catagory.

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  5. Pingback: Correction: Elinor Busby Was the First Woman To Win A Hugo | File 770

  6. Thanks for the kind and generous coverage of my late wife, Pat. Two tiny errors: Pat’s date of death was October 17, 2018 (not the 18th) and we were married in 1958 (not ’57). Please pardon my nit-picking.

    BTW, that photo of ours, taken while we were honeymooning in Bermuda, is a gem IMO. Where did you get it?

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