And to think I almost missed this! All thanks to “Lawrence Dagstine” for drawing worldwide attention to a major scifi milestone:
I have a story in the special — and rather thick, might I add — 250th Anniversary Issue of Scifi’s longest running fanzine. Pablo Lennis, Issue #250… 22 Years in print. And over that 22 year period, tons of great authors and poets, prolific and new, have come and gone. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of the last snail mails of its kind left. It’s where my fiction first saw print back in the mid-90’s, and it’s edited by John Thiel of Indiana. John, God Bless, and here’s to the next 250 issues…
Steve Davidson sent me the link, though I could tell from the accompanying note he was a little skeptical: “250th issue of the ‘longest running’ fanzine? See? SEE! THIS is why actual, verified and corroborated history must be SHOVED DOWN THE THROATS of the next generation until they gag and vomit back up the truth!”
Now, Steve, there you go again. I don’t think we should be jumping to conclusions without consulting the historic records. “Lawrence Dagstine” didn’t say this was fandom’s longest-running fanzine, he said it was scifi’s longest running fanzine.
I do kind of wonder why “Lawrence Dagstine” was the first and only person to notice this record. His name has too many letters to be an anagram of “John Thiel” and the wrong letters to be an anagram of “Pablo Lennis,” but I’m confident that with the right cereal-box decoder ring the truth will come out.