The Harp That Once or Twice, a collection of columns by renowned Irish fanwriter Walt Willis, has been added to the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund’s library of free downloads. If you enjoy it, a donation to TAFF is a fine way to express your appreciation. All are available in several electronic formats.

• The Harp That Once or Twice by Walt Willis

 “The Harp That Once or Twice” was Walt Willis’s famous column that ran from 1951 to 1969 in four different fanzines: Quandry, Oopsla!, Warhoon and Quark in that order, plus a final return to Warhoon. There were 44 installments, all collected here with the exception of two entire columns and a number of shorter segments within columns that formed part of the serialization of his 1952 US trip report, separately collected as the TAFF ebook The Harp Stateside.

First published as an Ansible Editions ebook for the TAFF site in March 2023. Cover artwork by Atom (Arthur Thomson) for Cry of the Nameless 164 (November 1962). 95,000 words.

From the Introduction

The harp that once through Tara’s halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls
As if that soul were fled.
– Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies

Only the harp. Lovely. Gold glowering light. Girl touched it. Poop of a lovely. Gravy’s rather good fit for a. Golden ship. Erin. The harp that once or twice.
– James Joyce, Ulysses

This ebook collects almost every instalment of Walt Willis’s legendary fanzine column “The Harp that Once or Twice”. These columns were widely appreciated for their insight into science fiction and science fiction fandom; for genially engaging humour in strong contrast with the rare intervals of deadly seriousness (such as the polemic on Heinlein and Starship Troopers in the twenty-eighth instalment); for cunningly crafted puns that sometimes didn’t detonate until a second or third reading; and for broad erudition modestly and entertainingly presented. (The learned Instalment 43, “The Rats that Ate the Railroad”, was incorporated almost unchanged into Walt’s professionally published 1969 book about his country, The Improbable Irish as by Walter Bryan.) There has been nothing quite like them in fanzines, before or since. They remain eminently readable today.

[Thanks to David Langford for the story.]