Rockefeller Coverage in Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair has published a lengthy piece about the “person of interest” in the 1985 disappearance of LASFSians Linda Mayfield and John Sohus, titled “The Man in the Rockfeller Suit”.

David Klaus forwarded the link with a comment:

Comprehensive account, although very little new, except more small details of each of his steps. Legally, he’s innocent until proven guilty. Metaphysically, it’s a certainty he killed Linda and John. He makes my blood boil. Linda was genuinely warm-hearted and decent, and reading about what he’s done leaves me feeling soiled.

Tolkien’s Revolver

Tolkien’s WWI revolver 

Webley .455 Mark VI revolver carried by Second Lieutenant JRR Tolkien during his service with the 11th Battalion, The Lancashire Fusiliers on the Somme.

I knew that J.R.R. Tolkien served in France in World War I:

Tolkien had just graduated from Oxford with a first class degree in literature when he saw his first active service at the Somme. From July 1916 until he was invalided out with trench fever at the end of October, he experienced the full relentless ghastliness of day after day of trench life under fire – the discomfort, the cold, the mud, the lice, the fear, the unspeakable horrors witnessed.

He had taken comfort from the fact that he was fighting alongside his three oldest and dearest friends from his school-days – a quartet of gifted would-be-poets who hoped to become outstanding literary men. But by November, two of those friends were dead.

What I didn’t know until I happened upon the webpage today is that the Imperial War Museum has on display the revolver Tolkien carried in action. And he saw plenty of that:

In June 1916 Tolkien went to France and was posted to the 11th Battalion, The Lancashire Fusiliers.  From July onwards his battalion went in and out of the line along the northern sector of the Somme.  He occupied front line trenches in Beaumont-Hamel, Serre and the Leipzig Salient.  On 28 September they undertook a successful raid against the Pope’s Nose opposite Thiepval and on 21 October helped to capture Regina Trench.  For both of these actions, Tolkien served as Battalion Signalling Officer.

At the end of October, weighed down by weeks of tension and wretched conditions, Tolkien contracted trench fever and was sent back to hospital in Birmingham.  He remained unfit for the rest of the war.

This Week in Words: Fandom’s Silent H

Bill Warren sent me a great fannish trivia question:

Whence and when came the fannish fad of tossing a silent H into words ordinarily without it, like ‘bheer,’ ‘Ghod,’ etc.  I know that it was most prevalent in the late 50s, well after Ghu, but may relate to that august deity somehow.  But someone else says it began when Bob Stewart typoed his name as ‘Bhob Stewart’ and then kept using that spelling (he still does, in fact).

There’s probably a real answer, but even such an authority as Harry Warner Jr. wasn’t able to track it down when he wrote his first great volume of fanhistory:

Other manifestations of fanspeak are less confined to newly created words. As if by instinct, fans have inserted from time immemorial the letter h as the second letter in many words that begin with a consonant. Donald A. Wollheim attributed it to the all-powerful influence of GhuGhuism. It is equally possible that there is a rational explanation: Mencken’s fondness for ‘bhoys,’ perhaps, or the frequency in fantasy fiction of ghost and ghoul. [All Our Yesterdays, p. 41]

Neither does Jack Speer identify anyone as the originator of the fannish h in his early fanhistory Up To Now, but on page 19 he gives many more examples of the extra h being added to words appropriated for GhuGhuistic parodies:

ghughu was a burlesque on religion, the combination ‘gh’ being frequently applied in such words as ghod and demighod, gholy ghrail, etc, the cult worships ghughu, who, they claim, is wollheim.

Knowing what influence New York fans had on early fanspeak, it’s worth noting that the 19th century New York gang called the ‘Bowery Boys’ dates to the time when “b’hoy” was local slang:

B’hoy and g’hal (meant to evoke an Irish pronunciation of boy and gal, respectively) were the prevailing slang words used to describe the young men and women of the rough-and-tumble working class culture of Lower Manhattan in the late 1840s and into the period of the American Civil War. They spoke a unique slang, with phrases such as ‘Hi-hi,’ ‘Lam him’ and ‘Cheese it’.

Another Day, Another Triffid

John WyndhamThere’s a highly-readable article on the BBC News site about movie-makers’ fascination with worlds doomed by science run amok:

A new BBC adaptation is being made of The Day of the Triffids, but why are we still prepared to believe in a post-apocalyptic world roamed by flesh-eating semi-sentient plants? And do we have a love affair with fictionalised destruction?

Andy Sawyer, librarian at the Science Fiction Foundation Collection at the University of Liverpool, is quoted. That sparked my curiosity – I corresponded with George Hay a little in the early days of the SFF. These days the SF Foundation‘s good works include their support of an sf research website. Its home page currently features Triffids author John Wyndham.

Oz Festival Reaches End of Rainbow

Porter County in northwestern Indiana is losing its annual Wizard of Oz festival, which once drew as many as 75,000 visitors. The September event had a low turnout and organizers are $10,000 in debt. A big part of the problem is their diminishing main attraction, the surviving Munchkins from the 1939 film.

You think our fandom has graying problems? Only three Munchkins were still alive and well enough to attend this year’s Oz festival. As many as 15 actors who played Munchkins attended the festival during its peak years.

One year, it was cigar smoking Munchkin Lollipop Kid Jerry Maren who fed me the best line for my next day’s story. “Do you realize that the dog who played Toto made more money that any of us Munchkins did on the set? We Munchkins got paid $50 or less per week and that dog made $125,” Maren said.

The Porter County Museum in Valparaiso has expressed interest in preserving the collection on display at the organizers’ Wizard of Oz Museum, which now faces the prospect of being sold off to satisfy debts.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Munchkin Ringers

The Los Angeles Times reports that a 70th reunion of the surviving actors/actresses who played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz had an unexpectedly bittersweet sidebar story:

[Not] all of the Munchkins were little people. It may be a footnote in Hollywood history, but let the news be spread that about 10 young girls of normal height, ranging from 7 to 9 years old, danced and sang alongside the little people 70 years ago on MGM’s massive Soundstage 27….

Last year, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce honored the entire diminutive citizenship of Munchkin Land with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame near Grauman’s Chinese Theatre that simply reads: “The Munchkins.” Nothing about “midgets only.” Yet, the handful of former child Munchkins who had been invited to the event were denied introduction and participation in the unveiling because they were not “vertically challenged.” Where is the Lollipop Guild and their sweet greeting when you need them?

Top 10 Posts for November 2008

This month’s elections helped boost a few posts with a presidential theme onto a list otherwise dominated by news of Forry Ackerman’s health and his 92nd birthday celebration. Thanks to a tie, this time the Top 10 lists 11 of the most-viewed posts in November 2008, according to Google Analytics…

1. Friends Visiting Forry
2. Pulpcon Torn Apart
3. Jane Badler Joins the Resistance
4. Keeping an Eye on Sea World
5. Now How Will We Know It’s the Future?
6. Bradbury Sets Ackerman Birthday Salute
7. John Hertz Reports: A Very Merry Unbirthday
8. Not a Forbidden Remake
9. Elliot Shorter’s New Location
10. (tie) Forry Riding a Wave of Encouragement
10. (tie) Pournelle’s Job in the Obama Administration

An Idea Whose Time
Has Come Again

Bruce Gillespie touts Steam Engine Time #9, the latest issue of the fanzine he co-edits with Janine Stinson:

This magazine of longer essays about SF and fantasy includes my convention report on Conflux 5 (Canberra 2008), a tribute to Tom Disch and a long article about Michael Chabon; George Zebrowski’s tributes to Stanislaw Lem and Daniel Galouye; Rob Latham’s and my articles about the links between fanzines and the New Wave; Frank Weissenborn’s article about Michael Moorcock; Gillian Polack on Geoff Ryman, an article about short stories by Cy Chauvin; and a long letter column. 100 pages.

Saving School Libraries

School libraries are down for the count. One well-publicized example in Britain has attracted celebrity attention:

Philip Pullman, the bestselling author, has warned a school that it will become a ‘byword for philistinism and ignorance’ if it goes ahead with the closure of its library.

The comprehensive in Chesterfield has become the focus of an authors’ campaign since it announced that its librarian will be surplus to requirements after Christmas, when the school is to become a ‘virtual learning environment’. Pupils will be encouraged to read at break times and at after-school clubs, but its traditional library will go.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]

Joe McGee, Horror Writer (1985-2008)

Joe McGee, a 23-year-old horror writer with several horror novels published by small presses, died in his sleep November 27. McGee was a member of the group New England Horror Writers. A posted added to his blog says:

The exact cause of his death isn’t known at this point, but Joe did suffer from diabetes.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]