Bwana’s in the Organlegger Business

Mike Resnick, best known to the internet’s luxury shoppers as Bwana25, always keeps a cargo of vintage fanzines for sale at his outpost on eBay. Every now and then that includes an old zine of mine.

This weekend Bwana’s selling a copy of Organlegger #7, from my first foray into fannish journalism back in 1973. The copy looks in good condition (it might be better than my file copy!), and that’s a pleasant surprise when you’re talking about twiltone paper printed with oil-based mimeo ink. If any of the earliest issues are still readable that’ll be even more surprising, for reasons that will be revealed in a moment.

Organlegger #7 came out in August 1973. The first issue had been produced just the month before. So was it a weekly? Never. But it had been a daily.

Elst Weinstein hauled his ditto machine and supplies to San Francisco in case they’d come in handy for whatever mischief we got into at the 1973 Westercon, a 5-day convention. The Westercon daily newzine had an aloof tone, and was full of official announcements. Elst and I were tempted to parody it until we considered how much real news we knew and that it would be more fun to launch a rival zine and play it straight.

Though it was a Sampo Westercon in the Bay Area, many of the con’s most interesting stories involved Southern Californians. Larry Niven was a GoH (in those days he was also hawking memberships in the highly-amusing parody Trantorcon in 23,309). Marjii Ellers scored a coup in the Masquerade as the “Queen of Air and Darkness”. The LA smofs bid for (and won) the right to try their own Bay Area Westercon, OakLaCon in 1975. And so on. Elst and I filled several ditto-reproduced issues of Organlegger by the end of the con.

The experience also confirmed I’d been bitten by the newzine bug. When I got home I took over the title and set out to print all the fannish news people felt Locus was neglecting (which was plenty even then, in only its fifth year of publication!) Organlegger failed to last only because I was a college student who simply couldn’t afford the project. The zine survived just long enough to report LASFS’ purchase of its first clubhouse — indeed, 2008 is the 35th anniversary.

If you’re someone who enjoys all the nostalgia brought on by a whiff of twiltone, don’t miss this opportunity. Bwana wants six bucks minimum. Buyer pays postage. Bidding ends February 18.

2 thoughts on “Bwana’s in the Organlegger Business

  1. Pingback: File 770 » Blog Archive » Bwana Rides Again

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