Category Archives: 50s Fanhistory

The Launch of Fan SF/F Awards

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By Dave Doering: While reviewing old fanzines of our early convention era, I note some curious parallels between the launch of the British “International Fantasy Award” (IFA) and the “Annual Science Fiction Achievement Award” [Hugo]. The big question is: “Who first came up with the idea?”

Origin Accounts

The IFA Origin: “The birth of the International Fantasy Award combusted spontaneously, as it were, during a conversation among four habituees [sic] of the London Circle at the White Horse Tavern one Thursday evening in April 1951.”

Dave Doering: With the event (titled Festivention) held on May 11-13th, and the statement that the awards were “conceived only two weeks prior to the convention”, this would likely have been Thursday, April 26, 1951.

“Highlight of this largest-ever British gathering was a surprise award promulgated by the London Circle for the Best fiction book and best technical book of 1950. The panel of critics chose George R. Stewart’s EARTH ABIDES (Random House) for fiction, and WIlly Ley & Chesley Bonestell’s CONQUEST OF SPACE (Viking Press) for the technical award. Forrest Ackerman accepted the two awards on behalf of his countrymen.”

The awards, conceived only two weeks prior to the convention, went on the drawing board immediately and a twelve-inch spaceship taken from the Bonestell design on the February 1951 GALAXY cover has been approved; it will be mounted on an oak base complete with ornate lighter.”

Dave Doering: This would have been a cigarette lighter, not a sailboat. Lighters were not uncommon add-ons in the 1950s awards. For example, here is one such trophy:

“Actual awards will be fashioned of heavy chrome for the fiction class, and bronze for the technical. Owing to the shortage of time, exact replicas were used in place of the models–not expected to be ready for some weeks. It is intended that these awards will be made annually, and planned to embrace other fields of science-fiction including the films.”

Dave Doering: Warp ahead from April 1951 to sometime in the summer of 1953:

The Hugo Origin: “The idea for the Awards was the brainchild of one of our club members, Hal Lynch. He came running over to my house one night, and said, “Hey, Bob, I’ve got a great idea! Why don’t we give awards for things like Best Novel and Best Magazine — sort of like the Oscars.”

And I said, “Gee, that’s great! We could call them the ‘Hugos’.”

Making the awards:

IFA: “For the event, it was only possible in the time available to have ready a facsimile of the actual Award trophies.”

Hugo: “Milt found out that the person who had originally been responsible for making the Awards had never even gotten started. So Jack stepped in and had to spend the entire convention in his machine shop.”

Appearance:

1953 Hugo Award
1951 International Fantasy Award

Design Origin

Hugo: ” Milt Rothman suggested we use a rocket design based on a Chesley Bonestell cover for a Willy Ley book” 

Dave Doering: Most likely the 1949 edition of The Conquest of Space by Willy Ley:

IFA: “The design was taken from the Bonestell cover on the March [sic] 1951 Galaxy” [Note that the cover is actually from the February 1951 Galaxy. Perhaps the writer is referring to the date when the issue appeared in Britain.]

Dave Doering: Wow, a remarkable coincidence! So, yes, the same Father of the Rocket was chosen on both sides of the Pond for a major award. Here’s another one: the 1951 Non-Fiction IFA went to that very book that inspired the IFA/Hugo design– The Conquest of Space.

The Question Remains…

Did the IFA spark the launch of the Hugo award?

There certainly may be a question, however small, about whether the British award made in 1951 would have been of notice two years later to Hal Lynch in Philly in 1953.

On the other hand, how much more likely is it that fen in 1951-53 would have discussed a significant award in their field? (Given too that there were two IFAs in 1951–Fiction and Non-Fiction Book.) If not the winners themselves, fen would certainly discuss what this new award would mean to fandom, wouldn’t they?

Point 1: The IFA history says: “Considerable publicity has been given the Awards on both sides of the Atlantic” 

Dave Doering: [I looked for zines of that era that reflect this publicity. Just may need to dig deeper.]

Point 2: The IFA committee announced their judging panel for the 1952 awards which included:

“ANTHONY BOUCHER and J. FRANCIS McCOMAS (jointly), as editors of Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction, both noted connoisseurs, critics and anthologists. EVERETT   F. BLEILER – leading anthologist and bibliophile. GROFF CONKLIN – well-known anthologist and book reviewer. BASIL DAVENPORT – literary critic of the New York Times and Book-of- the-Month Club. AUGUST DERLETH – outstanding anthologist, author and book reviewer. JUDITH MERRIL – leading woman fantasy author and editor.”

F&SF/Anthony Boucher/August Derleth/Judith Merrill were all big deals in SF in 1951-52 and being on the IFA’s award panel would certainly have been newsworthy in that era.

Point 3: Forrest J Ackerman attended the Festivention in England and carried home an actual IFA to the US. Wouldn’t 4E have mentioned this award in a zine or two?

Point 4: Even if news didn’t travel far or fast in 1951, wouldn’t it seem likely that Philly fen (if anyone) would have heard/discussed this award? Given the seniority of Phil-fen in fandom rivaling that of New York?

Yes, these are compelling points to me on the spark for the Hugos. I think the conclusion has to be our British compatriots not only planted the seed of our country but also planted the seed of the fabled Hugo.

Notes for Future Worldcons

Here’s a couple of points mentioned about the IFA and the Hugo that are of interest for Worldcons even today:

Meeting the Financial Challenge

IFA: “it is to be hoped that sufficient financial support will be forthcoming to maintain the high standard already set, and to establish a sound foundation for the future.”

“A special Fantasy Fund Award [sic] has been opened whereby anyone may donate.”

Hugo: “But how were we going to do it? Money didn’t flow freely in those days. In the end we decided to make them ourselves.”

Dave Doering: Even with today’s membership numbers, the Hugo awards now cost ~$12,000 to produce, a tidy sum for the committee. Should we return to “make them ourselves”? Tougher now as we don’t have hood ornaments to reuse.

Another British Solution:

On how to fund the IFA: “The idea was, for our American friends, a dollar-a-throw competition which entailed listing in order of preference their own six choices, with prizes amounting to $25.00 offered to the three winners placing the books’ correct order of merit as revealed by the adjudicators’ final selection.”

Dave Doering: Hmmm… Budget-conscious Worldcon committees might consider this contest idea for funding. Seems more dependable than hoping for help in lean years from a fan revolt to generate a blossoming of memberships.

Selecting Winners

Here’s a final question posed for the IFA in 1951 that reads exactly as a current-day post on the Hugos:

“The main question that has been asked, and which is still the most important factor of all, is: who will be the judges of what are the best works of fiction and non-fiction of 1951 in the fantasy field? Who are the best-suited people to state categorically that a certain book was the best literary achievement in fantasy published last year, worthy of an Award that could conceivably influence the sales of that book, and certainly enhance the reputation of the author?”

Dave Doering: Dang! 74 years later and this question is still on the table–hotly debated online and infinitely at the WSFS Business Meeting.

The Fan Who Had a Disease Named After Him

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By Rich Lynch: Once in a while, just for the fun of it, I do Internet research to find out what happened to science fiction fans who were active in past decades.  And with Chicon 8 now looming on the temporal horizon it seems appropriate to tell you about someone whose relatively brief stay in fandom began in the same year as the second Chicon.

His name is Joel Nydahl, and back about the time of that Chicon he was a 14-year-old neofan who lived with his parents on a farm near Marquette, Michigan.  He was an avid science fiction reader and at some point in 1952 decided to publish a fanzine.  It was a good one.

He named it Vega, after the bright star, and after a modest first few issues it gained enough acclaim where he was able to get contributions from some of the most famous fans of the day: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Dean Grennell, Juanita Wellons, Lynn Hickman, Bill Venable, Jack Harness, Wilkie Conner, Fred Chappell, Shelby Vick, Gregg Calkins, Bob Tucker, Robert Bloch, Bob Silverberg, and Harlan Ellison.  By the middle of 1953, Vega had become known as the best monthly fanzine and for a crowning achievement (after huge amounts of effort and no small expense) Nydahl published his 12th issue as an over-the-top ‘annish’ to mark a full year of its existence.  At 100 pages of top-notch material and with a wonderful three-color cover by Margaret Dominick it was something the likes of which had rarely ever been seen in fandom before.

A photograph of young Joel Nydahl charming a “cobra” (a vacuum cleaner tube with a horseshoe crab shell balanced on top) out of a wastepaper basket.

But there had been a cost.  Even though it had resulted in “letters of the wildest praise”, as Nydahl described it, there was never another issue after that – he dropped from sight and departed fandom.  Nydahl much later wrote that “I remember only that once the Vegannish was in the mail, I had no interest in putting out a thirteenth issue; nor, strangely, did I have an urge to read any more science fiction.”  His departure from fandom was so precipitous that the cause became known as ‘Nydahl’s Disease’, which according to Fancyclopedia 3 is “the diagnosis of any fan who gafiates amid or immediately after any big fannish project”.

Nothing further was heard from Nydahl for another 48 years and then, at the 2001 Philadelphia Worldcon, he resurfaced.  Several weeks prior to the convention he had been located by an Internet search and had then been contacted via email by both Robert Lichtman and Ted White.  This had intrigued him sufficiently to where he decided to attend Philcon because, as he described it, he found he was interested “in meeting old friends and rehashing old times with individuals whom I fondly remembered”.  Nydahl was at the convention for only one day, but his presence was almost immediately noticed with amazement by several fanzine publishers and fanhistorians who were there.  And after that he was gone again, back to his life in mundania as head of the English Department at Broward College in Florida.  But he left us all a parting gift, an article in Lichtman’s fanzine Trap Door (issue 21, March 2002) which described in detail his brief career in fandom and what he had experienced during his one day at Philcon.  It’s a good read.

Photo of Joel Nydahl posted with his family obituary.

And now, twenty years later, I found Joel Nydahl’s obituary in a web search – he had passed away on May 15, 2019 “following a brief illness”.  Turns out that after departing fandom in 1953 he had turned his attention to academia and other interests.  Following graduation from high school he went on to earn a degree in English from the University of Michigan and some years later a doctorate in American Studies.  His obit describes him as having had a “sense of adventure and curiosity [which] took him from his hometown of Marquette, MI, to more than 15 countries around the world where he lived and taught English”.  The obit concluded by stating that: “Joel had a terrific sense of humor, occasional corny jokes included, was a loving and sensitive husband and will be greatly missed and always loved by his wife and their many friends.”

I’m glad I got to meet him, if only briefly – I was one of those amazed fan publishers and fan historians at Philcon.  We talked just for a couple of minutes, as he was heading off to try to find someone he knew during his days in fandom.  I remember that Ted White took a photo of the two of us, but alas I can no longer find it.  No matter, the memory of the encounter is enough.

I’m writing this because I want you all to remember him too.  Vicariously, in this case, as I very much doubt there are many people left in fandom who have ever met him in person.  Joel Nydahl was one of the many notable fans of the fabulous 1950s, and fandom was blessed by his presence.  He was a bright shining star – just like Vega.

Note: You can read Joel Nydahl’s Trap Door essay at fanac.org: https://www.fanac.org/fanzines/Trap_Door/Trap_Door21.pdf. Issues of Vega are also online at fanac.org: https://fanac.org/fanzines/Vega/

What the Heinleins Told the 1950 Census

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Virginia and Robert Heinlein on the set of Destination Moon in 1949.

When we last left the Heinleins (“What the Heinleins Told the 1940 Census”), a woman answering the door at 8777 Lookout Mountain – Leslyn Heinlein, presumably — had just finished telling the 1940 census taker a breathtaking raft of misinformation. Including that her name was Sigred, her husband’s was Richard, that the couple had been born in Germany, and they had a young son named Rolf.

Ten years have passed since then, and the archives of the 1950 U.S. Census were opened to the public on April 1. There’s a new Mrs. Heinlein – Virginia. The 8777 Lookout Mountain house in L.A. has been sold. They’re living in Colorado Springs. What did the Heinleins tell the census taker this time?

WHERE’S WALDO? (INC.) The 1950 census worksheets aren’t searchable by name — that will come in time after volunteers enter all the data. Right now, searches must be done geographically. You need to know the state and county where your subject lived in April 1950 to find the Enumeration District containing their record. Research is time-intensive even when you know exactly where your subjects are living. Which I thought I did. But I was wrong.

The Heinleins’ Colorado Springs address so indelibly etched in memory had appeared at the end of the notorious “Who are the heirs of Patrick Henry?” ad they ran in newspapers – 1776 Mesa Avenue — the address of the super-modernized house designed by Robert that featured in a 1952 issue of Popular Mechanics. With the help of Google Maps (contemporary) and the census charts I worked out what Enumeration District to look in. However, when I found the right sheet there was no entry for that address. Their neighbors and soon-to-be good friends Arthur and Lucky Herzberger were present at 1700. But no 1776. Where were the Heinleins? Had they entirely evaded the census this time?

I shared my mystification with Bill Higgins, who had also studied the Heinleins’ replies to the 1940 census. He explained that I was looking in the wrong place. The new house had not yet been built when the census was taken in April 1950.

So where were they? Bill tracked them down. Digging into the second volume of William Patterson’s Heinlein biography, Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: The Man Who Learned Better, he found two Colorado Springs addresses for them.  In 1949, the Heinleins had been living in an apartment at 1313 Cheyenne Boulevard.  They put their stuff in storage before going to Hollywood to work on Destination Moon.  When the movie was finished, says Patterson, “They made for Colorado Springs, arriving February 12 [1950]. Within three days they found a grim little house in the same neighborhood they had left in the spring of 1949 [footnote 3].” Footnote 3 reads: “This house was at 1825 Cheyenne Boulevard.” That was the place to find.

SLOWUPS HAPPEN. The address isn’t in the urban center of Colorado Springs, rather it’s down the highway in the unincorporated Broadmoor area.   

Finally, I was looking in the right district. Carefully squinting at page after microfilmed page I came across entries for Cheyenne. Going up the top of one sheet I found 1818…1820…1822…1826 – WTF! Where’s 1825? Wait…all these are even numbers. Maybe the other side of the street is on a different page.

Again with the help of Google Maps I identified the street names in the neighborhood, then did a mental walk around to test whether different sides of the same street had landed on different enumeration sheets. They had. I found another batch of addresses in the right part of Cheyenne — and there were the Heinleins! Eureka!

THE DOOR INTO SOMEWHERE. So what was going on at 1825 Cheyenne when enumerator Phyllis C. Remington arrived on April 6, 1950? Everything you’d expect, and nothing that you wouldn’t.

Here’s the Heinleins’ entry from the P1 form – with thanks to Bill Higgins for creating the excerpt. An easy-to-read table follows with a transcription of all the information.

(Click for larger image)
NameHeinlein, Robert A.Heinlein, Virginia
RelationshipHeadWife
RaceWW
SexMF
Age4233
Marital StatusMarriedMarried
State Born InMissouriNew York
Processing Code043021
What the person did last week?WorkingHousekeeping
How many hours did he work40 
What kind of work?Free-lance writer 
What kind of business/industry?Writing 
Class of workerOwn business 
Occupation codesAuthors (006) 
Miscellanous professional and related services (899) 
Processing code3 

Codes translating “State Born In” to numbers:

  • Processing code 043: “0” = part of U.S.; “43” = Missouri
  • Processing code 021: “0” = part of U.S.; “21” = New York

Code number following the pair of three-digit occupation codes:

  • Processing code 3: Experienced unemployed [Procedural Studies of the 1950 Censuses, Issues 1-2, page 58; The meaning of the “3” code was correctly identified from a government table, regardless that the “unemployed” designation is wrong.]

IF THIS GOES ON… The personal information from the next census – 1960 – will be released in 2032.

When Bob Madle Named
The Hugos

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Willy Ley accepts his 1953 Hugo. Olga, his wife, is seated at right.

By Mike Glyer: It’s Bob Madle’s 100th birthday tomorrow, when File 770 will have more to say about his days in fandom. One contribution I’d like to discuss right now is his naming of the Hugo Awards, first conceived in 1953.

As Madle told the story in ”A Personal Sense of Wonder (Part 2)” (Mimosa #30, 2003)

The idea for the Awards was the brainchild of one of our [Philadelphia] club members, Hal Lynch. He came running over to my house one night, and said, “Hey, Bob, I’ve got a great idea! Why don’t we give awards for things like Best Novel and Best Magazine — sort of like the Oscars.”

And I said, “Gee, that’s great! We could call them the ‘Hugos’.” At the time I was writing a column, “Inside Science Fiction” for Robert Lowndes, and I used that to play up the idea of the Hugos before the convention.

Here’s a scan of the Philcon II segment of his column in the October 1953 issue of Dynamic Science Fiction (a quarterly publication which went on sale August 1, 1953, a month before the Worldcon. The October cover date was when it would be taken off sale.)

Harry Warner Jr.’s history of fandom in the Fifties, A Wealth of Fable (1996) confirmed Madle’s claim to have coined the nickname.

Dick Eney’s Fancyclopedia 2 (1959), produced only a few years after the awards were created, also credited Madle with attaching the name to the awards. You can tell from how Eney annotated the entry. He explained in the front matter:

A name in parentheses after a word or phrase to be defined is the originator of the term, or of its use in fandom; where this is followed by a colon and a second name, the second is the person who had most to do with making it a part of fandom’s vocabulary. 

The entry for “Hugo” displays Madle’s name in parentheses, identifying him as the originator.

Madle came up with the nickname, however, there was some resistance to overcome before it became universal. An item in Fantasy Times #184 (August 1953), published a couple of weeks after Madle’s column hit the newsstands, shows the committee was denying the “Hugo” name, trying to control the spin about what people should call their brand new Science Fiction Achievement Awards before they had even been given for the first time:

Fans obviously liked the suggestion. Not only did Madle’s nickname for the awards gain immediate currency, by the second time the awards were given (1955) the convention committee was using the nickname, too.

The Man Who Claimed the Moon

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Esther and Lester Cole at the 1954 Worldcon. Photo by Wally Weber.

By Rich Lynch: It was back on Christmas day that an email from an old friend arrived which provided some sad news.  Esther Cole let me know that: “You probably know that Les died in late September.  He had been very sick for a long time.  Still, he hung on, and was 93 when I kissed him goodbye, the night before he died.”

I actually hadn’t known, and apparently neither had anybody else in science fiction fandom.  Esther had not sent an obit to the local newspaper and Ventura is far enough off the beaten track, at least for most fans, that I may have been the first person to learn of Les’s passing.  We had been friends for a long time.

It was back in 1991 that I first became acquainted with Lester and Esther Cole.  I was doing some research for a new edition of Harry Warner, Jr.’s book A Wealth of Fable, an informal history of 1950s science fiction fandom, and had contacted them to gather additional information about the 1954 World Science Fiction Convention, which was held in San Francisco that year.  (Les had been co-chair and Esther the treasurer.)  It was two years later, at the 1993 Worldcon (also in San Francisco), that Nicki and I got to meet them – they had attended to participate in several discussion panels about fandom from that fabulous decade of the 1950s.  I was moderator for the panel about the `54 Worldcon and I remember that it was highly informative and also really entertaining, so much so that I am hoping that an audio recording will someday surface.

Nicki and I became friends with the Coles at the 1993 Worldcon, and following the convention we persuaded them to contribute essays to our fanzine Mimosa.  Esther’s appeared in the 16th issue, in December 1994, and described the half century that she and Lester had been science fiction fans.  It was titled, appropriately, “I Married a Science Fiction” and evoked a comment from another fanzine publisher that this was the kind of article he would want to build an issue around.  But it was Les’ article, which appeared in the 18th issue in May 1995, which was of even greater historical interest because it provided an inside story about the time, in February 1952, when the Little Men’s science fiction club of Berkeley, California (of which he was President) had staked a claim for a tract of land on the moon.  It resulted in mainstream news coverage around the world.

And now he’s gone.  Nicki and I had visited the Coles several times at their home in Ventura in the years since that 1993 Worldcon, the last time in the summer of 2018 on our way up the California coast to Worldcon 76 in San Jose.  Les had just returned from a short stay in the hospital and was not feeling well, so we spent most of our time talking to Esther.  We departed fearing that we may not see Les again, and maybe not Esther either since we don’t get out that way very often.  But when I told her gently that I this might be the last time we’d ever cross paths, she just smiled and told me: “We won’t let it be.” 

I’m sorry that I won’t be seeing Les again, and I’m missing him.  But as for Esther, I’m going to try very much to make sure she is right.

Happy 99th Birthday Bob Madle

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1930’s Fan Bob Madle and the slightly younger Fan Curt Phillips; May 1, 2019.

Bob Madle, turns 99 today. A founder of First Fandom, Bob attended the 1936 event in Philadelphia considered by some the first sf convention, went to the first Worldcon in 1939, co-founded the Philadelphia SF Society, was a finalist for the 1956 Best Feature Writer Hugo, won TAFF in 1957, and was Suncon’s (1977) Fan GoH.

By Curt Phillips: I visited Bob at his home two weeks ago just before Corflu 37, which was held in Rockville, MD this year.  Bob is doing very well, and in spite of some health issues over the past couple of years is active, sharp as a tack, and still loving science fiction and fandom as much as ever.  He’s still selling rare science fiction books and magazines too and during my visit I parted with a few hard earned dollars to buy some Wonder Stories and some other magazines that I’d been looking for, but the best part of my visit was to simply sit in Bob’s enormous pulp warehouse and talk about early science fiction with him.  He’s known everybody in science fiction and fandom over the decades and has fascinating stories to tell.  I only had a few hours to visit, but I could have stayed for days. 

First Fandom founder, WWII veteran, science fiction’s master bookseller; Robert A. “Bob” Madle. He was there at Fandom’s beginnings and he’s with us still.

1957 Worldcon Hotel Register

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By Rob Hansen [host of THEN, the British fanhistory site]: I’m always amazed by some of the stuff that survives down the decades and finds its way to me. The 1957 Worldcon was already easily the most well-covered con on my website, but now there’s more. Want to know the names of those at the con whose names have not been recorded in any conreport, the guests who turned and left on seeing the state of the hotel, those due to be there who cancelled, and those who refused to pay? It’s all here: The Hotel Register.

Karen Anderson (1932-2018)

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Karen Anderson in 1965.

Karen Anderson, author and a master of all the fannish arts, died March 17. Her daughter, Astrid Bear, announced her passing on Facebook.

My mother, Karen Anderson [widow of Poul Anderson], died last night. It was a peaceful and unexpected passing — she died in her bed and was found by the Sunday visiting nurse…. Memorial gathering plans to be announced later, but in the meantime, raise a glass to the memory of a fine woman. If you are moved to make a donation, please consider the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund or the UCLA Medical School.

Born Karen Kruse in Kentucky in 1932, she married sf writer Poul Anderson in 1953. They moved to the Bay Area, where their daughter Astrid (now married to Greg Bear) was born in 1954. Poul died in 2001.

Karen and Poul collaborated on a number of stories over the years, and on the King of Ys series published in the 1980s. And she wrote poetry, including the first published science fiction haiku (in F&SF, July 1962).

Even more notably, Karen made many historic contributions to fannish culture.

She was the first person to intentionally use the term filk music in print. ZineWiki explains —

In the 1950s, Karen Anderson spotted a typo in a fanzine while reading an essay by Lee Jacobs on folk music, where he had mistyped “folk” as “filk”. In her words, “Who ever heard of a filk? Since the essay appeared in an amateur publication circulated among science fiction fans, though, there was only one thing to do. Rather than waste a phrase like “filk song”, something must be created to which the name could be applied.” There had been songs written by science fiction fans since the 1940s, but Anderson’s new name for them caught on, and she is credited with naming “filk songs”.

Karen Kruse Anderson also was the first faned to publish a filksong, as Lee Gold documented:

Traveling yet further back in time, to the 26th SAPS distribution, Winter, 1953, on page #22 of Die Zeitschrift für Vollstandigen Unsinn #774 by Karen Kruse Anderson is…the first-known song published as a filk song [123k scan] – written (see the note in The Zed #780) by Poul Anderson.

And Karen, a rare beauty, shined as a costumer. She personified a familiar sf image in this array of “Warrior Women” photographed by George Young at the 1955 Worldcon. (She’s on the right.)

Warrior Women. 1955 Worldcon. Karen is on the right. Photo by George Young.

Later, she brought daughter Astrid into her presentations, as shown here in Ben Jason’s photo from the 1964 Worldcon.

Five years later at St. Louiscon, mother and daughter etched their names in masquerade history as “The Bat and the Bitten.”

Astrid and Karen Anderson as “The Bat and The Bitten,” 1969 Worldcon. Photo by Mike Resnick, used by permission.

Fanac.org relates the dramatic moment:

“The Bat and the Bitten” Astrid Anderson & Karen Anderson delivered a truly chilling performance as a vampire sires a new acolyte. Astrid is the victim in a white mini dress who transforms as the vampire envelops her in her huge black wings and secretly squirted Astrid with a homemade mixture of gelatin, red ink & yellow food coloring so that after the bite, Astrid opened her 14 foot white wings to reveal the blood that ran from her neck and down her dress to a horrified audience. It is still considered one of the best performances to this day and it was awarded both the Grand Prize & Judges’ Choice.

In 1988, costume fandom presented an award for lifetime achievement to Karen Anderson at the Worldcon, Nolacon II (New Orleans). This was the first such award, ever. It is a forerunner of the ICG Lifetime Achievement Award.

Karen had an avid interest in daily life throughout history and in different cultures, especially cooking as shaped by culture, available tools, and local or imported ingredients.

Her interest found a perfect outlet in the Society for Creative Anachronism, started in 1966, of which she, Poul, and Astrid were founding members. She remained active in the SCA for many years, once serving as “herald of the known world.” As late as 2010 she still officered a local organization as Baroness of the Angels.

Karen and Poul joined the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in 1967. She had earlier made her mark in LASFS history by appearing in the fannish film The Musquite Kid Rides Again (1960), based on a story from Lee Jacobs’ fanzine The Ballard Chronicles,  She moved back to the LA area after Poul died in 2001, and regularly attended club meetings for several years. She won the club’s Forry Award in 2010 for lifetime achievement in sf.

Karen was also a Sherlock Holmes fan, who co-founded a Holmes society with a couple of friends in 1959. The affinity continued all her life. She was made a member of the Baker Street Irregulars in 2000, receiving her investiture as Conan Doyle character Emilia Lucca.

Karen was an extraordinarily bright and talented person who made towering contributions to fandom and the sf field.

Lars-Olov Strandberg (1929-2018)

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Lars-Olov Strandberg. Photo by Magnus Westerlund.

By Karl-Johan Norén: Lars-Olov Strandberg passed away early morning on March 3, never having recovered from a stroke he suffered in January. He was a Guest of Honour at Interaction, the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow.

Lars-Olov was born July 26, 1929. He was active from the start of Swedish science fiction fandom, present at the first Swedish science fiction con, Luncon in 1956, and on hand with his camera at nearly every Swedish sf con since. He did not make a big mark in this very early fandom, but he was present, and his strong organisational skills were instrumental in making the Scandinavian Society for Science Fiction (SFSF) a success after its founding in 1960. Many of its early meetings were held in his apartment at Folkskolegatan 22.

Lars-Olov held a secure, well-paying job at a major Swedish insurance company, and served as treasurer, secretary, or chairman at nearly every con held in Stockholm, often paying the economic deficit of the cons out of his own pocket. He also used this to make frequent travels to international cons. He visited most Eastercons for nearly forty years, and was a regular at Worldcons as well.

When Swedish fandom started to expand in the 1970s, Lars-Olov was there was well. He was one of the founding members of Forodrim, the Stockholm Tolkien society, where he took the alias of Théoden. He organised the first lasting Swedish fan foundation, the Alvar Appeltofft Memorial Foundation. He was a member of nearly every science fiction club in Sweden. Perhaps most importantly, he was part of the board of SFSF when they acquired the book club of the Swedish publisher Askild & Kärnekull, instantly making the society’s membership several times larger. The publishing activity and postal order store was the foundation of the Stockholm Science Fiction bookstore, nowadays with presence in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, and one of the largest science fiction bookstores in the world. It is unlikely that the Science Fiction bookstore could have grown beyond its humble beginnings without Lars-Olov.

I first met Lars-Olov sometime early 1999, when I first went to meet Swedish organised fandom. I think he served as the secretary of the book auction, and he was friendly and unassuming. He was never forward, and I never heard him raise his voice. He was so retiring that one could be excused to think he was not there. But he kept careful notes at every meeting, no matter how small, and he was always there, making Swedish fandom better by being friendly to everyone. A Swedish con or an SFSF meeting without Lars-Olov was something impossible.

FANAC Fan History Project Update 4

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From the press release by Joe Siclari

“Keeping You Abreast of the Past”

November 20, 2017

Here are some highlights of the last 6 months:

Fan History Spotlight: Nearly everyone has heard of the Cosmic Circle and Claude Degler’s notorious fannish exploits in the ‘40s. If you haven’t, check the article at Fancyclopedia.org. However, few people have ever read the original “writings” by him, or the reports that fans wrote about him. This last summer, we added a section with over 40 of his original pubs and the investigations by T. Bruce Yerke and Jack Speer. (See http://fanac.org/fanzines/Cosmic_Circle_Pubs/)

Access: We’re trying some new ways to keep you aware of what we have online. Providing a bit more quick information has been a priority. On our Fanzine Index pages, you can now find the number of issues that we have online for that title. The last column will tell whether it is New, Complete or Updated. Another item is our Newszine Directory started last year. It’s a chronological list of all the Newszines (2,338) we have so far on FANAC.org. If you want to know the S-F and fan news of any given period, you can navigate directly to that month. The first ones are from way back in 1938 and the last in 2011. Finally, at the end of this FANAC Update, we provide direct online links to everything mentioned.

FANAC Fan History Project website: We keep adding more Newszines as we acquire them. In the last month, thanks to Richard Lynch, we’ve added a run of Chat, the Tennessee newsletter edited by Nicki & Dick Lynch in the early 1990s. We have been continually uploading issues of Mike Glyer’s File 770. Mark Olson has scanned dozens of them.

Since our last Update, we have added about 250 other pubs with “news from the past”. These issues come from 19 different titles. We are doing a lot to fill-in the runs of different zines. Unfortunately there are some issues I just can’t find or don’t have. Here’s where I need your help. If you can provide missing issues (zines, scans, even photocopies), please let me know. In particular, right now, I’m looking for:

Jack Speer’s Stefnews #58 (1946)
Merv Binns’ Australian SF News #1, 2 (1978), 47 & 48 (c1989)
Taurasi’s Fantasy Times #3 (1941)

Laney: We’ve added multitudes of material. Francis Towner Laney’s notorious memoir, Ah! Sweet Idiocy!, is the most requested item and it’s now online, plus lots of material about FTL in FanHistorica.

FAPA: So is Dick Eney’s A Sense of FAPA, a huge sensational historical anthology of fannish writings (nearly 400 pages), with contributors such as James Blish, Redd Boggs, Charles Burbee, Joe Kennedy, F. Towner Laney, John Michel, P. Schuyler Miller, Milt Rothman, Bill Rotsler, Jack Speer, Harry Warner, Jr., Donald A. Wollheim, C. S. Youd (John Christopher) and many others from the Fantasy Amateur Press Association.

LASFS:  The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society has given us permission to put their primary publications Shangri-LA and both runs of Shangri-L’Affaires online. So far, we have added 20 issues from the 40s and 50s, with many more to come.

Mirage: We’ve also been given permission to put Jack Chalker’s Hugo nominated fanzine, Mirage online. Mirage was one of the best sercon zines of its time.

FANAC Fan History YouTube Channel: We have over 50 videos/audios online at YouTube! In the last week or so, we put up a Harry Harrison talk (1971 Eastercon) on “Stonehenge and Sex”. It includes a roaringly funny discourse on the introduction of sex into science fiction stories in the 60s, with anecdotes about well-loved authors and editors including Brian Aldiss, Mack Reynolds, Ted Carnell and George O. Smith.  He also talks about the filming of an editorial lunch with John Campbell, and just how much of the iconic fiction of the classic Astounding Magazine was intimately shaped by John.

We keep adding great recordings and subscribers get first notice. We’re over 180 subscribers and nearly 18,000 views, with 3 pieces having over 1000 views. It’s heartening that even for the less viewed videos, many get an intense response from their audience. As always, if you have audio or video material that we might use, please let us know.

FANCYCLOPEDIA 3: This is our encyclopedia (yours and ours), so we hope you are using it (and adding to it!). Going to a convention this year? Read about the “first conventions”. Want to know more about famous fans, infamous fans (see Degler above), convention facts, clubs in your area, or fanspeak (the jargon of our people)? It’s all there. But is your local club or convention listed? If not, contribute an article (or the beginnings of an article). It’s easy. Just follow the instructions on Fancyclopedia.org.

Outreach for Fan History: FANAC has a Fan History Project Table at conventions whenever we can. In February, we will be at Boskone 55 in Boston and we will be at Worldcon 76 in San Jose.

FANAC was at Balticon earlier this year. The Fan Lounge Discussions we helped organize were well attended and great fun. You can listen to the Steven Brust/Geri Sullivan discussion on the raucous history of Minneapolis fandom on our YouTube channel (link below). Most recently, we were at Philcon this month. In addition to showcasing our history project websites, we have been showing selected fannish artifacts, including fanzines, original art, convention publications, and video and audio recordings from as far back as the 1940s.

When you next see our table, come say hello and help us preserve and promote our fan history. Take a sticker for your badge and/or your contributor ribbon. Bookmark http://fanac.org and click on What’s New every week to find our most recent additions.

As we keep saying, this is a community effort and we can only say “Thanks” to those of you who have helped us make our Fan History websites successful over the years. We’re continually adding to our contributors list. We have 248 of you listed so far and adding more as we update our older files. If you DO want to let people know you are a contributor, ask for our “I Help Save Fan History” ribbon. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/fanacproject/

We’ve added more: Photos, fanzines, and convention publications, video and audio recordings, and Fancyclopedia entries.  We provide information for fans, academic researchers, fan writers, and film documentaries. We’ve made some changes to the website to make it easier to use, with more to come.

Those who don’t know fan history may not be condemned to repeat it, but those that do know that Carl Brandon is not dead! Thanks for your interest our mutual fan history.

Regards…Joe Siclari