Category Archives: 70s Fanhistory

Two Vain Guys Named Robert

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By Bill Higgins: Robert Osband, Florida fan, really loves space. All his life he has been learning about spaceflight. And reading stories about spaceflight, in science fiction.

So after NASA’s Apollo program was over, the company that made Apollo space suits held a garage sale, and Ozzie showed up. He bought a “training liner” from ILC Dover, a coverall-like portion of a pressure suit, with rings at the wrists and neck to attach gloves and helmet.

And another time, in 1976, when one of his favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, was going to be Guest of Honor at a World Science Fiction Convention, Mr. Osband journeyed to Kansas City.

In his suitcase was his copy of Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel—a novel about a teenager who wins a secondhand space suit in a contest—and his ILC Dover suit.

Because if you wanted to get your copy of Have Space Suit, Will Travel autographed, and you happened to own a secondhand space suit, it would be a shame NOT to wear it, right?

As Ozzie stood in the autograph line, David Dyer-Bennet, a fannish photographer, was watching. Heinlein was casually dressed in a Hawaiian shirt. (You may have seen some of DD-B’s photos of this autograph session, because they are frequently reproduced in books about Heinlein, and he has made one available on Wikimedia Commons.)  He snapped a series of pictures of the fans.

Consequently, there exists a picture of Mr. Osband meeting Mr. Heinlein at that moment in September 1976.

Photo by David Dyer-Bennet. Robert Osband (Ozzie) is getting his copy of “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” autographed by Robert Heinlein while wearing the training liner of space suit he bought at ILC Industries of Dover DE, when the manufacturer cleaned out the attic and held a garage sale following the end of the Apollo Program. Photo used by permission.

This month I found, to my surprise, that the two had something unexpected in common. To put it into a single word, they were both vain.

Vain, but in interesting ways. I will explain.

Mike Glyer, our gracious host here at File 770, has, as you may know, a keen interest in science fiction history. On Friday, April 1, the U. S. National Archives made public the data from the 1950 Census. Mike was curious what the Census might say about individuals in the SF world, and he asked me for a bit of research help. Here’s his article: “What the Heinleins Told the 1950 Census”.

That’s how I came to be examining a list of Heinlein’s residences in those days. Robert and Virginia Heinlein, recently married, at first rented a place in Colorado Springs, Colorado. But in the spring of 1949 they put their furniture in storage and went to Los Angeles, where Robert worked on the film Destination Moon. They returned to Colorado Springs in February of 1950 and rented a house. But their dream was to build a house of their own. Robert had a lot of novel ideas about modern house design.

By springtime, they were negotiating to purchase land. The developer made them an unusual offer. Their lot was between two other homes on Mesa Avenue with house numbers 1700 and 1800. They were invited to choose an address of their own, a number between 1700 and 1800.

This is the reason why, in August 1950, Robert and Virginia Heinlein came to be living at 1776 Mesa Avenue.

To digress briefly, here in the U.S., states allow motorists to specify custom text on their license plates. Usually the state charges an extra fee for this. For example, I once saw an orange Cadillac owned by Forrest J. Ackerman, the prominent fan who coined the phrase “Sci-Fi.” And sure enough, Forry’s California license plate read “SCI FI.” Such custom license plates are known as “Vanity Plates.”

The Heinleins of 1776 Mesa Avenue, both patriotic veterans, had given themselves a Vanity Address.

A vanity address is much rarer than a vanity license plate. But Robert Osband has something even more rare.

Ozzie was—how shall I say it?—um, an amateur telephony enthusiast. He understood well how telephones work, and how the switching network functions, and how phone systems evolved the way they did.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as populations grew, and as the purchase of fax machines, modems, and mobile phones grew even faster, a lot of phone numbers were gobbled up. In large metropolitan areas particularly, the available supply of not-yet-assigned phone numbers became smaller and smaller.

The solution to this congestion was to assign fresh new Area Codes.

Each area code is a three-digit number, and (at the time) all the phone numbers assigned within a large geographic area would share this three-digit prefix. Chicago phone numbers started with 312. Miami phone numbers started with 305.

Ozzie knew about the North American Numbering Plan Administration, which governed the area code system. In Titusville, Ozzie lived in the 305 area code, whose boundaries encompassed much of southern Florida.

In 1988, the Orlando region was split off. A new area code, 407, was assigned to many phones previously within 305’s domain. Titusville remained in 305.

But more people, and more fax machines, and more mobile phones kept eating up available 305 numbers.

So very soon, it was time once again for the congested 305 to calve, creating a new area along the east coast of Florida, with a fresh area code.

Ozzie saw an opportunity. He understood the Numbering Plan. He consulted the pool of three-digit numbers not yet in use. He knew that the Florida Public Service Commission regulated aspects of the telephony business.

Ozzie did some research and carefully prepared his case. There was a particular three-digit string he wanted to advocate, one not yet in use for any other area.

On 24 September 1998, he testified to a meeting of the Public Service Commission. They loved his idea. And they ran with it.

This is the reason why, on 1 November 1999, Titusville, and Cocoa Beach, and Melbourne, and, most importantly, Cape Canaveral, Florida, became part of Area Code 321. As Ozzie had told the PSC, “With the Space Coast of Florida as the Count-Down capital of the world, this in my humble opinion, is the Area Code for us!”

As a result, Ozzie’s own phone number became 321-LIFTOFF.

Yes, Robert Osband had arranged a Vanity Area Code.

You may wish to read his own account of the tale, “How I Got My Very Own Area Code” , written using his pseudonym, “Richard Cheshire.”

So when I learned of Robert and Virginia Heinlein and their vanity address, I recalled Robert Osband’s vanity area code. And suddenly realized that, long after the address was established, and long before the area code was created, they had once met. And that DD-B had photos of the meeting.

And I wanted to tell you about it.

Bill Mills (1952-2022)

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Bill Mills

Las Vegas fan Bill Mills died January 9 at the age of 69, less than a week after coming home from the hospital.

Mills was a musician, filker, collector of sf movie props, and a masquerader. He was a prolific maker of videos featuring his singing.

As a young actor Mills had an uncredited appearance in the Disney movie Follow Me Boys (1966). Later in life he had acting roles or stuntman credits in a half dozen low-budget film productions.  

First meeting at the original LASFS clubhouse in 1973. Back row, L to R: Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Jerry Pournelle, A. E. Van Vogt, Forry Ackerman. Middle row, L to R: Unknown, Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, Wendayne Ackerman. Front row, L to R: Unknown, Bill Mills, Ron Cobb. Photo by Stan Burns.

After Mills found his way into fandom he joined LASFS in 1970. He and his friend Robert Short were the self-proclaimed world’s biggest Man from U.N.C.L.E. fans and amassed a fantastic collection that they displayed at Westercon 23 in 1970, filling an entire room with props, scripts and other materials used on the program, plus merchandising items from around the world.

They also were part of the T.H.R.U.S.H. squad put together by David McDaniel, an LA-area author of several U.N.C.L.E. media tie-in novels. He had obtained some T.H.R.U.S.H. logo patches from the studio, and everyone in the group sewed patches on dark suits and showed up together at a local theater where U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn was playing Hamlet. After the performance they stood politely in line to greet Vaughn, and equally politely insisted they were from the “Public Relations” department of T.H.R.U.S.H. There were several more “T.H.R.U.S.H. runs” to places where they could startle people who weren’t expecting a group of fictional villains to show up. The group included Barry Gold, Robert Short, Bill Mills, Evan Hayworth, Gail Knuth, and Charles Lee Jackson II, many of whom had been Tuckerized in McDaniel’s novels.

Years later he moved to Las Vegas and became active in the Vegrants. Around 2006 he created a new website, The Voices of Fandom, which hosted fannish podcasts, historic soundbites and classic filk music. An oral history page played short testimonials by various Las Vegrants in April 2006 about how they discovered fandom. Much of the material has been saved to the Internet Archive and can be accessed here. Bill’s tech expertise also led to him being part of the Corflu 25 committee in 2008.

In recent years, Bill has been active creating music videos for his YouTube channel.

He is survived by his wife Roxanne Mills.

jan howard finder: Prophet of Tolkien In Budapest?

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By Bence Pintér: As a historian and journalist, I always found pleasure in flipping through old newspapers. In these times of lockdown, I happened to be fooling around in Arcanum Digitheca, Hungary’s “largest and continuously expanding” digital periodical database, looking for traces of old Hungarian fandom in the papers.

This is how I found my way to an article from 1973 in Magyar Ifjúság (Hungarian Youth – the official magazine of the Hungarian Young Communist League), about jan howard finder giving a lecture on Tolkien to Hungarian fans. An American fan giving lecture on Tolkien in Budapest long before the fall of communism and long before Tolkien was even published in Hungary?

That is an interesting story, I thought, then googled “jan howard finder file770”, since I never heard about him before, but was sure that I would find something here, and boy, was I right! So I gathered that maybe some of the readers of File770 could be interested in what jan howard finder told to the budding Hungarian fandom about Tolkien. But first let me present you some context with a little the help from Pálma Erdei’s fine dissertation about Hungarian sci-fi and fandom.

In Communist Hungary fannish activities seemingly preceded the official recognition of science fiction: the first Hungarian fanzine was created in 1968 at Berzsenyi Dániel High School, while the first state-approved science fiction collection, Cosmos Fantastic Books started publishing in 1969 at Móra, which was a publisher mainly of children’s fiction. (Of course there were some science fiction books published before this collection in the country, but few.)

The science fiction clubs also preceded Cosmos Fantastic Books: apart from the fanzine-making guys at Berzsenyi High, the first was founded in 1968 mostly by scientists, members of the Society for Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge (TIT is the Hungarian acronym for that one). At the end of 1973, TIT got 600 members, a network of clubs in major cities in Hungary, and a rather good fanzine named Pozitron.

The title of the article is ‘A fantázia új útjai’ (The New Ways of Fantasy), but you should know  that in Hungarian with ‘fantázia’ does not mean the genre, because we call that simply ‘fantasy’. Besides that, science fiction is also called ‘tudományos fantasztikum’, in which the first part means scientific, and ‘fantasztikum’ is a broader term which means sci-fi, fantasy and horror.

The journalist describes jan howard finder (an American chemistry teacher from West Germany, we are told) a ‘sci-fi specialist’ and a Tolkien-expert, then goes on to wonder about why The Lord of the Rings is science fiction. The answer to this question (drawn from finder’s lecture) is a bit confusing, since it do not try to sell LotR as sci-fi, but goes on detailing the plot. I assume that the translation was not really accurate, and/or the journalist was confused by these terms. Fantasy was not a thing in Hungary then, and rather similar ‘fantasztikum’ meant sci-fi as well.

I would not bore you with the plot summary, but it is funny: it’s like if I want to summarize LotR to my four-year-old. “…in the story there is a ring, which has various magical powers, and which was lost by the leading evil magician. The good side find the ring, but if somewone wears it, he is corrupted…” And so on and so forth. Later the journalist quotes finder to say: LotR is the reason why Western universities started to research science fiction, and also LotR is responsible for the rise in quality in science fiction.

In the next part Finder reflects on new wave: “Science fiction, like every genre, is in constant change. Science fiction concerning technology is only written in East Germany nowadays, because there this became the most notable subgenre. The latest development is ‘speculative fiction’. You should be prepared not just to write ‘speculative fiction’, but also to read it. Honestly, first I was really bored by the ‘new wave’, but soon I found that this is just a perfect ‘brain exercise’ Nowadays I am amused by ‘speculative fiction’.”

The he goes on to describe Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine by R. A. Lafferty, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, and Zone Null by the Austrian Herbert W. Franke, which is wrongly attributed in the article to the German Wolfgang Jeschke. (There is a reason for that: the novel was in one volume with Jeschke’s short story collection.)

The journalist ends the article in this fashion: “One thing is sure: true SF does not mean space mysteries and space pulp anymore. The fans of SF only read sci-fi books sophisticated in style and message nowadays.”

While The Lord of the Rings was already a bestseller in 1973 for years, this is the first article in the Hungarian database which even mentions the massively successful book and its author. The Hobbit was published in 1975 in Hungarian, but until the publication of LotR in 1981, there were a total of six articles mentioning the book briefly. (One bears the title “Who is the Most Boring Writer?”, and is a translation of an article about which author is the most boring according to some students.) So it is no exaggeration to say that jan howard finder was like an evangelist prophesizing about a book that will be massively popular in Hungary also – twenty or thirty years later.

There is a quote from translator of the lecture in the article, who told the journalist that she wants to translate LotR, but it will be hard. In fact she will not be the one to translate the epic: most of the geographical and other names, and the first eleven chapters was translated by noted translator Ádám Réz, while the rest of the book was translated by future president Árpád Göncz (prose) and famous poet Dezso Tandori (poetry).

[Editor’s note: WordPress does not support one of the characters in Tandori’s first name, therefore a Latin character has been used instead. Apologies for the incorrect spelling. Also, finder spelled his name using lower case letters, thus the headline.]

Hugo Voting: Let’s Look at the Record Yet Again

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by Shieldforyoureyes Dave Fischer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

By Jo Van Ekeren:

I’ve spent the last couple of years exhuming statistics and ephemera about the Hugo Awards from various sources, including old Usenet posts on Google Groups, old fanzines, archived con websites, and various historical documents which have been scanned and made available online (and I give my thanks to those of you who have been making those archiving efforts, especially Joe Siclari, Edie Stern, Mark Olson, and Bill Burns).

I’ve managed to resurrect full or partial statistics for around 23 additional years beyond what was posted at TheHugoAwards.org. A few years have already been posted there, and I will be gradually rolling out the rest of them over the next few months as I get them formatted into readable documents.

This post is an expanded and updated version of earlier statistical analyses by George Flynn:
Hugo Voting: Let’s Look at the Record by George Flynn [1988]
Hugo Voting: Let’s Look at the Record (Again) by George Flynn [1999]
and of an update by Jed Hartman which pulled in some additional years and electronic vs. paper voting numbers:
Hugo stats: numbers of nominating ballots by Jed Hartman [2018]

I’ve updated it with Site Selection ballot numbers, Advance Membership numbers, and Hugo participation percentages for 2000-2019, plus Retro Hugo data, as well as showing the difference between the number of categories which were on the nominating ballot versus the number of categories which had sufficient participation to be on the final voting ballot.

I’ve got source citations for all of the numbers included here. A lot of the information came from documents on The Hugo Awards, Fancyclopedia 3, FANAC, eFanzines, the SMOFS Long List, old Usenet posts on Google Groups, and the Wayback Machine. If you have questions about where one of the numbers came from, you can message me here.

You are welcome to link to the full Google document — and certainly can make a backup of it if you wish — but please be aware that I expect it to continue to change as more bits of information become available.

Please do report to me any errors or omissions you might notice, either in the comments on this post, or by submitting a message here.

What does the most recent data about Hugo nominators and voters tell us?

  1. Tracking of the electronic vs. paper nominations and votes, at the turn of the century, was helpful in evaluating the amount of electronic uptake by Hugo voters. That hit 99% in 2011, and has remained there ever since. Now this comparison tracking is chiefly of interest in noting how many remaining members are either unable or unwilling to nominate and vote electronically.
  2. From 1989 through 2007, participation in the final ballot was consistently under 20% of the Advance membership (those eligible to participate in voting). In 2008, both overall membership numbers and Hugo participation began to rise steadily. It is likely that common acceptance and the ease of the ability to nominate and vote electronically contributed significantly to this. In addition, 2008 was the first year of the annual Hugo Voter Packet – containing finalist works which were not otherwise available for free – and this has also likely contributed to the rise of member numbers and of Hugo participation among members.
  3. The ratio of Supporting to Attending members has also steadily risen in the last 10 years, and while some of this can be attributed to the Puppy campaigns of 2015-2016 as well as to fans from the U.S. being unable to attend overseas Worldcons in London and Helsinki, it seems clear that access to a large number of free works in the Hugo Voter Packet is also a contributing factor. Percentage of eligible advance member participation in the Hugo Awards is now at an all-time high, at 40% to 50% of the eligible membership.
  4. Site Selection, which has remained a mail-in or on-site endeavour, has seen somewhat of a decline in participation in the last 10 years. This is likely due to having only one bid site in many of those years, but possibly also somewhat due to people who previously voted for both Hugos and Site Selection by mail in the past now only voting for the Hugos online. This is not likely to change unless and until it becomes common for bidcoms to be willing to have electronic voting for Site Selection.

Hugo Voting: Let's Look At The Record Again (1971-1999), by George Flynn



Over
seas


Year


Worldcon             


Location		[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Valid
Nominating
Ballots
Valid
Final
Ballots		[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Site-
Selection
Ballots
Advance
Member
Count		Final
Hugo
Vote
Ratio
197129 - Noreascon IBoston93437329—1,60045.8%
197230 - L.A.Con ILos Angeles927055092561,50036.7%
197331 - Torcon IIToronto, Canada11350708113752,20032.2%
197432 - Discon IIWashington DC12?930126452,60035.8%
O197533 - Aussiecon OneMelbourne, Australia12267600125281,88031.9%
197634 - MidAmeriConKansas City124861,595129933,60044.3%
197735 - SunConMiami Beach12500800128842,80028.6%
197836 - IguanaCon IIPhoenix135401,246131,1544,20029.7%
O197937 - Seacon '79Brighton, UK134671,160139204,12628.1%
198038 - Noreascon TwoBoston135631,788131,5495,44732.8%
198139 - Denvention TwoDenver124541,247121,6804,52927.5%
198240 - Chicon IVChicago126481,071121,1195,00021.4%
198341 - ConStellationBaltimore126601,322127295,50024.0%
198442 - L.A.con IILos Angeles135131,467131,3686,74021.8%
O198543 - Aussiecon TwoMelbourne, Australia13222443135272,19920.1%
198644 - ConFederationAtlanta135681,267131,863 (’88)
1,276 (’89)		5,400
[6]		23.5%
O198745 - Conspiracy '87Brighton, UK13567990131,3734,95320.0%
198846 - Nolacon IINew Orleans144181,178141,4554,72125.0%
198947 - Noreascon 3Boston13539980131,6366,10016.1%
O199048 - ConFictionThe Hague, Netherlands14291486141,0883,41814.2%
199149 - Chicon VChicago133521,048132,0865,12620.4%
199250 - MagiConOrlando14498902142,5095,29717.0%
199351 - ConFranciscoSan Francisco15397841141,2825,83414.4%
199452 - ConAdianWinnipeg, Canada14649491141,4394,38811.2%
O199553 - IntersectionGlasgow, Scotland14477744141,5544,90015.2%
199654 - L.A.con IIILos Angeles14442939141,0646,00015.7%
199755 - LoneStarCon 2San Antonio13429687131,4674,40015.6%
199856 - BucConeerBaltimore13471769132,1685,13115.0%
O199957 - Aussiecon ThreeMelbourne, Australia13425438138202,42518.1%

Hugo Voting: Let's Look At The Record Yet Again (2000-2020),
by Jed Hartman and Jo Van Ekeren
Over
seas		YearWorldcon             Location[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Valid Nominating Ballots
Valid Final Ballots
[1]
# of
Cate
gories		Site-
Selection
Ballots		Advance
Member
Count		Final
Hugo
Vote
Ratio
TotalElec%ElecTotalElec%Elec
2000
[2]		58 - Chicon 2000Chicago1340713031.9%1,07147544.4%131,6985,26220.4%
200159 - Millennium PhilconPhiladelphia1349517836.0%1,05028226.9%132,0945,01320.9%
2002
[3]		60 - ConJoséSan José1462637159.3%92469775.4%141,0344,42220.9%
2003
[4]		61 - Torcon 3Toronto, Canada1473877647861.6%141,4814,20418.5%
200462 - Noreascon 4Boston1456736664.6%1,093141,6865,61319.5%
O200563 - InteractionGlasgow, Scotland1554643679.9%68455280.7%15[7]4,16916.4%
200664 - L.A.con IVLos Angeles1553343481.4%71160084.4%141,5614,12817.2%
O2007
[5]		65 - Nippon2007Yokohama, Japan1540934083.1%589159024,69112.6%
200866 - Denvention 3Denver15483895158264,06222.0%
200967 - AnticipationMontréal, Canada167991,0741,04096.8%167633,81228.2%
O201068 - Aussiecon 4Melbourne, Australia168641,094165262,89837.8%
201169 - RenovationReno161,00699298.6%2,1002,08699.3%167604,68844.8%
201270 - Chicon 7Chicago171,1011,922179325,21836.8%
201371 - LoneStarCon 3San Antonio171,343132999.0%1,848171,3484,46841.4%
O201472 - Loncon 3London, UK171,923188998.2%3,5873,57199.6%177788,58041.8%
201573 - SasquanSpokane172,122211999.9%5,9505,91499.4%172,62510,32157.6%
201674 - MidAmeriCon IIKansas City174,032401599.6%3,130171,3216,17450.7%
O201775 - Worldcon 75Helsinki, Finland182,464245899.8%3,3193,31599.9%181,2277,67243.3%
201876 - Worldcon 76San José191,813179599.0%2,8282,81099.4%197266,39344.2%
O201977 - Dublin 2019Dublin, Ireland201,800179799.8%3,0973,08999.7%208806,000?51.6%
O202078 - CoNZealandWellington, New Zealand191,584158299.9%2,221221699.85195874,48649.5%

Hugo Voting: Let's Look At The Record for the Retro Hugos

Year
Held		Retro
Year		Worldcon             Location[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Valid Nominating Ballots
Valid Final Ballots
[1]
# of
Cate
gories
TotalElec%ElecTotalElec%Elec
1996194654 - L.A.con IIILos Angeles13111---605---10
2001195159 - Millennium PhilconPhiladelphia121304836.9%86215718.2%10
2004195462 - Noreascon 4Boston131319673.3%84110
2014193972 - Loncon 3London, UK1623322697.0%1,3071,29599.1%10
2016194174 - MidAmeriCon IIKansas City1648147598.8%86911
2018194376 - Worldcon 76San José1720419294.1%70368897.9%9
2019194477 - Dublin 2019Dublin, Ireland1821721498.6%83482699.0%11
2020194578 - CoNZealandWellington, New Zealand1812011797.5%52151699.0%12

No.Footnote Explanation
[1]Number of categories includes the Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award, the Lodestar/YA Award, and any other special categories or awards announced that year. Discrepancies between total nominating categories and total voting categories are the result of categories with insufficient nominations being dropped from the final ballot.
[2]Chicon 2000 received 1,101 Hugo ballots, of which 475 were electronic ballots and 626 were paper ballots. 30 ballots were invalid, which left 1,071 valid ballots. It is unclear how many of the 30 invalid ballots were paper vs. electronic.
[3]ConJosé received 940 Hugo ballots. There were 697 were electronic ballots, 226 paper ballots, and 17 fax ballots. 16 ballots were invalid, which left 924 valid ballots. It is unclear how many of the 16 invalid ballots were paper vs. electronic vs. fax.
[4]Torcon 3 received 805 Hugo ballots, of which 478 were electronic ballots and 327 were paper ballots. 29 ballots were invalid, which left 776 valid ballots. It is unclear how many of the 29 invalid ballots were paper vs. electronic.
[5]The number of final Hugo ballots for Nippon 2007 is unknown. The quoted figure is the number of Novel ballots / 80%, which is the average percentage of final ballots cast for Novel during that stretch of years.
[6]Site Selection went from 2 years to 3 years in advance
[7]Site Selection went from 3 years to 2 years in advance

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.

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.

Reminiscence for File 770’s 40th: Living the News of 1978

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By Chip Hitchcock: At some ages any year may seem momentous, but 1978 still stands out in memory. I was a couple of years out of college, but still singing in Harvard’s summer chorus and signing books out to borrowers at the MITSFS (owner of the world’s largest open library of SFF); I was working as a ~chemistry researcher, with no idea that in another couple of years I’d be massively more entangled in fandom and working for two other fans at a computer company.

For a start, Boskone (then and now my local convention) grew from 1000 people to over 1400 after a couple of years of near-stability. Star Wars, which had played downtown for several months the previous year, is the obvious explanation for this, and maybe the growth past 1900 in 1979, but how they found us is anyone’s guess; as far as I remember, Boskones then didn’t do much advertising because there was no obvious place for it. Later this led to strains on the committee, and finally to the Boskone from Hell, but at the time growth seemed like an unalloyed good; in 1979 it meant we could take all of New England’s largest hotel, instead of just working the fringes around the biggest ballrooms.

The immediate effect for me was that the RISFA Players had to do three performances in a row of the latest Anderson-Keller musical, Rivets Redux, in order to seat everyone who wanted to see it. I was playing Charles Dexter Ward (one of several obsolete characters in search of new employment), but also served as producer, something resembling music director, and technical director; this last required coming up with a representation of the appearance of the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the previous year’s other SF blockbuster), with a jury rig that we were lucky survived all the performances. (Since this was the RISFA Players, who had first been seen in “Buckets of Gor, or Abbott and Costello Meet the Priest-Kings”, the ship appeared not to the infamous five-note motif but to “Dueling Tubas”.) In addition to the usual problems of an amateur production split between two cities (the creators and most of the cast were in Providence), we dealt with two record-setting snowstorms in the previous few weeks; the second of these shut down the city for a week, right when the entire convention was busiest getting ready. When we finally moved into the hotel we found that all the other scheduled meetings had canceled, which at least gave us a space for some desperately-needed on-site rehearsal.

Then there was the Boston in 1980 Worldcon bid. I had joined MCFI (the sponsoring organization) just a few months before, and immediately “volunteered” (i.e., I was the only person not to step back quickly enough) to find and liaise with a printer so that we’d have someone ready to do the first progress report if we won. (I just discovered that the scan of File:770 #7 is online, listing me as an “officer” of Noreascon Two due to this job.) This later led to my producing several books for NESFA Press, and editing at least one of them. I’d seen a few Worldcon bids go by but hadn’t voted before 1977; MCFI was for the time a stable group (about as many couples as singles, many in solid jobs in computers and I think averaging a little older than typical) chaired by Leslie Turek (later FGoH at Sasquan). Fandom was getting less gender-imbalanced—after the New Orleans in 1976 Worldcon bid had been torpedoed by its CVB rep (“a great place for you to hold your convention, and a great city for your wives to go shopping in!”) I estimated from published lists that the membership that heard this line at the 1974 Worldcon was about a quarter female—but it had been some time since a woman had been sole chair.

Somewhere in this timeline, Iguanacon (the upcoming Worldcon) asked MCFI and its Baltimore opposition to each take on an area of the convention; we were given the costume contest and promptly dubbed ourselves the Boston Massaquerade. I was not going to be involved with the organizing, but it was assumed (based on the aforementioned musicals, which were an outgrowth of backstage work at high-school and college theaters) that I would be tech director—Masquerades being rather less rigorous 40 years ago. (These days the TDs usually have considerable current experience.) This was the first time that a Masquerade had been held in a real theater rather than a hotel hall, and the Phoenix “Symphony Hall” came with more lights already hung than we knew what to do with—and people to focus and run them, apparently already in the budget. So the Masquerade was displayed well despite my inexperience.

Iguanacon II Program Book cover by William R. Warren.

Iguanacon itself had made news for changing its chair a few months out, for reasons discussed extensively at the time, and for GoH Harlan Ellison’s steps to prevent any money being spent on his behalf in a state that had refused to ratify the ERA; despite the noise, and weather that was hot even for Phoenix over Labor Day, it had significantly more attendees than any previous Worldcon, after a few years’ pause in the steady increase that attendance had seen since the 1960’s. The abovementioned scan has discussions of some of the other uproars, but doesn’t mention the report I heard that the Art Show had to be torn down and reconstructed to allow passage from fire doors on an inner exhibit hall through the show to the doors on its outside wall. However, Iguanacon also had some innovations that are still well-remembered:

  • They persuaded the Hyatt coffee shop to stay open 24/7. An impeachable source told me this made the Hyatt so much money that other Worldcon Hyatts a few years later reportedly refused to believe the figures—which was a pity given the shortage of food around them. These days fandom might or might not average old enough that all-night food wouldn’t be useful.
  • They picked a hotel with a serious mingling space. The Google view tells me the atrium couldn’t have been much over a hundred feet each way, but crossing it always took at least 10 minutes because you kept running into people you could stop and talk to; in a typical lobby or corridor that would get you snarled at, or pushed. Many Worldcons since have aimed for such a feature.

I answered a few questions from a local TV station that was interviewing people in the atrium. I didn’t see the result, but I was told later that the news item had led off with my comment about blaming my parents because they gave me Tom Swift instead of the Hardy Boys at age 8. That’ll teach me to be smart to mundanes….

MCFI threw parties (on a much smaller budget than nowadays, although large enough that we used the rooms’ swivel chairs as impromptu dollies for ice) and hung hundreds of feet of computer-printed banners (one of the few reasons to miss old-fashioned line-printers and their fan-fold output) on the stacks of railing around the abovementioned atrium. At one of the parties I met the only other ancestral Hitchcock I’ve run into in fandom. (It’s an old name, but not common.) We were pronounced the winner after a notoriously humorless business-meeting chair first announced that a hoax bid (of which there were several) had won. The next day, somebody at our advance-sales table started a conversation with Spider and Jeanne Robinson, who had just won a Hugo for “Stardance”; the result was a performance, called “Higher Ground”, which showed some gravity-bound idea of what stardance might be like.

This was in the early days of airline deregulation, when the cheapest fares required staying for a week, so a lot of us hung around in the hotel lobby until it was late enough Tuesday night to go to the airport for a flight one minute into Wednesday. It turned out groups of us were taking two different airlines’ flights through O’Hare, so we blearily wandered into each other around dawn on Thursday while waiting for our connections.

And a ridiculously long chain of inattentions and coincidences had led to my singing in a chorus behind the the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood (their summer home) just days before leaving for Phoenix; I ended up chorusing a handful of concerts with the BSO over the next several years. So when I got home from Iguanacon I was full of beans but had no idea how busy my life was about to get.

An Earlier Clarke Birthday Celebration

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By Bill Higgins: As the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of Arthur C. Clarke’s birth, allow me to share a photocopy I recently rediscovered.

In 1977 my college SF club, the Michigan State University Science Fiction Society, noted that Clarke’s 60th birthday was approaching. Jim Ransom volunteered to write a letter of greeting and mail it to Colombo, Sri Lanka.

To our delight, Clarke sent a postcard in reply, dated on his birthday, December 16, 1977. He wrote:

==================

Thanks for nice greeting!

Herewith earth end of my next (&last) novel THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE.

All good wishes

Arthur C Clarke

==================

The postcard pictured Sigiriya Rock, a historic fortress where King Kasyapa built his palace in the 5th Century AD.

I kept a photocopy; I wonder if Jim Ransom kept the postcard, which turns 40 this year.

As for the plug for his upcoming book, Clarke did in 1979 publish The Fountains of Paradise and it does indeed feature a fictionalized version of King Kasyapa and Sigiriya Rock, as well as a space elevator.

Science fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate at prophecy, however; Clarke may have foreseen the Space Age and the Information Age, but he was wrong about The Fountains of Paradise being his final novel. He went on to publish eighteen more novels before passing away in 2008.

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