Canfield, Standlee and other members of the Sacramento Westercon bid were soon recruited onto the San Francisco in 1993 Worldcon bid committee. This time they were victorious and Canfield served as one of ConFrancisco’s deputy vice chairs.
It is also believed he produced the ConFrancisco Souvenir Book, based on this bit of detective work by the editors of the Internet Science Fiction Data Base:
There is not a title page per se. The title is taken from the copyright statement. The editor is listed as “Dr. Evil” in convention staff list. Jeff Canfield is listed as the “Speaker to Doctor Evil” and thus is assumed to be the name behind the pseudonym.
Besides sf, his other activities included Formula Vee racing and photography. He drove a Formula Vee Viper race car and was an integral member of the San Francisco region of the Sports Car Club of America. He founded Jeff Canfield Photography.
Professionally, Canfield worked as a System Software Specialist at State Compensation Insurance Fund for 25 years.
A memorial is being planned in June. People are invited to make donations in his name to the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.
The obituary that originally ran in the Sacramento Bee can be read here.
His first published sf story was “To Tell the Truth” in Galaxy in 1960.
Although never the winner of a major award, Barrett’s novelette “Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus” (1988) was both a Hugo and Nebula nominee, and a collection of his work, Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories, was a World Fantasy Award nominee in 2001.
Barrett credited his friend, the prolific author Mack Reynolds, for encouraging him to branch out from short fiction into novels.
“‘Never stop writing short stories,’ Mack told me. ‘But try a novel too.’ Hey, what an idea,” Barrett said. “I started off with Kelwin, the Aldair quartet, The Gates of Time, Highwood and others. I like to do novels, but short stories will always be my first love.”
He did a lot of work under house names. He also wrote comics. As he told a SFWA interviewer in 2010 —
“Like many professional writers, I’ve written westerns, mystery-suspense, horror, noir, air war stories, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, novelizations such as Judge Dredd, Barb Wire and Dungeons & Dragons,” he said. “One of my all-time favorite jobs is writing comic books–I think I’ve turned out over a thousand pages by now. That’s what writers do, you know–they often do what needs to be done. And I’ve found that a real pro puts everything he or she has into whatever project comes along. You name it. I can’t tell you how many names besides mine are out there over the work I’ve done for a series or special projects.”
Barrett was born in San Antonio and grew up in Oklahoma City. He was toastmaster at the 1997 Worldcon in San Antonio.
Dan McCarthy, the grand old man of New Zealand fandom, died August 7. He was a past Fan Guest of Honour at the New Zealand national convention and a 2009 nominee for the Sir Julius Vogel Award.
McCarthy belonged to Aotearapa for 25 years. He was the apa’s official editor from 1986-1987 and 2001-2003. As a member he contributed 77 issues of his fanzine Panopticon for which he did paintings and colour graphics. McCarthy’s skills as a fanartist were widely appreciated. He won the Best Fan Artist category of the New Zealand Science Fiction Fan Awards in 1989 and 1991.
One of Marty’s earliest fannish experiences, when he was 14, was traveling from Columbus, Ohio to Philadelphia for the 1953 Worldcon. Marty was unprepared for what he found there, felt overwhelmed and said he would have gone back to his hotel room to hide but for “a tall, white-haired man [who] came over and began to talk to me about what I liked to read. I had just bought a copy of Skylark of Valeron in the dealers’ room… and began enthusing about this ‘new’ writer that I had just discovered, E.E. Smith, Ph.D.” He soon discovered it was Smith himself he was telling this to, and Doc and his wife took Marty in tow, introducing him to other authors and artists. “For the remainder of the weekend, whenever either of them saw me alone they made a point of checking to see if I was enjoying myself, and of somehow including me in whatever was going on.”
Despite this friendly encounter with one of the field’s most loved writers, Marty did not attend another SF con until 1977 when Page Cuddy and David Hartwell “conned” him into going to a Balticon in order to meet Philip Jose Farmer.
After that Marty rapidly developed into a fannish leader. He ran programming for Balticon 13 in 1979 and became a regular fixture as the con’s masquerade director beginning in 1981. He chaired CostumeCon 3 (1985) and Balticon 21 (1987).
He held major committee posts on 4 Worldcons. Michael J. Walsh, chair of the 1983 Baltimore Worldcon where Marty ran the masquerade, likes to tell the story – “In 1981 when I called him from Denvention to let him know we had won: ‘Marty, bad news!’ [He answered] ‘We won?’”
Marty was famous for presiding over masquerades in costume as Count Dracula. And he was infamous for filling time with terrible vampire jokes such as —
What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?
Frostbite!
One of his most challenging moments came while directing the 1998 Worldcon (Bucconeer) masquerade — at the start he stumbled against a table of awards and took a four-foot fall off the stage. Quite the trouper, Marty got right back up and did his job without visible problems. He even looked in pretty good shape the morning after at the masquerade critique where he had nothing to say about his mishap except an apology for detracting from the costumers. He did use a cane for awhile afterwards, though.
Marty was a fiery advocate for his beloved event. Even at a Worldcon he refused to concede first place to the Hugo Ceremony, protesting during the Bucconeer masquerade post-mortem, “To the Worldcon committee the Masquerade is not the most important event…. It’s just the best-attended, and has the most people involved, but to the committee it’s a secondary event.”
When he was feeling more mellow he’d deliver the message humorously, saying things like, “Costuming is the second oldest tradition in sci-fi fandom. The first is drinking beer.”
Marty remained an active member of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, and at the time of his death was parliamentarian of the BSFS Board of Directors, coordinator of the Jack L. Chalker Young Writers’ Contest, and liaison to the school for the BSFS Books for Kids program.
Over the years he was a guest of honor at Unicon 87, Disclave 34, Sci-Con 8, Genericon 2, Arisia 9, and Balticon 30.
Professionally, Marty managed his own company Martin Gear Consulting Ltd.
Other than dressing as a vampire, Marty said one of his favorite costumes was “Cohen the Barbarian” a prize-winner at the 2004 Worldcon as “Best DiscWorld Entry.” His Cohen wore a fur diaper, a very long white beard and an eyepatch — and not much else. In one hand he carried a sword and in the other a walking cane.
To the end Marty continually mentored costumers and passed on his enthusiasm for the costuming arts. He told an interviewer, “I probably won’t stop costuming until I am dead, and maybe not even then.”
***
See Marty in his Dracula garb start the 2008 Balticon masquerade with a horrible joke.
In this interview at Anime USA 2012 Marty explained how he judges anime and reproduction costumes in terms that would be at home on Project Runway — “Clothes have to fit.”
The International Costumers Guild is posting a series of short video tributes to the pioneers and superstars of convention masquerades
The trailer “15 Costumers You Should Know” credits Forry Ackerman as the “Father of Convention Costuming” – he wore a “futuristicostume” made by Myrtle Douglas at the first Worldcon in 1939. The series will revisit the historic work of fans Kathy Sanders, Bruce & Dana MacDermott, Karen Schaubelt Turner Dick, Animal X, Jacqueline Ward, Janet Wilson Anderson, Deborah K. Jones, Pierre & Sandy Pettinger, Barb Schofield, Adrian Butterfield and Ricky Dick.
Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson died December 26 at the age of 83. He was diagnosed with mixed dementia two years ago and his condition “worsened dramatically over the past six months” said his son to Time Magazine.
Anderson was a guest of honor at Intersection, the 1995 Worldcon in Glasgow.
He was famous for “supermarionation,” using puppets to act out science fiction TV adventures, and it was an affectionately bestowed, enduring fame — just last year the Royal Mail set FAB: The Genius of Gerry Anderson as the theme of its first issue of 2011, featuring his shows Stingray, Joe 90, and Captain Scarlett on postage stamps.
Anderson was also notable for Space: 1999, a live action sci-fi adventure that reportedly was the most expensive tv show made up to that time. Its not-especially-scientific premise was that the Moon had been hurtled into interstellar space by a thermonuclear explosion of nuclear waste dumped on the lunar surface. It starred Mission: Impossible vets Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.
New York fan Danny Lieberman died of leukemia on October 19. He had been sick since 2011, but had not wanted to share that on social media.
Lieberman attended and worked on many conventions: his service included leading the Facilities Division at Bucconeer, the 1998 Worldcon, and the “Tardis and Couch Division” at Millennium Philcon, the 2001 Worldcon.
Den and Sharon Fox with Danny Lieberman at Bucconeer.
When she introduced the artist at the 1991 Worldcon, Marta Randall said fans in the Fifties and Sixties fans were able to recognize an sf book at a distance, not because there were aliens or brass-brassiered babes on the covers, but because of Richard Powers’ abstract paintings.
A newly-opened exhibit of Powers’ art is inspiring fresh appreciation for his talents. In Richard Powers: Seen and Unseen, Baldwin Hill Art & Framing and Gallery 55 are presenting 2D and 3D works owned by the Powers estate. The exhibit is open through October 7, at 55 South Main St. in Natick, MA
Some of his largest works are on display:
Throughout his life Powers was known for painting on whatever happened to be at hand. In his later years he took to painting on sections of hollow-core interior doors. These were cheap, readily available, and came in convenient widths from 28 to 36 inches. With proper edge trimming, these pieces had depth and presence while remaining relatively lightweight. Many of these works were done in his “surreal landscape” style with torn paper collage elements and stark, angular black and white lines.
There are smaller works featuring collage and montage elements, including some of his shadowboxes which combine paintings and sculptural elements.
Speaking to fans in 1991, Richard Powers, whitehaired, commanding, with a physique that made him the Michelangelo of paperback artists, declared, “The difference between writing and painting is that writing is work and painting isn’t.” And he told them, “The artist’s job is to do something of a visual nature that can’t very easily be put into words. My feeling is if the writer’s any damn good he doesn’t need me to do a literal illustration of something he’s already described perfectly well.”
Anyone willing to help clear the deficit can make a nondeductible donation to the cause by (1) writing a check payable to Nippon 2007 and (2) mailing it to BWAWA, P.O. Box 314, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701-0314.
While revisiting fanhistory for my Worldcon panels I began remembering some of the cool fannish things I once wished to own. Some of them I acquired. Some are still cool. One is still cool and available.
The Acoustic Modem
Plenty of fans in the 1970s were engineers, programmers and science grads with legitimate access to the ARPANET, the early computer network and forerunner of the internet. LASFS party hosts with accounts, of course, appreciated that the highest and best use of the system was calling into M.I.T. to let their guests play Zork.
Connecting to the net involved placing a regular phone receiver in the cradle of an acoustic coupler modem linked to the home PC. Those early modems were as big as a combat boot – the one my friends had must have been even bigger than the one in the picture, still, you get the idea.
It would have been heavenly — for some values of heaven — being able to call in and play Zork for endless hours with no other fans waiting breathlessly beside me for their turns. However, they soon clamped down on access to ARPANET accounts, and I could not have afforded however many hundred dollars that gadget cost. But it was cool!
The Ellison Index
Leslie Kay Swigart had been an active LASFS member of the era right before I joined the club, which is one reason Bruce Pelz had a copy of her magnum opus, Harlan Ellison: A Bibliographical Checklist. The 1973 first edition was printed by Williams Publishing of Dallas and I don’t know if that was a publishing house or just a printer. In any event, he showed off his copy during one of the card games at his place. The intricate cover by Leo & Diane Dillon made it look awesome. (Gosh, did I just write awesome?) And bearing in mind that Harlan Ellison in 1973 was at the pinnacle of his popularity, it’s understandable why Bruce’s offer to sell us copies was irresistible. You can’t read what you don’t even know exists, and in those pre-internet days Swigart’s checklist was the simplest way of discovering everything our hero had written.
Team Banzai headband
In 1984, Twentieth Century Fox hired a crew to travel around the country promoting The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension at conventions. They were the only source for the Team Banzai headband. The over-the-top title and the movie’s implicit coolness struck the right note with fans, which made the headbands popular. A few did wear them as headbands, others as armbands or thighbands, or tied to some piece of fannish paraphernalia.
Glow-in-the-Dark Bid T-Shirt
Fans sure did like the glow-in-the-dark LA-in-90 bid t-shirt (the yellow shirt in this picture). It may have been the most appealing thing about our bid. I’ll bet plenty of fans were wearing these shirts while happily marking their ballots for Holland.
Heinlein Blood Donor Pin
Robert Heinlein suffered two years of extensive illnesses and received many pints of his rare blood type in transfusions. He was determined to pay-it-forward, publicizing the National Rare Blood club and blood donation generally. Fans organized a blood drive at the 1976 Worldcon, MidAmericon, where he was guest of honor and Heinlein said he would only sign autographs for people who donated blood. Part of the package deal was a RAH blood donor pin (commissioned by the LASFS) and copies of his “Are You A Rare Blood” offprint which many of us had him autograph.
Commemorative Heinlein blood drives continue at conventions to this day, and unlike some of the other cool things mentioned in this article you can still get a donor pin.
