By Astrid Bear: This weekend there will be a Rolling Toast to honor Greg Bear. This is a tradition that began in the Gunroom of HMS Surprise, a group that Astrid Bear is a member of. Many of whose members have met and care about Greg and Astrid.
The Rolling Toast emulates a rolling broadside from the Age of Sail warfare. We each “fire” our toasts as the clock reaches the appointed hour. Thus the toast rolls around the world for 25 hours. Astrid and Greg’s family will have the option to end the toast with another toast on the 25th hour of the rolling toast.
The Toast will begin with Astrid at 4:21 PM Pacific Coast (USA) Time on Saturday the 26th, as the sun goes down. All those in that time zone are invited to raise a glass and toast Greg at that time. As that hour reaches each of us in the following time zone we will join the rolling toast, by raising our own glasses to honor Greg.
Since the toast will cross the international dateline, those on the other side of that line will pick up the toast on Sunday the 27th at 4:21 PM. The toast rolls towards the west from the Seattle area starting point, so most folks in the US will pick it up on Sunday.
This toast is to honor Greg and can be anything that you wish, alcoholic or not. It is very much the spirit (not the spirits) that count.
Feel free to post here with a note about the beverage of your choice.
Five-time Nebula winner Greg Bear died November 19, a week after heart surgery from which he never awoke. A CT scan showed stroke damage was caused to many parts of the brain by clots that had been hiding in a false lumen of the anterior artery to the brain ever since an earlier surgery eight years ago. After a review of the possible outcomes by the medical team, and following the wishes expressed in his advance directive, Bear was taken off life support and died two hours later.
The author of over 50 books, Bear’s novels won Nebulas for Moving Mars (1995) and Darwin’s Radio. Three other works of short fiction won Nebulas, and two of those – “Blood Music” (1984) and “Tangents” (1987) — also won the Hugo.
Bear’s writing was very successful in translation, too. He twice won Japan’s Seiun Award, as well as the Ignotus Award (Spain), and Prix Apollo (France). Altogether his works have been translated into 19 languages.
Bear sold his first short story, “Destroyers”, to Famous Science Fiction at age 15, and along with high-school friends helped found San Diego Comic-Con.
He also published work as an artist at the beginning of his career, including illustrations for an early version of the Star Trek Concordance, and covers for Galaxy and F&SF. He was a founding member of the Association of Science Fiction Artists. He even created the cover for his novel, Psychlone, a 1988 reprint from Tor.
In 1983 he married Astrid Anderson. They have two children, Chloe born in 1986, and Alexandra, born in 1990.
He was a guest of honor at the 2001 Worldcon, Millennium Philcon.
He served as President of SFWA from 1988 to 1990.
A resident of the Pacific Northwest, he was eligible for and won the first Endeavour Award in 1999 for Dinosaur Summer – and won it again the following year for Darwin’s Radio.
Bear participated in Sigma, a kind of think tank where science fiction writers share insights about the future with agencies laying real-world plans, twice making national news as one of the group’s representatives to Department of Homeland Security conferences.
Bear’s career honors include San Diego Comic-Con’s Inkpot Award (1984), the Robert A. Heinlein Award (2006) presented by the Heinlein Society, and the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society’s Forry Award (2017).
Martin Morse Wooster died Saturday night, November 12. He had been attending an ale conference in Williamsburg, Virginia and was walking along the highway from the convention venue back to the hotel where he was staying when he was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver. A local news station says police are asking for help in identifying the driver.
Martin’s sister, Ann Wooster, notified a member of Potomac River Science Fiction Society (PRSFS), a group he co-founded. Kyle McAbee released it to their mailing list. That is all the information presently known.
Martin has been a daily contributor to File 770 for years, and I will sorely miss him.
Ray Nelson, Frank Lunney, & Robert Lichtman, ConFrancisco, 1993; photo by Jeff Schalles
By John Hertz (reprinted from Vanamonde 1508): Robert Lichtman (1942-2022) left for After-Fandom on the day I came home from Westercon LXXIV. May his memory be for a blessing.
He missed his 80th birthday by two months. He hadn’t been to many Westercons recently, either, although he was Fan Guest of Honor at Westercon LV — whose ringmaster, Bruce Pelz, had died two months earlier. He was at Westercon XXXIV; so was Pete Stampfel, who’d played with the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders (and later married Betsy Wollheim); people kept telling Lichtman how much they liked the Fugs or the Rounders, so he cut his hair.
Now that he can take no more part in affairs of this world, I can offend his modesty — ow! what was that?? — by telling you his name meant illuminator.
Cover by Harry Bell for TD 16
He was a shining star of fanwriting. His letters of comment won eight FAAn (Fannish Activity Achievement) Awards. His loved and acclaimed — not always the same, alas — fanzine Trap Door won five. In the 2020 FAAn Awards he won Lifetime Achievement.
He wrote one of the Nat’l Fantasy Fan Federation’s seven fandbooks (fan + handbook; pointers from veterans for newcomers), The Amateur Press Associations in Science-Fiction Fandom. He edited a collection Ah! Sweet Laney! (F.T. Laney, famous for Ah! Sweet Idiocy!); another, of Walt Willis’ “Fanorama” columns from Nebula; a fanthology Some of the Best from “Quandry” (Lee Hoffman’s loved and acclaimed fanzine); and Fanthology 92, Fanthology ’93,Fanthology 1994. He got Jack Speer’s 1939 history Up to Now onto <efanzines.com>.
He was Secretary-Treasurer of FAPA (Fantasy Am. Press Ass’n, our oldest, founded 1937) from 1986 until his death, no small achievement; if I hadn’t just called him a shining star, enough to make him a pillar. David Bratman said, “As sometime Vice President of FAPA, and as emergency editor after Official Editor Seth Goldberg died in 1997, I … found Robert Lichtman as Secretary-Treasurer an absolute rock of reliability.”
His SAPSzine (Spectator Am. Press Society, acronym deliberate; our second oldest) was Door Knob. His FAPAzine was King Biscuit Time. He had others there and elsewhere.
He was elected the 1989 TAFF (Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund) delegate.
He found us in 1958 through Bob Bloch’s fanzine review column in Imagination. By then he was living in Southern California. That year he published his first fanzine, called (what else?) PSI-PHI, co-edited with Arv Underman. He joined the LASFS (L.A. Science Fantasy Soc., oldest SF club in the world; pronounced as if rhyming with a Spanglish “más fuss”), to which, wherever he is now, he still belongs, since Death will not release you. Later he moved to the San Francisco Bay area; to the Farm, a 1,700-acre commune in Tennessee; to San Francisco Bay again; he married twice, by his first wife four sons, Carol Carr his second as he was hers.
I don’t know the fate of his fanzine collection. I hope it was directed soundly. The tragedy of Harry Warner’s arrangements I learned of too late. Bruce Pelz disposed of his collection while he was alive. Jay Kay Klein’s photographs I believe are safe.
Although the moment seems much longer ago — time flies when you’re having fun — and of course time flies like an arrow — fruit flies like a banana — Pogo fans know about timing gnats (see I Go Pogo no. 20, 1960) — Trap Door 23 has my reminiscence “I Thought I Had a Pumpkin Bomb”. Not counting that, it’s a good issue. The electronic may see it here. Earlier TD reprinted (Trap Door 18) from Van 232 my appreciation of Bill Rotsler, another giant, with Bashō’s poem “A cicada shell / it sang itself / entirely away.”
Westercon, the West Coast Science Fantasy Conference, on the N. Amer. continent west of the 104th W. Meridian or in Hawaii. Originally faan was a pejorative form of fan; the extra a, or more of them e.g. faaan, denoted excess; enough of this lingered in 1975, when Moshe Feder and Arnie Katz started the F Awards, that the name showed a self-depreciation thought suitable; the Awards were given 1975-1980, then 1994 to date; since their revival they have been associated with the annual fanziners’ con Corflu (corflu = mimeograph correction fluid, once indispensable). Release, a decades-old LASFS catch-phrase; the electronic may see here. Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention.
Ellen Vartanoff (left), Bob Burrows, and Ellen Caswell (right) at a Christmas party in 2008. Photo taken by Bill Hussar.
By Martin Morse Wooster: Ellen Caswell, a long-time member of the Potomac River Science Fiction Society (PRSFS) and Knossos, the Washington chapter of the Mythopoeic Society, died on October 16 of cancer.
Ellen grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in linguistics. She worked with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association for many years as an editor and graphic designer.
She was an avid reader not just of sf, but also mysteries and other genres. She once read 18 Harlequin romances in two days while staying in a Boston hotel room during a snowstorm. She also read the last page of any novel first and if the ending satisfied her, she would then read the rest of the book.
Some examples of her tastes came from the books she picked for Knossos, which has a monthly book discussion. The last five authors she picked as selections were novels. by Rosemary Kirstein, Garth Nix, Katherine Eliska Kimbriel, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Diane Duane. It is because of her that I read Bujold’s Paladin of Souls and discovered that the book was an entertaining historical fantasy novel in the tradition of Rafael Sabatini.
Some examples of her writing come from the club newsletter, which she edited from 1986-1988. PRSFS, in its 45-year history, has prided itself on never collecting dues, and one recurring gag is for one member to say, “I vote to raise the dues” and members come up with increasingly facetious multiples of zero. “For any who may be coming to the club for the first time,” Ellen wrote, “don’t worry, only a few people have been bankrupted by the dues.”
In another newsletter, Ellen wrote about “New Works in the Prissyfish Library.” For Jean Dunnington, who worked in the Folger Shakespeare Library and liked to knit, Ellen came up with Shakespearean Crochet. Another member who liked cats and Jewish culture was presented as the author of Yiddish Cat Tales. Two other members who had recently moved were the joint authors of Surviving Torture: A Guide to Moving Incredible Numbers of Books.
Ellen spent a few years as a caregiver or her parents and had enough money from the inheritance to rent a small old house which we used for several pleasant meetings. She was an active officer of the local community association until her death. She also kept up membership in her two clubs, including more than one meeting where the Zoom connection was made from a hospital bed.
In personality, Ellen was very calm. She certainly let you know what she thought but she never tried to dominate a conversation. She always had plenty to say—and she always kept reading.
By Rich Lynch: There have been many times, during my nearly 50 years in science fandom, that I have wondered what it must have been like to been a member of the very earliest fan organizations. To have attended the very earliest science fiction conventions including the first Worldcon. To have been friends with famous fans and pros when they were young men and women. What would it have been like to have been a part of the forefront of fandom back then? What would it have been like?
I was fortunate to have had a friend who had done all of those things and more. Whenever I met or corresponded with him, whenever I sat in on a convention panel where he was a participant, whenever I read from some of his many fan publications that described previous eras of fandom, it was like I was in the presence of a living time machine. His name was Bob Madle.
I had known of Bob even before my first days in fandom back in the mid‑1970s. But it was my great misfortune not to have met him in person until shortly after I had moved to Maryland in 1988. By then I had taken a strong interest in what had happened in earlier eras of fandom and this had manifested into me becoming co-editor, along with my wife Nicki, of a fanzine (Mimosa) whose very reason for existence was the need to preserve bits of fan history, especially from the First Fandom ‘dinosaur’ era, that were then only fragilely kept in the memories of some of the older fans. After our relocation to Maryland it seemed almost too good to be true that one of the most prominent fans of all lived just a short distance away.
I don’t have strong memories of my first meeting with Bob except that he was warm and welcoming when I showed up at his front door one afternoon. He took me down into his basement to see all the science fiction books and magazines that he had for sale in his mail order business, and I do have a strong memory of that. It was awesome. It was like a miniature version of the Area 51 warehouse where the Lost Ark of the Covenant ended up, except that there were stacks of books instead of wooden crates. I must have looked dumbstruck because when I looked over at Bob he had a big grin on his face.
It was only a bit more than two years after arriving in Maryland that I had taken on a big fanhistory project as editor of Harry Warner’s 1950s fanhistory book A Wealth of Fable, and Bob was an invaluable resource who I called upon frequently. He was everything from a fact checker to a provider of photographs for the book to a source of anecdotes and stories about fandom of the `50s. I didn’t actually need the latter since it was Harry’s manuscript, but it allowed me to plant the seed that he really ought to preserve these tales, either in print or on tape. And eventually he did.
It was at the 1998 Worldcon, held in relatively nearby Baltimore, that I finally got the opportunity to do a taped interview with Bob. It was unfortunately not very well attended and held in a room where there were distractions going on outside, but it still resulted in a transcript which was published in two parts in Mimosa. In the first part Bob described his personal odyssey, starting with his discovery of science fiction from futuristic pulp magazine covers in the early 1930s, to the first-ever science fiction convention in 1936, to the beginnings of the Worldcons, through the war years of the 1940s, to the first Philadelphia Worldcon in 1947. In the second, he brought the narrative into the 1950s where the he was involved in the invention of the Hugo Awards, the origination of First Fandom, a very contentious Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund election, and even a less-than-successful attempt to bring fandom to another part of the country. Wonderful stuff.
Come the new millennium, my contacts with Bob became fewer and fewer with the passage of time. We still crossed paths every so often, but usually it was for only relatively brief instances. The last time I visited him at his home was in 2008, and it turned out to be a memorable encounter because it was the only time that I ever had my picture taken with him. I remember that we had an extended chat about fan history and, more specifically, the 1939 Worldcon. And I also remember that I wished it could have gone on a lot longer than it did.
Bob was 102 when he died, and we’re all wishing he could have gone on a lot longer than it did. It was a life well-lived, filled with many memorable events that he participated in. I feel honored that I was his friend and that he shared many of those events with descriptions vivid enough that I could almost believe I was there. So I’ll end this remembrance by paraphrasing Dr. Seuss: “Don’t be sad that it’s over, smile because it happened.” I’m sad, but all my pleasant memories of Bob are making me smile. I think he’d have liked that.
Introduction by John L. Coker III: Today I received a telephone call from Jane Madle (Bob Madle’s daughter). She was very sad to report that Bob died this past Saturday, October 8th. Jane said that Bob had been in generally pretty good health until recently, spending his time reading, listening to his favorite music, watching baseball on TV with a couple of beers, and occasionally visiting with friends who came to see him.
The death of Bob Madle brings a very long era to a gentle close. He was a life-long fan and a true living legend.
Appreciation Prepared by John L. Coker III and Jon D. Swartz. After service in World War II, where he met his future wife, Billie, he attended Drexel Institute and received a bachelor’s degree on the G. I. Bill; he later attended night school for an MBA degree.
He started reading at a very young age, collected boy’s books, was a fan of Burroughs and Buck Rogers, and began reading magazine science fiction with Wonder Stories, the December, 1930 and April, 1931 issues.
Around this time, he started writing LoCs to SF prozines. In 1934, he formed the Boys’ Science Fiction Club with fellow fans. The following year a letter of his appeared in the pulp magazine Pirate Stories, published by Hugo Gernsback, and won him a year’s subscription to Wonder Stories. In his letter he suggested that Pirate Stories publish a story about a space pirate of the future and that Edmond Hamilton should write it.
In October 1936, some of the New York Futurians (including Donald A. Wollheim, John B. Michel, Herbert E. Goudket, David A. Kyle, Frederik Pohl and William S. Sykora) took a train to Philadelphia, where they were met by Madle, Milton A. Rothman, and Oswald V. Train. Later they were joined by other Philadelphia fans. This meeting, known as the First Eastern SF Convention, is regarded as the very first SF convention.
Jack Agnew, John V. Baltadonis, Robert A. Madle (1937)Robert Madle in 1938.
At the first Worldcon in New York in 1939, Madle was picked to represent Pennsylvania. He was the first American TAFF delegate (1957) and published his famous “A Fake Fan in London” as his trip report. At the 1957 convention, he was made a member of the order of St. Fantony.
Front: Mark Reinsberg, Jack Agnew, Ross Rocklynne Top: V. Kidwell, Robert A. Madle, Erle Korshak, Ray Bradbury Coney Island, 7/4/1939 (during first Worldcon)
He edited several important, early SF fanzines, including Fantascience Digest, in the 1930s – 1940s. In 1948, under the imprint of New Era Publishers, Madle issued a hardcover book featuring two novels by David A. Keller: The Solitary Hunters and The Abyss.
His awards, appearances, and other honors over the years included: 1974, Big Heart Award; 1977, FGoH, Suncon; 1982, GoH at Lunicon 82; 1990, elected to First Fandom Hall of Fame; 1990, Special Guest, Boskone 33; 2002, Sam Moskowitz Archive Award; 2012, GoH at Philcon 2012. In addition, he is credited with naming the Hugo Award.
Bob Madle at home in 2020. Photo by Jane Madle.
A highly respected book dealer for many years, he published his Amazing Madle Catalogue on a regular basis. His catalogs were full of important bibliographic information, and a joy to read.
Madle was a founding member of FAPA in 1937, a founder of The National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F) in 1941, and of First Fandom in 1958. He was First Fandom’s initial president, holding the office for twenty-five years. He later served another decade as its President Emeritus.
He was the last surviving attendee of the first SF convention (1936) and the first World SF Convention (1939). He was the last surviving founding member of both First Fandom and the N3F and will be greatly missed by the members of both organizations.
Moreover, he was the subject of the First Fandom 2020 Annual, which contained a complete bibliography of his genre writing along with photographs and articles from some of his friends.
From the time he was young, Robert A. Madle was highly regarded as an active fan, fully engaged in the issues of the day and tomorrow. He got to meet and befriend most of the great SF fans and pros starting in the Golden Age. His was a unique perspective, experienced across ten decades. Bob’s generosity and dedication to SF fandom was only matched by his personal knowledge of the field and the admiration of his thousands of friends.
A life-long fan and a true living legend, he was the last link in an unbroken chain going back to the dawn of the Golden Age of science fiction.
L-R Jack Agnew, Robert A. Madle, John Newton, Oswald V. Train, John V. Baltadonis. PSFS meeting – Nov 17, 1984. Courtesy of David Ritter.Bob Madle and Mel Korshak (Chicon I, 1940). Collection of Robert A. Madle.
By Curt Phillips. I am deeply sorry to report that we’ve lost Bob Madle.
A phone call from his daughter Jane this afternoon informs me that Bob died peacefully in his sleep Saturday evening, October 8, 2022. He was 102. Bob’s health had been both good and stable until about a week ago when he went into a decline and began to fade away. Jane assures me that he didn’t suffer, and that his last days were calm and peaceful. Funeral arrangements are yet to be announced.
Bob Madle was the last surviving original member of First Fandom, having begun his activity in science fiction fandom in 1933. He was present at one of the earliest club meetings in Philadelphia in 1936, attended the first Worldcon in New York in 1939, and was a long time presence at science fiction conventions around the country. He was an accomplished collector and one of the most important science fiction book and pulp magazine dealers in the world. Few worthwhile collections anywhere haven’t benefited from Bob’s expertise in the field. Bob published David H. Keller’s Solitary Hunters And The Abyss through his New Era Publishers in 1948. He was the TAFF (Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund) delegate in 1957 and attended the first London World SF Convention through TAFF in 1957. He wrote a long running series about science fiction published in the various professional magazines published by his long time friend Robert A. W. Lowndes. He served honorably in the United States Army during World War II.
More important than any of this to me; he was my very good friend. I first met Bob in the late 70’s when I called him at home, explained that I was a science fiction fan and asked if I could I come and visit him. He instantly replied, “Sure, come on over. We’ll talk about science fiction.” And that’s exactly what we did. He also sold me all the SF books and pulps I could carry away, plus when I expressed an interest in several boxes of old fanzines, he suggested I borrow them to read through. That was quite a generous offer considering that he’d just met me! I borrowed those zines, kept them for about a year, and discovered some of the best fan writing ever committed to mimeograph paper. When I took them back on my next visit, Bob quizzed me a little on what I’d read and was delighted that I seemed to have picked up a few things about fandom…
I visited Bob’s home in Rockville, MD several times thereafter, usually catching him watching his beloved Oakland A’s playing baseball on TV. Bob had followed that team since they were the Philadelphia Athletics; his home town team. We always had a grand and relaxing time chatting about baseball and science fiction, which we both agreed were two of the best things in life. He taught me so much about collecting science fiction, particularly early sf, and his vast trove of lore about the early days of both science fiction and early fandom can never be replaced. He was 102. If he’d lived to be twice that it wouldn’t have been enough for me. I had hoped to visit him again this coming spring. Instead I’ll just remember him whenever I read a particularly good story in an issue of Wonder Stories, or whenever I see the Oakland A’s on tv having a good game.
So long Bob, and thanks for 45 years of friendship.
Bob Madle and John BaltadonisBob Madle, Lee Hoffman, Rusty Hevelin.Photos by and (c) Andrew Porter.
Influential sff critic and reviewer Maureen Kincaid Speller died September 18 of cancer. She was the Senior Reviews Editor at Strange Horizons, and Editorial Consultant for Foundation: the International Review of Science Fiction.
Active in fandom since about 1980, she wrote over the course of time as Maureen Porter, Maureen Speller, and Maureen Kincaid Speller; she was the partner of Paul Kincaid from 1986 until her death (they married in 1993).
A leader in the British Science Fiction Association, she edited its publication Matrix in the late Eighties, served as Magazine Reviews editor of Vector in the Nineties, and wrote innumerable reviews and essays for each of them. The organization mourns her loss, saying “Her diligence, wisdom and vision were instrumental in the BSFA’s continuance for several years.”
She also edited the first issue of The Gate, a quarterly science fiction semiprozine which lasted three issues (1989-1990).
Cover the The Gate #1Photo cover of Geri Sullivan’s Idea #12 showing the Minnesota State Fair expedition.
Speller was a four-time Hugo nominee, once for Best Fan Writer (1999) and three for her work on Strange Horizons (2016, 2019, 2021). She won a 1998 Nova Award, given for achievement in British fanzines, as Best Fan Writer.
In addition to the BSFA publications she worked on, Speller created her own fanzines, including Snufkin’s Bum, and Steam Engine Time co-edited with Paul Kincaid and Bruce Gillespie.
Elected the 1998 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate, she traveled to Bucconeer, the 1998 Worldcon in Baltimore, and fannish centers including Madison, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Portland. Geri Sullivan reminded friends today that Speller was “the TAFF delegate for whom TAFF-on-a-stick (a fannish outing to the Minnesota State Fair) was first invented.”
She often served as an awards judge – four years for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (1989, 1990, 1993, 1994); the Otherwise Award (2004); and the Rotsler Award (2004-2006). She also contributed reviews to the Clarke Award “Shadow” Juries of 2017 and 2018.
A great deal can be learned about the nuances of sff criticism by reading her work, partly because it was so insightful, and partly because she expressed her thoughts so clearly and concisely. One memorable example is “You’re Never Alone with a Critic – Shadowing the Clarke Award, 2018”, which says in part —
…Here’s the thing – a critic’s job is not to provide plot synopses, nor is it to tell you whether or not you’ll like a novel. It is definitely not a critic’s job to act as an unpaid publicity agent. A critic’s job is to look at the fiction itself, and to have a view about it. Critics write about all sorts of things. They think about where a text sits in relation to other works of sf, they explore themes, tease out aesthetic similarities and differences; they consider what a novel says about the world at large, and, yes, they make judgement based on their experience as informed readers….
Huck and Victoria Huckenpöhler at an Edgar Rice Burroughs event. Fan Cole Richardson is in the background to the left.
By Martin Morse Wooster: J.G. “Huck” Huckenpöhler, a long-time fan and official in the Burroughs Bibliophiles, died on August 26 in Washington, D.C. He was 81.
Huck worked for the National Science Foundation as a science resources analyst between 1964-1996, compiling reports about the numbers of people getting different kinds of scientific degrees. He later monitored three long-term contracts the NSF had with three universities.
He was one of the most serene fans I have known. I never heard him complain about anything, not even routine aches and pains. His happiness derived from his strong and enduring 57-year marriage to his wife, Victoria, and from his love of fiction, particularly the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Huck had many hobbies. He loved German culture, including the novels of Karl May and German beer. He had a deep appreciation of German operettas and knew all the composers most people know and many that were obscure.
He loved military history and earned a Ph.D. in history from George Washington University on an 1866 battle between Prussia and Austria where the winning Prussian general was an observer at the battle of Gettysburg and adapted strategies from victorious Union generals. In 1991 the Washington Post interviewed him about the Gulf War, which he said “has gone so much better” than U.S. efforts in World War II and Korea.
Huck also had a substantial Spanish-language stamp collection and acquired a love of Latino culture from time spent in Puerto Rico when he was young. Huck started attending Worldcons at NyCon III in 1967 and was an expert calligrapher who for many years inscribed the award certificates handed out in the Worldcon masquerade.
But his greatest love was for the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. A biography in the 2018 Escape Velocity program book says he first discovered Burroughs from the Tarzan comic strips of Burne Hogarth. But this piece Huck did for ERBZine says he began to collect Burroughs in 1959 and in the 1960s would browse Washngton D.C.’s once-abundant used bookstores looking for books for his collection.
Huck liked other authors, including Otis Adalbert Kline, the adventure fiction of Lin Carter and the books Kenneth Bulmer wrote as “Alan Burt Akers” featuring Dray Prescot. But Edgar Rice Burroughs was his primary interest.
Huck was the recording secretary of the Burroughs Bibliophiles for 31 years, and was an active member of the Panthans, the Burroughs Bibliophiles’s Washington chapter. At Capclaves and Balticons, Huck would usually staff the tables the Bibliophiles had and was always happy to talk about Burroughs with anyone.
He frequently attended national Burroughs conventions. In 2011 the convention, although sponsored by the Washington-based Panthans was held in Pocatello, Idaho where Burroughs once worked there in a general store. Idaho State Journal reporter J.G. O’Connell interviewed Huck, who argued that Burroughs was “the grandfather of science fiction” who “wrote about organ transplants before they’d ever been performed, aircraft with autopilot before there were airplanes and tissue cultures before they were commonplace in laboratories.”
In 2012 the Postal Service issued a stamp honoring Edgar Rice Burroughs on the centennial of the publication of Tarzan of the Apes. The first day of issue ceremony was in Tarzana, California, and the LosAngeles Daily News interviewed Huck, who had 29 cachet envelopes ready to be stamped. Huck told the Daily News he was “glad to see” Burroughs “get the recognition he deserved.”
I’ll miss Huck, whose love of Edgar Rice Burroughs brought him a lifetime of happiness.
