Chris Garcia’s and James Bacon’s The Drink Tank #300 [PDF file] celebrates another century mark in an epic way; 320 contributions from a bodacious number of writers and artists fill 272 pages, which translates to 11 megabytes of faanish goodness for those of you who read Drink Tank electronically. (“Is there any other kind?” barks Col. Jessup.)
Chris and James get 18 pages just from listing the contributors. The quick and the dead alike have been enlisted for this issue – Hieronymous Bosch one of the latter. All the rest, with the exception of Harlan Ellison (shh! it’s a secret! at least from Harlan) have enthusiastically and willingly joined this great zine’s post-Hugo victory party.
Many took inspiration from the issue’s several themes: wrestling, Los Angeles, and “Your Worst Idea Ever.” There are also articles by people who seem to have thought there was a theme “But wait, I’m important too!” And of course you are.
The number 300 is a theme itself and Julian West’s sublime “300” is a grunt’s-eye view of glory at Thermopylae, limned in gallows humor.
Contributions come in every form, genre and style — a haiku by Kevin Roche, computer code (“The Garcialyzer”) from Liz Batty, a micro fotonovela with art by Rick Bretschneider, an extremely cool travelogue by Eleanor Farrell, Liam Sharp’s interesting short-short “It Was Like Sorrow”, several reviews, and an interview with Michael Whelan conducted by Sarah Lorraine Goodman.
Some of my other favorites include seductively-titled bits of ingenuity like Bill Higgins’ “The Shmoos of the Tevatron,” which is actually nonfiction, and Dann Lopez’ brilliant, masterful, and don’t let me forget to say hilarious Wizard of Oz parody “Ozzie’s Broom.”
Jason Schacht even lost 150 pounds for the occasion. Well anyway, he really did lose 150 pounds – and it’s all documented here.
Check it out! It’s for reading experiences like this the long Thanksgiving weekend was made.
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Some readers may be naive enough to believe that Chris’s 300th. issue was a celebration of Drink Tank itself. But I know better. I’m in the habit of taking the .pdf files of DT to Kinko’s (or its equivalent) to print out. Ordinarily its a small job of four to twelve pages, and the cost is trivial. Chris knew this, of course, and giving in to his perverse sense of humour decided to publish an issue that was virtually *too long* to print out. If printed out, it would be impossible to staple. If cerlox bound, it would cost more than it was worth. Ha ha. This is why, when I next see Chris, I’m going to try to staple *him,* instead. He can’t be any thicker through than a 300 page fanzine…
I suggest printing out issue 300 up to and including Julian West’s sublime short story (of exactly 300 words, as it happens). It will be compact and easily stapled.
150 sheets of paper is not my idea of compact. It should be about 2/3 of an inch thick. Then there’s the cost — four cents a side, or $12 plus taxes to print out the issue.
I wonder if I can take apart the .pdf and reformat it as two pages to the side? Or even four! A lot of work though…