Ken Fletcher | File 770

The 2018 Rotsler Award has been given to Ken Fletcher.

The award, established in 1998 and named for the talented, prolific artist Bill Rotsler (1926-1997), is for long-time artistic achievement in amateur publications of the science fiction community. The winner receives a plaque and an honorarium of US$300.

Fletcher’s drawings have been part of Rune and many other amateur publications for decades. By 1976, when he co-founded Vootie, “the Fanzine of the Funny-Animal Liberation Front,” he had long been known particularly for anthropomorphic cartoons.

He has drawn on spirit-duplicator masters, mimeograph stencils, and in today’s digital media, sometimes with fantastic settings, or remarkable because the setting is all that is not fantastic, like his invented Spontoon Island where it always seems to be 1937.

In 1966, Fletcher co-founded the Minnesota Science Fiction Society (Minn-StF). In 1979 Fletcher and his wife Linda Lounsbury were the Down Under Fan Fund delegates. They attended the Australia national SF convention, held that year in Sydney. Upon their return they presented a slide-show at cons in North America.

Science Fiction Five-Yearly, a fanzine published on time for sixty years, carried the long-running serial !Nissassa by Nalrah Nosille (backward only in that sense), with recent chapters illustrated by Fletcher.

Some of Fletcher’s work can now be seen in a gallery at DeviantArt

The Rotsler winner is announced each year at Loscon, held during the United States Thanksgiving-holiday weekend. Loscon XLV, 23-25 November 2018 at the Los Angeles International Airport Marriott Hotel, had a display in the Art Show of work by every Rotsler winner.

Loscon is sponsored by the non-profit L.A. Science Fantasy Society, oldest SF club in the world. The Rotsler is sponsored by the non-profit Southern California Institute for Fan Interests. The current Rotsler judges are Mike Glyer, John Hertz (since 2003), and Sue Mason (since 2015).

Rotsler Award Exhibit at Loscon 45 — Photos by Kenn Bates

Art by Ken Fletcher.

Many notable fanzine artists have banded together to present exhibits of their finest work at The Zine Artists, where they hope others soon will join them.

Here are high-resolution scans of great cover art unimpaired by cheap paper repro, faneds’ peculiar choices of colored paper, or massive blots of zine title typography. Pristine! At last, no barriers between the artist and the audience.

Already available are dozens and dozens of examples of the funny and beautiful work by —

Taral Wayne forestalls the obvious question —

The first thing you will notice is how terribly incomplete the list of artists is. “Where are Jeanne Gomoll,” you may ask, or “Jack Wiedenbeck, Randy Bathurst, or David Vereschagin?” The answer is that it will take time to track these artists down and contact them.

Taral has also penned a detailed history of the evolution of fanzine art – including his lament about the current state of affairs:

Then, of course, came the digital age, which changed everything. No longer was it necessary to print anything at all to publish a fanzine. Fan editors could manipulate words and images directly on the screen, and distribute them in whatever file format was convenient. It was no longer necessary to limit illustrations in any way. Colour became almost mandatory. Photographs were a breeze. Any image that was already digitized was fair game to import into your document. You could search the entire globe, through the Internet, for the exact image you wanted. In effect, fanartists became redundant.

The golden age of fanzine art represented here never really seems to have been accompanied by a golden age of appreciation for the artists. In every era there have been justifiable complaints that the artists did not receive enough egoboo to “sustain life as we know it.” So take advantage of this chance to leave an appreciative comment in The Zine Artists chat section!

File 770

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Tag Archives: Ken Fletcher

Ken Fletcher Wins 2018 Rotsler Award

The Zine Artists Online Museum