Tag Archives: Ted White

Lifetime Achievement Awards Given

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Earl Kemp and Shelby Vick received Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Corflu Glitter banquet on April 22.

The Lifetime Achievement Awards “salute living fans for their excellent fanac over a long career in Fandom,” Arnie Katz explained in Glitter #61.

Convention chair Joyce Katz presented Kemp and Vick with framed certificates featuring art by Dan Steffan.

The Lifetime Achievement Awards were given for the first time in 2010, to Ted White and Art Widner.

A judging committee selects the winners from among nominations submitted by fans. The committee is made up of the two most recent Corflu chairs, the current Fan Achievement Awards Administrator, and any past Lifetime Achievement Award recipients who want to participate.

Richard Thompson Suspends Comic Strip

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Richard Thompson, who draws the Cul-de-Sac daily comic strip, has suspended the strip for four weeks to undergo treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

Thompson came out of fanzine fandom. Many of his cartoons appeared in the 1980s and 1990s in such fanzines as Stephen Brown and Dan Steffan’s Science Fiction Eye, Ted White and Dan Steffan’s Blat! and the Disclave program book.

Thompson was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2009. Since then friends and fans have been encouraging and supporting Thompson through Team Cul De Sac.

Thompson lightened the latest announcement with a touch of humor:

Well, I’m taking some time off. Some more time off, three or four weeks. I’m about to start a program of physical therapy sessions designed for people with Parkinson’s. I’ve only been in for an evaluation, but the therapy largely consists of big, exaggerated movements and sweeping silly walks that will so embarrass your body that it’ll start behaving itself, I hope.

Thompson received the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award, a cartoonist of the year prize, in 2011. The daily “Cul de Sac,” which he launched as a weekly feature in The Washington Post Magazine, is carried by more than 140 papers.

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster for the story.]

How the Hugos Avoid Conflicts of Interest

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The British Fantasy Awards became mired in controversy when Stephen Jones charged a conflict of interest between the administrator and several winners. That prompted a few fans to suggest fixing the BFA by borrowing rules from the Hugo Awards.

The Hugo Awards do have an excellent reputation for avoiding such conflicts, but don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s because of the superior draftsmanship of the rules. The real reason is that over the years many different people have steered clear of conflicts that the rules do not prevent.

What Is a Conflict of Interest? A conflict of interest exists when anyone exploits his/her official capacity for personal benefit.

The Hugo Awards are run under a set of rules that is extremely wary of conflicts of interest. The WSFS Constitution excludes the entire Worldcon committee from winning a Hugo unless these conditions are met:

Section 3.12: Exclusions. No member of the current Worldcon Committee or any publications closely connected with a member of the Committee shall be eligible for an Award. However, should the Committee delegate all authority under this Article to a Subcommittee whose decisions are irrevocable by the Worldcon Committee, then this exclusion shall apply to members of the Subcommittee only.

To avoid disqualifying the whole Committee – upwards of 200 people, most having nothing to do with the Hugos – the Worldcon chair generally appoints the fans who count the votes and apply the eligibility rules to a Subcommittee. So if some minor member of the concom wins a Hugo, as I did while serving as editor of L.A.con II’s daily newzine in 1984, it’s no problem.

From the beginning the WSFS Constitution (1962-1963) has banned all committee members from eligibility for the Hugos. To my knowledge, the rule was modified in the 1970s by adding the option of an autonomous Subcommittee. People thought it should have been unnecessary for Mike Glicksohn to resign from the TorCon 2 (1973) committee rather than forego the chance for his and Susan Wood Glicksohn’s Energumen to compete for the Hugo, which they indeed won.

The modified rule has worked to everyone’s satisfaction for a number of reasons having little to do with its precision. Worldcons once were commonly led by people also involved with Hugo contending fanzines, which has rarely happened in the past 40 years. On those rare occasions the people involved have taken it upon themselves to avoid any conflicts.

For example, many fans involved with running Noreascon Three (1989) wrote for The Mad 3 Party in the years leading up to the con. Edited by Leslie Turek, TM3P was nominated for Best Fanzine in 1988, withdrawn in 1989, and won a Hugo in 1990. Noreascon Three did appoint a Hugo Subcommittee, of unassailable integrity — in my mind, if TM3P had competed in 1989 and won a Hugo there would have been no reason to doubt the result. The committee, however, felt they needed to go beyond what was required in the rules to preserve an appearance of fairness and TM3P was withdrawn.

When I chaired L.A.con III (1996) friends reminded me that I could remain eligible for a Hugo by delegating responsibility for the awards to a Subcommittee. I felt invested in and responsible for everything that was happening with the con, so for me it was never an option to act as if the Hugos weren’t a part of that. I did appoint a Subcommittee – and put myself on it, announcing that I was withdrawing from the awards for 1996.

So the anti-conflict rule works because people make it work. It is not an infallible rule. In fact, I agree with a comment made by drplokta on Nicholas Whyte’s From the Heart of Europe that it would be hypothetically possible for something similar to this year’s BFA situation to play out in the Hugos without violating the rule.   

[Hugo Subcommittee members’] partners are eligible though, and I guess if a Hugo subcommittee member ran a publishing house then the books that they publish would be eligible, since the nomination would be for the author and not for the publisher.

In short, it’s a good rule to have, but it’s not all-encompassing as some have assumed in recommending it to fix the BFAs. 

The Hugo Awards Conflict of Interest Trivia Quiz: When I made my decision to withdraw in 1996 I doubted that other Worldcon chairs had ever faced the same choice. But they did. I’ll share what I’ve discovered in the answers to this two-question trivia quiz.

Question 1: How many times has the chair of the current year’s Worldcon won a Hugo?

(a) Once
(b) Twice
(c) Never

There’s been such controversy about the chair of the British Fantasy Society’s close association with 5 of this year’s award winners — for example, he is a partner in the publisher that won Best Small Press – that you’d have to assume it would be impossible for a Worldcon chairman to win a Hugo at his own con without raising a historic stink, right? Wrong.

Answer to Question 1: Once. Loncon I (1957) was chaired by Ted Carnell. The winner of the Hugo for Best British Professional Magazine was New Worlds edited by John Edward Carnell. The same person.

Ted Carnell is the only chair to win a Hugo at his own Worldcon. And it appears everyone was content. Harry Warner’s history of Fifties fandom, A Wealth of Fable, doesn’t contain the least hint of controversy. Neither do any of the conreports from Loncon I collected on Rob Hansen’s website.

Sometimes in the award’s early days the chair of the Worldcon administered the Hugos and counted the votes. That may not have been the case in 1957. The progress reports directed members to send their Achievement Award ballots to the convention secretary Roberta Wild. The chair winning a major award might still have been questioned but I’ve found no record of any complaint. In all my time in fandom I’ve never heard anybody say a bad word about that having happened.

Ted White, the 1967 Worldcon chair who responded to some questions for this article, agrees: “I have never heard anyone say anything disparaging about it either.  It was a bit too obviously deserved. Fandom was a lot smaller then, and even smaller in the UK.  Carnell wore several hats.  I met him in 1965. A quiet, unassuming, gentle and generous man.”

Question 2: How many times has a Worldcon chair won a Hugo the year before or after their con?

(a) 2
(b) 4
(c) 8

Answer to Question 2: 4 times.

Many Worldcon chairs and their committees were connected with award-winning fanzines over the years. Before the Internet that was the best medium for building fannish communities and wooing voters.  

(1) Wally Weber was a co-editor of Cry of the Nameless, the Best Fanzine Hugo winner in 1960, the year before he chaired Seacon (1961). Cry was not a nominee in 1961 but was back as a finalist in 1962. So was the zine kept out of contention the year they hosted the Worldcon? Wally Weber isn’t certain but he thinks they might have:

As for the 1961 Hugos, I remember a discussion and decision that Cry be disqualified due to the unusually large percentage of the eligible voters being from the Seattle area and who had never read a fanzine other than Cry. Unfortunately my memory is often more creative than accurate and I have no documentation to back that up. I do not even remember who participated in making the decision. I don’t even remember how the voting was done or who counted the ballots. Did we have official ballots? I would think such a decision would have been mentioned in one of the progress reports if, indeed, there actually had been such a decision. Maybe votes for Cry were just discarded during the counting processes.

(2) The 1961 fanzine Hugo winner was Earl Kemp’s Who Killed Science Fiction. The next year Kemp chaired Chicon III (1962). However, as I’m sure you already know, Who Killed Science Fiction was the most famous one-shot in the history of sf. It obviously wasn’t a factor in the Hugos when he chaired the Worldcon.

(3) George Scithers chaired Discon I (1963) in Washington, D.C. He edited Amra from 1959 to 1982. It won the Hugo in 1964. Since it had never been nominated for the Hugo in any prior year it’s difficult to guess whether he took any special steps to keep it off the ballot when he chaired the Worldcon in 1963. None of the committee members who might know are still with us – Scithers, Bob Pavlat and Dick Eney. One thing we do know is that he wouldn’t have permitted his zine to be placed on the ballot because he’s one of the people who helped write the anti-conflict rule into the original WSFS Constitution of 1962-1963.

(4) Ted White co-chaired NyCon 3 (1967), the Worldcon which originated the Best Fan Writer and Best Fan Artist Hugos. He also worked for F&SF at the time. Ted says: “F&SF withdrew itself; this was not a NyCon3 committee decision. Ed Ferman [the editor] had a nice sense of propriety.”

Ted says he didn’t take any steps to stay off the ballot in the fan categories the year he chaired the Worldcon. “I did not withdraw myself from the Fanwriter category (nor make any announcements to that effect) because I did not regard it as necessary. I wasn’t nominated that year, obviating the question.  My win the following year surprised me.” However, he probably did not need to make any announcement: people would have been aware of the anti-conflict rule in the Constitution.

White and F&SF both won Hugos the following year, 1968.

[Special thanks to Robert Lichtman and Ted White, as well as Darrell Schweitzer, Peggy Rae Sapienza, Michael J. Walsh, Elinor Busby and Wally Weber for their assistance in researching this article.]

Earl Kemp to Retire Zine “eI”

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Earl Kemp recently published eI57 with the collected “Letters from Jail” by Ted White. Twenty-five years Ted ago was arrested for dealing drugs out of his home in Falls Church and served a term in jail. He wrote a compelling series of 21 letters to his friends about these experiences. Since his friends were also fanzine editors the letters soon saw print, however, their Eighties zines now are rarities.

Kemp, who published his own prison letters in eI10 (2003) in “I’ve Got Some Friends Inside,” had the vision to do the same with Ted’s letters, collecting them in a single issue, handsomely illustrated by Dan Steffan.

Kemp announced in the same issue that he will shut down his prolific fanhistory zine at the end of this year. Two more regular issues will appear, then Kemp’s last one, eI60, will contain an Index to the entire run. eI will definitely be missed.

Marty Cantor’s Corflu Report

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backsides

The backsides of great fanzine fans. A rare view, rather like that famous photo of Churchill.

THE ANNUAL FANZINE FANS’ GET-TOGETHER
The 2011 Corflu in Sunnyvale, California
by Marty Cantor

For a hot-house plant like me, even Los Angeles can be cold in February. But a sweater, jacket, overcoat, gloves, and a hat can take care of that whilst the interior of the car warms up. Even over the Grapevine, that gateway to a fast drive on the I-5 north from Los Angeles to the Bay Area. Or, to be more accurate, to Sunnyvale, in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Even in Buttonwillow, 100 miles north of my North Hollywood starting point, where I stopped to put gas into my car, and thence to grab a bite to eat in the rest stop just north of that burg, the cold was barely tolerable when I removed my gloves to remove money from my wallet to pay for the fuel at the gas station and to hold the sandwich I consumed at the rest stop.

But what really warmed me up was the listening to some of my favourite music on my way north. CD players built into automobiles are a boon for people like me, people who like music at least a bit out of the mainstream.

See, I started out listening to two CDs of the secular music from the Renaissance, wonderful sounds from 400+ years in the past. I then moved up 200 years and listened to a CD of Ludwig von Beethoven’s overtures – and then got all modern listening to Catulli Carmina and Trionfo Di Afrodite by Carl Orff, modern music only 100 years old. I was listening to Orff’s Carmina Burana when I pulled into the parking lot of the Domain Hotel in Sunnyvale, the venue for this year’s Corflu, a con celebrating a part of science fiction fandom which started in the 1930s and sometimes feels like it has barely left that time despite the embrace of modern zine-creating technology.

And almost the first thing I did after registering at the hotel and moving things to my room was to take three other con-goers in my car and drive to the Winchester Mystery House for a tour of same. This weird and wonderful 160-room, Victorian mansion which was continuously a-building for 38 years (until the owner died) seemed a fitting start to a con dedicated to the ideals of what started our hobby. (Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photographs of any parts of the interiors of the mansion but photos aimed outward from porches and balconies were apparently not forbidden – and I shot some from those viewpoints.) Fandom does, of course, adapt to the new technology to continue producing fanzines, usually much easier to create than it was in bygone days; and, sometimes even showing better repro and other technical niceties.

This Corflu’s concom, though, tech-savvy as they were, did not keep their web site updated, so it was a decided shock to see some people show up who were not listed as members. Make that a “pleasant shock” in many cases, as non-listed Pat Virzi walked into the hotel lobby, and the totally unexpected appearance, walking down a hotel corridor, of Victor Gonzalez (with his wife, Tamara). Out of the past walked Gary Farber – or so it seemed at the time as I do not think that I had seen Gary since the 1984 Worldcon in Los Angeles. And, even though the day before I had been posting on an e-list where Graham Charnock was sending messages from London, England, awaiting the birth of his first grandchild, there he was in the hotel bar when I walked in.

One new person I met was Kat Templeton. On one or another of the e-lists I infest it had been mentioned that she was going to be producing a fanzine. I asked her about it and she told me it was half-finished. As, maybe, a spur to get her to do more fanzining, I handed her an envelope of Rotsler illos. I had used all of these illos during 2010 and I was originally going to give these to Earl Kemp for use in his on-line zine. But, with Earl not at the con this year, I saw no reason why I should not help a relative newcomer by giving her the Rotsler illos.

And one of those wonderful, unplanned happenings of cons are the totally unexpected connexions and meetings which spontaneously happen. I more or less slightly overslept on Saturday morning – but I was still the first person down for breakfast. I had just finished eating and was starting my second cup of coffee when Michael Dobson walked in and joined me. He told some interesting anecdotes about some people (non-fans) he knew in DC (where he lives) and we traded some anecdotes about Australia, a place we had both visited. At the time, I had been planning to take my second cup of coffee and walk up to my room and begin typing this con report on my computer, but it was really more interesting, talking to Michael, so I started working on this account about an hour later than planned. As cons are one of those things which are usually so interesting there is relatively no time during them to do any writing, the only time for typing is either before or just after breakfast for an early riser like me.

Friday night’s opening ceremonies were, well, opening-ceremony-like, with the only difference being me taking photographs with my brand-new camera. And, also, taking the microphone and announcing that I had copies of Len Moffatt’s fannish autobiography for sale, all proceeds to TAFF and DUFF. (A sudden weird thought – why is it always TAFF and DUFF rather than DUFF and TAFF? Probably it is because TAFF was here first rather than a more usual alphabetical listing. Still, some phrases always bother me because they are so backwards – like the phrase “back and forth”. I mean, how can one come back before one has gone forth? Et bloody silliness.)

As is the protocol at cons, at least for those of us who have been in fandom for awhile and who have attended some cons, almost more important than the usual official starting ceremonies are the individual greetings of those whom one has not seen since the last iteration of the con – especially at Corflus as this meeting of fanzine fans is often the only con attended by those of us who enjoy this part of fandom. Of particular enjoyment are the first meeting with fans with whom one has been corresponding in one or another milieu, often for some time, but with whom this is the first ever face-to-face meeting. such was the case in my meeting with Mike and Pat Meara, over from Old Blighty to experience the American iteration of Corflu and to see how it differs – if at all – from the English version of the con which they attended the previous year. Indeed, I met them almost as soon as I arrived at the con hotel. And they (along with Milt Stevens, the other Angeleno at the con) were my passengers as I drove them to the Winchester Mystery House, theoretically a 10-minute drive from the hotel – according to the map I downloaded before I left North Hollywood – but local traffic made that more than a bit of a joke. But get there we did, and I must say that we all enjoyed the tour of a house with cabinet doors which opened to blank walls, an outside door on a higher floor which opened up to open air and no stairs, a stairway up to a ceiling, a window in the floor, and many other strange constructions. Anybody interested in this over-large anomaly of a building can probably read about it in many places. Needless to say, joining with the British Sandra Bond and the three passengers she drove over from the hotel, we had a fascinating tour of this architectural pile.

After which we all returned to the hotel or went for a meal or did something before we went to the Opening Ceremonies. In my case, even though Milt and I shared a table in the hotel restaurant before going to the opening ceremonies, nothing much which happened on that Friday evening compared to the sensory overload of viewing the Winchester House. At the Opening Ceremonies I remember Carrie Root’s name being pulled from the box, therefore making her the Guest of Honour at this Corflu, but not all that much of what else happened at that event – except me making an announcement of the Len Moffatt autobiography which I had printed upon hearing of Len’s death. (This autobiography was a compilation of 9 episodes which Len wrote and which I had originally pubbed in nine different issues of my zine, NO AWARD (starting over 10 years ago).

Tired from all of this, I went to bed even earlier than usual. So, if anybody is interested in what I did at the room parties and such like at the con, please note that I am an early riser and rarely stay up until midnight at most cons. Indeed, even were I to stay up past midnight, I would be asleep anyway. A night person I am not – unless it is at the tail end of the night, as I awaken before sunup.

Programming at Corflus is always single track. Granted, there are not all that many people at these cons compared to, say, Worldcons, but these are all the sort of people with whom other fanzine fans love to hang around. And talk. And talk. And talk. So, even though whatever the programming at the con happens to be, tailored as it all is to the interests of fanzine fans, sometimes many of the attendees do not much bother the programming which is put on for their enjoyment/edification.

So be it.

This means that I missed the fannish trivia contest where four teams squared off to see which team knew the most useless information. The results, though: the Mike McInerny American team of John D Berry, Milt Stevens, and Gary Farber beat the Sandra Bond English team.
 
One item of interest was a slide presentation by Dave Hicks, a fanartist
brought to the con by the Corflu 50 group. Dave is a fanartist whose
artwork I would dearly love to showcase in any genzine I was putting
out. If I was putting one out …

In my case, I was only interested in the Fanzine Auction, put on at 8 on Saturday evening, given that I had brought items to auction off for DUFF. All of the items put up for bid at Corflu auctions are meant only for the support of various fannish charities, usually (and mostly) the various travel funds: TAFF, DUFF, GUFF, and the like. I have participated in fannish auctions before – as an auctioneer – and it turned out that this was to be no exception as Chris Garcia, the con chair, had not made arrangements for anybody else other than him to do the auctioning. As more and more fans straggled in from dinner, the auctioning got more spirited as more people began participating in the bidding. At the end of the scheduled hour, with only a few items left to auction, we called an end to the bidding so that those who had won items could pay for them and the next programme item could commence.

This was a fannish play, written by Andy Hooper. I always seem to enjoy reading them after the fact as I usually have conversations drag me away from the live productions – and this time was no different from the usual.

I went up to the con suite and got into some conversations, including a bit on the virtual con suite, a connexion to interested parties via the internet. This was most ably handled at the Corflu end by Kat Templeton.

Sunday morning saw Jack Calvert arriving for breakfast as I was going in for same. Yeah, I slightly overslept today, too. Jack is a member of LASFAPA, one of the two APAs I run, and he is also a member of Inthebar, the e-list founded by fan artist Harry Bell. As is all too common, I remember that Jack and I had a fine talk during breakfast, with me not remembering any of the details.

Sunday mornings at Corflus usually start slowly as the only scheduled programme item is the Banquet. Of course, eating food is only one of the things we do at the Banquet. The food at this Corflu’s Banquet was a brunch – in name, even though it was mostly breakfast food along with exceedingly spicy chili. Some of us who had already eaten breakfast at the hotel were slightly put out that essentially the same food for lunch. (An aside: a free, full breakfast was included in the price of our hotel rooms. Personally, I find that a wonderful change from the sweet roll and coffee combo called a free breakfast at some hotels. And, as a breakfast, it was very good.)

The food part of the Banquet was served in a room off the lobby of the hotel. So, when we finished our meal we moved to the room we used for Corflu functions, on a hallway in back of the elevators on the second floor. This is where the “business” of the con was then held. Starting with the nominations and voting for the Past President of FWA, Fanzine Writers of America. As explained by Ted White (who ran this part of the meeting), what the members of the con produce are fanzines, and whether drawn or typed, we are all writers, and no matter from whence we came, we are all Americans – at least for the purpose of FWA. And we always vote for last year’s President as there is never any current President of FWA. (Ted explained all this better than me but I was too busy taking photographs to write down any details.) Anyway, after some very spirited voting, Spike was voted Past President of FWA.

Then came the time for Spike to announce the winners of the FAAN Awards, with said Awards being carved on bronze plaques (by Tom Becker). First, though, there was a Special Lifetime Achievement Award given to Art Widner. Art got up to take the award and then sort of hesitated as he attempted to read the words on the plaque. Some wag – not me, this time – wondered, aloud, if the words on the plaque used Art’s spelling. Art mentioned something about them being in “dumb English.”

Below is a list of the FAAN Awards as voted on by fans:

Artist: Steve Stiles
Letterhack: Robert Lichtman
Fanzine: Robert Lichtman’s TRAP DOOR
Writer: Roy Kettle
Website: eFanzines.com

Carrie Root then gave her Guest of Honor speech; which, in her case, was a slide show of a visit with relatives and Andy Hooper to northern New Mexico. It was well received.
 
There was then a discussion of where Corflu would be held in 2012, with Ted White presenting a bid for Las Vegas as none of the Vegrants were able to appear at this year’s con. Many of us have good memories of the Corflus previously held in Vegas, so it was with good heart that Las Vegas was awarded the 2012 Corflu.

The end of the Banquet is traditionally the end of the programming at Corflu. The Con Suite will remain open until around midnight or so and there are still get-togethers and fannish food expeditions afterwards, but many people leave for home on Sunday afternoon and evening. Being theoretically retired – well, I run the apartment building in which I live as a supplement to my Social Security check – I usually stay at the hotel an additional night and start my drive home early Monday morning. As I did, this time, except I had the “pleasure” of having rain or drizzle as an accompaniment to my driving all the way south until I arrived at the Grapevine. From the beginning of my ascent into the mountains – and for the remainder of the day – the Sun was shining brightly. A fitting end to a fine con.

Widner goes forward

Art Widner rises to accept his Lifetime Achievement Award.

Art Widner deciphers his award plaque.

Sound and Fury Signifying Trivia

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Today’s trivia question: Every winner of the Best Fan Writer Hugo has made at least one professional sale, but two winners have never sold a science fiction story. Can you name them?

The winners since the creation of the category in 1967 are: Terry Carr, Richard E. Geis, Mike Glyer, Dave Langford, Cheryl Morgan, Alexei Panshin, John Scalzi, Bob Shaw, Wilson Tucker, Harry Warner Jr., Ted White and Susan Wood.

Most of the names are easy to rule out because their record in the sf field is so well known.

Wilson Tucker won the 1970 Best Fan Writer Hugo, then had Year of the Quiet Sun nominated as Best Novel in 1971.

Scalzi’s novel Old Man’s War and its sequels have received Hugo nominations.

Dave Langford’s “Different Kinds of Darkness” won Best Short Story in 2001.

Bob Shaw’s classic short story “Light of Other Days” received a Hugo nomination in 1967. He didn’t get around to winning the Best Fan Writer Hugo until 1979 (and again in 1980.)

Ted White’s first novel was written in collaboration with another Best Fan Writer winner, Terry Carr. Invasion from 2500 (1964) was published under the pseudonym Norman Edwards. Ted went on to write lots of other novels under his own name.

Terry Carr, in the middle of a run of seven other nominations for his fan writing and fanzines (Fanac, Lighthouse) had a short story nominated for the Hugo in 1969, “The Dance of the Changer and the Three.” The year Terry finally won the Best Fan Writer Hugo, 1973, he was also nominated for Best Professional Editor (in the category’s debut), and it was as an editor he won his last two Hugos (1985, 1987).

Alexei Panshin won the first Best Fan Writer Hugo in 1967. He declined his nomination in 1968, hoping to set an example for future winners. He also had great success as a pro. His novel Rite of Passage received a Hugo nomination in 1969 and won the Nebula.

Harry Warner Jr. had 11 short stories published in the mid-1950s (and grumbled when that was discovered by his neighbors in Hagerstown — see the link below in comments).

Richard E. Geis has sold any number of erotic sf novels.

I trail this parade at a respectful distance, with one pro sale that appeared in Mike Resnick’s Alternate Worldcons.

That leaves two winning fanwriters to account for: Cheryl Morgan and Susan Wood. Cheryl has made nonfiction sales, but the Locus index lists no fiction. Susan Wood published scholarly work about the sf field, but no stories. So Morgan and Wood are the answer. (Subject to correction, as always…)

Update 10/12/2009: Of course Harry Warner sold short stories — text corrected. Thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden for the assist. Update 10/13/2009: And to Dave Langford for catching mistakes about Shaw’s story I have been helplessly repeating since, oh, 1967, although they ought to be avoidable  — I can always remember the exact year “Neutron Star” won its Hugo. 10/18/2009: Alexei Panshin’s comment gives the real reason he turned down his Best Fan Writer nomination in 1968.

The Apprentice

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Trufen.net’s story of the day announces Jeff Berkwits will be the new editor at Amazing and that Ted White has already determined Berkwits lacks the necessary skills for this job.

Say what you will about Ted and his crystal ball, I’m sure he’s right. Ted has edited pro magazines, he ought to know. What’s more, I have a little experience in this line myself. It’s just that I was lucky enough not to get the dream job.

Berkwits is embarking on a desperate gamble that all his gifts as an editor and writer can be trained up fast enough to make the crucial difference in Amazing’s commercial survival. And he’s the kind of promising novice a scuffling prozine publisher will inevitably turn to.

When Jim Baen was leaving Galaxy in the 1970s, out of the blue Jerry Pournelle told me (entirely seriously) that I should apply to take over the job and that he’d put in a word for me. Well, I thought it over logically for about twelve seconds before getting swept up in the dream. I wrote the best application letter I could and mailed it off to Baen at Galaxy. Then I waited. Then I heard nothing. Then I read in Locus that Hank Stine had been hired as Baen’s replacement.

In hindsight one can see that Galaxy was already on the verge of a financial tailspin that could not have been halted by the resurrection of John W. Campbell. Hank Stine merely received the privilege of riding the bomb down to the target, like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove.

However, Stine was editor of Galaxy long enough to find my job application in his in-box, scrawl an insulting answer on the back in red pen, and mail it back to me. Really, it was a hilarious and pathetic gesture. Didn’t he have bigger things to worry about? Yes Hank, you were right, I did not have any credentials to aspire to that job.

In the mind of a science fiction fan, editing a prozine is a dream job. Who could turn it down? But I exaggerated when I said I was lucky not to have been picked. One of the things that distinguishes a fan is looking for external validation, and wouldn’t I have “proved” something to the sf community even by editing Galaxy into the ground? Er, don’t answer that.

As for Berkwits, I wish him luck and success. Been there. Almost did that.