By Rich Lynch:  Once upon a time there was a fan named David Mitchell.  He hailed from Blue Mountain, Alabama, and for a short time in late 1964 and early 1965 he was a member of the Southern Fandom Press Alliance.  But (spoiler alert) he wasn’t real – he was one of the best hoaxes ever perpetrated in Southern Fandom.  This is his story.

Back then SFPA was still a fairly new apa, having been in existence only for about three years.  It had been created by Tennessee fan Robert Jennings as a means for encouraging fan activity in the southeastern United States and beyond through amateur publishing.  SFPA membership over its first three years included fans who later became famous professionally (writer William Gibson and comics artist/writer Joe Staton), fans who were or later became renowned throughout fandom (of which there were several), and fans who were active only briefly before drifting back into relative obscurity (of which there were many).  And then there was David Mitchell.

His first SFPAzine, Endless Shadow #1, appeared in SFPA mailing #13 (September 1964), and in it he briefly described himself: “I’m fourteen years old and a fan of science-fiction.”  Mitchell wrote that he had discovered fandom after asking the proprietor of a local book-and-magazine store if she could put him in touch with somebody who bought s-f from her regularly.  That person turned out to be SFPA member Larry Montgomery, who lived in nearby Anniston.  Mitchell wrote in his SFPAzine that they hadn’t met in person but had frequently corresponded through the mail: “We swapped several letters and than he sent me a copy of his fanzine Warlock. It was the first of these ‘fanzine’ that I’d ever seen.  I told him that I would like to publish one myself.  He told he how to go about it.”  And with that Mitchell joined the apa.

Endless Shadow #1 was a five-page effort, except for the cover page abysmally printed using ditto.  It was a stereotypical neo-fan crudzine, complete with lots of typos and an amateurish piece of fiction.  There was also a couple pages of mailing comments, and that’s where things started to get interesting – Mitchell was opinionated.  Very much so.

One point of contention was that Mitchell felt discussions in SFPA and even the titles of SFPAzines should be related to science fiction.  He made this clear in his comment to Bill Gibson’s Wormfarm: “That sure is an odd name, I wonder why you didn’t pick a name related to science-fiction.  I mean your zine is supposed to be slanted towared science-fiction.”  And Mitchell particularly disliked SFPAzines that were mostly mailing comments: “I didn’t enjoy your zine too much because all it was, was mailing comments,” he told Dave Locke.

But he reserved his strongest opinions for two topics that were guaranteed to stir things up – religion and sex.  His comment on Al Andrews’ and Dick Ambrose’s excellent genzine IscarioT took dead aim: “I hope that you, Al and Richard, didn’t mean for that title to mean JUDAS Iscariot.  If you did, I don’t LIKE, that’s sacriligeous.”  And for Lynn Hickman’s Huckleberry Finnzine (which contained several tasteful illustrations of nude female dancers), Mitchell wrote: “Nothing here but mailing comments and some nude drawings.  Now nudes are alright in PLAYBOY but not in any part of science-fiction.  Putting sex into s-f I just don’t approve of.”

After all that and perhaps surprisingly, the mailing comments that Mitchell received in SFPA 14 (December 1964) did not very much criticize him.  Regarding the use of science fictional terms for a fanzine titles, Dian Pelz told him: “You will find, after you have been around fandom for a while, that very few fans have titles relating to science fiction.  Most fans choose titles that are puns, or references to something that they are interested in.”  On the topic of religion, Len Bailes gently chided him: “Gee, if you’re going to worry about fans being Sacrilidgious, you better not go much further.  You might as well get used to the idea that fans don’t hold anything sacred, on the average.”  And concerning drawings of naked women, Kent McDaniel declared: “What’s wrong with nudes in fanzines?  After all, fanzines are supposed to mirror their editors interests.  And, I ask you, just what red-blooded American boy isn’t interested in nudes?”

Mitchell’s Endless Shadow #2, was in SFPA’s 15^th mailing (March 1965) and was much nicer in appearance and as a result a great deal easier to read than his first effort had been.  It had been printed by Montgomery with his mimeograph and once again included mailing comments and another (and better) piece of fiction.  But he was still as opinionated as he’d been concerning religion and nudes.  He commented back to McDaniel: “I still disapprove of nudity because I’m a Christian.  I will admit that I like girls and consider myself normal, but I DON’T like nudes in s-f zines.”

Cover of Endless Shadow #2. Art by Larry Montgomery

That comment to McDaniel apparently had grated on Dian Pelz, who was a pretty good fan artist.  For SFPA’s 16^th mailing (June 1965) she produced a one‑off fanzine titled A Portfolio for David Mitchell that was “dedicated to the proposition that sex and stf do mix”.  In it she did twelve drawings which illustrated snippets from mainstream science fiction novels by well-known authors.  Those ten scenes all included characters who were naked.  And so did Pelz’s drawings.  In today’s terminology, it was definitely NSFW.  Comments she later received from various SFPA members were mostly complimentary, as much for the concept as the artwork.  But if she were hoping to provoke a response out of Mitchell, she must have been disappointed.  Because it came to light in that same SFPA mailing that there was no David Mitchell.

Larry Montgomery along with a friend of his, Lamar Hollingsworth, had been behind the hoax, and it was all revealed in Montgomery’s fanzine Warlock #8.  As Montgomery described it: “When and where the idea came to me to try a hoax – I can’t remember, but by early July, 1964, I had rented a box at nearby Blue Mountain Post Office under the name David Mitchell. … The idea of having Mitchell as a VERY neo-type fan was hit on almost immediately. …  Originally I was going to do it myself, but when Lamar showed interest of getting into fandom I put the idea to him and he liked it.”  And as for the name of the hoax fan, Montgomery wrote: “David Mitchell was my best buddy in grammar school, but moved off when I was in the 5^th Grade, so somewhere-someplace there IS such a person.”

As for why the Mitchell hoax ended, there was a pretty good reason.  Montgomery wrote that: “[Lamar] decided he was tired of ‘playing neo’ – he’ll admit he still might be considered one from his lack of time in fandom, but he’s much more mature than his alter-ego and wants to be himself from now on.”  But there was some irony.  Hollingsworth never did further emerge into fandom and eventually faded into obscurity.  The only place he ever had a presence in fandom was in the pages of Montgomery’s fanzines, which led to speculation (unfounded, as it turned out) that Hollingsworth himself might be a hoax.

There were numerous comments from SFPA members to Montgomery about the hoax’s reveal, among them one from Dave Locke who was mostly unimpressed: “A hoax can be amusing, but to unveil it too soon you put it more in the category of a joke rather than a hoax.  A good hoax is one that runs for a good length of time; you nip it too soon and you lose a lot of reaction.”  Joe Staton, on the other hand, seemed amused: “I must admit that I was taken in by the hoax.  You see, I have a bad habit – I trust people.  However, I assume that continued association with you will soon break me of this.”  Dian Pelz was wistful: “SIG*H, poor Mitchell, and he was such a nice little neo.”  And Richard Mann did a bit of postmortem analysis: “Congrats on your Hoax.  It did go over pretty well, but … we suspected things – there were inconsistencies in the story, like David Mitchell having read Larry’s entire fanzine collection, but never having met Larry.”

Mann was right that there had been hints about the true nature of David Mitchell.  In Endless Shadow #1, Mitchell had mentioned that he and Montgomery had never met in person, and yet Mitchell had two pages of mailing comments on the previous SFPA mailing – which he would not have had any means of obtaining.  But that went unchallenged.  Perhaps the first SFPA member to suspect that something seemed off had been David Hulan, who in a comment on Endless Shadow #1 wrote that: “What I can’t figure out is whether or not you’re for real.  I know these Alabama fans and how they delight in hoaxes … and you read just like the sort of hoax Al and Dick might come up with.”  But neither of them had been involved, even though as Montgomery described it, he’d had frequent conversations with Ambrose while the hoax was still active: “Many were the discussions with Dick that summer about this seemingly mysterious neo-fan.  My acting ability came in for many trials in those conversations and I always suspected that he KNEW. … But last month when I finally told him the truth, he said he never suspected.”

We’re coming up on the 60^th anniversary of the Mitchell hoax.  Larry Montgomery is no longer with us, so this is all we’re ever going to know about what happened back then.  Even though it pales in comparison to the famous hoax fans Joan W. Carr and Carl Brandon of the 1950s, it was still a pretty good ruse that might have become renowned through fandom had it gone on longer.  All in all, it’s a tale that deserves to be preserved so I’m happy to help create a place in the history of science fiction fandom for the mysterious David Mitchell.