K27

---

K27, an APAzine for PIECES OF EIGHT, Sept. '92, from A. VINCENT CLARKE, 16, Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN. "I may be the baddest outlaw in the galaxy, but even I ain't stupid enough to smoke". (Character in BRAVESTARR, a 'space-age animation' film on TV).

---

UPDATE

Mea culpa and similar. In a thoroughly snivelling cut-purse fashion I let down our gallant Cap'n by not coming up with a post-mailing as promised. So stop keel-hauling the local postman. Oh yes, I had every intention of putting out some pages whose every line would be a golden distillation of wit and wisdom, but in the end the wit failed and the wisdom had taken shore-leave. The depressed mood which I mentioned in July (yeah, that far back) has lingered on. The creative juices have run dry, and I find it difficult even to answer letters.

But enough about my troubles – how about yours?

COMMENTS ON AUGUST MAILING

THROUGH THE SPEAKING TRUMPET

Welcome to Carol Ann and Antony, and a sad farewell to Ron. I've often wondered what super-human strength lies in those fans who can look after young children and still fan.

Anyway, THROUGH THE ST was beautifully laid out, and the colophon terrific.

MARAUDER No.8 – Ken Cheslin

RYCT me about the requirement for teachers to have a degree coming in about the last year of your training reminds me (distantly) of my time in the RAF.

In those days we had 'square-bashing' which was an initial 16 week initiation period when you learnt how to march, hold a rifle, throw a grenade, make beds in the approved manner (blankets folded and laid at the head of the bed so), had several injections and vaccinations for obscure tropical diseases, and generally suffered in the cause of 'learning discipline'.

The final flowering of this process was the 'passing out' parade, when you marched by the eagle eye of some Wing Commander, buttons polished, boots gleaming, performed some elementary drills, and finally took the oath to serve your King (in those days) and Country.

The last few weeks of this learning process were all geared to this final parade, and by that time we were palpitating with apprehension. Twelve weeks, thirteen weeks, fourteen weeks...buttons were feverishly polished, cap-badges worn smooth with frantic brushing, old-barrack room tricks about the polishing of boots passed on from recruit to recruit....

And in the fifteenth week, someone in the Air

Ministry decreed that the initial square bashing was to be cut from 16 weeks to 14 weeks. The following week's parade would be undertaken by the 14-week squad.

We, the fifteen-weekers, were hustled out from the square-bashing to various airfields and they even missed out the oath-taking; made me wonder sometimes in the years that followed how legally bound I was to the RAF......

RYCT me about newspapers serialising stories. Of course, I was talking pre-war days. For a period of 10 or 12 years (perhaps even longer) newspapers were unable to use the amount of newsprint they would have liked, so the needs of advertisers were supreme, and with the rise of PBs in post-war years and thus plenty of fiction available, I guess it must have been found impractical and uneconomic to go back to serialisation.

RYCT me on accepted wisdom on story-telling. There's another school which says that development of the protagonist's character is all important – thus some of the modern school of story-telling, which throw out the plot and concentrate on the character.

RYCT JDR on black and white clothing. If I remember correctly, white reflects heat but also keeps it in, whereas black absorbs heat but also lets it out more easily? Ummm – on reflection that doesn't sound right, or we'd be wearing light-coloured clothes in winter.

RYCT JDR on unemployment, there was a TV thing on Harlow New Town last night which said that various vacancies had over 100 people applying for them. I think we need something on the lines of the 1930's American state-aided programmes to combat the current depression; 3 million unemployed are not going to disappear very easily, however much the figures are massaged.

I'm not sure that it was a good idea to use so many cartoons with blank "balloons", or maybe it's my present state of non-creativity, but I just look at the collection – blankly.

MARAUDER No 9 – Ken Cheslin

Capability Brown laid out the grounds of The Mansion, which is about half-a-mile from where I'm writing....a large house with ornamental lake and vistas. The Mansion used to be open to the public long ago, but has lain derelict for years; a builder who was contracted by the local council to start renovations wasn't getting paid, so he kidnapped some vital parts off to South America or somewhere equally exotic. It's hard to follow what happened as being a local government affair (and a Conservative council at that) you can only believe half of what you read in the local press.

'Heather & the Confusing Titles' gathers pace. Possibly you could make the view-point a bit more consistent – most of the story is as Heather experiences it, but occasionally it shifts; "In fact, Rummage's arms felt like lumps of lead.."..."Rummage suddenly remembered..." etc. And I was confused re. the 'safe path' – seems a bit ghastly to me. But, as I said, the thing is rattling nicely along.

LITTLE BITS OF ZERO – Carol Ann Green

Interesting on your alma mater's change from college to University. Is it just cosmetic, or does the curriculum change? And interesting on your thesis. Tell me, me being an ignorant old peasant, what exact benefits do you get from a Ph.d in a rather academic subject, or is it just the sheer job satisfaction/ego trip?

I would think that the first reading matter on your list should be WOMEN OF WONDER and MORE WOMEN OF WONDER by Pamela Sargent (Penguin, late '70s), with a scholarly intro. to each volume which more or less covers the historical background; will lend them to you if you can't trace them. It's been weird to live through the ages, as it were, from the sf'al woman as a cute little heroine always being menaced by a BEM to the present day self-sufficent hard-bitten specimens. Cherryh's books are a good read, too. I wonder, sneakily, what you'll make of John Norman's females.

There's been some forthright fanzines put out by women – Avedon Carol's BLATANT, Jean Weber's Australian WEBER WOMAN'S WREVENGE (now in its 10th year), etc., tho' the Americans with Geri Sullivan, Jean Gomoll, Lucy Huntzinger, etc. etc. as ever have it for sheer quantity.

But, disregarding APA-zines, the first all-female fanzine was in fact British...FEMIZINE, except that the editor was in fact a male under a pseudonym. This being in the '50s, there were only the first infant traces of feminism to be noted.

DAY FOR NIGHT – words – Paul Kincaid

I guess I'm old fashioned; postmodernism (after up-to-date?) doesn't appeal. A good piece of fiction will keep me riveted (lips barely moving) whereas if I'm asked to join in a game of pleasing the author, by 'destroying the illusion of fiction', it just fails to work. I find it as distracting as one of those (postmodern?) Steve Jackson games books where you're guided from one section to another by having to make decisions. Tho', come to think of it, those Victorian authors with their asides to the 'Gentle Reader' must have been meta-fictionists of a sort. And I hope you'll forgive me if I suggest that "John Fowles....will cheerfully admit the whole thing is a work of fiction" doesn't seem to me to get us anywhere. Any author can break into the middle of his action with a "Yah-boo-sucks you stupid reader this is only a story I'm writing".

But of course – if he finds readers like that type of meta-fiction...good luck to him. And you.

Your notes on HORROR. I'm another who wouldn't have a horror book in the house if it sat up and begged (except for some NOT AT NIGHT stuff, more in their role as collectibles than anything else) but I think you'd find the thesis ("we are {now} surrendering our power to the material objects with which we surround ourselves") a bit over-stated. Dorian Gray had his picture, the House on the Borderland was undoubtedly a home, hearses and ventriloquists dolls and cats and locks of hair with uncanny properties are scattered over the years. Tho' to be fair the potential horror in the electricity powered household objects of today offers a lot more scope to the author looking for inspiration. It's hard to imagine a malignant gas oven. You may have a point.

(Be interesting to have a small survey of possible modern titles. THE EGGBEATER FROM HELL? THE VACUUM CLEANER THAT SUCKED BLOOD? THE LIVING VIDEO NASTY? THE FOAM FROM THE CAVITY WALL? THE BARBAROUS BARBECUE?)

(Further on this theme ('Horror is in Everyday Objects') in a clipping in the next column from a local rag. They apologised for mis-spelling 'Berserk' in the next issue. Didn't apologise for using 'brained' tho.)

THE ONE PER CENT FREE – Darroll Pardoe

RYCT JDR: I'm fascinated by the railway wagon names, not so much by those noted but by the NOT YET SEEN file. I mean, where's goldfish and coley and sea-horse, to name but three? And who included mammals like whale and sea-lion and mermaid? Something fi...strange here.

RYCT Kench: Yes, the word processor has spelt the finish for those immense ideographic typewriters one used to read about in Ripley and READER'S DIGEST. Pity – some of the romance has gone; once upon a time you could believe that over in the Orient some poor perspiring guy was sitting at a keyboard with 5,000 characters or whatever.

THE ARACHNO FILE 21 – J.D. Rickett

Since reading your piece on immigrant spiders, saw a sound-bite (vision-bite?) on TV about scorpions acclimatizing themselves in South-ampton or somewhere equally prosaic (no

Southampton-born crew aboard, I trust?).

Butterfiles in a story? Not Tiptrees PAIN WISE because there's only one butterfly, and it would be the same for Russell's CREATOR. Leinster's MAD PLANET had giant butterflies...um, when questions like this arrive I'm conscious of being an old baby – new memories flood in at one end the older ones get eliminated from the other. It certainly isn't THE POLLINATORS OF EDEN. Didn't Stapledon have clouds of butterfly-like creatures somewhere? Dim recollection of a horror story – butterflies and horror make a good combination, nein? Give me more time, Sir......

RYCT Maureen: "To wake up in your tree and discover you are on the fast way down" was a frequent dream of mine when young, until I read something about ancestral memories and also read Jack London's STAR ROVER with the same explanation. But this leads me on to dreams in general. I've found that if, when waking up, you set yourself the task of finding the psychological explanation of any dream-memory that persists, it rapidly fades away. You'll thus never read me talking about 'em.

RYCT Sue: Why do women feel threatened? Surely it's just a matter of size?

Yes, I remember when I had tonsils out – the mask, as you say, quite horrible, and the fear stayed with me for some years. . I think I might have panicked if there'd been a gas-attack early in the war, but after a time I cold-bloodedly sat down and forced myself to wear a civvy-issue gas-mask. It wasn't easy. And later, in the RAF, going on a sweaty route march in a gas-mask...brrrr. Luckily, that was at nearly the end of the war, when over conscientiousness seemed a bit bizarre, so I followed the example of others and inserted a match between the rubber and one cheek.....

As usual, ARACHNO FILE deeply satisfying.

SHREDS OF CANVAS ETC – Eunice Pearson

Nasty little story about Suchait Singh Jagpal, especially as the cultural imperative is to have sons. Well, economic as well, I suppose, males being generally able to earn more than females, even here.

I looked at bit enviously at your buying only ten stamps a month – sure you didn't mean per week? I shy away from the post-office counter (wherever you go there seem to be eight positions, only two of which are manned {womanned?}), and I've got into the habit of buying bunches of 6p stamps, the first four postage charges being 24, 36, 45 and 54 pence. Handy. And having an accurate weighing machine at home helps, too. (In case anyone wants to know – one A4 sheet goes airmail to the States for 39p., but two or three sheets go for 57p).

Re. washing powders; most of them are made by only two or three firms, which I presume are the same formula under different names, but I try to alternate on the theory that if Brand A leaves some residue Brand B might deal with it.

THE STRUTHIAN PERSPECTIVE 25 – Theo Ross

Congratulations on the story sale; I hope you have better luck than friend Chuch Harris, who sold his story to a very minor sf zine – and the cheque for a full seven shillings and ten pence from the liquidators of said zine so amused him that he didn't cash it but kept it. It's now framed in the Archives at 16WWW.

Er – what is SCHEHEREZADE?

Re. metric measure. Inclined to agree that it's difficult for us old-timers (daughter does a momentary pause as she mentally translates from metric to imperial for my benefit when the subject comes up) but at least the Americans still keep to feet and inches. And oddly enough – astronomy; never seen the distance to the sun expressed in kilometres.

RYCT me; Oh, it was us who discovered anti-scorbutic properties of limes? Presumably that's why we were christened thus. Now I come to think of it – wasn't is some famous seafarer such as Captain Cook who was the dicoverer?

Marvellous stream of consciousness stuff again – and the pictures are terrific.

TRAVELS IN HYPER-REALITY – Maureen Speller

Having cats in the house I suppose fish-skin is not something you come across uneaten, but I guess it's as susceptible to varnishing as any other scaled creature eg. snakes.

And weren't the pins used on female dresses safety-pins, which have been used since – oh, probably the Neolithic? And hat-pins were handy as weapons of defense, I understand.

While I was reading the evocative Edinburgh museum account I kept getting flashes of my own early childhood, and of the Victorian middle-class house where I was raised, but nothing, unfortunately, sharp-edged. There was a scullery, a sort of ante-room to the kitchen, with a huge copper (vat) for washing clothes, and a large free-standing mangle, and I seem to remember hot-water being ladled from the gas-oven top to the copper....but it fades.

What I remember most is long curves of banisters where one could slide down and, oddly enough, the difficult passages to negotiate across darkened rooms before one could pull a little chain to turn on the gas, strike a match, and insert it carefully under the edge of the glass globe to ignite the gas mantle it was covering.

You don't even think about switching the light on when you enter the room, do you?

As for labelling exhibits in museums, there was a very interesting programme on London Zoo on TV, where it was acknowledged that, apart from a deafening silence on the Zoological Society's role in conservation, they'd even failed in what one would think would be their prime objective – the proper labelling of exhibits. People interviewed all expressed their dislike of the scrappy information shown, whereas Chester (?) with a monorail above certain areas, recorded small discourses on various animals and adequate labelling, was thriving.

It's many years since I went to London Zoo (25?), as I felt the caging of free-ranging animals was repungnant, and I can't make up my mind as to whether it should be closed down or not. Certainly the work they do is extremely useful, but the exhibition aspects – which are what keeps the whole thing going, from admission money – give one pause. Another of those situations where it's difficult to make a decision. Is seeing a video of a lion the equal to experiencing the whole grim beast, smells and all, glimpsed through thick iron bars? I suppose the answer is to split off the bigger animals to more congenial surroundings in open-type zoos, and just keep some of the smaller animals available for Londoners to look at. Maybe there could be videos of elephants, giraffes, etc., with some stuffed specimens.

How do other countries keep the zoos in their major cities viable? Government subsidy? For my comments on dreams, see small confession to John, previously, but I admire your dissection of yours, even tho' I wonder at your ability to remember it after you've explained it to yourself. Er – yes – where does Horus come into it?

I've no comment on the 'raining stair rods' optical illusion, except that it's queer that neither you nor John say anything about the background on to which your windows look. Normally, one takes in the whole scene, so that the absence of rainwater on the surrounding landscape would wash out (no pun intended) any suggestion of rain. Could be a defect in the window glass tho' from looking at the window a metre or so away (sorry, Theo) it looks as though defects run horizontally, not vertically – the neighbour's telephone lines assume all sorts of weird configurations when looking through certain parts of one particular pane.

TRAVELS well worth reading as usual – wish I could write as smoothly and at length.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR – Brian Stovold

Where you're going wrong with type lengths? Well, if you're still using an 8256 and ordinary A4 paper go into Document Set Up screen, select f5 and Page Layout, select Top Gap 6, Heading 0, Paper Body 61, Footer 1, Bottom Gap 3 and Paper Length 71. Go back to f5 and select Paper Type and then Show Paper Type. Select Height 71, Width 50, Top Gap 6, Bottom Gap 3 and Ignore Sensor. Exit, and if the results are satisfactory write down the figures given on an odd bit of paper and keep it by you.

Sorry for that. You were saying...? Interesting holiday stuff. Yes, I've often thought it would would be an idea to learn BSL, but with my isolated life the chances of running across profoundly deaf people are pretty small – I have this one friend in that category and he wouldn't understand it anyway.

It would have been interesting to get some prices on this holiday (including the bike hire!) for possible future use. In fact, there's a bit of a shortage of facts such as these – referring to liking the opening hours of Banks and lunch-time closing without mentioning what they were, for instance.

But I dug the carefree holiday atmosphere such as the sudden decision to St. Malo & Mont St. Michel. What's the use of a holiday if you can't act on impulse?

FINAL UPDATE

Meanwhile, I note that I haven't dropped in any book reviews this time, but the only recent one I read, HEARTS, HANDS AND VOICES by Ian McDonald (Victor Gollancz '92) is set in the future on another planet but gives a depressing picture of police/military brutality when destroying the native village of the protagonist, has some weird biology (the 1st. sentence is "Grandfather was a tree") and is told throughout in poetic cadences that ultimately became too monotonous for

A. VINCENT CLARKE