K3


K3 – A fanzine for Pieces of Eight by A. VINCENT CLARKE, 16 Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN.......dated June 1990..........may ghod bless all who enter here.............


FANS HAVE £S. The one-off mini-Con to pay tribute to the memory of Arthur (ATom) Thomson in London was a huge success. When I first arrived there was this long line of people winding around the base of the building, a sort of high-class caff near Tottenham Court Road, and for a few seconds I thought that Greg Pickersgill and Dave Hodson's publicity had succeeded beyond all expectations. Firms like Forbidden Planet had promised to carry leaflets in their shops, EastCon had given publicity, and CRITICAL WAVE had blown the bugles loud and long, but this was something extra. I'll confess I hesitated, putting down the suitcase in which I'd lugged some copies of ATOM: A TRIBUTE, and wondered what the hell I was getting into. Then a gent in motor-cycling leathers who'd been lounging on the pavement stepped forward, said "You after the ATOM do?" (a nice bit of colloquial English), and swiftly explained that the queue was for autographs from Doctor Who, who was expected in the basement. I now noticed that the crowd was composed almost entirely of young male teenagers (or below), and seemed very well behaved, unlike your average fan crowd. I was still trying to decide if I was disappointed or relieved when Greg Pickersgill came along and let a small group of us into the building and upstairs. Now this was definitely a fan event, because the first thing that we discovered was that the cafe wasn't expecting us until noon; they let us stay, however, and we spent an hour or so arranging two or three tables and gossiping, and watching a Dalek being ushered in downstairs. There was a growing pile of stuff on one of the tables for an auction or two, and I was selling ATOMs on behalf of the fund. After that, things became just a teeny bit blurry. (What were you expecting – reporting à la the London TIMES? This is sub-SUN). I was designated as auction treasurer, and spent most of my time thereafter gathering in the proceeds and giving change. The prices were simply fantastic; Ted Tubb, who used to be the main auctioneer for all our conventions through the '50s, was sitting there with his eyes bulging as bids went through the roof. Mike Moorcock arrived and started bidding for an early '60s LES SPINGE with one of his own articles in it – rumour has it that he's collecting and destroying them, tho' I wouldn't think him capable of such a foul act – and ran the bidding up to £12 for the fanzine, which had been duplicated by our own fellow-pirate Ken Cheslin. Barry Bayley joined in, bidding for an OPERATION FANTAST from the '50s by Ken Slater which had a story of his in it. That was also run up to £12. Some major items were Jim Burns-donated works of art; Rog Peyton, the auctioneer, went up in £10s. I didn't really have time to take notes (written, not Treasury), but I do know that one gent, having bid a total of £280 for two items, gave me a cheque for £300 on a sort of "it's a good cause, keep the odd change" basis. Martin Tudor, who'd donated a pile of CRITICAL WAVES, was suddenly struck by an inspiration, paid me the full asking price for them, gathered them up, went downstairs and flogged them to the waiting queue of Dr. Who fans, apparently on the strength of one small paragraph relating to that well-known GP. Incidentally, those patient Who fans were standing for at least 2 hours before anything (except Martin Tudor) happened to them. The first auction over, Mike Moorcock and Colin Greenland sat down in front of the audience and MM patiently answered questions for an hour. He disappeared fairly soon thereafter – ironically, considering the way ATom went, there were smokers present and MM is allergic to cigarette smoke – which was a pity as I'd have liked to have exchanged a few 'do you remember' remarks with him. However, this last week I received an enormous cheque from him for the ATom fund – about 5 times what he actually owed on his bidding. There was another auction, a donation of £100 from EastCon, a raffle (550 tickets sold to the 80 or so attendees), and altogether an on-the-day total of over £1500 was actually raised, with various people owing the auction around £200 more. But this wasn't the end. Avedon Carol and Rob Hansen picked up 5 ATOMs and took them across to Corflu, the US equivalent of our Mexicon; 4 of them were sold normally, the fifth raised $40 in an auction. There was then a collection, which raised £450. It looks as though the total will exceed £2300, which is breathtaking. Olive Thomson, Arthur's widow, is overwhelmed. She's not only had to cope with Arthur's increasing illness over the last year or so, but she lost her father in November, Arthur this February, and her mother in April. She's got enough to do in trying to make a new life without having to be worried by petty money problems, and of course the evident regard with which ATom was held is comforting in a way. She's very, very grateful.

I'm here to tell you that fans are good people.


MORE MOORCOCK By one of those odd coincidences that happen half-a-dozen times a week, Moorcock has been on my mind lately. It appears that two people, Ian Covell and John Davey, are preparing a real, definitive, 100% no-nonsense, genuine cast-iron bibliography of MM, and have eventually got down to my level – fanzines. Davey, who's a single-minded fellow – reads only Moorcock – has been around to 16WWW several times, borrowing fanzines written to or edited by MM and taking copies, and also providing me with copies of those that I hadn't got, mostly copiered in turn from the Bodleian (oh yes, we're talking heavy intellectual stuff here).And, coincidentally, an American fan – Don Thompson, who publishes DONN-O-SAUR – provided me with a list of MM titles that he was wanting. I showed this list of about 15 titles to Davey, and he actually sat down with it and reeled off which titles were available in PB, which in hardcover, pointed out a title that wasn't MM, picked out two US editions which were available here under different names, gave me additional information – "that's a Sexton Blake booklet" – on every single one of the fifteen, all off the top of his head, entirely from memory. I suppose it helps if you concentrate on one author instead of, like most of us, muzzily trying to remember details of a couple of hundred or so stretching from Asimov to Zelazny.

COMMENTS ON MAILING FOR MAY '90

RES IPSA LOQUITUR REVISITED: I'm not sure what you're getting at in your introduction when you appear to deplore self-censorship. Surely we all suit our conversation or writing to the matter suited to the company. If I write to Chuch Harris, who has been totally deaf for 50 years, there's a thousand and one things to write about, but not an appreciation (?) of the latest pop music. But when one gets into the body of your piece, you are really semi-apologising for laying out personal matters which you're not sure are acceptable to the assembled company. The answer is of course the same one that people give to Mary Whitehouse; if you don't like it, switch off, turn over, pass to another subject. As for the problem as outlined, it would take a braver – and more fool-hardy – person than myself to give you specific answers, but I think you'll have to take a rational position. There are no clear-cut solutions to many problems. You're lucky even to have them in plural. Some people are faced with dying – starvation, illness, accident, execution – even as you read this, which, as Dr. J. nearly said, concentrates the mind wonderfully, but you're lucky. You're spoilt for choice amongst the multiplicity of goals. You're an intelligent, comparatively young human being in a comparatively advanced country, with a good education, and you know very well that if you set yourself a not-too difficult primary goal in any endeavour, you should have a good chance of reaching it. If, as you say, you feel depressed, do as I did a few months ago and have a medical check-up. If you still feel you "haven't the heart to do things", then it's probable that the 'things' are not what you really want to do in the first place. Change your goals. How about charity work which gets you involved with other people? If Hamlet had met Ophelia in an Oxfam shop there'd probably be a Mills & Boon type ending. Why not?

MARAUDER 5: Comments on comments...oh well. Isolated fragments. Page 2; agree with you on Aldiss – he tries too hard to be funny/with it. Those rambling comments are funny and interesting – the vinegar 'drying up your blood' looks a likely candidate for the LORE AND LANGUAGE OF CHILDREN (or is it the other way about?) by the Opies. Ancestors: I have only a few fragments of knowledge of my ancestors even as far back as the mid-1800s, except that the maternal grandfather ended his days as a Tax Inspector – oh, the shame! I have an album of Victorian photos, all very prim and proper and black clothes, from I think the paternal side of the family, where a Victorian young lady looks remarkably similar to myself when young, but I've never had the impulse to investigate. Friends you choose – blood relations are wished upon you. The OMPA reprint was interesting (did you see the page of a '57 fanzine I reprinted from the original wax stencil in a NOT SCIENCE FANTASY NEWS, about '83?) and I must say that wax stencils, as well as being cheap (even now only 8p or so) last a helluva sight longer than electros. I'd use wax stencils for this, but I'm afraid of jamming the little pins that make up the dot matrix. I think that apazines have an advantage over genzines in sheer communication – most apazines draw comments, while it's rare for a genzine to draw more than 15% LoCs. On the other hand, most of the long-lasting 'classics' of fan publishing have been in genzines.

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF OLAF: That's big; do we comment or LoC? "All businessmen are fully occupied with office matters twenty fours hours a day"? Jo Lucas packs in a lot of detail in the short space; I particularly liked the shop with the pools of darkness between the counters and the sound of the curtain rings against the curtain wire. That's observation. If it's ever reprinted, I'd like to see a mention of the season of the year when the visit took place – references to cold point to winter, but it's not stated. The Hemlock Soames story was about as sophisticated as the hero's name. Ken, when you have characters conversing with each other, the practical thing to do is to keep all of one character's conversation in a single paragraph, then the other guy talks for a single paragraph, and so on. Otherwise the reader gets confused. And we're confused enough already. But I admire the energy and enthusiasm.

Your answer to Harry Bond: colour copiers aren't new, they're just damned expensive. Years ago – around '80 – a fan living in London was putting out coloured copier covers on his fanzine, courtesy of his employers, but the interior was copiered hand-written, apparently as he didn't have a typewriter. Your reply to Mike Glicksohn: I recommend without reserve MONEY OF THEIR OWN by Murray Bloom (Weidenfield & Nicholson, '57), an entertainingly written account of master forgers; been a favourite bedside book for years. One character forged stamps, back in the days when you sent a telegram by going into a post office, having the chap behind the counter assess the cost, take your money, put the requisite stamps on your message, post-mark them, and then send the message. Years later it turned out that the chap behind the counter was supplying his own DIY stamps......

Like the Olafs on 24 and 25 (Canute and Buck House) best. Good ol' Ken; nice stuff.

LOLLYGAGGING: A nice exercise in free-wheeling insanity – beautiful stuff. I don't look at ITV much ( the Brian Hayes 'Right to Reply' is the only regular slot I watch).....am I missing out on a Cultural Experience? In your reply to Maureen, you can get an overstrike on an Amstrad 8256, in either LS1 or 2. On LS1 thus: Firstly, you can't use Proportional type or Justified lines. You type out your 'target' line with a message – Chuck Connor has tin ears – and end the line with Line Space 0 (+LS 0). You then use the carriage return to get down to the next line, space bar across it until you're under the first letter of what you intend to overstrike, type out the overstrike, and spacebar spaces to the end of the line, where you revert to normal (-LS). Next line carries on from the 'target' line. In LS2 you, rather boringly, simply use 'EXTRA /' before every letter. Doing this too often can send you blind.

HARD TIMES 2: Nice production, tho' some of your remarks don't mean anything to those of us who didn't attend EastCon ("..item ended with something of a bang..." – "Illumination won the 1992 bid..." which wouldn't have meant a thing if I hadn't known that Illumination was Blackpool's bid). That's interesting on the weekly X-ray – don't they put any limit on how often you use it? Was the multiple occupancy of Con rooms official policy?

MALACHITE: Bright and cheerful as one might expect – you're good, Jenny. Nice cover, sorry to hear of Steve's absence. Thanks for sympathy – we all knew ATom had a life threatening disease which wouldn't get better, but the end came as a surprise. Like the bit on Jane Austen's letters – I have a Penguin complete JA, but it's very utility as we used to say – cheap binding, no foreword, minute typeface. I threw out 3 or 4 separate books when I got this one volume, but rather regret their loss now. another MALACHITE: Ummm – I don't know that I'd have bothered to go to EastCon, even to hear Ian rubbishing fanzines, for he forgets they're different art forms; also, if you say or do something silly at a Con it's forgotten during the next round of drinks. Do it in fanzines and a beady-eyed Vin¢ can look it up 30 years later. Conventions are ephemeral; fanzines endure, and they can reach across the seas and the years.

CHITTERINGS FROM THE MONKEY TOWER: The writing's good, but I don't get much from this, as I grew up in an era when one read story papers, not comics. The 'funnies' were the middle section of US newspapers; as school kids we saw one about every six months. I didn't buy any comics (except a few MADs) until the early 70s, when they were for my daughter, but she wasn't really interested. Bought her, from a junk shop, the first 20 or so 'X MEN' (except for the first), but burnt them a few years later when they were getting in the way. (Catch him!)

LECTISTERNIUM OCTAVORUM: Nicely civilised stuff but not many 'hooks'. You're right on Mary Celeste, white is Chinese mourning colour, and yes, I prefer machinery which you can fix with a screwdriver, eg. I gave John Harvey (PULP) my electric duplicator and kept the hand-wound one. On the point about 'quasi-quotes', the nearest possible on an Amstrad 8256 (LS2) is an umlaut (EXTRA & W), which being an accent doesn't move the cursor, plus a hyphen, thus: – ". Not all that satisfactory – better to design your own.

THE RETURN OF THE CULTURE VULTURE: Thanks again for sympathies. I was going to babble about opera, but space and time (interchangeable) is short. 'Turandot' to advertise the World Cup on BBC? Comments? Anything's better than nothing?? Interesting about Tony Walsh; don't paint too black a picture of current fandom, there are still some nice people around. Some wise words in the reviews, especially to Maureen.

THE BUMBLE BEE AND THE BEACH BALL: My ghod, this was fantastic – really funny. Thank you very much, Sarah; made me feel a lot better. Someone tell me about this lady (probably too modest herself)! Er....had you thought of putting the cat litter outside, preferably in a sheltered spot? But this was terrific – congratulations.

A VOTE FROM THE CROW'S-NEST: Very smooth, Maureen, and I'm glad that you're feeling better and actually enjoyed EastCon. One could pick a small hole or two in the atmospheric view of Bournemouth Road – the Yorkie rat jars a little in a generally good-natured piece, the reaction to the terracotta ridge tiles maybe a leetle exaggerated – but on the whole fascinating enough to keep one reading. Poll Tax – I'm paying mine monthly – why should I let them draw interest by paying the whole lot at once? – because I'm not only using the services (get just over 50% rebate as a pensioner on a lowish Tax) but the Council has to have some money to use. And government were voted in. No use saying that it wasn't democratic, that they got in on a minority vote; all governments, Tory and Labour alike, have done so since...was it '45? We're stuck with first-past-the-post, and I don't know what one can do about it.


Produced and published by Vince Clarke on an Amstrad 8256 using LS2, a Roneo electro-stenciller and a 230 Gestetner duplicator. If anyone wants work electro-stencilled (it costs out at 22p each plus postage), ask.

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Vince Clarke's APAzines
Contents

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Notes and Queries
K1
K2
K3
K4
K5
K6
K7
K8
K9
K10
K11
K12
K13
K14
K15
K16
K17
K18
K19
K20
K21
K22
K23
K24
K25
K26
K27
K28
K29
K30
K31
K32
K33
K34
K35
K36
K37
K38
K39
K40
K41
K42
K43
K44
K45
K46
K47
K48
K49
K50
K51
K52
K53
K54
K55
K56
K57
K58 to K69
K70
Books About SF Continued
From K??
Vincentian 1
Vincentian 2
Vincentian 3