K35

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K35, an APAzine for PIECES OF EIGHT, July '93, from A. Vincent Clarke, 16

Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN.

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UPDATE

A small grovel to our esteemed Cap'n for saying I'd do a post-mailing. Another paving block in Hell. Unexpected things came up. Like Test Matches. Wimbledon. And not actually time-consuming but something equally upsetting. You know that I've been trying to cut down on book-buying lately? Too many unread. And I've cut down on buying maybe-useful-someday junk at boot fairs. The house was beginning to fill up. Hardly ever went to a boot fair in the first half of the year.

So what do They do?

They start a regular Saturday afternoon boot-fair on the very nearest possible area to 16WWW... the grounds of a Primary School about 3 minutes walk away.

Someone Up There has it in for me.

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CRITICAL WAVE No. 31 says: A CHANGE OF ZINERY # 15, published by the Peterborough SF Club, includes a nostalgic look at past Easter-cons from veteran sf fan Vinç Clarke....

Anyone know anything about this? I don't.

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Recent library reading includes THE CHATTO BOOK OF CABBAGES AND KINGS, ed. by Francis Spufford (Chatto & Windus '89). It's a weirdie; a collection of lists in literature. Covers a variety from the 'begats' in Chronicles to Cole Porter's 'You're the Top' lyrics ("You're the top!/ You're a dance in Bali./You're the top!/ You're a hot tamale....."). Bit tedious, but the end of one report of a Gay Freedom Day Parade by Frances Fitzgerald got a giggle:

Somewhere in this neighbourhood there was a truly unfortunate juxtaposition. The Women Against Violence in Pornography and the Media had taken their proper places in line, but then somehow, perhaps as a result of some confusion in the Society of Janus, elements of the sado-masochistic liberation front had moved in just behind them. The pallid-looking men in uniforms were not dragging chains – the parade organisers had counselled against it – but they were carrying a sign of questionable grammar that read BLACK AND BLUE IS BEAUTIFUL.

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My creative instinct is still lying on it's back with it's paws in the air, so I'll just ramble as usual about other and better folk's writing, hoping it will stir some buried reflexes. IXve missed both June and July, but reckon that the June divertisments are a wee bit ancient now, so:

COMMENTS ON JULY MAILING

PM ROUTINES 4 – Andrew Butler

Three pages of filosofic fancies leave me appreciative but a wee bit cold. "The road of excess will lead to the palace of wisdom"? Umm. And I've always had a sneaking doubt about Tygers and Lambs; are they actually found together? More likely Tygers and Young Goats, I'd think, but it hasn't the same ring.

I feel unequal to the task of re-writing Steve Sneyd's information on P.K. Dick here, which is comprehensive but hectic, so will cut his letter up a la Kench's OUTHOUSE and reproduce that here somewhere.

Incidentally, anyone interested in the news that the Mike Moorcock Appreciation Society (of the USA) is now running a British branch and fanzine?

MARAUDER – Ken Cheslin

Interesting ruthless rhyme snippets – reminds me of Harry (?) Graham and Hilaire Belloc. Origin?

RYCT Maureen on media and fandom, one of the oddities I have is a special fanzine for the staff of CONSPIRACY, the '87 World Con, published after the event, which largely consists of media reaction to the Con. It is actually slightly more knowledgeable about sf itself than was the sort of case many years ago, but fans make 'em uneasy. As one might expect.

RYCT Paul: light sail spiders ring no bells with me. At a guess, might be in A.C. Clarke.

RYCT Brian: Well, I was resurrected in 1981 but have more or less given up coming to terms with modern fandom – just too darned big. Certain sectors of fanzine fandom (themselves sometimes mutually exclusive) and PoE are as much as I can get a grip on – and even that loosens sometimes.

Yes, 'Mercers Day' was established by Walt Willis. If I can copy from Harry Warner's WEALTH OF FABLE (got into the habit of re-typing stuff since you-know-what):

Mercer's Day came into the calendar in 1957. British fan Archie Mercer announced early in that year that the deadline for a batch of proposed amendments to the OMPA constitution would be April 31st. Walt Willis, then President of OMPA, seized upon this statement in a way that epitomises the amazing ability of fans in that area to find delights in even the most minute manner.

Willis found that the OMPA constitution gave the president 'power to deal with situations not covered by the constitution'...and ruled that on account of lots of trouble in the world on the first of May....the day following the 30th. April shall be known as 31st. April...Instead of May Day the new date shall be known as Mercer's Day, in honour of our infallible association editor who has so intelligently anticipated my wishes.

And thanks for the Mercer's Day card, Brian, even if you didn't know the exact origin.

RYCT me: Books on 'future wars' published in the past were the subject of a whole book by Professor I.O. Evans, which if I can remember the title I'll insert here before copiering. But your local public library should be able to trace.. 'War' is in the title..

Nice reply to Kev. Possibly just as well I didn't answer the May 'K' – I'd have been somewhat less restrained.

The Ocarina Player is marvellous, tho' I stopped being really surprised at fanzines since picking up one for Rat Fanciers at an early-'80s Brighton Con – they were having an exhibition in the same hotel.

THE SHIHTZU OF THE DOPPELGANGER – Dop

Funny about dogs v. cats. I had a toy poodle about 12 years ago (my daughters, actually, but she married a man who went into asthmatic convulsions in the presence of small pets, so I fell heir to it), and I always felt sorry for it because most cats outweighed it. It would charge into the garden barking furiously – and suddenly notice that the target cat was just sitting and looking at it. So it would do a furious little dance about 6 cautious feet from the cat...until Master loomed behind it and the cat skedaddled.

There's a new guy next door, and he was telling me that either he or his son (or maybe both) picked up an Apple-Mac Computer in a waste bin, and as far as he can tell it works. But he doesn't know how to handle it as there was no instruction book (natch). I asked him what Mark or whatever it was and got a blank look. Can you (or one of the other computer buffs) tell me where to tell him to look on the body of the machine for the relevant information? I'm a bit hazy here, because my w/p is named on the BATH MAT principle – it has AMSTRAD 8256 writ large on it under the monitor screen – but I presume a more sophisticated machine has the relevant info. tucked away somewhere. He can then – presumably – try a dealer.

THE WATCHER FROM THE SHADOWS – Jenny Glover

Yes, I remember Steve saying that his postman had made some remark about you not getting much stuff from 16WWW lately, which amazed me somewhat. Any chance of finding out the name of this left-over from wartime fandom?

Duplicating; yes, a bit of a Black Art as you say. Rob Hansen has had no less than four duplicators fail under him in trying to do THEN 4. I told him it was a black chicken you had to sacrifice. He now has an agreement with a duplicator dealer and repairer to sell him No. 5 – a Gestetner 460.

Never heard of a stencil which has to be lifted into place by four people – unless it's one that is being re-used and is heavy, sticky, and black with goo and in danger of falling to bits under its own weight. Er...maybe 'cos of a black mass written on it?

You 'don't always have the money to do double-sided photocopying'? You mean they charge more for double-sided than two singles? Weird!!

ROPE OF SAND – Brian Jordan

Very nicely done. Thanks for thanks re. BLEARY EYES; Ken was the prime mover there, but it was interesting to re-type and to try and get the text on old quarto pages to fit into A4 without leaving a great yawning gap at the end of each item – and to leave the proper sized blanks for illos.

BLEARY EYES 2 is being worked on, but Ken has lost the use of the excellent copier employed on No.1. We're considering going on with electro-stencils and Ken's electric Roneo, but that has to be disinterred from a pile of guinea-pig droppings (or so I understand – you didn't think 'Guineapig Press' was just a fancy name, did you?). Can't be as bad as the time when Ken Bulmer and self went over to help Chuch Harris with his duper, which was ailing. We eventually found a dead mouse in the works.

Con-runners – filk singing – APAs; all subjects which once upon a time (ah! that old refrain) were covered (with everything else pertinent to fandom) in THE NEO-FANS GUIDE TO SF FANDOM. This was a fanzine started in 1955 by Bob Tucker in the States, and as far as I know the last up-dated edition, the fifth, was in 1978, and was sold to benefit fan funds such as TAFF, DUFF, etc. About time that there was another – in '78, for instance, computers were only a gleam in a millionaire's eye. On filk-singing (and don't forget this is basically an American publication), this edition says:

Filk singing is, of course, the singing of filk songs. Often fans congregate at parties or in the hall singing these ditties amnd ballads. Many have been written by now-famous authors like Randy Garrett, some by long-forgotten fans, some by good old A.N. Onymous. Other songs have been taken from SF stories and adapted to music (like "The Green Hills of Earth") or stolen from folksongs and adapted to SF (like "What do you do with the drunken spaceman?")....."

Filk-singing conventions were still in the future....

Fannish Bulletin Boards: Data on these was in the Oct. '91 THE LIGHT STUFF, ed. Rhodri James – you'll have seen his letters in THE OLAF ALTERNATIVE, with his current address. He gives a once over on various fan groups, and disregarding Star Trek groups and the like the only one then of real relevance appears to be 'rec.arts.sf-lovers', which he calls "a high bandwidth group with a low signal-to-noise ratio". I suggest you get in touch with Rhodri for up-to-date news.

THE 1% FREE – Darroll Pardoe

Ug – I forgot (after giving the mailing a first once-over three weeks ago) that you'd supplied an explanation of Mercer's Day. Oh well, I ain't going back to wipe out my mention now. Your contribution smooth as usual but without much to comment on except the software ad. graph, which is funny and produces queries such as "Is there someone we know working at that firm?" Someone who read the March 1948 ASTOUNDING SF article or a re-print thereof?

DRIFTING IN UNCHARTED SEAS – Eunice Pearson

Congratulations on the story publication. And you're right – your outline is 'a bit weird'. Talk about hidden depths!

If you do move down to Southampton you may find an sf group there – at least, there used to be one in the early '80s, which drove me to utter naughty words recently. I was working on a checklist of '80s fanzines, and the South Hants Group, as they were known, never ever put the date, not even the year, on their issues. A fearful crime to a bibliographer.

One of the things I like about PoE are the queries that are raised, and your question re. woman authors of horror tales is right up there in Class A. What a weird juxtaposition! And I, at least, am baffled. The only help I could give is that one of the top pre-war book series, NOT AT NIGHT, was edited by one Christine Campbell Thomson. It reprinted from such sources as WEIRD TALES. I have some odd volumes tucked away somewhere (they're quite rare) and in front of me the 'NOT AT NIGHT' OMNIBUS. Of about 3 dozen stories, there are about half-a-dozen women authors listed – I suppose the two best known being Mary Elizabeth Counselman (a wonderful name) and Jessie Douglas Kerruish, who both flourished in WEIRD TALES.

But of modern story writers in that category I haven't a clue. Just think, if you start to write in the weird author category, you'll be even uniquer than you are!

A further note – Kate Wilhelm wrote a sort of horror-cum-sf book in the last decade, tho' even that was in collaboration with a male author.

Nice cover, Eunice.

THE ARACHNO FILE – JDR

RYCT me – "I went to university in '55 and that seemed to take up all my spare time..." Yes, there's the same sort of remark in Chuck Connor's recent THINGUMY, from a Czech who is torn between studies and fandom, and it's led to me getting in a tizzy. For however low the prospects are in this day and age, a graduate has at least a slim chance of gainful employment. Should one actively encourage someone in those formative years to indulge in what after all is a hobby, friendly and satisfying though it may be?

I started to write to Tom (the Czech) and then temporarily gave up, because if I offered to send some of the hundreds of duplicate fanzines I have here, what am I interfering with?

This sort of thing never bothered me and my contemporaries, because with the War interrupting our lives we mostly came to fandom (not sf reading, fandom) in our mid-20's; I first met other fans when I was 25 years old, tho' I'd known of fandom for some time previously. Have I any right to push my enthusiasm at someone who's younger and has (presumably) less experience in fighting off the serpent charms of such time-consuming eccentricities as fandom?

I feel far happier with you and Brian Jordan, for instance, who have passed those fraught early years. I'd be interested to hear other people's reactions to this. Am I worrying unduly?

Re. possible new member. Good idea on the haiku as a means of tempting Steve Sneyd in! I've been in correspondence with him for some years, starting I seem to remember with stuff about poetry in '50s fandom and going on to wider horizons like the peculiar life of Lilith Lorraine, a pen-name for an American female sf writer in the 1930's who later founded a poetry school. And directing some attention to Robert Conquest, who was an sf enthusiast (but not a faanish fan as we know it), scholar, diplomat, poet and essayist. He even had a poem about sf in the RADIO TIMES once.

The AF read with a good deal of envy and jealousy. Oh, I wish I could write so fluently about so many things these days!

THE STRUTHIAN PERSPECTIVE – Theo

The piece on the 'elite education of yesteryear' fascinating. Encore?

Know what you mean re. advance cleaning and tidying for visitors – I always tell folk to give me a ring before coming so that I can pick up the fanzines from the floor (some of 'em are fragile. Fanzines, that is.)

Envy you the view you mention of Halley's Disappointing Comet. Most satisfying sighting I ever had of a comet was to get up at 4 in the morning, step into the (dry and newspapered bath) and direct a telescope out of a small slit in the bathroom window. And there, between two houses opposite, was a fuzzy light blob. Do you wonder that my childish enthusiasm for astronomy has waned?