K4

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K4 – A fanzine for Pieces of Eight by A. VINCENT CLARKE, 16 Wendover Way, Welling. Kent, DA16 2BN.......dated July 1990..... composed on Amstrad 8256, printed Gestetner 230

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THINKING ALOUD

So I'm mucking about in the front garden – in itself an unusual occupation for me – and this lady from Up The Road stops and speaks to me. I don't even know her name, though she knows mine. She's the sort of middle-aged matron that Neighbourhood Watch legitimised. After some pleasantries ("The back garden's getting overgrown" sez I, wiping honest perspiration from the brow, "I've got a 12-foot high rose tree I don't know what to do with". "I've got a 20-foot high one in mine" she said, casually over-trumping.) "You know," she went on, "what you want to do is to sell the house. Get a small flat somewhere. That's what I'd do."

"Uh – I've got a lot of furniture – uh..." said I, frantically editing a long explanation of fanzine library, books, prozines, duplicator, copier, etc. etc. from the reply.

"Yes, that's what I'd do" she said, sweeping on like the tide, and after a few more remarks I can't remember washed on up the road.

So I went indoors for a glass of Diet Cola, and wondered what she'd have said if I'd remarked that really the house wasn't big enough. The front room in which I'm typing this is cluttered – books on every wall. The upstairs front bedroom is cluttered – that's the Fan Room, with fanzines, prozines, and books all around and a heavy table in the centre of the room with a copier on it. There's two back bedrooms, one mine, one guest, both cluttered, especially the guest bedroom – the bed is so convenient for dumping parcels of fanzines on.

There's a back lower floor room, but aside from having tools, washing machine, tumble-dryer and spin-dryer in it, there are various pieces of furniture, an odd upright piano, and it's generally cluttered. (Um – I suppose I could get up enough energy to offer the piano to a local boy-scout troop for a fund-raising charity appeal – smash the thing in so many seconds). But I rarely use the room anyway – the daylight is kept from it by a huge apple-tree next door, and it does as a sort of tool-shed cum work-room. And there's a tiny kitchen and a tinier lavatory/bath-room.

What I have to do is to reduce some of the clutter, which is mainly caused by books. I've either got to put up more shelves, a solution which has worked for about 20 years but which means I'm running out of wall-space, or to get rid of some of those I've got.

"Get rid of some of those I've got". Gee – it sounds so easy. "I've got a solution, Mr. Herod, sir. We just kill all of the first-born."

But I've about come to a crisis point, not actually put there by the lady-from-up-the-road, because it's been niggling at me for some time. . I don't really want to be the star of a newspaper report reading RECLUSE FOUND DEAD AMONGST PILES OF BOOKS....it'd be so embarrassing. I've got to do something.

First of all it means a selection process, culling the books, then a way of getting rid of the surplus. Both courses have their snags, but if I stiffen the old upper-lip (starch the moustache?) I can probably make inroads into the piles. I can foresee problems with selecting anthologies – so many have duplicated stories but with just one or two extra yarns – but I think I have enough will-power. I hope.

What I can't figure out – and I'd welcome helpful suggestions – is how to dispose of a surplus. I'm thinking of about 20 feet of shelf-space here, 500+ PBs for a start. I haven't a car, so can't take them to a Convention to flog. I could feed them back to various local charity shops. I could issue lists, tho' quail at the bother of wrapping and posting whatever other people want. I can go along to the SF Foundation, check if they've got what I've picked as surplus to requirements and donate them, tho' with 15,000-odd books being held there's not much chance of finding gaps, and this is a minimal option. Are there any other ways of disposing of the surplus, without actually running into expense?

COMMENTS ON JUNE '90 MAILING

TWISTING BY THE POOL – Yes, I know this is described by Ian as 'not a proper contribution', but it raises some points that interest me, nonetheless.

Writing about games is a peculiar performance in itself, whether it's darts or cricket or shove-ha'penny. I've a local paper here (the dustman came this morning, so it's the only one available) which has about 24 column inches on Sport, all of it devoted to football and rugby. Approximately one of those inches contains a mention of an individual rugby try, "X...made something out of nothing by powering past four opponents on a 40-yard run". The rest is generalities, where a team becomes personalised by the addition of a manager's or captain's name – "Time is running out for Lennie Lawrence's battle-weary troops" and "By contrast, Palace manager Steve Coppell has tiptoed to within shooting distance of Wembley" (yes, this is an old newspaper).

I think that the philosophy of this is that if you haven't got yards of boring statistics such as those beloved by cricket fans, you have to generalise – and at the same time hype up a few personalities. In essence individual performances, except when there's a brilliant solo item which can be discussed in the pub later with many a head-shake and a "Never seen anything like it..." are not really of interest except to the players themselves. These days, personalities are all.

So let's visualise your contribution as sold to the millions – but slightly hyped:

"Lynne's Brandling Arms team nearly showed the way home to Jubilee 'B' lads on Thursday, when a brilliant stroke by black-haired vivacious 19-year old Kath J. sunk the last black to vociferous applause. Speaking afterwards to your reporter, Kath denied that there was any bad blood between her and Lynne. "It's all nonsense about me trying to take over the captaincy of the team," she said. "It's true that I said that we'd be better off having a non-playing male captain, but it seems to be that we want someone to keep order in the room when things get hectic, and men can certainly shout louder".

Interviewed later, chestnut-haired 22-year old Lynne........etc etc etc.

Yes, let's have some personalities. And our tongues firmly in our cheeks.

Actually, I've been wondering how one could illustrate this sort of account – video and TV are so prevalent these days that one feels that the sort of people who move their lips whilst reading sports pages need something graphic. Many years ago the NEWS OF THE WORLD used to illustrate billiards shots that one could do at home with a little line drawing of a table, a cue, and the positions of the balls, with dotted lines showing the anticipated paths....I wonder if the same thing could be done in a pot-black situation in Ian's report?

I see you draw back in shocked horror. I used to read the NEWS OF THE WORLD? Ah, this was a l-o-n-g time ago, well before the War. Even then, the NotW was known to its friends as the Barmaid's Gazette – heavy on crime and scandal. The family used to get it because, years previously, someone – I think my Mum – used to go in for 'The Fashion'. This was a weekly competition where the reader was invited to place 10 or 12 photos of models posing in current fashions in the correct order of something or other, as determined by head buyers at London stores and the Fashion Editoress. I used to amuse myself by trying to calculate how many possible answers there were. I think it was sheer inertia that kept us getting the paper, and possibly the fact that I used to devour the serial – yes, they serialised cowboy and thriller books each week, tho' never sf, as far as I can remember. They also had a half-page of piano music each week, plus plenty of BODY IN BEDROOM type headlines and sport – something for everybody.

The last time I saw NotW was about '57 or '58; I was heavily into fandom by that time, and they had a half-page story of peculiar interest, which someone lent me. Dr. Paul Hammett was being dragged through the NotW mill because of alleged drunken sex parties, with allegations of drugs and orgies on the side. Paul was a London sf fan, rather background except on one occasion when he doused a Con film screen with water from a zap-gun in an effort to repel the Martian invaders. It says something for the hectic fan atmosphere of the times that I shook my head, said "I knew he'd get into trouble some day" and didn't follow the story up. Or perhaps I couldn't bring myself to buy a NotW.

TODAY'S PIG IS TOMORROW'S BACON – Beautifully produced, with that laser printer, and doesn't UNIX have a built-in dictionary? Good old obsolete Locoscript does. TPITB could have done with ten times the proof-reading, tho' as ten times zero is still zero....but you get my drift. Even the (16th.-century) epigram scans better when given attention ("If all be true that I do think/ There are five reasons we should drink/ Good wine – a friend – or being dry/ Or lest we should be by and by/ Or any other reason why"). As a layman I think Artificial Intelligence is interesting and exciting, because I can't see how the jump from memory to intuition (the old example of an ape fitting pieces of pole together to get hold of a banana) can be obtained. I, for one, would like some (simple, if possible) exposition of this. Some of us – me, at least – don't even know what "irritatingly intentionalist language" is, would you believe? Best of luck with the MSc, anyway – wish I had your chances.

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MARAUDER 6 – Marvellous cover, Ken, would make good wallpaper for the feline fanciers. Unless, of course, they thought it might be demeaning to their pussy pals.

The OMPA membership list raises memories; love your names. Fred Barbarossa's address sounds quite genuine. The last name on the membership list was KEEPER OF THE PRINTED BOOKS, BRITISH MUSEUM, as previously noted. Liked the comments, tho' wish you'd acknowledged origin of the pictures; what attracts me on the damsels is the noses. Very very difficult to draw a decent nose, especially a full face or three-quarter view. That on the p.5 dame isn't so good, but p.4's is marvellous.

Thought you were a bit luke-warm about Sarah's piece (cats and kids) in May; I not only thought it was terrific but I showed it to Terry Hill when he came around (ex-active fan, was responsible for me coming back to fandom) and he laughed and laughed – got me to make a photo-copy so that he could take it home to his wife. Terry has two kids, boy 8, girl 4. I guess he saw resemblances.

Roman telegraph; Sprague de Camp incorporated this into his LEST DARKNESS FALL, a first class fantasy published in Unknown 1939, and worth about 6 of today's fantasy trilogies. It makes one examine the extent of one's own knowledge. If you were dumped in some past time – in this case, Rome in 535AD, the twilight of western classical civilisation, hence the title – what could you do? de Camp cheats slightly as he made his hero an archaeologist, so he can ask "Speaking of Thiudahad, has Queen Amalaswentha been murdered yet?" without dislocating his tonsils, but it's a first-class story.

The Magical Mishap: For now I'll just sit on the sidelines and nod approvingly. Nice episode, tho. This form of writing, the multi-authored serial, has a long history dating back (in fandom) to what we would nowadays call a semi-pro zine called Fantasy Magazine in 1935 where a bunch of professional authors including Howard and Lovecraft wrote five instalments. There were other forms, including one which was written backwards, from the last instalment to the first. Other fanzines took up the idea. The British Fantast started in May 1940 a serial in which the characters were fans, but this was published in the same month that the Phoney War ended and the blitzkrieg started, and I don't think it got very far.

In 1954 I started off (by request) a 'Future History of Fandom' serial in Triode edited by Bentcliffe, Jeeves and Jones, which was played strictly for laughs and had all the better-known humorists of the day contributing. It went on for at least 3 years. Like many of the older forms of light-hearted fandom, this was one which hasn't been seen around lately, I suppose because it relied on a small (say 50) cohesive group who were aware enough of each other's habits, idiosyncrasies and past history and could catch allusions to them. I don't think the present piece comes into the same category, being a throw-back to the original form of being a straight-forward serial by different authors (Lorrad Eodrap notwithstanding), the objective being to leave the hero in as sticky situation as possible for the next writer. But we need someone to establish an order of – er – walking the writing plank? Cap'n?

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K3 – Follow up to the ATOM piece is that at least £200 more has come in; most of it from some sort of financial wizardry connected with Corflu in the States. Marvellous people, Americans fans.

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MALACHITE – Nice and friendly with so much to comment on....like the cotton securing the pages which is a nice touch (Historian Vince says some issues of the pre-war NOVAE TERRAE were sewing-machined down the staple side, but this is a first time for the humble needle and thread to my knowledge). You were lucky the ticket inspector spotted the error in your route. The one and only time I got on (in a terrific hurry) the wrong train about five or six years ago, both the gate man and the on-board ticket inspector failed to notice anything wrong. I landed up in Liverpool, when I wanted to go to Stranraer in Scotland (and then on to Belfast). I eventually, after making a fuss, was found a train which travelled inland and connected with the next London-Stranraer service, 12 hours after the one I intended to catch. It was a few days before Xmas, and bitterly cold. If it'd been summertime it would have been enjoyable, but as it is my chief memory of about 8 hours in Liverpool is my attempts to keep warm by dodging into stores and markets – presumably because they don't fancy providing shelter for tramps and the like Liverpool didn't have waiting-rooms at the station, just a few plastic seats on the draughty concourse. Though come to think of it, I may be living in the past (again) – I've been trying to think of waiting rooms in a London terminus, without success.

I love your style, even when I can't understand the writing – the para. starting "I decided to treat the kids to Jorvik" incorporating Madeira cake and coining (as well as 'Jorvik') is as mysterious as any I've read and has me weaving little fantasies.

Yeah, I don't like the sun either – why on earth should I lie out in imminent danger of burning myself when I could be doing something interesting, such as exploring the dusty recesses of a back-street bookshop?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce and the quote from Living Marxism (I suppose a book?) has a funny set of values: "One sublime act of cultural sabotage..."? I don't get it. Does he actually think that it's better to have some sort of commercial image imposed from outside on to some cultural input, rather than for one to form one's own image, however formless it may be? Something tells me that I wouldn't like this guy.

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STRENGTH THROUGH CHAOS – Ancestors: only the other day I came across, by accident, one of a pair of family trees I once made out, about 1952. We had an ancient aunt on my father's side living with us then, and when she and my mother used to gossip – which seemed to be most of the time – the family names fell thick and fast. One day I was so intrigued, and at the same time bewildered, by this flood of uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.,that I asked them to think up as many relation's names as they could, and I'd try a family tree. I've now found one foxed and dog-eared sheet of paper for the maternal side, which in spite of only going back to one set of great-grandparents (with the wonderful Victorian names of Elijah and Matilda), has 85 names on it, including the Australian branch with a pair of siblings named Brisbane and Adelaide.

Looking at it, I'm surprised that from a total of about 8,000,000 people in the whole country in Shakespeare's time we've only reached 50,000,000 four hundred years later. Bred like rabbits, our ancestors.

Nice little cartoon reprint; I've heard of George Metzger lately, but with about 3500 fanzines on hand and constantly checking through them for the ATom tribute and enquiries....nope – will keep on checking. The cartoon itself reminds me of HYPHEN 1 cover, which I'll reproduce if I have any space, on the back page.

City: seems that the definition is unclear; my encyclopedia defines it as a borough or town incorporate which is or has been an episcopal see, but points out that Doncaster and Sherborne were once sees, but have never been called cities. Hull, with no cathedral or bishop, is one. I guess you have to shrug and say that, like 'gentleman', it's one of those words you can't pin down. Talking of which, ever heard of Sir Michael Maxwell Scott, Bt.? He held the secretaryship of the Standing Council of the Baronetage, campaigned for the resurrection of baronetcies, was a former deputy literary editor of the TIMES. A gent if ever there was one. His obituary last November, kindly sent to me by Steve Sneyd, says he died aged 68, and "combined a keen interest in science fiction and wildlife with the secretaryship etc. etc." Keen, huh? Was he a member of the BSFA, Maureen or Jenny?

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City of Capetown? It has an Archbishop – Desmond Tutu!

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A VIEW FROM THE CROW'S-NEST – I tired (hah – a Freudian typo – should have been tried) tried gardening for a time some years ago, and what with one thing and another have nearly given it up. The main trouble was, I couldn't figure out how you told proper flowers from weeds in their babyhood. And vegetables demanded too much discipline – to avoid a glut you have to stagger planting times. Anyway, I've just spent what I'd normally squander on a Convention on buying a shredder or compost maker – a three legged contraption like a Neolithic robot, a kitchen waste-disposer for outdoor use – and am going to make an effort to dispose of some of the brambles, at least. Will report progress – if any.

The piece on anniversaries and exploitation of historical events touches on something which has been floating around my mind for some time; let's try to get it in order. Firstly, visiting the site of Bosworth or Culloden strikes me as being morbid. I remember being taken by some friends to an ancient battlefield many years ago; I can't even remember where it was now, because there was nothing like souvenir shops there, just a lot of overgrown fields looking, in fact, slightly tidier than my back garden. Except my back garden doesn't have cows. I found it virtually impossible to visualise a lot of excited, fearful people hacking away at each other with swords.

And the battlefield didn't matter. Whether there was a famous victory there, or a king lost his crown, or it was the first step in some historical process, directly the killed and wounded had been moved away the field reverted to being a field; it took its place in history and events moved on.

In a weird way this philosophy, if I can dignify it by that name, occurred in a fan context last year. As those of you who have read Rob Hansen's fan history THEN may remember, I used to share a flat we called the Epicentre in Highbury with Ken Bulmer in the late '40s/early '50s, and for a short time it was what might be called the only private fan venue in London. Last year I visited Owen Whiteoak, a London fan, who by a coincidence lives only about a quarter-mile away from the Epicentre site, and so I went along to see it. And it didn't do a thing to me; no stirring of emotion, no furtive tear. Nothing. What Ken and I had done there (and Ken started a professional author's career that lasts to this day) belonged to us, not to a pile of bricks and mortar.

Anniversaries and exploitation of historical events are similar in this respect to historical sites, in my mind. OK to get the history in order – which is why I'm an enthusiastic supporter of THEN – but the fact that certain events occurred at certain times and certain places shouldn't invest those times and places with significance.

Fanzines: the dearth continues. It's so easy to go along to a Convention and feel that you're doing something significant, even if your participation is about as much as a fan who receives a fanzine and doesn't do a thing about it. And you can't really blame people having a good time without having to do anything except pay money.

I've been wondering if it might be an idea to run a fanzine on the lines that Donn Brazier was doing in the '70s in the US. I haven't full details of this, because it was up and running a long time before the Fanzine Library's copies start (at No.29), but his TITLE was only available to those who locced it – except, of course, for the first issue received. It was similar to an APA in some ways, as readers chatted with each other in its pages. And it was massively time-consuming – Donn reckoned once that it was taking 30 hours a week, and it was a monthly publication, but the response was tremendous; something like 98% of readers contributed. In Issue 33, Donn reported that since TITLE started, presumably about 2½ years previously, he'd had 2500 locs. TITLE came out during the '70s, when there doesn't seem to have been much communication between British and US fans, so it wasn't well known on this side of the Pond. Maybe Darroll can add something to this? Incidentally, Donn finally tired of TITLE in '78, on it's 73rd. issue.

Another very interesting VIEW, Maureen. Wish I had your easy style.

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THE STRUTHIAN PERSPECTIVE: I think the Chapter One is just a little too technically correct for a humorous piece of the careless type required, in spite of the roast bear. Here's a pretty problem for our Cap'n; do you keep all three (it is three?) starts and see how they vary, or fix on one? The cartoon strip was fascinating; nice ship.

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