K13

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K13, an APAzine for May '91 Pieces Of Eight by A. Vincent Clarke, 16 Wendover Way, Welling, Kent. DA16 2BN "AS OF 12th. DEC. '73 I HAVE RECEIVED SINCE JAN. 1ST, 1,164 PIECES OF FIRST CLASS MAIL (SF ONLY) AND NOT COUNTING ADVERTISEMENTS, FANZINES AND PACKAGES." DONN BRAZIER, TITLE No.23.

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(I just put the above quote in as an awful warning to Chuck Connor, who's just started a fanzine on the lines of Donn's – that is, it's only sent to those who LoC or exchange.)

SOS TO CHEMISTS

I'm confronted by a Problem, and need some help. Twenty years ago or more I glued a number of '50s fan photos in an album, both sides of each page, thinking that I'd never need to disturb them.

The plans of fools and fans gang aft a'gley. There is now being worked on in the States a reprint (in hard-covers yet!) of WEALTH OF FABLE, Harry Warner Jnr's history of '50s international fandom, and they're asking for photos to reproduce.

Naturally, I'd be willing to help, even to the point of sending over whole album pages – should they be able to handle them if they only really want to reproduce one small area of a page – but I'd much rather send over just the photos. How do I detach them from the album pages without damaging them?

And I'm sorry, after all this time I don't know what glue/gum I used.

There's a bit of time to spare, the Project not being scheduled for completion until next year. I need a solvent. So far, I've tried ammonia, methylated spirits, perchlorethylene, acetic acid (vinegar), acetone, paint brush cleaner, paint stripper, petrol, some mysterious stuff in a tin calling itself BOSTIK 6012 CLEANER THINNER / HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE, and hot air from a hair-dryer. Zilch. I've still got a couple to go – Turps and Stain Devil for Glue and Chewing Gum which contains not only Turps, but Methylglycol Acetate and Tetrahydrofuran which sounds impressive – but my initial confidence that I could solve the problem is beginning to look a bit weather-beaten. I suppose I could try steam, but I'd rather not, even tho' I'm experimenting on a virtually useless snap of some by-gone Convention hall.

Ideas welcome.

I suppose in the last resort I could split the album pages in half (I've heard of forgers doing it with bank-notes, and this is comparatively thick paper) and just cut around each individual photo, but I'd like to find a Scientific solution.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

In a recent 'K' I was burbling about typography – legibility of type, justification etc. – and said "I"ll return to this subject later – there must be some technical stuff on it!"

After looking around, I report that there are technical studies, and most of them are locked up in technical journals.

By one of those curious coincidences that happen every day I came across in a church-hall book sale a dignified tome called THE VISIBLE WORD. It was first published in a restricted edition by the Royal College of Art; this is a revised second edition dated '69, which means it's just prior to the Computer Age when us ornery folk started to take an interest in the way words looked on the page:"With twenty-five soldiers of lead I have conquered the world" claimed an early seventeenth century author with sublime arrogance and a cheerful disregard for the truth...today's computer manufacturers might claim, with rather greater justification, that they have conquered the world with just two soldiers: 1 and 0!

Little did they know what was coming. There's some interesting remarks, though. "We force one letter, 'a', to convey 7 different sound values, yet we represent the sound of 'i' in 23 ways". And Javal, a French Professor of 1878:"revealed that the eyes move along a line of print in a series of quick jerks, which he called saccadic movements....because these movements are so fast no clear vision is possible, and perception occurs only during the fixation pauses which punctuate these jerks. In most situations about 94% of reading time is devoted to fixation pauses and on the average, in the ordinary reading of adults, each pause lasts about 1/4 second"

Javal also defined a regression, when the eyes make a backward movement ("did I really read that?") and other optical terms. It's also stated that only about 4 letters of 'normal size' fall within the zone of maximum clearness of vision, and beyond that vision fades off gradually.

"All-capital printing retards speed of reading to a greater extent than any other typographic factor", but on the other hand "where very small type sizes approach the limit of legibility, capitals are more easily discriminated....."

They're not fond of italics..."the use of italics retards reading." Also, "the commoner type sizes, 9 to 12 point, are of about equal legibility. Larger sizes reduce reading efficiency."

Incidentally, don't get confused between 'points' and 'characters per inch'. 'Points' go 72 to the inch (or, to be picky, 0.9962" – I presume that in the grand old British manner, this is the distance between Gutenberg's thumb-joint and it's tip), which, assuming the characters are square, means that the optimum size of type face is about 6-8 characters to the inch, so we're all being too tiny and making things hard for readers. With the current price of paper – too bad.

On justification, THE VISIBLE WORD appears to be surprised that unjustified text can be read as easily as justified. Some experimenter found that "the least proficient readers read unjustified text more quickly than justified text". As a sort of oblique commentary on this THE VISIBLE WORD is set unjustified.

There's also some remarks on indentation ("it is universal practice to separate 'thought units' mechanically by indenting the first line of every paragraph") but this 1940 dictum was not 'universal' 28 years later, and the subject drifts away.

There is, unfortunately, nothing specific on the subject in which I'm mostly interested – the optimum length of line for sizes of type, and I'll keep on looking. There's a 500 title bibliography in THE VISIBLE WORD, but almost all the references are to learned journals.

The search continues.

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BOOK REVIEWS

There ain't any – I've just been too busy. I had THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE by Bill Gibson from the Library, and found it virtually unreadable. It's an example of 'steam-punk' – the author sets his story on a different time-line. This is supposed to be bang up-to-date, tho' Keith Roberts wrote the marvellous (if down-beat) PAVANE in '68 wherein Elizabeth 1st. was assassinated and the Armada won, and of course H. Beam Piper's stories were even earlier.

THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE is set in a world where the Babbage 'engine' was completed. It's replete with Victorian slang and attitudes – there's a fantastic amount of research gone into it. I found it practically unreadable and took in back to the Library unfinished.

I'm starting CLARKE COUNTY, SPACE from the Library – with a title like that it's irresistable. And an odd resolution I made not to buy any more books has gone where all good intentions go. So I've added to the 'To Be Read' shelf a couple of Philip K. Dick PBs, THE NUCLEAR AGE by Tim O'Brien (straight from the States – it still had an American bookmark inside) and a few others including NEW DESTINIES, a 'paperback magazine' which suffers from a bad attack of hero worship – "This and every issue is dedicated to the memory of Robert H. Heinlein". In spite of which there's occasionally a good story in one of them.

I more or less stopped collecting the 'Travis McGee' books by John MacDonald a couple of years ago as they started to be repetitious and predictable – they're now prime candidates for disposal and anyone wanting to fill in gaps should get in touch. I've started to collect a fresh author: Robert B. Parker. I was intrigued by the TV series 'Spenser', about a private eye in Boston, and found that although the books had their faults – Parker has a Thing about clothes and describes them at every available opportunity – there's far more humour than one normally gets....and a lot of books to look for.

And I slipped right back into my youthful days when I picked up EMPIRE OF THE WORLD by Cutcliffe Hyne, c. 1910. Not that I was even a lonely sperm then, but I can remember those distant days of the '30s when you could read all the new fantasy and sf being published without trouble and you hunted through the shops looking for titles to feed the habit. This one appears to be about an outlaw holding the world to ransom through a Ray which disintegrates iron. Report to follow...perhaps.

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COMMENTS ON APRIL '91 MAILING

THE SKIPPER'S PANTRY – Chuck (Captain) Connor

Smoothly done, Sir, and nicely laid-out page. The flow-chart's also a good deal funnier than the usual spread of addresses.

As long as missing members have paid their dues I don't mind trying to entertain them, providing they're not stopping anyone else from joining. In fact, one could say that it's partly the contributor's fault if they're not provocative/interesting/friendly enough to elicit comments from the silent minority.

But as I've previously pointed out, if we ever put a limit on numbers, this automatically means that it's only fair that non-contributors are chucked out to make way for people with something to say. Should we have a limit?

K12 – self – I wrote to the publishers of the PRINT ....HOW YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF book mentioned, as I wanted a copy for myself but found that they'd changed. Have still to get in touch with the new people – another job waiting. I need a secretary.

MARAUDER No.4 – Ken Cheslin – RYCT John, I too like illos, especially those wonderfully appropriate ones you find up, but usually I'm rushed for time and space and just can't lay out 'K' as I'd like. RYCT Maureen – it's always struck me as weird that the IRA have never really gone for the big targets – they blow up the odd innocent bystander here and there (metaphorically speaking), but any reasonably intelligent person could think of ways to bring London to a grinding halt, given a certain degree of ruthlessness. I wonder what would happen if Britain started suffering as we did, eg. during the Blitz? A full scale invasion of Ireland? There must be some godawful scenarios locked away somewhere on this.

RYCT Tommy, let me know which OLAFs you want – I'm positively weltering in '80s fanzines. And yes, I've got the 'Cannibal' song on a reel-to-reel tape somewhere – I've just been looking for it in a horrible tangle of tapes. Tape-recorder works OK if low-fi anyway – I'm listening at the moment to 'Oklahoma' on a different tape, but recorded at about the same time as the one for which you're looking – which is, incidentally, 'The Reluctant Cannibal', sung in a revue called 'At The Drop of A Hat' by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, sometime in the fifties. If no one comes up with the words in this mailing I'll find the tape and see if I can record a cassette for you.

RYCT me – I've tried but I can't suppress it – Walt Willis said at one time that, like you, his Dad was a printer. "I", said Willis, "have just reverted to type."

You haven't exactly blackened your life forever by not visiting the Wellington for a meeting. We have, I suppose, about 100+ people crammed into the bar – it's quite an event when you can see a yard or two of floor – and about 30 of those will be talking. Added to the din, they actually run a juke-box with loudspeakers scattered here and there, and there's seating for about 25. And of course, you can't bar the normal mundane public. It's a horrendous experience, only tolerable because you can't imagine any other venue in mid-London and – well to repeat what I'm listening to – "It's better than a magic-lantern show...."

'Something Mything' (nice title) sets out my thoughts over the last few years almost exactly, and I suppose my experience was even more numbing than yours because I left fandom in '60 with the myths in full flow (the Fancyclopedia II had been published only a couple of years previously) and came back in '81 to what seemed metaphorically a devastated landscape. I wish that you'd published this in your general circulation ACGOO – perhaps you will? – as I'd like to see a wider discussion than you're likely to get in PoE.

Some of the causes of this state of affairs have to do with extraneous matters – the rise of satire and anti-institutional feelings in the '60s – and fandom as it was was an institution, with a long history of fans, slang, incidents, references. Partly it was due to a shift of reference in the '60s – the BSFA, which was originally set up with the aim of encouraging fannishness-as-we-knew-it became a solemn respectable society. Partly it was due to the most energetic fans of the '70s being iconoclastic. But mostly it's due to dat ol' debbil Time. SF readers are no longer the 'persecuted' minority they once were – I can remember when if one saw a stranger reading sf you'd go up to him (or her – but mostly him, then) and get into conversation; you'd possibly found a comrade. And from there it was an easy progression to finding that sercon discussion was fun, but trufandom was even more fun.....

But if the will was there, we could still have a couple of hundred people creating a mental playground, another level of reality as you put it. It still exists in many minds, particularly in the States. But it needs a focal point, a regular fanzine run by and for fans who don't mind slipping into the other reality and who would have a strong sense of comradeship.

Fossils. I remember in the late '60s going along a partly deserted piece of shore called The Warren somewhere on the South Coast...was it Folkestone, Maureen?...where you could literally pick ammonites etc. out of the cliff face as you walked along. I've sometimes thought of returning there, just to get the sense of geological time which pervaded the place, but I know very well that it's probably now an esplanade with fish-and-chip shops and games-machines, and I don't want to soil the memory.

THE STRUTHIAN PERSPECTIVE 11 – Theo Ross That's a gentle and marvellously written essay, Theo. Class isn't a subject to which I've ever given much thought (I have only one book on the shelves on it – CLASS – Image & Reality in Britain, France & the USA since 1930 – Marwick, Fontana '80 if you must know) but I think there's a general perception, especially since WW2, that Class should be meaningless. I think you (or the other people to whom you refer) are confusing terms; the attributes, planting daffodills, not squandering money, etc. etc. which you cite I'd call civilised.

Ok, some people march to a different drum, but the principle's there.

If you start citing ancestors who were professionals, then you are guilty of gentle pride, but if you cite them as reasons for being respectful to you, then that's snobbery. People are products of dozens of different influences; if you isolate one, ancestry, then that shows at best an inability to comprehend reality.

Which leads us into the piece on Royalty. You must know, as an educated man, that they're subject to the same luck of the draw as anyone else when they're born. True, they have the training (tho' I'd imagine that these days it's only by example) but there's no laid-down rule that their genes are going to lead them to be wise and generous or just be passionately interested in corgis and horses. As far as I know there are no monarchies in the world which have managed to keep their people happy and contented longer than your ordinary democracies (and if you come back with 'Victoria', I'll demonstrate the terrible inequalities of that era).

I used to be anti-Royalist as a kid. It wasn't fair that they should have all that money, and of course George V. would have the biggest stamp collection in the world, the jammy sod. Nowadays I feel that they bring in money from tourists and have to endure tabloid prying and there's worse alternatives – the American Presidential system, for instance – so on the whole I shrug and murmur that the Court is an interesting anachronism. If they want to play games, let 'em.

ARACHNO FILE – John D. Rickett – Spidey and Spidess charming as usual. Have you ever thought of writing children's tales?And that's another of them dern coincidences – the jenny hanniver looks remarkably like mine (also looks like an alien dentist but we won't go into that), my picture being reversed in printing (old custom – always have figures facing inwards – mine was on a right-hand page), tho' I wouldn't have liked the job of straightening the neck. Creak!RYCT Ken, I've got a tape library if not a tape APA somewhere on my list of priorities – I think it's No.15. Oh sure, MCs are an outstanding part of any APA, tho' I'm always aware of the fact that in years to come a fan may read my stuff and wonder what on earth I'm talking about. When you have a fanzine library it makes you conscious that you're writing for posterity – even if it's a solitary Harry Bond II. RYCT me. I'm not disputing that justification looks better. Good point on left hand justification, except that the eye finds it easier to come back to one vertical line instead of seeking backwards and forwards. But as I remarked earlier, research continues. In the book from which I quoted earlier there's samples of boustrophedon – every alternate line starts from right to left and reads backwards as well – but also a rather nice modified form:

Kujus says this arrangement
fatiguing less prove would

which would in fact be easier to read, I reckon, but I can't imagine how an ordinary typewriter would handle it. Or, come to that, a W/P. Be a bit like justifying on an ordinary typewriter, which I've done in my time. Painful memories. The Amstrad 8256 has 5, 6, 7½ & 8 line pitch alternatives – I have it set for the standard '6', but it shows slightly more as the font I'm using isn't the standard. Interesting about your retrievement of French. It's difficult to think of any other skill on an academic level which might be required later. On the other hand, there's motor skills – I wonder how they hold up? Bicycling is a well known one that does – I went back to it after 20 years and had no trouble. Wonder if holding and using a snooker cue would work after practise? I handled one after at least 30 years, at NovaCon last year, and it felt like a walking stick – no response whatsoever. RYCT Maureen on duping/copiering facilities. You (or anyone else) are welcome to use mine. That's a nice line about Josie – 'ferocious competence'. TAF much appreciated.

In deference to you I'm justifying this section!