K2

A GAP IN ONE'S LIFE

Sorry, I don't feel like doing much in the APA at the moment. As many of you will have heard, Arthur Thomson (ATom) died on Feb. 8th.

This is not the right place for an obituary. There'll be plenty around in the next month or two, including a very definitive one by Rob Hansen in PULP, but I'll just say here on an impersonal level that fanzine fandom is very much the poorer for his passing. Although over the last few years his drawing was mostly confined to doing covers and interior illos for PULP, he had appeared world-wide. I've got – oh, 3-4,000 – fanzines, and I'd say over 300 had ATom illos.

A little known fact is that he was ambidextrous; when I asked him what hand he used for drawing – I was chasing down a theory I'd heard that right-handed people draw profiles facing left, left-handed people the opposite – he cheerfully said that he used the hand nearest his drawing pad. He drew a few bacovers for the Scottish sf magazine NEBULA, but he just didn't fancy professional work – he was a fan and used his talents for fandom.

One anthology of ATom illos appeared in the early '60s; the time was well over-due for another publication, and I was thinking along those lines over the last few months. This project would now be a memorial volume, proceeds to his widow. You may hear about it later this year.

* * * * * * * *

SOOT AND WHITEWASH, SIR?

I commend our esteemed editor (take a bow, Ian) for his industry in reproducing photos in his last offering (Jan.), but as I'm sure Ian will agree, they're somewhat short of detail. It is, of course, possible to get a printer's block made up for an ordinary photo (usually better in black-and-white than colour) and you can get excellent results, but this costs.

All through my fan life I've been seeking to do things as cheaply as possible – after all, it is a goddamned hobby – and some years ago bought (very second hand) an electro-stenciller. This cuts a special stencil by an HT spark and is excellent for reproduction of text and line drawings – you may have seen PULP, BLATANT, HYPHEN 37, THEN, and various other zines. But it's hopeless for coloured photos – the photo-electric eye it uses can distinguish only black or white.

Then I got a copier, for use on Fanzine Library stuff, but naturally experimented and found that I obtained a better image on photos than the electro-stenciller, but there was still an element of soot-and-whitewash. Then I found that there was a widget available which was supposed to be of help – a plastic sheet imprinted with thousands of dots. Both Gestetner and Letraset make one (the latter is called a 'Letracopy HT', code number HT-1-A4) although they're both pretty scarce. When you put one under a photo it produces a sort of pseudo-half-tone effect, splitting the picture up into numerous dots which the machine finds easier to deal with.

I'm reproducing a typical Con photo overleaf. (L. to R – Chuch Harris, Eric Bentcliffe, Bob Shaw, 2 unknowns, Sadie Shaw & Arthur Thomson). It's enlarged on the copier, so that the dots on the plastic sheet are more evident, and it's nothing like perfect (the copier has been acting up a little) but you can see how it works. The sheet degrades the sharpness of a photo-copied item very slightly, but I think it gives a better over-all effect. Alas, it doesn't improve the quality of an electro-stencilled item at all, tho' it does help hold large solid black illos together.

I'll probably send out a postmailing; the shock of Arthur's death still makes it hard to compose properly.

*{K2-produced on an Amstrad 8256 & a Sharp SF(!) 760 copier}*

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