K21

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K21, an APAzine for PIECES OF EIGHT, Jan. '92, from A. Vincent Clarke, 16 Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN. "The first three minutes of life can be the most dangerous. The last three minutes are pretty dodgy too....If God had not meant us to write on walls he would never have given us the example " Chuch Harris

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UPDATE

Xmas has come and gone, leaving the memory of a fairly conventional time, the gift of a shirt or two and the video of FANTASIA, slightly less Xmas cards than usual (about 50), and a period of utter blankness when it came to writing anything to anyone; the brain's been in neutral, and everything's been too much bother.

So excuse it if the following is just plain comments on your comments.

APOLOGIA (of a sort)

For some unfathomable reason I overlooked commenting on Ian's COTTAGE PIE of the November mailing. I fully intended to, because he raised two subjects of interest to me – microwave cookers and 'Repeat Prescriptions' – going back and re-reading old books. He wondered if he was being 'intellectually lazy'.

I've already written to him on microwave – great, tho' it's just an additional tool, analogous to another modern invention, a frying pan with a dome in the middle and a lid which cuts the use of oil fantastically – but here I'd like to say a word or three about books, or to follow Ian's lead:

KEEP READING THE TABLETS

I collect old reading matter and I read old reading matter. There is a difference. I can't really defend collecting per se, the desire to complete one's set of whatever – WONDER STORIES or the books of Michael Innes, or fanzines, etc. etc. – because that has psychological roots which I presume are shared by all collectors and which it'd take a better guy than me to disentangle. I can't understand the motives of a man who can boast of having umpteen sports cars, any more than he could of me having twenty SCOOPS (Britain's earliest sf zine, a weekly for boys). I couldn't give a faint damn for his motives, except a small wonder as to why he wastes his money thus, and he'd certainly think the same thing of me.

But I've never thought twice about re-reading until now. It's something I've done all my life. Why?

I suppose it's the pleasure principle. If I'm going to spend time reading, then I want to enjoy it, and I can't guarantee that a new book is going to give me the same amount of enjoyment as a once-read one. And there's memory – if one had a perfect memory I presume there'd be no reason for re-reading, but very few people have total recall. And there are different gradings in this, too. I can re-read with wonderment say, Christopher Fry's blank-verse play The Lady's Not For Burning (so often alluded to in relation to Maggie 'The Lady's Not for Turning' Thatcher), with its glittering passages:

Coming in from the light, I am all out at the eyes / Such white doves were paddling in the sunshine / And the trees were as bright as a shower of broken glass / Out there, in the air, the sun and the rain / clash together like the cymbals clashing / when David did his dance. I've an April blindness./ You're hidden in a cloud of crimson catherine wheels.

and get a tremendous satisfaction from the one-thousandth remembered stuff, and next day pick up and re-read for the umpteenth occasion 'Don A. Stuart's Who Goes There, whose story-line, dénouement and characters are perfectly familiar, because I very much admire the sheer craftmanship of the plotting. I don't know if the latest new title that I pick up will give me as tenth as much enjoyment as the two titles cited or hundreds of others. There just isn't time to read all the new titles...I came across a copy of THE BOOKSELLER, the trade magazine, the other day, which was a special edition featuring autumn/winter books. Damn thing was half-an-inch thick. It's impossible even to read all the old titles that one has heard about.

But, worries Ian, are we who re-read indulging in some sort of escapism, living in the past, etc.?

Well, sure, it's escapism. There are a few people around who do nothing but drive forward in an attempt to better themselves, their family or their country all of their waking hours, but such monomaniacal behaviour is not for the majority of us. We escape in ten thousand ways, from painting to fox-hunting. Writing this is escapism when I should be eg. bettering my physical wellbeing by doing push-ups. Don' talk to me 'bout steenking escapism, man.

And also, of course, re-reading can encompass philosophy or mathematics or something else which you couldn't quite grasp in the past and return to read when you're older and possibly wiser. But you're thinking of fiction, I guess.

'Living in the past' is usually used as a handy derogatory label, ignoring the obvious fact that all culture is derived from the past. But living in the past assumes that one finds certain aspects of it preferable to the present. I fail to see anything wrong in that. Perceived excellence from the past is a handy yardstick when measuring the offerings of the present. If the latter don't measure up, then the fault lies with the moderns. This applies to fiction as it does to every other cultural manifestation.

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REVIEW

ORA:CLE by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. (Grafton '86)

I don't know what other enthusiastic readers do, but I have a habit, when I'm particularly enjoying a book, of checking the amount of pages still to be read. This is to assure myself that I've still a certain amount of delight to come, I suppose.

This doesn't happen often, but for only the third or fourth time in '91 it did with ORA:CLE. This is a marvellous read, and next to impossible to describe, taking in as it does punk sf, old-fashioned detective fiction and a lot of free-wheeling imagination.

Briefly, the world of 200 years hence is linked by computer networks, matter transmitters and a world-wide government, which is just as well as no one can go out of doors because of marauding, technically superior aliens. The hero has a microchip implant which enables him to be in telepathic contact with anyone desiring information on his particular specialist subject – East Asia, 1500-2000AD. And someone is trying to kill him....who happens to be the world-wide government.

You can tell the author had fun writing this; a thoroughly entertaining read.

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COMMENTS ON DECEMBER MAILING

THROUGH THE LOUD HAILER (a wee bit anachronistic, eh what?) Cap'n Blackheart

Loss of Tommy noted with regret. The general ennui which affects fanzine fandom seems to have spilled over into this APA. Yawn.

COTTAGE PIE 2 – Ian Bambro

On the other hand we have ex-Cap'n Ian rising like a veritable wossname and smiting hither and thither – metaphorically, of course. I'm still using your double column method, Ian, with a hefty slice of cardboard sellotaped to the back of the printer with Guide Lines on it. The only trouble I've had was that on the second column of the first page one needs blank lines to bring the two columns level. This is complicated by the fact that normally I use an extra half space between paras. A lot of trial-and-error, cursing, and a bit of f5 Last Line solved it.

Yes, I too have ambivalent feelings about the presentation side of fanzines – the odd thought intrudes that the time and effort expended in getting the presentation just right could have been expended on polishing up the prose. Lucky the person who, like our present Cap'n, can do both excellently (bootlick, bootlick). I still don't like justified right hand edges, tho.

Spellchecker lines noted; that's a new twist. I don't normally use the thing, as it's too much trouble swapping discs; I've never solved the problem of installing it on a disc which also holds the particular type-face (Modern) I like.

RYCT Kench on Boot sales: yes, I absolutely agree that fantastic bargains in books, etc., are very hard to find, it's mostly the ambience I go for. The inverse law also applies (or is it Murphy's Law?) – the smaller the sale the more chance there is of coming across a bargain. You can save pounds on eg. electric cable, sellotape, stationery, etc. tho.

RYCT me: I heard a sort of apologist for the Royals on the radio explaining that yes the Queen doesn't pay taxes and her wealth accumulates at the rate of £500,000 a day or something, but she is generous to charities, etc. I moved nearer to the radio in the hope of getting specific facts, but there was absolutely nothing – no "Yes, she supports the Home For Deprived Corgis" or "Don't forget her upkeep of the Tower of London". I know it's not the 'done thing' to publicise charitable donations, but....Nice turn of phrase re 'Ruritanian Theme Park'.

'Great minds' etc. Yes, I did buy a couple of long-arm hinges, bolted them together, and went about cutting a (cheapo boot-sale) stapler in half and attaching a bit to each arm. It wasn't difficult, but I didn't take sufficent note of the fact that there was an awkward 'step' between the bottom line and the top.

I was running short of patience (and it was co-o-old), so I shelved the experiment for the time being, but still have the bits and will go on with it some day. I saw a long-arm stapler at my duplicating supplies shop and the price was £25+, so it's a job worth doing some day. I think it'd be rather difficult to align both halves if they were loose, as you suggest.

As I didn't need many copies of the Fanzine Checklist I laid each copy out on the carpet, used a stapler just to penetrate the sheets and bent the staples over by hand on t'other side. Crude, but it works on a small number of copies.

I lift up my skirt fastidiously when passing that Du Maurier remark. And I wonder how many will get the 'Say Goodnight, Gracie' end bit? Remarkably nice stuff, Ian ie. I agree with 9/10ths of it.

MARAUDER Dec. '91 – Ken Cheslin

RYCT Ian:Yeah, saw the Chippendales on Clive James too. I was thinking of making a crack about the original Chippendale furniture having bowed legs, but restrained myself – they've put in a lot of hard work to look like that. I wonder what happens when that type grow old?

I was managing a shop when the original credit cards appeared – Access, I believe. You had to make a call to their head office if the purchaser wanted more than about £20s-worth of goods, to verify if it was OK. "I don't like the idea" I said to the rep. "Lot of opportunity for forgers and so on." "No, no", he laughed, "They're perfectly safe". Last year credit card frauds and misuse amounted to £100,000,000. Still, I guess that's only a tiny percentage of the transactions.

RYCT Jenny: Badges – with the present low number it's not likely that we'd pass each other at a Con unrecognised. If it's for advertising, I'd rather see a T-shirt.

RYCT me: The police have just killed another dingbat who was waving a model gun. I suppose that there'd be a case for saying that anyone who was so far outside the norm as to endanger (or was thought to be endangering) others deserves what he gets (always a 'he', isn't it?), but it seems a bit drastic when you think that in contrast a motorist who kills someone gets a few weeks in prison.

RYCT Eunice: There's a topic – 'The first film I remember'. I can just recall vague flashes of a couple from the mid-'30s – one was called, I think, 'The Bat Whispers' and had a character going around in one of those haunted old houses bumping off the other legatees of a will. Marvellous Gothic mansion, the sort where a picture swings open on the staircase and an arm with a knife comes out, and in one scene the Bat was cornered in a study – and escaped through an under-the-mat trapdoor. Must have been terrific hokum, but it impressed the hell out of me at an impressionable age.

And although I can pin point that one fairly easily, (reference books say it was made in '30) there was another from the same era of which all I can remember is that there was this department store floor with rolls of linoleum standing up like a wall, and on one side hurried a damsel while on the other, keeping pace with her, skulked a murderer, knife in hand.

But that was in another age, when such delights as TV, Bingo and videos hadn't been born. The cinema was king. In Croydon, where I lived, there were at least five cinemas scattered along the High Street, and several more easily available. They all had different programmes, consisting of a main film, a 'B' picture, a newsreel, and sometimes a 'short'. You had three hours of solid entertainment for your money.

Tush, that you'd forget so soon – you did two sheets of perfectly horrible elephant jokes in 1964; you don't think 27 years can wipe out that stain, do you?

((The above para. an alternative to an equally perfectly horrible idea which occurred to me, which was to circulate three or four (different) elephant jokes to every member of PoE to print as their own originals)).

K20 – self

Which was done in a tremendous and increasing hurry, and which caused me to leave out half a sentence on p.3. Read "What does worry me is nationalism – the present stupid squabbling in Yugoslavia is quite insane – which I'd like to see abolished and if in the process 'national culture', folk dances etc. go to the wall...." [Correction inserted in K20 above]

UNTITLED & UNSTAPLED – Sarah Cox

I wish I could write like this. Sarah's got the ability to take an experience which is quite alien to one (can't remember the last time I went to the theatre) and construct a warm and witty account of it. Maybe 'construct' is the wrong word, because while I'm conscious all the time I'm writing of the way to get my meaning across in as few words as possible, Sarah has a natural flow which seems to skip any conscious ordering process at all and comes straight from the heart. Gee, I wish I could write as naturally.

By the by, what method of reproduction is used here? My copy looks remarkably like an original typed manuscript.

THE WATCHER FROM THE SHADOWS No.2 – Jenny Glover

Layout improved (those little boxes in No.1!) and I particularly like the double lines which enclose each page and the break with the wild geese or whatever they are. Every now and then I get itchy fingers and think about using a DTP programme on this modest Amstrad, but the last time I tried out the best one, MicroDesign 2, it took 75 minutes to print out one page. Intellectually I know that this shouldn't make a difference – there's dozens of things I could do while the printer was stepping delicately from pixel to pixel – but in the cold hard world I know I'd be kicking the thing to bits.

I don't know that anyone has actually written an Office Symphony, though I remember a Tenement Symphony that was mildly popular many years ago – American, of course, as you may guess from 'tenement' which isn't used much in England (unlike Scotland) – but as I recall was mostly descriptive without particular sound effects but with music.

Your sheer energy makes me truly envious.

THE ARACHNO FILE – No. 13 – John D. Rickett

You're lucky to be touched by whimsy – in this gloomy winter weather I find it hard to fantasise. Which means I skip straight to the interesting question "What...did we ever do to make us flee from the..warmth..of the tropics?".

I think the quick answer is "Ate meat". Yes, we're in the land of Paradise Lost again. Early man stopped being a vegetarian and begun to vary his diet with juicy steaks. Meat was a darned sight easier and quicker to obtain to satisfy hunger than to spend all your time scrabbling amongst trees for the odd bunch of bananas, those the monkeys had left.

But hunting meant space. In his ASCENT OF MAN, Bronowski makes a pregnant observation:

Hunting cannot support a growing population in one place; the limit for the savannah was not more than two people to the square mile. At that density, the total land surface of the earth could only support the present population of California...the choice for the hunters was brutal: starve or move.

So men spread, and by the time the Ice Ages were over had become accustomed to cooler climes, playing soccer and rugby in the winter months and talking about fair white skins, etc. So we stayed.

Re. J. Clute, my main objection was not the dictionary grabbing but when you looked up the darned word it still meant the same as you suspected it meant in the first place. 'Medusoid cruelty' is meaningless.

Broadly in agreement with most of the rest – it was fascinating to see how your mood changed as you travelled through AF13 (No.13 – already?)

STRUTHIAN PERSPECTIVE 18 – Theo Ross

Marvellous defence of Shute – you must be well acquainted with his books.

A very short personal list of re-readable authors would include about 3/5ths. of yours (Francis? Wilbur Smith? Morris West?) plus Bramah, Cabell, E.S. Turner (non-fiction compilations of odd subjects), R.T. Gould (Lt. Commander R.N. {Retd.}), Alan Coren, Sturgeon, Bertrand Russell, etc etc etc., – and I find it curious that some people don't collect or have favorites. But then the thought of someone who doesn't read or re-read twists the brain a little.

Mention of RLS reminds me, in fact, of an odd incident back in my primary school days. The class had been given copies of the same book, Catriona, and were taking it in turns to stand and read half-a-page aloud to the teacher. Having already read Kidnapped I dived into the book and was soon turning pages at a fair rate, hearing in the background the un-melodious drone of the other boys. Suddenly, a voice cut across.

"Clarke!"

I stood up, startled. Everyone was looking at me. It was evidently my turn. I blushed. And stammered ungrammatically: "Er – er...I don't know where we're up to."

"Oh? And why not?"

"Well, er – I was reading on ahead....."

"Alright, sit down. Next boy".

I sat down feeling highly embarrassed (which is why the incident impressed itself on the little grey cells) and it was years before I realised that the teacher was probably heartily glad that one of his pupils could get so immersed in reading.

Excuse me for not rising to various baits regarding life, death and religion; I find that like Eliot's Webster I've been much possessed by death lately – probably because of a peculiarly incongruous Xmas card I had from an old friend with a message which started "It turns out John shot himself...." and I'm not really in the mood. Next time, perhaps.

Nice to see an extra page from you, Theo...is this a harbinger for '92?

HAPPY TO NEW TO ALL