K24

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K24, a fanzine for PIECES OF EIGHT, April 1992, from A. VINCENT CLARKE, 16 Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN. It seldom occurs to teenagers that someday they will know as little as their parents.Anon.

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IS THERE A SOLICITOR IN THE HOUSE?

Only kidding – only kidding. But I have a reason for the cry. I've been doing a bit of research on the end of OMPA, the APA which I helped to found in '54 ("found? I didn't know it had been lost!"). As by copyright law the Keeper Of the Printed Books at the British Museum was – in the early days, at least – supposed to receive a copy of every publication, this might mean going through the formalities of applying for a 'Reader's Pass' and toiling up to London to see if this ruling was still applicable in 197- (date uncertain) and they had the last few mailings.

I was mulling over this t'other day when I came across GOLGOTHA No.2, ('54) edited by Tom White. Tom was also a co-editor with Mal Ashworth of BEM, a funny and notorious fanzine in the old days. BEM started life by Mal sending a stapled-up collection of spoiled sheets to Walt Willis for review, pretending it was his first issue. In '54 Tom said:

"Now I'm wondering whether we (BEMeds) are to be the victims of a hoax. This morning arrived a printed letter, ostensibly from the Copyright Receipt Office, British Museum, London, WC1, as follows: Sir, I am directed to inform you that the Publication (the capital is theirs) entitled "BEM" (so are the inverted commas) does not appear to have been delivered here by you under the Copyright Act of 1911 (1 & 2 Geo.V., cap. 46) and I am to request you to forward it as soon as possible. I am, Your obedient servant, for the Principal Keeper of Printed Books.

If this is a hoax it's fool-proof; no fool could penetrate it. The letter, with the exception of 'BEM' and the signature is printed, the envelope is printed, an official museum franked label is used – and the postmark is London, not Belfast or Leeds."

This was in the first OMPA mailing, but Tom's brush with officialdom wasn't unique – many of us had a similar experience – and soon the Keeper was officially listed as a non-dues-paying non-contributing member of OMPA. Tom's air of bewilderment was funny ("Apart from the fact that I don't know where to get a Copyright Act of 1911 to send BEM under...." and "How did the Principal Keeper of Printed Books find out about our small, 120-150 an-issue BEM? Have we a viper clutched to our bosoms?...") but it's set me wondering – is the Copyright Act cited still current or has it been repealed? And if so, when?

Might save me the aforesaid trip up to the British Museum or Library or whatever if the answer is 'Repealed' and a date way back. And if it hasn't been repealed – oh boy!

UPDATE

Another old-time fan, Eric Bentcliffe, went to that big bookshop in the sky on Feb.26th. Eric produced various fanzines between 1950 and the 1980's, won TAFF, and was the centre of Manchester fandom for many years. He'd faded from the fan scene, tho', and the grape-vine news came via Scotland and the States. He'll be missed.

Geri Sullivan, very active US fan, was coming into Gatwick, scheduled arrival 8.15am. Train times (Welling to Charing Cross, Charing Cross to Victoria, Victoria to Gatwick) didn't coincide very well, and with a recent IRA bomb on the Gatwick line trains (usual journey time V. to G. 30 mins.) were running slow. Checked on mini-cab firms; they all said they'd charge more for the single journey than the return cost by rail. After some heart searching, wallet searching, and a further survey of timetables, decided on rail. Up at 4.50am., out of house by 5.30, on train at 5.50, arrived Charing Cross 6.20, tube to Victoria arrived there 6.50.

Train from Victoria, nominally at 7am., moved like an arthritic snail for first few miles, incidentally passing through East Croydon where I spent my first 14 years. Didn't recognise a thing. Finally trundled into Gatwick about 8am., and I was quite prepared (as there was a westerly wind) to find Geri almost there. Arrivals board dashed hope – estimated time of arrival 9.35. Later, it moved to 9.55. Plane came in 9.58, took another half-hour for passengers to get through Customs. Met Geri 10.30.

And having written above, ready to blast airline for delay, struck by sudden thought – Columbus took 2 months (3rd. August – 12th.Oct.) for a similar voyage; 2 hours overdue ain't really so bad. Philosophy helps keep your blood-pressure down.BOOK REVIEW

THE PRIMAL SCREEN – John Brosnan (Orbit '91 – £16.95)

He was an Australian fan (who else but a fan would title a book with such a lousy malapropism?) and this is a follow-up to his authoritative book FUTURE TENSE of 1978. The latter was a survey and history of sf cinema; the present volume up-dates it in a way, but strictly speaking is more a personal survey of what he's liked and disliked through the years.

Brosnan fell in love with sf/horror movies at a very tender age – "I remember I spent almost the entire length of War of the Worlds kneeling on my seat with my back to the screen, much to the discomfiture of the man sitting behind me, and then the following day I pestered my mother for all the gruesome details of the film that I'd heard but not seen...." – and the book is full of personal detail told in an excellent easy style. It's not short of judgments either – "...the dreaded Irwin Allen, the man who has done more than anyone to knee science fiction in the groin. A former literary agent, which explains a lot..." – and many others – "Now I had sat impressed but completely dry-eyed throughout E.T. while stronger critics than me sobbed into their Kleenex, but I must admit that STARMAN had me close to bawling my heart out. As I said at the time, to describe STARMAN as a science fiction movie is like calling a sinking ship a submarine....".

This is an excellent book – if the price is off-putting, ask at the library. Well worth reading.

COMMENTS ON MAR. '92 MAILING

THROUGH THE SPEAKING TRUMPET (ah – authenticity!) – Ye Cap'n

Aye aye – have a regular ad. in MATRIX; I'll be quite willing to photo-copy extra copies of any or all contributions (should existing members agree) so that sufficient sample mailings can be sent out. (We should be so lucky). Actually, weighing the amount of time it takes to comment on zines against the possible inclusion of new blood and new viewpoints finds me only just inclining to the latter choice.

MARAUDER vol.3 no 3 – Ken Cheslin

RYCT Ian. You make an interesting point about Terry Pratchett's books not becoming available in 2nd.-hand marts. – as a pretty regular visitor to such places I've been surprised over the last years as to how few there've been. A few copies of STRATA, his pre-Discworld but still funny sf fantasy (all of which I've bought and passed on to possible converts), but nothing else. Matter of fact I could do with a copy of THE LIGHT FANTASTIC – my own's gone missing. I think that Pratchett's books have been re-read at 16WWW more often than anything else in the house.

And there's rarely more than one or two in the Public Library at any one time, whereas L. Ron Hubbard's crap takes up half a shelf. Grrrr.

Interesting point that, "I'd imagine that all nobilities, and rulers, base their position on the power of the sword, ultimately". I was going to cite US presidents, where the power is the wallet, but realised that we're talking about primitive line-of-succession here, and indeed it's hard to think of any kings etc. who were elected because of their wisdom and not because some ancestor had a sharp battleaxe. Have a hazy idea that possibly the Greeks had such a system, but am too lazy to check up. Any cleverclogs in our vast audience (18...17.. and counting) know?

RYCT me: Note your choice of books from my list – except for the Robert the Bruce just what I'd expect! It seems a perfectly legitimate book club, given that you must expect soft-backs and further choices are, as I anticipated, charged in the region of £8. A correspondent says he joined it twice, to take advantage of the opening offers, under different names. Know it's silly, but am personally reluctant to do this Anyway, I expect the offer has increased the possibility of the list of books I quoted becoming more available on the second-hand market, when some of them don't come up to folk's expectations and get thrown out. Keep watching the shelves.

You mis-read my note on the 4-second 'Think of a word' game, or maybe I explained it badly – of the three given letters the first must be the opening letter in the word, so your 'vuNeRaBle' wouldn't fit....NeuRoBiology would, but it's not the sort of thing that would trip off the tongue of Mr. Average in 4 seconds. Incidentally, they have a refinement of this game – you're given the first and the last letters but are allowed to choose the middle; the same conditions apply, first letter starting the word, and you're given 30 seconds to spout as many as you can. Some poor wight was given N * M the other day and chose 'S' as the centre letter, mostly because she wanted to cite NARCISSISM (you get extra points if your word's longest). Managed to think of one other in the time allowed – and even then didn't get awarded for the longest.

RYCT Steve, I did my sums on photo-copying versus duplicating some time ago, came up with your sort of figures (tho' copier ink-powder is now about £15 a small bottle) and concluded that the equation was a bit too difficult for my small brain (and patience) – you have to balance number of pages against number of copies against ease of reproduction. And of course so much depends on whether you own machines, the Firm has them, or you're paying for copies.

The only thing I'm sure of is that litho is prettier but more expensive unless you're thinking of several hundred copies.

RYCT Maureen: re. religious help, Arthur (ATom) Thomson's widow seems to have found some comfort at her local church and is being drawn into various church activities, but I don't think that deep down she's at all religious – it's just a handy way of getting to know people and occupying herself. In that respect the church is doing a great job – it's just the underlying faith in biblical teachings which gets up my nose, as the bishop said to the actress.

Long time since I went to Canterbury, but it's a nice place. Their Boots (Chemist) has a basement with archaeological architectural stuff in it that one can visit – forget what remains they are, but it's given me a soft spot for Boots, which has lasted.

MARAUDER is very very interesting throughout until one comes to the history-papers – in this case on Kinver. Sorry, Ken, but when I visit the public library, one of the sections I walk by is that of History. If you want to spend time and money reproducing someone elses stuff on an obscure subject OK, but I'd far rather read your own reactions to contemporary happenings, fannish and otherwise.

A SURPRISE FROM RON GEMMELL – RG

Congratulations on Joshua Michael. I've lately been experiencing some of the sensations of fatherhood secondhand, as a new grandfather, and in spite of your good intentions I can't see you doing much more fanning for a year or two. A baby completely alters your life in a way that's unimaginable beforehand, and that odd worry about 'money festering in the bank' will soon disappear.

Travel, I'm afraid, is something that has never really appealed to me. Scenery I can get from pictures, and the sensation of treading on some foreign soil would be overweighed for me by the thought that thousands – if not millions – have trod the same ground. Now if there was some completely unexplored portion of the landscape where one could definitely be The First – yes, that might be acceptable. Trouble is, Lost Worlds and Shangri-La's are fictional, and in reality the untutored savage is more likely to ask you for a light for his cigarette than reveal some undiscovered realm. I wonder if I'm a Realist or a disappointed Romantic?

ONE PER CENT FREE – Darroll Pardoe

The title's a pretty puzzle – seems an incredibly parsimonious offer to be commercial. Something in the chemistry line – free radicals and stuff?

But mentioning commercialism, I just had a leaflet in the door from Britelite windows, in which they blurb they give you AT LEAST £1000 CASH IN HAND when you buy from them and have a display board up for just 6 weeks subject to certain conditions available on request. The last proviso (in small print) not only makes the whole deal sound extremely dicey, but I notice inside the leaflet that their finance plan APR is '28.6 variable'. Anyone able to calculate what you'd really be paying on, say, a £5000 deal?

Cheese is something I try to avoid – I love it, but am scared that the fat content is harmful.

I keep on coming across Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy, separately or in one volume, but haven't been able to persuade myself (after a hasty glance through the pages) that they'd be worth buying. And unfortunately the public library doesn't seem to have a copy.

By the way, I picked up a leaflet on forthcoming postage stamps recently (I've just done a short article for MIMOSA in which I hark back to some pre-sf stamp-collecting, and it sort of semi-revived a long-dormant interest) ((hyphens, anyone?)), and I see that a Tolkien stamp book is coming out later in the year – not stamps, but text on Tolkien embellishing a standard issue stamp book.

SHREDS OF CANVAS etc. – Eunice Pearson

Nice Victorian illo – it's amazing how much work they used to put into these – look at the flounces on the woman's dress in the foreground, for instance. Or the man's shoes. Makes one sigh at the ingenuity and skill that went into this and tens-of-thousands of similar illos. I hope 'A. Hopkins' or whoever he was earned some sort of suitable reward.

I'm inclined to agree with you that mailing comments are the most important part of an APA – I find that commenting on other people's subjects inspires (if that's the right word) memories and even insights which I would find it difficult to dredge up unaided.

RYCT Ian RYCT me – you collect bus-tickets? I'll remember that – I'm sure there's two or three scattered amongst the books here as page-markers. I must say that I never went into the hobby, except in a peripheral way – I used to eye each ticket in case the magic numerals 0000 appeared; actually no more uncommon than the other 9999 which were printed, but there was a certain aura about those figures remembered from school-days. I'd forgotten completely about this until one summer holiday, when I was in my early '40's, I was actually given an 0000 ticket on some obscure transport system – I think it was a bus in Bude in Cornwall.

I gazed at it and thought back to school-days and further thought "I'll keep this as a souvenir". Alas, two minutes after leaving the vehicle I realised that life-long habit had taken over and I'd stuffed the magic ticket into the bus waste-paper box.

RYCT Ken – I think the peculiar horror of the Nazi (and other creeds) crimes against the Jews was that the persecution involved the blood-line. If your grandparent was a Jew you were condemned; this doesn't hold for the other categories of victims you cite. I'm inclined to agree that in one aspect the later emphasis has been overdone, but we do need something to remind us of man's inhumanity to man. The knowledge that there'd be an actual band of men seeking you out because you committed a war crime should be a lot more of a deterrent than the odd stone in a cemetary.

Not, I think, that it's done much good.

RYCT me – no, it was definitely 3 books only from the list that were on offer, so it was real make-your-mind-up time – no stretching the limits. I've since bought one book, BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS, collected articles on natural history (I deny this is being inconsistent with earlier remarks to Ken), one of which is entitled Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples; it deals (in passing) with a query raised in PoE some months back – why do men have nipples?. The answer is "The external differences between male and female develop gradually from an early embryo so generalised that its sex cannot be easily determined.....males and females are not separate entities, shaped independently by natural selection. Both sexes are variants upon a single ground plan, elaborated in later embryology. Male mammals have nipples because females need them....."

The author (Stephen Jay Gould) says that the question is always being raised, citing a librarian's enquiry amongst others.

Other chapters range from platypus to comets, including some mention of the Cardiff Giant – a hoax figure dug up at Cardiff in the US in 1869. This refers in passing to the odd fact that when P.T. Barnum, the great showman, exhibited his own copy of the 'Cardiff Giant' "his model far outdrew the 'real' fake when the original went on display at a rival establishment".

THE ARACHNO FILE – John D. Rickett

I note that your type face is small – but perfectly formed, naturally – and I'm just wondering if I should reduce the size of this face – I'm always finding that I'm possibly on the last column of 'K' in the small space I allow myself. Tell me, would this, which is in 15cpi, be too eyestraining? Would allow 25% more writing in the same space. (Theoretically, anyway)

Like the teeny cartoon heading, tho' I'd have thought the 'valentine' message would have been written on the side of a nice joint of fly.

Why do I recognise the name of 'Caswell' in the Sheckley opus you quote? I'm sure I don't remember it from GALAXY in '56. Later book?

'Turning dial' noted. Possibly avoidance of sexual connotation when using 'knob'?

An old-time fan, Ron Bennett, used to run a Saturday magazine/comic stall in Leeds Market (weekdays it was school-mastering), tho' he may have given it up now. Don't know if Jenny or Stephen know (of) him.

What, amongst hundreds of interesting lines, do I comment on? RYCT Maureen – 'natural processes' – I remember a book many years ago (was it Spacious Adventures of a Man in the Street? ) where excretion was viewed as we regard intake of food – and vice-versa. RYCT Brian – not always true re. Treasurers; for many years the Treasurer of the sf London Circle was a railwayman – and a committed Communist to boot.

Re. your 'Typesetters' note – sympathies; gauging the length is particularly awkward when one's using 1½ spaces between paras as I do on this admittedly lo-tech Amstrad. Never mind – your brilliant words are there.

'Fraid that I can't really find it in my heart to say much on the translation. In itself no doubt excellent work, but the subject matter is akin – to me – like arguing what would have happened if Mr. Rochester hadn't been completely blinded, or Friday had been a woman. Speculating on fictional characters is OK in its place, but not when one is as far behind as I am with correspondence, etc.

STRUTHIAN PERSPECTIVE/JENNY'S (lovely) LETTER – dammit – run out of space. Hopefully next time in this fascinating whirlpool...AVC