K34


K34, an APAzine for PIECES OF EIGHT, May '93, from A. Vincent Clarke, 16 Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN. AZTECs:...they played a type of football. Some of the players were killed after the game, but it is not certain whether the losers were sacrificed for having lost or the winners promoted to the next world for having won. HUTCHINSON ENCYCLOPEDIA


UPDATE

I'm so annoyed I could spit. I made a casual mention last 'K' of having to go into hospital for a minor operation. And by minor I mean that the morning after the op. two doctors agreed I could go home. Then I felt sick (the anaesthetic, they agreed) and had to stay another day. Eight days later, extracting the stitches, the nurse found a minor infection. A week later that had cleared up, but there was still some soreness. Two more visits and they found something else...I'm waiting for an

Ultrasound scan at the moment. Treatment has been terrific, but this decrepit body has let me down. Grrr.

Of course, I did enter 'None' on the entrance form when they asked me for my religion.....

It's all nothing serious, but it's putting a question mark against attending Mexicon at the end of May.

London has too many hospital beds? I had to 'phone on the morning of admittance to see if there was a vacancy. The ward I was in had two people leave one afternoon. The beds were filled again by midnight.

So I've been doing some serious lounging around this last month. Read some P.I. stories by Sara Paretsky – who recently had a film made about her major character, V.I. Warshawski – but there's a certain sameness. I prefer Robert Parker.

And I'm working through a check-list of '80s fanzines. It was the decade when anyone with access to a photo-copier could make like Robert Maxwell. Only trouble is, some of them couldn't bother to put the month of publication or even the year on their brain child. Not a good thing when one of the check list compilers is already irritated.

Incidentally, was it someone in this APA who was wanting the names of Usenet bulletin boards dealing with sf, fandom, etc? Although it's not something on which I would normally have info., in compiling the checklist I've found a 18-month old fanzine with what appear to be useful address codes or whatever they're called. Anyone want?

Oh yes, and I read quite a good modern fantasy (yeah, I'll wash my mouth out later) called PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING by Christopher Moore, (Heinemann '92). Set in California (where else?), it's about this 90-year old hero who is accompanied by a three-foot tall demon with a yen for human flesh. One of the minor characters is cafe-owner Howard Phillips..."Yet as we sit, ensconced in our grief, two perfectly healthy daily specials languish under the heat lamps metamorphosing into gelatinous invitations to botulism."

This is Moore's first book. A new talent worth keeping an eye on.

London fans forsook the Hamilton and went back to the Wellington at Waterloo for the first Thursday meeting in April. Couldn't be there myself, but I understand that some (fringe?) fans were lost during the changes of venue in the last few months and crowd conditions were therefore tolerable. Hope to be there for May.

COMMENTS ON THE APRIL '93 MAILING

THROUGH THE SPEAKING TRUMPET – JDR

Smoothly sinister as usual.

PM ROUTINES 3 – Andrew Butler

Well, they couldn't let Hull Docks stand in the way of Progress, as now understood, could they? I sometimes wonder what the powers that be visualise as the future for this country, with docks and manufacturing and coal mines and God-knows-what just relics of the past. Do we all take in each other's washing? Can we live off the tourists as the land of the service industry?

I suppose that you could sell off tracts of land to rich Japanese or Americans. What am I bid for Anne Hathaway's cottage and the surrounding 10 acres? Didn't I read somewhere that Land's End was already gone (in the financial sense)? If water can be privatised, why not the seaside?

PM R thoroughly enjoyed.

STRANGE DEBRIS 11 – Chr$ Carne

If you like puns you'd have gone mad over HYPHEN years ago; picking one from the shelves at random I note that there was some correspondence on snakes and cars. Someone mentioned vindscreen vipers and someone else the Mudgard Serpent. This in normal everyday reader exchanges, and the editorial staff were far worse.

By the way, in the same issue, Walt Willis, a gifted humorist, has a delightful piece I must quote. He mentions a children's TV sf serial, THE LOST PLANET.......my 7-year old daughter Carol knows I'm a science fiction fan and every other Saturday afternoon as I am sitting peacefully in the attic waiting for correction fluid to dry she comes storming up the stairs screaming "Daddy! The Lost Planet! What you're intressed in! SPACESHIPS!" And I have to run downstairs so as not to disappoint her....

I really like Strange Debris. Marvellous light hearted stuff, Chr$ – I wish I felt bright enough to join in.

MARAUDER – Kench

RYCT me. Trouble with reviewing the OMPA mailings for 1966 and 1976 is that I'd be afraid of boring people but, most importantly, I just haven't got that many complete sets.

When Rob Hansen and self were doing research on '60s fandom, it was like trekking across a large and arid waste. With a few honorable exceptions like your good self and Brian Jordan and Darroll, the '60s were notorious for people who did their own little thing and had no idea of the larger scene, fandom as a social phenomenon with its own history. Also, of course, if they gave it any thought fans would consider that the BSFA with its fanzine library would be an adequate source. They learnt differently in the early '70s.

Not, I hasten to add, that I was much better in the '40s and '50s – how I regret not seizing the opportunity to get Carnell and Rosenblum and Gillings talking! But there you go – one persists in thinking that everything one knows is going to go on for ever...until that old man with the scythe intervenes.

Yes, fanzine fans – in this country, anyway – are small enough in number for a new directory to be viable. Be an interesting project sometime.

True, I forgot peer pressure as a factor in the attitude to learning. Maybe 'cos I'm not aware of it operating in my case, tho' it probably did.

RYCT Dop: 'Putting fictional detectives in the same universe' is uncommon but is an idea that's occurred to various people. Somewhere in the back of my memory – from 50 years ago when I was a spare-time librarian in the RAF – are a couple of books about some bucolic cop solving cases which had baffled Holmes, Poirot etc. al., but a better documented item ('cos I have it in my hand right now) is W.G. GRACE'S LAST CASE, by William Rushton (Methuen,'84). It's an OTT account by Watson involving everyone you ever heard of in late-Victorian times, including H.G. Wells' Martians. I haven't noticed a kitchen sink, but then never got around to finishing the opus.

RYCT B & T: Yes, the remark about the 'fairly normal entry (to fandom) via the university route' made me smile too. Sorta sad quirk of the lips, y'know?

Liked the cover, especially the moggy.

K33 – self

I've been trying to inveigle Steve Sneyd into PoE for some time (hopeless project, anyone?), and sending the last K to him evoked several paras.:

Re. the Dickiana reply to Andy Butler, there's now an all-PKDick fz in the States – keep meaning to write off for a copy, as a Dick enthusiast myself – the rather unlovable title (or maybe it means summat different Stateside) is "For Dickheads Only", Ganymede Slime Mold Productions, Box 112, New Haven, Indiana, IN 47774. (Indiana seems to have more genre-related prodns, writers, etc., than all the other states together – could be a sociological thesis in there somewhere).

Steve goes on to cite a large number of Dickiana bits from fanzines – if anyone wants let me know – as he has a database, whereas I was quoting from a 5-year old list of my fanzine collection, and hurriedly at that.

Steve also mentions Arthur – I think most convincing 'pro' argument is the point made by Leslie Alcock (think I've got the right source) that "someone" won the battle of Bardon and halted the Saxon advance for a generation; no one else has ever been suggested – if not Arthur, who?

And the Cheshire police UFO scam which he also heard of – sounds very dubious police tactics.

And mentions that Wolfshead P. have a nice minibook out, CORNCIRCLES FOR FUN & PROFIT which sounds like my kind of book.

Anyone doubt that Steve would make a good crew member? What can we do?

SPRING IS HERE etc. – Dop

Brilliant, especially the picture-from-a-

computer-in-Sweden (presumably from an American comic), but RAEBNC.

THE WATCHER FROM THE SHADOWS – Jenny

Why not on one sheet, Jenny? On beggars, I reckon it's so hard to distinguish between genuine beggars (if there are any) and those who are earning a comfortable living or just want enough for more dope, that the best thing to do is to keep one's cash for more certain causes – and to make sure everyone you know votes the right way next time.

LITTLE BITS OF ZERO – Carol

RYCT me: Don't forget that OMPA was a quarterly APA, with members having to supply a quantity of writing over the whole year, so the chances of everyone being in one mailing was a bit remote, but in the early days 300 & 400 page mailings were quite common. We coped.

RYCT Kench: Reading through an APAzine and making a cross against stuff on which you want to comment later is favourite.

All these odd (but very readable) remarks on relations make me feel – um – not jealous so much as alienated. Must be weird to have brothers and sisters.

Read and enjoyed the rest but no comment.

DRIFTING IN UNCHARTED SEAS – Eunice

Sorry to hear about one flu attack after another. One advantage of living on one's own is that the chances of infection are pretty small; I manage to get through most winters with just a week of sniffles.

Read and enjoyed your stuff without finding much to say, except that the drawing of a lamb at the end looks like a woolly cat! But interesting that you find each APA different. I wonder why?

THE ARACHNO FILE – JDR

I'm afraid that the Borges poems didn't impress. I don't want to pour too much cold realism on to his flights of fancy, (strained metaphor, anyone?), but even when I was fourteen there were doors I'd closed forever, mirrors I wouldn't see again, or wouldn't see me, books I wouldn't re-open. Especially the boring ones.

Man had some peculiar ideas about aging. Tho' I guess he was of his time (1899-1986). Only today I heard a couple of TV presenters marvelling at the number of congratulatory messages they send to centenarians as against a few years ago. Us grey and wrinklies are increasing daily. Hourly, even. Hooray for us. Crying 'cos you're going-on 50 gets little sympathy from me.

RYCT Andrew – yes, I heard a passing reference to 'Mornington Crescent' once years ago which intrigued. A joke, I think?

RYCT Ken RHCT Theo: Yes, you probably read about Biro in an early PoE zine name of 'K' – I did a short piece on THE BIG PUFF which had some sidelights on advertising and incorporated the story of ball points. The early slogan that they could 'write under water' was deliberately designed to be outrageous, to get people talking about them. A bit like the third Weetabix.

Thanks for pinning down the location of that Sherlock Holmes pub. Next time you're in London, Ken....?

RYCT me. I can't get over this 'ignorance' of yours re. early fandom. You must have been unlucky – never in the right spot at the right time. Up until about '56 or so there was mention of Conventions in magazines, especially NEW WORLDS which, being originally financed by fans, had a soft spot for us and featured the odd inside-front-cover showing the White Horse or The Globe and an invitation to come along.. And the '57 World Con had some coverage – BBC and ITV were there until 4am., and were jeered at as 'weaklings' by fans when they packed up and went away into the dawn.

But it was the diminuition and eventual disappearance of the free magazine adverts that prompted us to start the BSFA, which was hopefully going to provide a public door into fandom. Didn't work out, which accounts in part for the desert-like aspect of the '60s to which I previously referred.

But dry your tears – you and everyone else are welcome to dip into the Fanzine Library for at least an echo of those days.

Yes, good point on measurements being all in millimetres – guess people haven't the time to switch to 'm' in letters in the middle. Rather like your glottal stops – or the US 'aluminum' instead of 'aluminium'. (Pauses, trying to think of another outstanding example one's heard of – was it 'ornery'instead of 'ordinary'?)

THE STRUTHIAN PERSPECTIVE – Theo Ross

RYCT Kench: Alternative histories, especially on the topic of War, were a bit of a speciality of mine at one time. Amazing how detailed some of them were, too...THE GREAT PACIFIC WAR has the Japs invading Pearl Harbour in the early '30s, etc. The great grandaddy of them all is, of course, BATTLE OF DORKING – serialised in 1871, of which I have a paperback price 6d – which must have been quite a sum in those days....And what was there left to us to live for? Stripped of our colonies; Canada and the West Indies gone to America; Australia forced to separate; India lost for ever, after the English there had all been destroyed, vainly trying to hold the country when cut off from aid by their countrymen...Ireland independent and in perpetual anarchy and revolution....When I look at my country as it is now – its trade gone, its factories silent, its harbours empty, a prey to pauperism and decay..

But we don't want to go into that fantasy, do we? Let's move on to the next book on the shelf, THE GREAT WAR IN ENGLAND IN 1897, by Le Quex (Tower Publishing, 1894)...Dynamite had shattered Charing Cross Station...but in the end the French are defeated. Etc. etc. etc.

Dialogue on BC and AD reminds me of that marvellous LEST DARKNESS FALL where the hero worries about what date he's fallen into and is informed that it was 1288 years after the founding of Rome. Highly improbable that anybody could pinpoint it thus, but..."That means that this is the year of our Lord 535. That's the system the church uses. The Goths say the second year of Thiudahad's reign, and the Byzantines the first year of the consulship of Flavius Belisarius. Or the somethingth year of Justinian imperium. I can see how it might confuse you."

Re. odd query on camp meaning of 'fairy', the DICTIONARY OF HISTORICAL SLANG (1937) defines it as 'A debauched, hideous old woman, especially when drunk'. Like other words ('gay' – (Of women) leading an immoral, or a harlot's, life (2) Slightly intoxicated), twisted into another meaning. Why can't people invent their own words instead of using euphemisms?

Hey, I like 'Po8'.

I suppose I'm a Heinlein completist up to about STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND – roughly 25 items – but didn't know change of titles you mention. One lives and sometimes learns.

TSP seems to be getting better each time – how do you manage it?

TRAVELS IN HYPER-REALITY – Maureen

Congratulations, of course. Maybe you'll be able to tell us some day the reason for the official tying-of-the-knot? Tho' I suppose I could ask (dare I?) my own daughter, who I told I couldn't care less if she were married or not as long as she was happy, but she had the full church bit anyway.

Meanwhile, I was delighted to see the generally happy tone of the whole issue. Looks as though you have made the right decision psychologically.

And really, after looking forward to the piece, I can find nothing controversial in your fox-hunting epic at all. Both sides fairly represented, I'd say, and a triumph for calm reasonableness on your part.

The only slightly wayward note was the small para where you say that "drag hounds, aniseed trails" were "not considered 'sport' in the same way", which is something that I've wondered on. They would appear to be the perfect substitute activity. I suppose you didn't have the opportunity to press for any comments on this, but it certainly looks as though, somewhere in there, is a primitive liking for the sight and smell of blood.

But a very good piece of writing, certainly good enough to sell.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR – Brian

I like 'bookridden chambers'. In fact, like the whole thing. Very very light-hearted, and makes me feel old and slow. Glad you appear to have solved the spacing problem, too.

Ummm – smells do trigger off memories, but sometimes a bit weirdly. If I smell new-mown grass – an unlikely event in my overgrown surroundings, but occasionally from a neighbour's lawn – it takes me back....where? This is what gets me. Somewhere, in the distant past, the smell of new-mown grass has been significant, but I haven't the least idea as to the time and place. It just 'takes me back'. A bit unsettling.

'Rhapsody In Blue' takes me back to – oh, when I was 12-ish, perhaps – when I got one of the new-fangled electronic tone-arms (can't even remember if that was what they were called, now), which I mounted on the base-board of a spring-driven gramophone and was able to listen – wonder of wonders – to the record being reproduced through the wireless. Always been a favourite light-music piece ever since, tho' the original 12"(?) 78rpm. disc has long gone to that rubbish dump of memories.

By the way, anyone familiar with La Valse by Ravel? It doesn't actually evoke memories but just a powerful and fantastic sense of a waltz struggling to be born. Only a short piece, but I can't do anything but listen when it's being played.

Nice going, Brian.


A really good quality mailing, everyone. But now.... Good heavens – pinching and scraping all along to shorten phrases because I'm not in the mood to do over 4 pages, and now find myself with 37 lines to spare. How about a Sales List?

40p. each – the cost of second-class postage:

All good to excellent condition. Free to callers.

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Vince Clarke's APAzines
Contents

PreviousNext

Notes and Queries
K1
K2
K3
K4
K5
K6
K7
K8
K9
K10
K11
K12
K13
K14
K15
K16
K17
K18
K19
K20
K21
K22
K23
K24
K25
K26
K27
K28
K29
K30
K31
K32
K33
K34
K35
K36
K37
K38
K39
K40
K41
K42
K43
K44
K45
K46
K47
K48
K49
K50
K51
K52
K53
K54
K55
K56
K57
K58 to K69
K70
Books About SF Continued
From K??
Vincentian 1
Vincentian 2
Vincentian 3