K45


K45, an APAzine for Pieces of Eight, June '94, by A. Vincent Clarke, 16 Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN


UPDATE

You may know that I'm more interested in fanzines than in any other aspect of fandom. I've written and illoed them, typed and electro-stencilled and duplicated them. But my chief interest during the last few years has been in their collection and care.

I'm therefore taking a special interest in the current activities of Greg Pickersgill. Greg was comparatively quiet during the '80s after a hectic '70s, but has recently re-entered the fan-pubbing scene with RASTUS JOHNSON'S CAKEWALK (don't ask!).

Greg is heart and soul behind SF fanzine publishing with a burning enthusiasm which makes me feel very old – and poor. He has started to buy up existing fanzine collections, has already acquired 4000 stretching back to before the War and will soon surpass my comparatively modest 7000. If you're interested in fanzines, then you really should get into touch with Greg Pickersgill (3, Bethany Row, Narberth Road, Haverford West, Pembrokeshire, SA61 2XG). He intends, aside from the accumulation, to start a separate project, Memory Hole, which is taking in duplicate fanzines and intends to re-distribute to those wanting them.

Meanwhile, I'm still willing to lend out originals or in some cases copiered copies from my own roomful.


GREEN GROW THE RUSHES O.

Remember Theo's enquiry?

Steve Sneyd, who should be in PoE and unfortunately hasn't the time, has just sent me the result of a search he's made of some relevant source books.

Unfortunately, the GGTRO chant is so mixed up in mystical-religious imagery that I've got to verify some details and send a copy back to him for checking, e.g. "SIX – The Six Proud Walkers – a Christian attempt to bring the Cana miracle in (those who brought in the 6 pots of wine)" etc. etc. etc.

If you are able to do your own delving, the major source of Steve's information is Where is St. George? Pagan Imagery in English Folksong by Bob Stewart, Blandford Press, '77. This was borrowed from Kevin Byrne, who edits a tiny 'zine called WEARWOLF – more of this later.

Steve also mentions An ABC of Witchcraft Past & Present by Dorothy Valiente, Hale '84, Songs of the West by S. Baring-Gould and H.F. Sheppard, (1913, ?publisher), and Who Killed Cock Robin? by Norman Illes, ('83, ?publisher). The last Steve says is an 'erotic explanation of GGTRO'.

Gee – takes me back to the days when I was ploughing through Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley and other magicians – forgotten for decades.

And I must check up on the Baring-Gould family some time. S. Baring Gould, mentioned above, wrote Curiosities of Olden Times and Curious Myths of the Middle Ages amongst others, and R. Baring Gould wrote Stargazer Talks, Enigmas, Oddities, etc. and a much-quoted book (if you move in those circles) on the Loch Ness monster. The Baring Goulds seem worth exploring


WEARWOLF

Mentioned above, this is a small press zine – 30p. + stamp (Wolfs Head Press, PO Box 77, Sunderland, SR1 1EB) edited by Kevin Byrne. He sometimes uses the classic method of finding a bizarre quote and weaving a suitable comment, such as a report that a chimp throwing darts at a list of company names did better than a panel of experts at predicting successes. Later, in an apparently unrelated piece, Kevin reports on the financing of WEARWOLF, which is raised by re-cycling aluminium cans, says that the price of these fell in March by 5p. to 40p. per kilo, adds "It wouldn't have happened if we'd had a chimp running things".

I like the guy's approach, even if he does run a full page warning directed at Pagan & Occult magazines, about a scam by a concern called Sacred Trees Trust. Surely readers of such zines are asking to be conned?


DUNSANY

Anyone interested in this author should note that the May '94 Book & Magazine Collector carried an article and a UK bibliography. Latter included items other than fantasy.


POST

Ever cast a superior sniff at the US Postal System? Something went right recently. Art Widner's fanzine YHOS arrived here on the 12th. May – posted in North Bay, California, on the 9th. May. How'd they do it?


COMMENTS ON MAY MAILING

PM ROUTINES 7 – Andrew Butler

Agree on 12-year old girls receiving condoms, at least as an alternative to getting pregnant, but it seems that once again the responsibility is being put on the female half of a partnership.

Jarman and possible accidental infection. Could happen with blood transfusion, but agree there was a lot of initial confusion in the early days. I guess I was flirting with the notion that the young never believe anything bad will happen to them personally. Hence, amongst other things, smoking.

The minac idea. You mean if I did 8 pages I'd be clear for the following year? But surely the idea of an APA is a constant flow of ideas, outwards and inwards? Just suits my butterfly mind, anyway.

Your para. on good pubs leaves me boggling. Overheard conversations? Now, that takes me back to the '60s – and further.

COLD IRON 2 – Ros Calverley

Afraid essays on comics leave me cold. The last time I bought them was in the '60s; I'd been to the seaside and bought an 'X Men' for the kid. I was vaguely interested in the continuity involved – memories of sequels in the written SF universe – and when we got back to Welling and I saw in a local secondhand furniture shop the first 40 issues or so of 'X Men' I acquired them. I think I was charged a quid. Neither of us felt any particular attraction to them, and the bundle went into the back of a cupboard and subsequently the garden bonfire. I regretted this later when I rejoined fandom and found out the prices charged by People Who Knew for those old issues.

RYCT Theo. Agree absolutely about capital punishment. Too many chances of mistakes except in the clearest of cases.

MARAUDER – Ken Cheslin

Don't exactly like the self-portrait. Makes you look as if you're waiting for your invitation to the Last Supper. Hope to heaven something can be arranged about your future in fanzine publishing, but obviously your private life takes precedence.

RYCT me; I suppose the determining of the age when one started reading is tied up with one's understanding of language as a whole. I'm sitting here trying to visualise what goes through the mind when one's vocabulary is only a few hundred words – and I don't mean learning a foreign tongue, when you already have an idea of language structure and can use logic and deduction from knowledge of your own speech.

Correction re 'futility of war' acknowledged.

Yes, I noticed in Radio Times that Twain's 'Adam's Diary' was being serialised (or it could have been 'Eve's Diary.')

One of those weird coincidences, as I've never come across any other mention of the title except in specialised lists.

So many things in your stuff that I agree with that I find comments a bit superfluous, tho' RYCT John on 'flail tanks' I've often wondered why they haven't resurrected some from WW2 museums and used them in various places where peace has broken out, eg. the Falklands. Surely they weren't all blown up/scrapped? For the benefit of PoEians who were lucky enough to miss the War, this device was a well-protected tank carrying a device on the front that beat the ground ahead with chains, thereby exploding mines. Slow, I suppose, but surely superior to a soldier with a trowel digging 'em up.

K44 – self

Now in contact with Intersection Con., also had a wonderfully sympathetic phone call from Jenny, who with Stephen is doing Fan Programming. Thanks.

HIGH RATES DRIFTER – Ron Gemmell

Nice bit of philosophy, that of intending to live life more fully. Given, sez he cynically, that health and wealth hold out. Aaargh, that was uncalled for. Joshua will keep you young. Appreciate him while he's young.

SILVER PENNIES – Helen Gould

Excellent piece of writing that really gets the reader involved. I'm sure all our best wishes are with you. Re. babies pooing, sicking, etc., this is part of the bonding process – hope and trust you'll find out for yourself some day soon.

FRAGMENTS – Mike Gould

RAE (specially the bit about Bijou and the toffee pudding) BNC

DRIVULA'S DRIVELINGS 3 – Carolyn Horn

RYCT me: sorry about the odd fan slang creeping in – I was so soaked in it during my first years in fandom that I still use it, although for some reason modern-day fans don't appear to care for it. Cheerless lot, really. Here's a short list:

ANNISH: Anniversary issue of a fanzine if it lasts that long.

BNF: Big Name Fan – one whose name is recognised world-wide.

BEM: Bug Eyed Monster – used to be standard fare on covers of SF magazines.

CORFLU: Correction fluid – used on typewritten ms. and stencils, so now a little old fashioned.

DNP: Do Not Print; DNQ: Do Not Quote; injunctions in personal communications which have been honoured during 60 years of fandom – mostly. Do not infringe.

EGOBOO: Publicity for yourself, boosting your ego.

EYETRACKS: left on page by careless reading habits.

FAAN (or even more 'A's): really fannish fan.

FAAN FICTION, fiction by fans about fans.

FANAC: Fan activity – publishing, con-going, not just reading.

FIAWOL: Fandom Is A Way Of Life. Who amongst you who's been in fandom more than 10 years will cast the first stone?

FIJAGH: Fandom Is Just A Goddam Hobby.

GAFIA: Getting Away From It All – originally meant leaving mundane life for fandom, now means the opposite. Also various grammatical forms – gafiation, gafiated, etc.

HUCKSTER(ING): One who sells books, prozines, fanzines, etc., and what it is.

LoC: Letter of Comment to fanzine (one of few acronyms still known to all), along with WAHF – We Also Heard From.

MUNDANE: The barbarian world outside of civilised fandom.

There are many other definitions. Some are anachronistic, eg. The March of Progress has (nearly) meant the passing of the common typewriter, where it was easy to make QUASI-QUOTES – " – denoting the sense was quoted without it being an actual transcript.

Some of the above was from NEO-FAN'S GUIDE, last edition '84 in the States. I'd like to see INTERSECTION put out an edition – there's a lot more therein than acronyms and slang.

Ummm – got carried away there. Back to Drivula's

3rd. nybble. I read the burning oil bit with a sort of horrified fascination. Although you give all sorts of warnings about the possibility – or danger – of fire, I was left wondering what one would do if there was a fire. Would the kitchen-fire rule of shoving a wet towel/blanket over it to exclude oxygen work? Bit difficult if the whole thing is on a bonfire. Do you just stand back and watch the pretty flames for a bit? I'm not sure I'd like to try making my own litho ink without asbestos (or similar) gloves. How much does the ink cost at your friendly neighbourhood stationers, anyway? (ie. is it worth it?)

Love the energetic enthusiasm for virtually everything you read in PoE. Very good stuff. And thanks for bringing the print up to 8pt.

ROPE OF SAND 11 – Brian Jordan

OK, OK, I was mistook in counting this in the last 'K'.

Looking forward to seeing your views on APAs in RJC. I certainly use PoE for 'round robin letter writing' as Greg describes it. This is mainly because it's difficult to find purely fannish subjects which I think are new and worth a bigger audience. Maybe, as I intimated to Theo in the last 'K', this is because as you grow older you get overwhelmed by déjà vu.

Recap on battery-chargers noted. Not going to get a Walkman just to see if you're right.....

RYCT me, re. TV programming. Lately there's been fuss about competition – eg. two different channel soaps on at the same time – but luckily my viewing is fairly restricted. In fact, only serious clash that has me videoing is BBC1's 'Tomorrow's World' and BBC2's 'What The Paper's Say'. But video is handy when there's a watchable piece showing and I want to do something else, eg. write this.

Still interested in this mysterious duplicator. Apropos of which, Chuch Harris says he bringing down for my attention a Roneo 475 "with a serious oil leak and maybe two blown fuses or worse". When I wrote back that I'd be interested, as a duplicator with an internal combustion engine (as implied by 'oil leak') was pretty strange, he said no, the oil seemed to come from a lubricant bath for moving parts. I'm still a wee bit skeptical.

RYCT Theo; I believe J. Irrep. Res. is still going, but being American, is v. rare over here. I see that the Fortean Times is alive and well and on W.H. Smith's bookstalls, but what doesn't seem to be available except on subscription (maybe a reflection of these superstitious times) is The Skeptic, a slim £1.85 bi-monthly from Manchester which takes an extremely jaundiced view of crop-circles, ESP, faces on Mars, homeopathy, astrology, and the like.

Incidentally, my local Boots now has a homeopathy display. Commercialism 1, Medical science 0.

RYCT Paul; a giant modern worldcon terrifies me too, but I found at Conspiracy '87 that keeping to the fan room was the answer; congenial company, and every fan I wanted to meet drifted in there at some time or other.

andmoreagain – Paul Kincaid

Excellent writing, descriptions much appreciated. Really enjoyed this. Also appreciate the thrill of the hunt as I tried to track down 'gynnels' and 'grungy' in dictionaries. For a few moments I thought a map would have helped out-of-town PoEians, but a swift glance at the A-Z page squashed that. You traverse a real rabbit warren.

THE MOON-DRENCHED SHORES – Darroll Pardoe

Interesting anecdote re. gas chromatograph.

Re. transferring activity credit 'strikes at whole concept of an APA'. Gee, and I thought the really central idea was to have pleasure – and give it to others.

RYCT Ron: I suppose a 'huge heap of flowers outside Boots' is a highly visible show of public sympathy for the Warrington bomb victims, but like flowers at funerals it seems to me that something more logical (eg. donations to local hospitals) would be a better response.

THE STRUTHIAN PERSPECTIVE 44 – Theo Ross

Fascinating story, well told. And yes, I can see that you'd have an awkward time trying to sell it, with its criticism of both sides of the Cold War. But true author's instinct – turning your experience into a story. If you could write like this in '61 I'm surprised you didn't turn pro.

Incidentally, I didn't know that Blackwoods magazine existed into the late '70s – always thought of it as primarily Victorian/Edwardian/Georgian.

PENINSULA WITH MINUTE APERTURES – Maureen Speller

Or 'The Entrance to my Castle was a Cat-flap'? Hair-raising account, coolly told. Sympathies, tempered by the thought that leaving a key in the lock (and sliding a newspaper under the door to receive it) was old-hat in thrillers many many years ago. Tickled at your compassion directed at the guy being accused of being a book thief – would be my reaction also.

Sorry to hear of cold; I heeded the dire warnings in the early winter and had an injection against Chinese flu. No sniffles since then – tho' admittedly I don't have much face-to-face contact with people. I suppose when the computer revolution finally takes place and 50% of people do their work from home, it'll cut down on petty infections also. (Phones) Sell my shares in Boots!

TIGER WOLF TALES – Keith Walker

Hey, a page of apology for a teeny tiny possible transgression? Don't be silly. Matter of fact, we should be grateful if you can supply some sidelights on FAPA – sort of people in it, quality, and in fact what sort of contributions, etc. Not many British fans have this dual membership.

Sorry to hear of your wife's troubles. I'm afraid that as active fandom ages there's more and more evidence of human frailty amongst fans and their relatives. Another reason for nostalgia for a bygone era, when you were regarded as a grand old man ('boring old fart' hadn't been invented then) if you were over 40. Fandom started in 1930, if you were 15 then, you'd be a GOM in the mid-nineteen-fifties.

Interesting account of Cons, tho' I was raising an eyebrow at your mention that the Easter Con was 'somewhat devoid of "stars"'. Does it make a difference? I suppose it would to neofans ( who of course might then progress), and one presumes that authors should by their very nature be somewhat out-going and entertaining and good company. But who like that is around the British scene these days, apart from Bob Shaw and Terry Pratchett?

I wish that, echoing my comment on your earlier PoE zine, you'd expanded on some descriptions. What was Jack Cohen arguing about in the Prediction of Divination workshop? (Workshop?) And what was the 'sensuality' workshop all about? Lot of wasted comment there, I'm afraid, to those of us who didn't attend.

But interesting stuff overall.

THE ARACHNO FILE – John D. Rickett

Yeah, it's odd how many different ways human beings have found of filling their stomachs. BIG spiders, beetles, varied birds of the air, rattlesnakes, whales, chocolate-covered ants, eels, haggis, and other human beings. Is their anything we haven't tried?

Cats?

Keep on hearing about the Chinese eating dogs, but is there anywhere in the world a perverted taste for cats?

(I was going to make a remark about the fur being difficult to remove, but in view of prevailing opinion in the crew.....)

As usual, I find very little that I disagree with in AF, so will pick up on the odd comment. RYCT Chr$ on British culture, we've obviously picked over a ragbag of cultural items from the World, and like our language it'd be very difficult (and a waste of time) to isolate threads. Who was it who campaigned in a US Presidential election on the slogan of 'One World' – Wendell Wilkie? I'm much in favour.

There used to be a guy named Garry Davis – don't know what happened to him – who got a lot of self-publicity (egoboo, Carolyn) by calling himself a 'Citizen of the World'. He was a back-packing American who was periodically being turned back from foreign frontiers because he didn't accept their validity. He may have had other eccentricities, I don't recall, but I've always thought that he was about 100 years ahead of his time on this, anyway. Believe he attended an SF Con or two.

RYCT Ken on Hogwash and Milligan. I keep on remembering – and then forgetting – to supply Ken with the figures at least turned round the other way (carbon paper backwards would do it), Now I'm wondering if I'll get the chance.

RYCT me. I don't dislike Olde Englyshe typeface in small dabs, it's just that not having had much experience of reading it I can't visualise it as being easy to read en masse. And if there's one thing I strive for, it's fluid communication. (Yeah, yeah, I know, throwing bottles with messages in them into the ocean).

Your mention of 'Merry England' set me searching for Stephen Pile's The Return of Heroic Failures, where I thought I remembered a reference, but it turned out to be to Young England'. This was a West End play that was so bad that, like our Badger Books in the PB category, it became a success. "The show went from strength to strength, even though its clergyman author periodically roamed the aisles remonstrating with hecklers and shaking his fists". (Op. cit., and one of the funniest books I've read.

By the way, Stephen Pile also mentions It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (Professor Rice, Sphere Books '86) which gives a collection of bad starts to novels. Anyone know of and can lend?

RYCT Paul, yes yes, we all heard you about Tristram Shandy. I'm going to take it into hospital on the 2nd. June when (hopefully) I'm having a minor op., and will report in the next 'K'.

May I compound your dislike of Stephen Baxter (RYCT Barry), with a quote from his Flux (Harper Collins '93): 'Spin-spider egg,' she said. 'I knew you wouldn't recognise it. But it's the only way to eat it. It's actually a delicacy, in some parts of the hinterland. There's even a community on the edge of the wild forest who cultivate spiders, to get the eggs.'

It's supposed to be SF, not horror.

Nice pick up on the jenny hanniver – I wonder how many there are? This has a striking resemblance to the specimen we were discussing a couple of years ago.

AVC.

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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