K6

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K6 – An APAzine for Pieces Of Eight October 1990 from A. VINCENT CLARKE, 16 Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN. "Outer space is no place for a person of breeding". Lady Bonham Carter (1887-1969)

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THE REASON WHY I DIDN'T CONTRIBUTE TO THE LAST MAILING WAS 'COS I WAS BUSY TIDYING UP, EXPECTING GUESTS.....

I invited both Yugoslavian Pavel Gregoric and American Don Thompson to stay here after the World Con, without giving much thought to the differences between them, only the similarities. Pavel, of whom I'd never seen a picture, turned out to be a tall-enough-for-Irish-fandom six-footer, eighteen and good looking with it. Speaks and writes darned near perfect English, his grandfather was Ambassador to Italy, he's just starting the uneasy period between passing his exams and going to university, during which period the Yugoslav goverment conscripts them for a year of military service. He may become True Fan, but he's mainly trying to catch up with all the sf he's heard about. Both Don and I have been sending him parcels.

Don, on the other hand, is 62, a bit frail (still recovering from cancer operation), about my height, comes from Denver, didn't enter fandom until he was 40, and regards the whole lot of us as 'family', tho' he's married and has grandchildren. (Oddly enough, I've sometimes indexed my letters on the Amstrad as 'Family' when writing to close fan friends). Otherwise a normal publishing faan – (DON-o-SAUR) – he's a Moorcock completist; I'd found half-a-dozen off his Want List which were waiting for him. He's also a magazine completist – down to a couple of hundred wanted, which includes some WEIRD TALES back to 1923.

They both wanted to visit Charing Cross Rd and bookshops – bookshops – bookshops, tho' their aims were slightly different; Pavel was hunting books of Latin and Greek history (didn't matter if they were written in the original language – he knows them), Don was mainly after Moorcock stuff and general booksy sightseeing. Also, Pavel expressed a strong desire to walk down Oxford Street. I think this must be a childhood ambition, as it was about the last mile in London where he'd pick up the books he wanted.

So the first day we got the train to Charing Cross, walked down to the Embankment to see Cleopatra's Needle, walked through Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly Circus (a disappointment to me, as there's a terrific amount of re-building going on) and took the tube to Marble Arch. For the benefit of strangers to London this is the western end of Oxford Street. We gave Pavel careful instructions and a map, and set him on his way, while Don and I bussed east up the street and eventually ended up in the British Museum.

Don was fascinated by the Literature Section; we marvelled over the illuminated mss., with brilliant colours and gold leaf glowing, which don't show in most reproductions. We found a 14th-century ms. with an sf story in it – hero goes down in a diving bell – and also saw a rather unrewarding Temple of Ishtar, which didn't look much like Merritt's description. After two hours we met Pavel on the Museum steps; he decided he'd 'do' the Museum another day, so we had a meal, visited Forbidden Planet which is quite close (turned out Pavel had already found it), penetrated a few yards down Charing Cross Road just to show them what they were up against and bussed to Waterloo, where I showed them the Wellington, and home.

In the evening Pavel managed to get in touch by 'phone with his girl-friend, Helena, who was in South London (Forest Hill) for two months. Fascinating to hear the Yugoslavian coming out after the perfect English.

Don and I decided we didn't want to be gooseberries so as Pavel was obviously capable of looking after himself we left him and Helena to find their own way around for most of the rest of his stay. The exception was a marvellous Sunday, when, keeping my fingers tightly crossed because it might have been too late in the year, I took them to visit the sights at Greenwich. We met Helena at Blackheath station, which is only a mile or so from my target, and started walking there (Sunday buses are unreliable). We had a bonus – there was a lot of kite-flying on the heath (it's a huge open space, backing on to Greenwich Park where the observatory used to function, and gets its name from plague victims being buried there in the – um – 14th. century? ) and there was one organised team of four men who were flying four delta-winged monsters together, in close formation. The kites made an extraordinary whistling/whiffling noise as they carved their way through the air, and it so fascinated Pavel that he went up to a woman who was unpacking a similar kite and asked her about it. He came back with the info that she'd only bought hers the previous day and it had cost £100. He visibly abandoned the thought of taking half-a-dozen back to Yugoslavia.

So we went down into Greenwich and, praise be!, found everything open and the place thronged. There was an open-air market, scores of stalls selling everything from Victorian biscuit-tins to African shields and, of course, the inevitable stalls selling thousands of pocket books.

Then I dragged them away to the piece de resistance, which was a sort of open-ended brick shed (may have been a tram depot at one time) that was absolutely stuffed with books and book sellers on two floors. It boasts of being 'London's Largest Weekly Book & Ephemera Market', and I can certainly believe that. Amongst other things I found one stall with at least 40 sf ACE doubles.....

Sheer hunger drove us away to get some take-aways, which we ate on the plaza where the Cutty Sark, an ancient tea-clipper is dry-docked (you may have seen it on TV films of the London Marathon) and also Francis Chichester's Gypsy Moth, a small boat he sailed single-handed around the world. We then walked up to Greenwich Observatory, where Pavel and Helena amused themselves by standing with one foot in each hemisphere, on the meridian line. I'd have liked to have gone in to the astronomical museum, but it was £6 each, which Don and I thought a bit excessive, so Don and I sat and admired the view (not in fact very impressive as there's so much building going on down by the docks, including Europe's soon-to-be tallest building) while the youngsters went in on their student discounts.

That was a day.

And so it went on. Pavel had to go back after a week (he's already reported to his military quarters), which involved returning to Amsterdam and then using his return ticket to Zagreb, whilst Don stayed on a further week.

We went to the Fantasy Centre one afternoon, where there was a huge consignment of magazines just arrived – and Don had forgotten his Wants List. To make up for it, however, he bought a Sexton Blake library booklet by 'Desmond Reid', a pseudonym of Moorcock and others for what I thought was an excessive £25, whilst I got a reprint copy of FANCYCLOPEDIA 2 with the 'Rejected Canon' and some other corrections built in. I queried Ted Ball and Dave Gibson, the owners, about fanzines, and after saying they didn't really deal in 'em one of them slipped into the back of the shop and came out with a couple of Fantasy Fiction World from 1940, which were especially interesting as they were addressed to the late Walter Gillings, editor of TALES OF WONDER and the grandfather of British fandom. There were a few other FAPAzines of early vintage, including one with a chain-letter signed by Laney, Burbee and Tucker – "Simply send a copy of this letter to five equally tired male fan friends. Then bundle up your wife and send her to the fellow at the top of the list. When your name comes to the top of the list....you will receive 17,178 women...." Chauvinistic, but funny. Also a Shangri-L'Affaires from '43 with the name of Mike Rosenblum on it. He single-handedly produced a fanzine unifying British fandom throughout the war.

Remembering a 'phone call I'd had a couple of days previously, I asked them about the possibility of buying James White's magazines, but they'd extended themselves with a couple of large purchases and weren't in the market right away. (Anyone interested in NEW WORLDS from No 1 to 170 and ASTOUNDING/ANALOG from '34 on? James doesn't want the hassle of splitting, wants to sell them as one or two lots).

There are other high-points – going to Rob 'n' Avedons and on to the Wellington, coming out from a tube and seeing Big Ben towering over one, looking at the remains of the temple of Mithras (4th. century) amidst the massive buildings of the modern age..... One small incident sticks in the memory. I collect books of Giles cartoons and some of the early ones are much sought after. On a visit to Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road, I saw the first five in a window, and not having No.5 asked the price, expecting it to be a too-stiff £10 or £20. "No.5? Oh, £200...there was a paper shortage...."

I shook my head regretfully. Bank-note shortage.

It was a terrific couple of weeks or so, with only a few disappointments. I never did get around to doing D & P the great English meal, Fish 'n' Chips, for instance, and London is so full of re-building it's almost impossible to walk around without having to skirt great dusty, noisy sites. There was a small disappointment when one evening I was intending to run THE THING, John Carpenter's version, on the video for Pavel's benefit. About 3/4hr through the film started slipping, on vertical hold. The original, on TV, was OK, so it must have been the video. In fact, when I took the cassette from the shelf I found that I hadn't rewound back to the start, and it had been lying around like that for some months. This may have caused the trouble, but I've (accidentally) done this before without anything disastrous happening. Anyone any ideas, before I scrap the thing?

Don left with virtually everything scrubbed from his original Moorcock want-list, but he heard for the first time of another half-dozen books for which to search. I reckon it's better, if you're a completist, to start looking for the works of a deceased author – at least you know that they've (presumably) stopped production.

I suppose that if Pavel, Don and I had been going anywhere other than central London I'd have regretted not having a car, but I can't imagine anyone driving in London for pleasure these days. Welling is right out on the periphery of south east London, twelve miles from Charing Cross, and the local High Street still gets choked after 4pm or so, when the great Trek Homeward begins. It'd be nice to live nearer the centre, but pollution rules.......

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SOMEONE, it may have been Ian, was saying recently that PoE was short of sf reviews. Personally, I think that with CRITICAL WAVE and ERG and BSFA zines I get more reviews pushed at me than I know how to handle, but it set me a'thinking. What do I need from a review? Just an inkling of the plot, an idea of the author's style, and if the reviewer honestly thinks it's worth reading, right? I thereupon produced the following:

TEK WAR – Wm. Shatner (Bantam Press £12.95)

"Ron Goulart, a wonderful writer, showed me the way out and showed me the way in to completing the novel. He did an enormous amount of work..." runs the Acknowledgments, and anyone picking this up and glancing through it would immediately assume that it's a Goulart book.

"The robot madam greeted Jake warmly. She was tall and wide with an ample chrome-plated bosom showing beneath her shimmering glogold dress.....her plump chrome cheeks were decorated wiuth glimmering gems, her crinkly blonde hair was made of spun gold, and she smelled strongly of a dozen different flowers."

Anyone who doesn't murmur 'Goulart' after reading this is style-deaf.

TEK WAR is more or less a Goulart-type slam-bang adventure, in a Goulart world, and it's OK to pass the idle hour. You haven't got any idle hours? You shouldn't have become a fan.

THE FOLK OF THE FRINGE – Orson Scott Card (Century £11.95)

I must confess that I usually find OSC boring, in spite of his Hugo and Nebula awards, but this is somewhat more interesting, as it is strongly influenced by his Mormonism. It's five stories about the US after the Blow Up, with the Mormons gradually extending civilisation (Mormon type) from Utah. The first story is near-standard sf, the little band of Mormons wending its way through a devastated and lawless country with assorted adventures. Each subsequent story continues with the future life of one of the characters. The stories vary from slam-bang to sentimental, and there's an interesting author's Afterword on how they came to be written. Worth reading, tho' in my present mood not worth keeping.

ALIEN NATION – novelisation of the film by Alan Dean Foster (Severn House, £10.95)

Interesting premise. Earth's first alien visitors are involuntary, going from 'here' to 'there' and diverted, and are more or less humanoid. And they don't know much more than a shipload of African slaves might have done, shipwrecked on a European shore.

The story proper starts a few years later, with integration only partially successful, and it's a mixture of Tough Cop, straight out of 'Dirty Harry' and the like, and standard sf fare:

"Winter finally broke off the small talk long enough to indicate the alien corpse. "You took this guy out too, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Lucky for you, you got him in both of his – well, what we loosely refer to as 'hearts'". Winter shook his head in amazement. "They look a lot less like us on the inside, you know."

Foster does the best that he can with an uneasy mixture of sf and hardboiled 'tec stuff, including the obligatory car chase, but it's hard and the strain shows. I looked through it when I started to write this, three weeks after first reading, and couldn't remember the plot. This 'electrifying novel of the stunning film' has pretty weak voltage.

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These are the type of reviews that I, personally, prefer; it would be interesting if we could get some sort of concensus about the sort of reviews we in this APA go for – might be helpful to editors in a wider context.

"In my present mood" above is an indication that I'm still piling up PBs, waiting for a chance to off-load them somewhere. I've already disposed of a few. The list would be too long and boring for the APA, but if anyone wants to know the latest titles-for-chucking-out, drop me a line.

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COMMENTS ON THE SEPTEMBER '90 MAILING.

THE CAPTAIN'S TABLE – Nice to see Chuck Connor alongside again, as you say. And I may have been the first PoEian to meet John D. Rickett (at the Wellington). As usual with new fans I find myself fighting a battle not to overwhelm him with hundreds of fanzines and explanations. Finding Out About Fandom is half the fun....

INCOMMUNICADO – Ian Bambro – I went to Edinburgh 30 years back, and fell for it – the city next to London I'd like to live in; it has so much in its area, for everyone. I like Moira too – pity she seems to have slipped out of publishing (unless she's with the Woman's APA).

The Who's Who idea; this just a Project, but the offer is helpful. Heck – I've forgotten for the moment who started off that train of thought about getting together a stack of British faces to show at American Cons – still a Good Idea if one can afford to copy photos.

I find it hard to comment – we have similar feelings about most things, especially Ma Thatcher. Yes, the puzzle-solving element is part of the enjoyment of stories, which is probably why most fantasies strike me as a waste of time – if you can suspend natural Laws then anything goes, and you are left with the quality of the writing. I suppose Jack Vance in THE DYING EARTH and some of Terry Pratchet have some of the right ideas – the painful and limited memorising of some mind-wrenching spell or other, and not an all-embracing "Abracadabra" with no more problems".

Talking of which, I guessed the key move in your chess problem, but was too impatient (and too hustled, with guests coming) to follow it through. Story of my life – never enough time. Do you know that I've taken books back to the Library and paid fines for keeping them too long, and never got around to reading them? Our new shipmate, John Rickett, wrote to me and said "Where in the name of Hawking do people find the time for all this writing – do they live within the event horizons of black holes or something?" I think the answer is "No, on the edge of a nervous breakdown." I can imagine him having quiet hysterics when he reads Maureen's bit about "This is the fifth zine I've produced (this month).

LIFE IN THE BUS LANE – Chris Carne – Couldn't agree more on the first para. To quote a leaflet I was given in London, issued by the National Peace Council amongst others (it's printed on bright green paper which wouldn't, I fear, go through the copier here or I'd reproduce it): "Selling weapons to the Middle East does not guarantee defence but instead heightens tension, prolongs wars, and makes any conflict more destructive of human life. The international community must urgently reach agreement to control, reduce and eventually eliminate arms transfers".

If the bloke at No.14 was to say to me "Sell me your carving knife, I want to threaten the chap next door unless he gives me his house" I'd have good cause to call the cops (actually, the bloke at No 14 is a cop, but never mind), but we can boast of selling weapons to dictators and military hierarchies I don't think I'll ever understand human beings.

When writing books Philip K. Dick was such a distinctive stylist that I'm afraid it always gets in the way of the story, for me. I don't like being constantly reminded of the author. And the endings stink: In the darkness of the Martian night her husband and father-in-law searched for Erna Steiner; their light flashed here and there, and their voices could be heard, businesslike and competent and patient". from MARTIAN TIME-SLIP is typical. Dick was good, especially on his shorter stuff, but he could have done with a strong book editor. But to each his own; I can (partly) understand if not entirely sympathise with Dick enthusiasts.

MARAUDER 9 – Ken Cheslin – The memories are good, and I agree that the badge for Brumcon '65 is really excellent; it was a bad day for fans with poorer eyesight when the BSFA acquired a badge-making machine and the ability to make badges which were all design and a microscopic name. I'll pass this zine on to Rob as he may want to use pictures of the Con badges on the cover of THEN 3.

Rob Hansen and I have tried to get conversations going with the old-timers instead of relying so heavily on old fanzines for reporting fan history in THEN (you yourself were at one meeting with Ted Tubb, Ken Bulmer etc.), but we're being forced to the conclusion that if it's worth reporting it gets into a fanzine. It's like that philosophical question about "Is there noise in a forest if a tree falls and there's no one about?" Unless the idea, quote, incident, has made an impact and got into print you have to fall back on memories. And if you rely on people's memories you soon find you're in trouble. F'rinstance, the programme booklet lists 303 members up to the end of March '73 for the OMPAcon, but who's to tell how many actually attended? (Go and stand in the corner, that person who asked "And does it matter?")

The story pretty well done, actually, and I think the main obstacle to making it sellable to a Christmas issue of something is the difficulty of making a sack of toys somehow equate with a sack of rubbish in the alien mind. An interesting idea.

MARITIME MAIL – Chuck Connor – After the you-know-what a few years back there hasn't been much info. on the Falklands, but I've always thought it would be a marvellous place to prepare for Mars. Live underground; that would be an awfully big experience. After all, if they can construct a Channel Tunnel in 3 or 4 years a really large cavern should be a snip. Once the place was hollowed out and the sheep installed you could set about heating it (not very difficult when you remember that the heating system in cinemas actually takes heat out of the air, and all those sheep surely bump up the temperature). You then turn it into a Disneyland or something and it starts paying for itself. These are just rough details – the idea needs refining. Come back to us soon, our wandering boy.

UNTITLED – Sarah Cox – Dear Sarah, you're a naturally funny writer, and I'd not be doing my duty to fandom or posterity if I didn't urge you to do as much as you can. It's marvellous. My own daughter Nicola was not an enthusiastic swimmer, although I remember when she set her little heart on getting a 1500m. Certificate and ploughed up and down some Holiday Camp baths for two solid hours while Dad watched bored out of his mind and occasionally waving enthusiastically. Her usual style was to just find some unoccupied water and float there, which I remember she did once on a small children's pool alongside the adults pool late one night. Soon I saw the attendants casting worried glances over their shoulders; a small body floating alone.....

Never heard of anyone actually washing a cat before...at least, not deliberately, tho' there's the occasional story of a kitty in a washing machines. Difficult to know what to advise now that armour's gone out of fashion and you can't get leather gauntlets all that easily. Best to creep up on it next time with a bucket of warm water and let fly, I should think. It wouldn't be able to blame you then.

TRAVELS IN HYPERREALITY – Maureen Porter – Pity about the e-stenciller and the Amstrad going wrong together. What you could have done was to send me the Amstrad disc, and let me run it off and e-stencil it. Never mind, but it means that I have an extra excuse for not straining the eyes and reading the exhaustive resume of STIG OF THE DUMP, as – I whisper – I ain't read the book. Some other time, and then I'll come back to TIH and see what extra lights you can cast on it.

Meanwhile, I'm surprised you don't use a pencil for marking bits in books, fanzines, etc. I've had countless fanzines from Walt Willis over the years with neat little 'x's against items he was going to comment on; seems adequate to me.

The comments on Jenny's comments on Con Running very interesting. PRs are useful 'cos it reassures you that the Treasurer hasn't had it off to Buenos Aires with the proceeds, and tells Guests Of Honour that they'll have some sort of audience.

My own experience of Con holding is wildly out-of-date, but you never said a truer word than "readers are not necessarily doers." All right, five words. Once upon a time you knew virtually everyone at a Con. You read the same fanzines, had the same tastes in sf, and were more-or-less all friends. Now, with Cons getting 500+ attendees without any trouble if they want them, con holders have moved into the entertainment business; it's the punters and the organisers. I think it's too much for any non-professional body; the punters pay a lot of money and they expect to be entertained. There should be at least a part-time professional on hand. I think there'll come a time when, just as there are fanzines and prozines, there'll be fan-cons and pro-cons.

THE ARACHNO FILE – John D. Rickett – Really marvellous stuff for a beginner. "Fan" is an evolving sub-cultural language, so yesterday's acronyms are today's obscurities. And in turn – I would have had to run 'pbm-er' over a couple of times in my mind before realising what it was. Your only relief is that it's not as bad (relatively speaking) as it was. All through fan history, and especially in the '50s, such a thickly interwoven mesh of history and quotation and abbreviations and acronyms grew that in 1959 a 182-page FANCYLOPEDIA was published in the USA. There's been no up-date, tho' there were half-hearted attempts to publish another edition in the '80s. This is partly because there was a cataclysmic split in US fandom in the early '60s which still rankles in some minds, partly because as fandom got bigger and bigger over the years the newcomers just couldn't be bothered to learn. Straightforward history suffered the same fate – Harry Warner Jnr. wrote ALL OUR YESTERDAYS covering the '30s and '40s and WEALTH OF FABLE covering the '50s, but then bogged down. Over here Rob Hansen is working on a British history, the aforementioned THEN, a fanzine; No.1 covered the '30s and '40s, No 2 the '50s, No 3 is in preparation.

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Produced on an AMSTRAD 8256 2/16, a Roneo e-stenciller and a Gestetner 230