Since my lordly progress through America as partially reported last issue, the multi-million-pound complex of Langford Enterprises has been hammering away at a novel not long to be denied you. Oh, you should see the synopsis: 'packed full as a tube train with cosmic concepts; stellar explosions in alternate paragraphs and planets colliding with the frequency of dodgem cars. To provide interesting personality conflicts, all the characters will be raving loonies. At the end, with the roar of disintegrating galaxies still reverberating through the airlessness of space, the good guys will win.' But the power of the mighty Tharg, alias Ad Astra editor James Manning, is inescapable; I've had to leave all my novel characters cliff-hanging on the very event horizon of a titanic black hole, in order to bring you this latest searing instalment of the column which uncovers the FACTS and is not afraid to misprint them....
At a recent SF convention there was a 'formal' debate on the motion 'This house believes that the fragmentation of SF fandom is both inevitable and desirable'. The motion was lost, amid a fog of uncertainty as to what 'fragmentation' actually meant – probably something to do with the tendency for groups to separate themselves from SF/fantasy readers in general and to form cults worshipping Star Trek, Dr Who, Anne McCaffrey's dragons or, for all I know, the famous Fission Fragments column. Now since I'm writing from an SF fan's viewpoint here, it's perhaps time to mention British fandom. After all the term 'fanzine' has even been aired on TV's Call My Bluff, with Frank Muir explaining how it comes from 'fan' and 'magazine' (roars of laughter from all present), so thus a fanzine is a sort of amateur magazine (hysterical laughter) put out by science fiction fans (they are going to hurt themselves it is not good for them to laugh so much). You may check this for yourselves in the latest edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary.... Onward, then.
An SF fan as distinct from a mere reader is someone whose involvement goes beyond reading SF. Simply in reading this column you're measurably more of a fan than those who austerely stick to reading science fiction rather than book reviews or maunderings like mine. In the Smithsonian in Washington there is a cunning display which appears to be simply a rotting log: when you press a hidden button the images of revolting fungi and insects grow and swarm all over the log, an ecology in miniature. 'The log represents SF,' my companion observed, 'and all over it are these parasites like us.' Well, yes, approximately. The classical path to ruin begins when readers are no longer content to take solitary nibbles at the insalubrious log of SF. At first, perhaps, they discuss their perversion with friends whose minds are likewise rotted: after this there are three inviting routes downward. Firstly, they can form a local SF club, usually meeting in a pub and quite possibly getting some attention from local newspapers (who will generally play it for laughs and get everything wrong. An item on sale at the Boston Worldcon was an exceedingly nifty pack of Tarot cards, each card a separate painting by a different SF artist: one paper termed this 'a deck of Battlestar Galactica cards complete with rules'). Secondly, they can contact an organization such as the British SF Association and receive vast quantities of information on absolutely everything in society mailings. Thirdly, they can jump in at the deep end and go on to one of the many SF conventions. All these beginnings can lead inexorably to the pit, where neophytes are exposed to various temptations: to spend all their money in joining the BSFA, British Fantasy Society, National Fantasy Fan Federation (US, and not recommended by my US contact, who says the BSFA is much better) and so on; to spend considerably more than all their money in attending (and possibly getting stoned out of their minds at) as many as twenty conventions a year; to vanish forever within the event horizons of the overspecialized cult groups referred to above; to dedicate all their leisure time to reading and writing for fanzines which cover an enormous spectrum from amateur SF and criticism via reports on conventions to humorous accounts of what the editors did on their holidays....
All this is much easier to find than it was. Many towns – university towns especially – now boast SF clubs; London has several, from quasi-formal writers' meetings to the peculiarly degenerate fan group known as the Surrey Limpwrists for reasons not to be disclosed in a family magazine. A directory of such groups is even now being prepared by the BSFA, which itself is much more accessible and reliable than in the old days when a mention in Science Fiction Monthly generated so many enquiries that the committee at once collapsed. Membership is approaching 900; the power-crazed Chairman is expected to announce his takeover bid for ICI in the near future. The addresses of the BSFA, BFS and current Easter convention are easy to find (see my bits in Ad Astra 9 and 11): you never had it so good. Fandom is a social, a communal thing, and one aspect which alarms the newcomer is that it seems almost independent of SF. Just as those creepy-crawlies on the rotting log could readily wander away, so many fans will throw themselves into fanzine production – some of the best fanzines deal less with SF than with dirt on SF or fan personalities – and often claim not to read SF any more. (Usually they do really but keep quiet about it: a reaction against others who read or claim to read nothing but SF, which for my money is a swift path to total brainrot.) Or, similarly, fans enjoy helping run conventions – or organizing local groups into vast multinational conglomerates – or climbing up the mighty BSFA power structure ... and find little leisure time for reading SF. Even those who concentrate on criticism and thus theoretically stay close to the grass-roots, contributing reviews to such magazines as Vector, Arena or Foundation, can find their own technique of constant analysis a hindrance to enjoyment. It's like that tale of someone who left the Army and returned to the green valley of his childhood – finding to his horror that though outwardly unchanged, the place is no longer a green valley but a series of potential gun emplacements, sniper locations, strategic hilltops – in short, a war map. This is how SF looks to the jaded critic.
(But even a jaded critic can be made to sit up and take notice when something new appears. It happened to me recently with Rudy Rucker's White Light (Virgin, £1.95), a wondrously lunatic book which tries to do with infinite set theory what Illuminatus! did with this century's history and folklore.)
Also on the more or less reviled 'serious and constructive' side of fandom are the myriad amateur writers. Amateur SF is generally pretty bad, as a matter of fact rather than of necessity – after all, look at some of the stuff which actually gets published and then consider that the amateur material is largely stuff that can't be sold professionally. One gleam of hope is that the cliches of bad SF are evolving slightly: 20 years ago editors complained of the 'shaggy god' story, whose lead character turns out to be Adam, Eve, Jehovah or James Manning, but now my spies report that in the recent Omni short-short story competition something like 10% of the entries dealt with an alien fleet attacking Earth against vast odds and winning through to a triumphant touchdown and a huge sign going up in the sky saying GAME OVER, INSERT COIN.
One way in which amateur writers can help each other is through a writers' group, which at its best has everyone dishing out sensible criticism of others' submissions (either circulated beforehand or read aloud at the meeting), but at worst is merely a circle of sycophants telling each other how wonderful they are – which unfortunately is the status of too many local literary societies. The magazine Focus ran a special feature on SF writers' groups in its second issue (75p from 38 Peters Ave, London Colney, Herts, AL2 1NQ). Similar meetings exist for professionals, for example the Milford conference begun by Damon Knight in the USA and imported over here by James and Judy Blish in the early 70s. Is this getting a long way from fandom? Not really: Milford and suchlike meetings are also social events where one can drink a lot between work sessions, or watch Chris Priest's frisbee prowess, or listen in awe as Richard Cowper runs a 'Call My Bluff' game wherein his word 'tappen' actually does turn out to mean a mucus plug formed in the rectum of a polar bear during hibernation.
Fandom, then is a zone of social contact between fans, and also between them and writers, agents and publishers, many of whom also regard themselves as fans. It seems unique to SF. It's a source of great pleasure to many of us, and since involvement is voluntary it needn't bother other people ... except perhaps those who are reading this column to find the Real Inside Dirt rather than the above.
In brief: A.E.van Vogt collected a $50,000 settlement for possible plagiarism (in Alien) of his 'Discord in Scarlet' ... Hugo hot tips since last issue's are Pohl's Beyond the Blue Event Horizon and Benford's Timescape (whose Gollancz edition was amended to remove naughty bits about our Royal Family) ... The SF Foundation has appointed Colin Greenland as writer-in-residence, mere nonentities like Ian Watson and John Sladek being rejected ... my own super book War In 2080: The Future of Military Technology is out from Sphere in February (advt.) ... SF publishers Dobson placed bottom in a recent poll of what authors thought of their publishers ... and it's said that Leslie Charteris's thriller Vendetta for the Saint (1964) was in fact ghost-written by our very own Harry Harrison. Theodore Sturgeon, of course, is known to have written at least one Ellery Queen detective novel, The Player on the Other Side (1963). Which may well make you wonder which incredibly famous author is churning out this column and signing himself: DAVID LANGFORD