 {{  We thought fewer articles last issue might
well translate to fewer letters of comment, but we were wrong -- not only were there
more than 70 respondents, we also received maybe 60 different fanzine titles in trade.
Needless to eay, we're gratified by the response. The articles that seemed to
generate the most mail were Dave Kyle's remembrance of the first Worldcon, "The Great
Exclusion Act of 1939", and Bruno Ogorelec's autobiographical "Great Jumping
Grandmothers -- A Cautionary Tale of Female Emancipation". First up is a sampling
of comments about these articles...}}- - - - - - - - - -
Harry Warner, Jr., Hagerstown, Maryland The new Mimosa gave me a lot of pleasant
reading, plus a sort of patriotic pride to find Maryland so well represented among the
creators and contributors. Maybe this state is entering a fantastic period of fanac
that will some day be compared with Irish Fandom.Naturally, as a lapsed fan historian, I took a
lot of interest in Dave Kyle's article. The reprint of the complete document that
caused so much trouble at the first Worldcon is something that should have been done
long ago. I remember years ago coming across my copy (a much-rumpled one which either
Fred Pohl or Jack Gillespie retrieved from a hip pocket and presented to me the time
they hitchhiked to pay me a visit shortly after the con) and thinking it was a seminal
document that should be made available in print in complete form from time to time. I
do wish, though, that Dave had told us who did the actual writing. I can't remember
anyone having claimed authorship and I can't figure out from re-reading the identity of
the author on stylistic grounds. It sounds as if it might have been a collaboration
with two or more Futurians helping out.I'm glad you ignored your length limitations for
once and published Bruno Ogorelec's article in complete form. It's the sort of article
that will stick in my mind long after most of the contents of the fanzines I read in
1989 are jumbled together in a homogeneous mass. It's so different from most fanzine
material in subject matter, so thorough in its characterization of an entire family, so
warmly humorous. If the FAAn awards still existed, it would deserve one. And the
strangest thing about the article is that the events described in it seemed familiar to
me, four or five thousand miles away from its setting. The excitement when science
fiction became available in greater quantities in Yugoslavia a generation or two ago
wasn't too different from the way it was when I was a boy and could find it almost
nowhere but in the three prozines published each month, followed by the elation that
came when dozens of new prozine titles began to be published.{{ Like the commercial says -- sometimes you gotta
break the rules. Bruno's article was just one of those cases. We're glad that so many
people enjoyed it, and we'll run longer articies a little more often
now. }} Mimosa #6 was outstanding!
{{ Thanks! }}
I picked it up at Noreascon, mainly because I noticed it had the text of Dave Kyle's
"evil, communistic" pamphlet of 1939, which I've wanted to get for a couple of
years.It turns out, I see, that Kyle's
pamphlet was neither evil not communistic -- just libelous! I don't think I buy
Kyle's argument that Moskowitz made the pamphlet sound worse than it really was,
by selectively excerpting it in The Immortal Storm: some of the stuff left
out was as bad as the quoted material. On the other hand, Moskowitz did leave out
one paragraph ("The Newark Revolution") which might have embarrassed him.Speaking of communists, what propels
Mimosa 6 into the fannish stratosphere is Bruno Ogorelec's wonderful
memoir, "Great Jumping Grandmothers". This has got to be one of the best things
I've ever read in a fanzine. (Teddy Harvia's illos fit the text beautifully,
too.)It made me think of my own East
European roots, in Ukraine. I'm also the descendant of priests, only in my case
it was all legit and in the male line: Ukrainian Catholic priests could marry, at
the time.Bruno's account of the difficulties
in obtaining SF in Yugoslavia reminded me of how my father discovered Edgar Rice
Burroughs: a Polish translation of The Return of Tarzan was serving as
toilet paper in the outhouse. My father remembers spending hours there reading
ahead, while people banged on the door and yelled, "Hey! What are you doing in
there!"- - - - - - - - - -
Kev McVeigh, Milnthorpe, Cumbria, United Kingdom The piece about the first Worldcon
all seems rather petty now at this distant time, but at the same time it shows up
a disturbing phenomena in U.S. culture which seems to still be present.From here, and I may have a
distorted view, it seems that there is an effective "ban" on socialists through
the McCarthy legacy. I have a copy of The Book of Lists, which includes
"20 U.S. Cities which have Elected Socialists to Public Office". I don't know
what they include in "Public Office," but still, the fact that this list is worth
printing says a lot to me. {{ ed. note: "Public
Office" here is any position in the city, county, state, or national government
that a person must run and be elected to, rather than being simply appointed. }}
Why is it that so few socialists achieve success in the U.S.? Is
it a result of propaganda and anti-Soviet paranoia? Whatever its cause, the effect
seems not far short of the one party system of Eastern Europe in preventing real
change.{{ It probably goes a lot farther back than that.
The original colonists of the New World were mostly individualists who were looking
for a better life; much of the westward expansion was by so-called "rugged
individualists" who apparently did not want or need any government interference in
their lives. Later, the mythos of "Yankee Ingenuity" arose, which again promoted
the values of individualism, with the carrot of potential personal wealth for a
good new idea (i.e., "Build a Better Mousetrap and the World Will Beat a Path to
your Door"). In short, this country is based on the concept of individualism --
always has been and probably always will be. Socialism, even something as
beneficial as social safety nets like Social Security, Medicare, and the proposed
National Health Insurance has always tended to rub people the wrong way. The
McCarthy era seems therefore a symptom (a reactionary one, admittedly) and not a
cause of the general lack of success of Socialist candidates for political office
here. We're interested in other's views of this, particularly from other countries
like Australia and Canada with similar histories. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Michael Sherck, South Bend, Indiana I especially enjoyed Dave Kyle's article
"The Great Exclusion Act of 1939". Having previously read about early fandom (Fred
Pohl's The Way the Future Was and Damon Knight's The Futurians primarily)
had left some curiosity about those days and it was quite interesting to have some light
shed on the subject. I don't suppose the principals are too awfully interested anymore
but I thoroughly enjoyed that little piece of fannish history.Mr. Ogorelec's family's experiences with
SF were interesting. Having been the recent recipient of a portion of a grandmotherly
woman's SF collection myself, however, I wonder whether this might not be a somewhat
more widespread phenomenon than is otherwise noticed. I suppose that it is entirely
possible that there are whole legions of elderly ladies out there with bulging
collections of vintage SF.{{ We know for a fact that's true. Some years ago, Dick
was able to acquire a large number of old SF digest magazines from someone who was
cleaning out his grandmother's attic and who heard through a mutual friend that we might
be interested in buying them. Included in the stack were the first four issues of
F&SF, plus issues of Galaxy and Astounding from the early 1950s.
All were in excellent condition, and the purchase price averaged out to 45¢ per
issue. The fellow told Dick he had almost thrown them away, a fate that any number of
similar collections of long-time readers of SF have undoubtedly been unable to
escape. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Dave Rowe, Franklin, Indiana Oddly enough, back around '72 I happened to see
Sam Moskowitz and Don Wollheim greeting each other (at a London Circle/Globe meet, of
all places). Their attitudes 33 years after the exclusion act were still curt,
artificial, and icy.As much as fandom "owes" Sam for writing the
first history of fandom, his lack of reticence worries me. Although The Immortal
Storm started in Fantasy Commentator in 1945 before the McCarthy era, it
went on till '52 when the witch hunts were well underway. Didn't Sam realize that if
an overzealous petty politician had gotten wind that there were dirty little commies
involved in that kids-stuff SF, all hell would have broken loose? Surely it would
have been better to have halted the series until more liberal times prevailed. As
Arthur Clarke has pointed out, science fiction was about the only branch of
entertainment to escape the McCarthy witch hunts (mainly because at that time it was
generally thought to be beneath contempt), it's also fair to note another truth
Arthur pointed to -- if it ever happens again, SF will not be so lucky.{{ Let's hope we've reached the point that it never
happens again. Is it really fair to blame Moskowitz for not being intimidated by
McCarthy-ites, though? When he started his series, he could hardly have predicted
what was to occur, and part of the reason for the downfall of McCarthy was certain
individuals deciding not to be intimidated by him. As to whether Moskowitz and
Wollheim are on friendly terms, though, read on... }} I would like to make a few additions,
revisions and corrections to Kyle's presentation. First, Dave's statement: "But I
forgive him even though others haven't after all these years." Of the six who would
be barred from the First World Convention, Cyril Kornbluth and John B. Michel have
passed on and I was on a very friendly basis with both of them before their deaths,
Kornbluth appearing as a guest speaker for me at the Eastern Science Fiction
Association in 1958 ... Michel loaned me his mimeograph to put out my fan mag,
Different, dated December 1945.I don't know whatever became of Jack
Gillespie.Further, I regard Robert Lowndes as a
close friend that I had no compunction with helping him obtain a position with
Gernsback Publications when his Magazine of Horror collapsed. He has been over
to my house on several occasions for very friendly get togethers. He paid me for
consultation when he was editing the fantasy magazines.I have been on excellent terms with
Donald A. Wollheim ever since the forties, have visited him at his home and he has
graciously responded to my requests that he be a guest speaker at the Eastern Science
Fiction Association on a number of occasions, paying all his own expenses and
providing his own transportation. Just three days before writing this letter I
visited him at the Manhattan hospital where he is recuperating from a stroke suffered
in 1988. I am on a very friendly basis and have always been with his wife Elsie and
his daughter Betsy, both of whom are lovely people, and recently met Betsy's husband
Peter and her baby Zoe. Fred Pohl bought a dozen articles from me when he was
editing Worlds of Tomorrow.I regard myself as being on a very
friendly basis with Dave, his wife Ruth, and his daughter Kerry for many years, and I
wonder why he had to forgive me. After all, I did let him into the
convention!{{ Sam's letter goes on at great length from here (10
pages!) and in great detail about events leading up to that first WorldCon,
re-presenting his version of these events (as originally related in his book The
Immortal Storm) in refutation of Dave's version. Since there still, after 50
years, seems to be plenty of hard feelings left over about this incident, perhaps we
should present our stance on this still-controversial topic. Simply put, we
have no interest in re-opening a 50 year old feud; indeed, we had no idea that this
was still a touchy subject after all this time -- we saw Sam, Dave, Don Wollheim, Fred
Pohl, and others on a fan history panel at the Atlanta Worldcon, and everyone seemed
to be getting along just fine. In any event, what interests us about articles like
this is the fan history aspects; it's obvious from the mail we've received that most
fans have never seen, or even heard of, the Pamphlet. In our opinion, while it
is a bit of fannish history, it's had little effect on fandom outside the
region where it happened so many years ago. If it had any effect on Southern Fandom,
for example, it would be pretty hard to trace. We also don't know if it had an effect
on the fandoms outside the U.S. but we do feel it's an important bit of fan history
that deserved being revisited, fifty years after its transpiration. As for events
surrounding the Pamphlet and the First Worldcon, we suggest that readers acquire
The Immortal Storm, The Way the Future Was, The Futurians, and
other fan history references, and to make up their own minds as to what did or didn't
actually happen. }}{{ ed. note (2015): The 10-page letter was later published
in its entirety by one Sam's friends, Norm Metcalf of Boulder, Colorado. }} I've read about the exclusion of those
fans from the first Worldcon in two other publications -- Fred Pohl's The Way the
Future Was, and as Mr. Kyle states, Sam Moskowitz's The Immortal Storm. I
have to be amazed that there is still the controversy, the disputation, the anger,
and the hard feelings surrounding this event after fifty years. {{ Us too. }} In this later age, the fact that
there's further discussion and revelation makes me wonder how those feelings can last
after 50 years of what I thought would be resolution and patching-up. Feuding and
fannish politics seem harsh to many in my own circles today, but if that length of
time cannot let those involved forget or forgive, then our own conflicts are mild
indeed.- - - - - - - - - -
Janice Murray, Seattle, Washington I was fascinated by Mr. Kyle's article
about 1939 Worldcon politics. Gee, I had no idea the crap I went through with Norwescon
in 1980 had such a rich fannish historical precedent.{{ We've been through a few of those
ourselves. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Walt Willis, Donaghadee, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom Thank you for Mimosa 6. I hope you
know what you're doing, printing that article by Dave Kyle. {{ Apparently we didn't! }} It makes the Great
Exclusion Act as interestingly controversial as any of the great events in mundane
history. Many people think that history just sort of lies there, everything agreed on
and all the loose ends tidied up. But if you read different books on, say, the French
Revolution, you realise that controversy is still raging about every episode and
character. What is going to happen as a result of Dave's article is that you will get
an indignant and copiously documented rebuttal from Sam Moskowitz which you will feel
morally obligated to print; other readers will take sides and once again All Fandom Will
Be Plunged Into War. Oh well, it was nice knowing you.The whole fanzine was good, but to my
mind the article by Bruno Ogorelec was outstanding. His experiences are at once so
similar and so startlingly different from what is typical here, that one feels
simultaneously both sympathy and astonishment. And all that about the fan gene
descending the female line...incredible. It leaves me feeling that one would almost
believe Bruno if he told us that his country was really called Hugoslavia, after
Gernsback. Anyway, it was pretty nearly an ideal fanzine article. Congratulations.- - - - - - - - - -
Russell Chauvenet, Silver Spring, Maryland Thanx a lot for Mimosa 5 and 6.
It was especially nice to have 5 on hand while reading the locs in 6. The absolute
★ of ★★★ was Bruno Ogorelec. At my age I never expected to
read any fanzine article a tenth as gripping and fascinating as his Cautionary Tale.
As soon as I can find my father's old Serbian dictionary, I'm going to write him a
letter. I'm glad you decided to run Bruno
Ogorelec's article. I found it interesting, well done, and the allusions to
Dune amusing. Then it occurred to me that this wasn't written in the man's
native language...- - - - - - - - - -
David Palter, Toronto, Ontario, Canada I have seen letters from Bruno
Ogorelec in various fanzines before, and I had wondered how he had managed to become
an SF fan in Yugoslavia. Having not read the history of his discovery of the genre,
I must say that it is both stranger and more interesting than I had remotely expected.
Aside from the inherent oddities of the narrative itself, I must also remark on Bruno's
writing, which is excellent by any standard. This is even more impressive as a display
of his command of English. Of course, it is logical that he should have developed such
a knowledge of English, given the quantity of English-language SF he has read. Fandom
does have its educational side-effects, without a doubt.- - - - - - - - - -
Richard Brandt, El Paso, Texas Interesting fanhistory notes this issue
-- especially from Dave Kyle. Sam Moskowitz has been arguing heatedly and effectively
for the depth and validity of his research; the issue of how his biases affect his
conclusions, or indeed what he selects to present as history, is perhaps more at
issue.{{ Sam's book is undoubtedly influenced by his personal
recollections, so it is not unexpected that he would add his own spin to events he
chronicled, just as Dave has in his. }}Bruno's article is quite a tour-de-force;
the science fictional element is merely a thread to tie together the outré family
history and glimpses of life in an alien nation. His discovery of the story where "the
mountain opened up" didn't sound quite so stfnal to me, however. Why, our local paper
headline recently: "MT. SAINT HELEN'S TO OPEN FOR CLIMBERS."I wouldn't mind hearing more of Dick's
adventures in the coal seams {{ "Paradise" }}.
I'm in the fossil fuels industry myself, although my desk job doesn't provide any
fascinating experiences in the gas fields. Somehow, anecdotes about the office routine
don't stack up... Dave Kyle's "Great Exclusion Act of 1939"
suffers from the same fault he accuses Sam Moskowitz of showing in his The Immortal
Storm -- it is incomplete. What he doesn't mention, among other things, is that most
Futurians and Michelists didn't do much thinking for themselves; they just slavishly
followed the Communist party line. They were pro-Fascist from the time Germany and the
USSR signed a non-aggression pact and divided Poland until the Nazis attacked Russia.
And as far as the excisions from Kyle's booklet, let me say that as editor of the magazine
that published The Immortal Storm {{ ed. note:
The Immortal Storm was originally serialized in Fantasy
Commentator }}, I read these before publication and felt they added
little substance to the points Sam was making. (I re-read them again in Mimosa,
and see no reason to change my mind.) I can't help wondering why, if Kyle thinks they are
so important, he never wrote to me when the abbreviated version first appeared? Did it
take him 50 years to make up his mind?{{ Well, we weren't aware of any statute of limitations for
replying to a fanzine article, so it doesn't seem entirely fair to take Dave to task for
waiting until now to write his own account of those events. }}Sharon Farber's tales of medical school
{{ "Tales of Adventure and Medical Life, Part II" }}
were delightful, and I shall hand them over to my wife Alice (who happens to be a doctor)
for her enjoyment. I note that Sharon encountered patients for the first time in her third
year, which I think is late. Alice had in her freshman year a course titled "Introduction
to the Patient" and always told me she was glad contact with "the real world" started that
early.Finally, thanks for printing your experiences
with a cat in a motel {{ "Two-and-a-Half Months in a Hotel... With a
Cat" }} My wife and I are cat people, and once had a household containing two
Siamese and a Russian Blue, both now gone (as Sharon would say) to the Eternal ICU. Their
place is now taken by a cat who found us (as cats are so adept at doing), a big, affectionate
orange tiger male named Monty. When Monty can't snooze on our laps he does so beside my
typewriter, which he is doing now, and if he could read and write I am sure he would add a
few words of praise to Nicki for her enjoyable article.{{ We regret to report the saddest, cruelest transition in
this fanzine of transitions -- earlier this month we lost our cat Sesame to an unknown
illness. She went anorexic soon after Thanksgiving and wasted away before our eyes. We
still don't know what killed her, though we know lots of things it wasn't, among them
FeLV, FIV, or anything that would affect her blood chemistry. It seems ironic that she could
cope with a stressful cross-country move and three-month hotel stay so well, then yield to
something so subtle we still don't (and may never) know what it was. We miss her a lot.
Fortunately, we still have her companion cat that we adopted about a year ago from a vet
clinic. }} Mimosa was a good read, as expected.
Your stay at the motel sounds like the sort of thing that's interesting for a while but starts
palling fairly rapidly -- then entering the increasing-impatience-to-escape stage. Up to a
point, I don't mind new experiences, even when they're uncomfortable. But it's sort of like
playing host to other people's kids (who of course haven't been as well trained as one's own):
pleasant enough for short periods, followed by relief that they're not yours and will
eventually be their parents' sole charge once more.{{ Actually, the worst part about being in the hotel for so
long was not being able to cook, and having to eat out all the time. It was also difficult
for Nicki to job hunt with only a hotel phone number to give out. Most of the people who
called back thought she actually worked for the hotel, rather than being a guest
there. }}Roger Weddall's reaction {{ ed. note: in the Letters column }} to Sharon's
reminiscences prods me to assure him from a patient's point of view. No, all U.S. hospitals
are not like the one she's describing. They come in wild varieties.- - - - - - - - - -
Michael Waite, Ypsilanti, Michigan You should be settled into your new home
by now, which prompts me to ask, when is Mimosa going weekly? {{ Arrrrgh. }}I'm looking forward to more cutting
stories from the humorous scalpel of Ms. Farber. (Can you really hear the ocean through
a stethoscope?)- - - - - - - - - -
Buck Coulson, Hartford City, Indiana Sharon Farber has the best material again
this issue. Juanita says that once when she was visiting me in our hospital, a
candy-striper came in and unhooked the heart patient who shared the room with me, saying
"time for your (whatever)", and wheeled him out. A couple of minutes later, the head
nurse came running in, stared at the empty bed, and asked, "Where did he go?" Juanita
explained, and the nurse said that when the aide came back, she was to report to the
nurses' station immediately. Apparently, the aide hadn't mentioned to the nurses
about the (whatever -- bath, I think), and they had been watching the remote sensors.
Suddenly all of his went dead, and when the nurse came to check, the patient had
vanished.{{ We received several letters detailing hospital
anecdotes / horror stories like this. Maybe things are worse here than we
thought.. }} I really enjoyed the further adventures of
Sharon Farber... as someone mentioned, there is something about being a medical student
that guarantees a fund of stories. You also pulled quite a coup with an actual article
by Harry Warner, jr. {{ "The House on Summit
Avenue" }}, and not "just" a letter (which can be articles in
themselves).{{ We'll have another article by Harry next
issue. }}And of course, the Great Exclusion Act
gave a great peek into early fandom... and I didn't need a ladder to reach the second
story windows.- - - - - - - - - -
Patty Peters, Dublin, California Harry Warner, jr.'s article got me
wondering if non-fans would be more understanding of fan clutter (paper in sundry
forms) than of "crazy" people's rubberband, rag, hubcap, or lampshade collections.
If something did/does happen, who would place any value on most of the things we find
important enough to house? I know my parent's approach, because when they moved several
years ago, all my books were given to the library or to Goodwill. I don't even want to
consider how the moose collection would be interpreted.- - - - - - - - - -
Brad W. Foster, Irving, Texas I liked Harry's article. What with all
the huge amounts of obvious trash moving out of that house, my first question to Harry
was did he ever recall seeing a trash truck stop there while the couple still lived
there? I mean, it sounds like they simply never took out their trash -- maybe that's
why they wanted the flattened curb, to roll their trash out!- - - - - - - - - -
Terry Broome, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England I couldn't make much sense of Dave Kyle's
article, and the reprinted WARNING! is both embarrassing and tedious. From
what I could understand, a group of fans disagreed about the running of the first World
SF Convention, one group wanting the process to be democratic, the other oligarchic or
even autocratic. Reading it, I can see why Moskowitz edited it and said most of what was
left out was simple repetition, 'cos that's the way it came across to me. I can see why
Kyle wanted to present his side of the story, but unless your readership is particularly
interested in fanhistory or of the age to have been at that con, I wonder what the
article was supposed to be saying to younger, less fannishly introspective fans like
myself.{{ Perhaps the article can be considered a cautionary tale
about how events or ideas of one time can seem blown out of proportion to those who follow.
Struggling to keep one or more "undesirables" out of a convention or club can lead to hard
feelings and pain long after the oh-so-legitimate reasons have been forgotten or become
unimportant. Until you've ever been involved in the strangeness of fannish feuds or
parting of ways, you don't realize how something minor or transitory (to another) can
become a major bruhaha. }}So, a poor start after your wonderful
opening comments about moving and the Mimosa tree {{ "Notes from the Second Floor" }}, but I was soon cheered up
by Harry Warner jr,'s "The House on Summit Avenue". It is as marvelous and incredible
a story as his "When Fanac Was a Four Letter Word" for Geogre Bondar's Marital Rats
of Shaolin, a pure delight to read, in that gentle, smooth style of his that gives it
that Indian Summer type of feel I like so much.Nicki's closing comments about the move and
life in the hotel counter-pointed the opening comments, and worked very well. I wondered
how you could suffer the hotel for so long.{{ So do we. However, with a cholce of either that or the
street, you do adapt. We moved with such short notice, we had no time to find another
house until we actually got here. }}Finally, I loved the illustrations and the
cartoons. Teddy Harvia's stuff is usually very funny, but I also particularly liked Charlie
Williams's illustrations for Dick's and Sharon's pieces, and Steve Stiles's illos for
Harry's article. The Pamphlet of Kyle's from the 1939 Worldcon
is pretty interesting since so much of it appears to have been deleted from Moskowitz's
account. It's good that Dave Kyle has finally seen to its reprinting in full, though its
issues have long since become moot -- except for its warning about power-mongers among fans.
That seems as timeless as ever.{{ And as timely as ever, too. }}Roger Sims's and Howard DeVore's play {{ "The Definitive Story of Numbered Fandoms" }} astounds
me -- mostly because I haven't seen Howard write anything before except when minac and
deadlines were hounding him. This was a nice little play, superbly illustrated by Kurt
Erichsen, one of fandom's least known better artists.{{ Big-Hearted Howard has lots of humorously anecdotal fan
history tales he can tell, so we hope to see more by him here soon. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Ladislav Peška, Slaný, Czechoslovakia The article by Dave Kyle was interesting for
me, because of the name of one of the participants in "The First Eastern Science Fiction
Convention", William S. Sykora. Sykora is a typical Czech name. Would it be possible to
get to know more about this fan? The only other American fan with a typical Czech name
that I know about is Arthur Hlavaty.{{ There are numerous references to William Sykora in Harry
Warner's fanhistory of the 1940s, All Our Yesterdays. From it, we can deduce that
he was an active convention fan; other than that we're somewhat in the dark ourselves -- we
don't know if he's still active, or even alive for that matter. from what we've read, he
would be a good subject for an article of fanhistorical interest for a future issue of Mimosa. }}- - - - - - - - - -
P. L. Caruthers-Montgomery, Anniston, Alabama Excellent Teddy Harvia front and back covers!
He's doing wonders for the looks of fanzines everywhere -- not only with his inspired covers,
but with his witty cartoons as well.You're to be commended for your efforts to
bring to light historical material not only on American fandom, but also for filling us in
on the beginnings and early days of fandom in other parts of the world.{{ Thanks! Fan history has always interested us, as do
writings which demonstrate that SF fandom is more than Just an American
phenomenon. }} Well, the first of the northern Mimosas
bears a striking resemblance to its antebellum ancestors, so evidently the move hasn't hurt
your essential southern fannishness. Welcome to your new part of the country and I hope
we'll continue to see a regular series of attractively designed, nicely printed, and
interesting issues of your fanzine.{{ So do we. }}I knew the basic story of the 1939 Exclusion
Act, but I don't believe I'd ever seen Dave's manifesto before, so that adds flesh to a
previously skeletal piece of pivotal fanhistory. Whenever I get to thinking that maybe some
fans are taking fandom too seriously, I shall recall this article and recognize that
compared to the eo-fans we're all just simple dilettantes!I'm in complete agreement with you and Leigh
Edmonds on the importance of getting older fans to put their recollections into a more
permanent form. Since I spend at least part of the midwest cons I go to hanging around with
the likes of Sims and DeVore and Tucker and Hickman, I've heard many of their tall tales of
early fannish exploits, but unless somewhere like Mimosa encourages these elder
statesmen to either write articles or talk into tape recorders for later transcription, these
aspects of our history are going to be lost as we gradually lose those who were a part of
them. The SF Oral History Association is doing a good job of preserving current conventional
fannish history, but Larry Tucker can't go around to room parties and record people just
chatting about their own memories of fandom past. It's those parts of our very fragile
history that most desperately need preserving. I applaud the job Mimosa is doing in
this direction and hope you can get more Old Pharts to set their stories down for you. (Even
if many of them do centre on that Ellison fellow, may his dangerous visions increase.)- - - - - - - - - -
Skel, Stockport, Cheshire, England Mike Glicksohn {{ ed. note: in the Letters column }} has a point about the
prime purpose of a LoC being to return substantial amounts of egoboo to the editors and
contributors, but I think he misrepresents that bit about "making the letter-writer appear
clever or entertaining to readers of the subsequent issue...". I can't speak of a
letter-writer wanting to appear clever, which I think a poor motive, but I sometimes try to
write entertainingly, so perhaps I should explain why I take the trouble.Partly of course it's a compulsion, and I can
neither accept credit or blame for my endeavours in this regard, but there is another reason.
Making the extra effort to present the egoboo entertainingly is in itself egoboo for the
editor and contributor. The editor gets in effect a mini-contribution, something which will
hopefully improve the quality of the lettercol (which Mike quite rightly sees as the "lifeblood
of any good fanzine"). Mike surely would agree that letter-columns need to be carefully edited,
and that there are few things more tedious than enormously long LoCcols that are full of
dully-phrased LoCs doing nothing but doling out straight-forward egoboo to the editors and contributors.You ran excerpts from 20 letters in
Mimosa 6, presumably the ones that best suited your editorial requirements for that
issue's letter column. You also WAHFed a further 30, and looking at some of the names involved
it obviously wasn't because they didn't write interesting LoCs. You two got the editorial
egoboo from those last 30 LoCs. I presume you xeroxed the contributors' egoboo and forwarded it
to them, so they got their egoboo too. So from the point of view of yourselves and your
contributors, strictly from the standpoint of receiving your due egoboo, you have no need to
actually publish a letter column at all.How then would Mike explain this? Everybody's
got what they want from the LoCs, what he says they're mainly for, and yet there's no
justification for a LoCcol which he sees as "the lifeblood of any good fanzine". There's a logic
fault here somewhere. This program will not run. The lettercol therefore must achieve more than
Mike's stated objectives... and it does. For the editors, it is a feature, a composite
contribution in itself, serving the editor's purposes within that issue, and one of those purposes
must be to entertain the readers. Thus a LoC that the writer has taken some extra trouble over,
if it suits the editor's purposes, is therefore of more use to the editor, and hence more likely
to be used, than one that was dashed off dutifully.Another thing the editor wants to do is make as
many of his or her readers feel as involved with the zine as possible, because readers who feel
involved are more likely to respond in some way, and furthermore to respond more interestingly.
Without the letter column in Mimosa 6 you involve 14 people (that's the 13 people in
the contributors listing on page 14, plus Dave Rowe)... whereas with the letter column that
number was increased to 34.From the contributor's point of view, egoboo taken
in public is much more satisfying than the equivalent egoboo taken in private, via xeroxes of
unused LoCs. It's like actors taking a curtain call. We not only like to be appreciated, we like
to be seen to be appreciated. We're all at least that insecure. I mean, it would
be all very well for the Queen to take me aside at one of her garden parties and say, "Loved your
article in Mimosa 7", but how much more satisfying if she were to pull out a sword
and exclaim: "For services to fanac, arise Sir Skel!"- - - - - - - - - -
Leland Sapiro, Waco, Texas The current Mimosa is a true House of Horrors,
it being hard to decide which account was more frightening: Sharon Farber's, of the callousness
toward corpses at City Hospital; Dick Lynch's, of being nearly pulverized in Paradise; or Harry
Warner's, of chopped-up corpses being crated out from the House Next Door. Or maybe this last was
just plain ol' shit -- as hinted at by the editorial remark on Moving as a "cathartic
experience".On Sam Moskowitz's failure to reprint all of
the '39 pamphlet -- the stuff he left out made no more sense than the stuff he didn't. In any case,
the Futurians were not "excluded" in the sense of being unconditionally forbidden to enter --
but I'll refer you to Sam's book for more details.Sims' and DeVore's account failed to record how First
Fandom's Staples War terminated in the first Bob Tucker Death Hoax (yeah, there was a second a few
years later) which resulted in Bob's being left out of Astounding's "Brass Tacks" for a long,
long time. Talk about Grand Exclusion Acts!- - - - - - - - - -
Charlotte Proctor, Birmingham, Alabama Mimosa 6 arrived on Saturday and I immediately
piled up in bed, fortified with Diet Pepsi, and read it from cover to cover. There are not many
zines I do that with. I particularly enjoy following the tales of your lives. For some reason, I
am very interested tn your life and times, I guess because you feel like family to me, and I rejoice
in your good fortune and worry when things are in turmoil. Unlike family, however, you have never
hit me up for a loan!- - - - - - - - - -
We Also Heard From: Eve Ackerman; Harry Andruschak; Lon Atkins; Martha Beck; Tony Berry; Lloyd Biggle, jr.; Sheryl Birkhead; Pamela Boal; Lester Boutillier; Ned Brooks; "Gary Brown"; Mike Christie; Richard Dengrove; Sharon Farber; Wade Gilbreath; Jenny Glover; Chuch Harris; Lee Hoffman; Steve Hughes; Alan Hutchinson; Ben Indick; Dave Kyle; Guy Lillian III; Ethel Lindsay; LynC; Jeanne Mealy; Norm Metcalf; Curt Phillips; Berislav Pinjuh; Marilyn Pride; Sarah Prince; Peggy Ranson; Deb Roe; Yvonne Rousseau; Robert Runte; Julius Schwartz; Michael Sinclair; Diana Stein; Sheila Strickland; Alan J. Sullivan; David Thayer; R Laurraine Tutihasi; B. Ware; Roger Weddall. Thanks also to Sheryl Birkhead, for her help in printing, collating, and assembling both this issue and our previous issue. She has helped make the hardest part of fanzine publishing a lot less difficult. Illustrations by Sheryl Birkhead, Brad Foster, Teddy Harvia & Phil Tortorici, Kurt Erichsen, Diana Stein, David Haugh, and William Rotsler |
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