 {{  Well, maybe our mailbox didn't quite
overflow from all the responses to Mimosa 8, but it sure came close a time or
two! The increased size of the Letters column this time is one result. Thanks once
again to everybody who sent a letter, postcard, and/or Canadian and Australian stamps.
Postal workers in Germantown are starting to recognize Nicki whenever she has to go to
the service desk to claim mail that won't fit in the mailbox. Anyway and perhaps not
unexpectedly, Nicki's Opening Comments for Mimosa 8, "The Fannish Life", about
the changes in fanzines and science fiction fandom over the past twenty years prompted
quite a bit of comment from readers. First up are a selection of comments about
it...}} - - - - - - - - - -
Roger Waddington, Norton, Malton, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom Many thanks for Mimosa 8; I've
taken notice of the red-inked Last Chance reminder. The funny thing is, I don't
remember ever seeing that previous issue, and browsing through the lettercol for the
topics then, doesn't ring any bells. So either there's a black hole lurking behind my
letterbox, slurping up everything in sight, or else it's transferred its location to
that empty space between my ears.{{ We wish there was a good way of telling if
each issue will safely arrive at its intended destination. We've thought of including
a request in the masthead like: "If you don't get this fanzine, let us know," but
somehow, we don't think it'll work. }}But for one, if I had seen Skel in full
throttle on fanzines, fandom and their respective fates {{ ed. note: Skel's article "No Way to Stand Kansas" in Mimosa 7
and his letter that same issue served as partial inspiration of our Opening and
Closing Comments in Mimosa 8. }}, I'd certainly have added
my penn'orth of comment. Mainly to the effect that with the spread of hi-tech, home
computers and the rise of desktop publishing, it seems like the greatest opportunity
for fanzine fans since the invention of the mimeo. But so far, fandom seems to be
turning more in the direction of bulletin boards and electronic mailboxes, where the
only paper and ink you need is downloading to your own printer. Me, I'm still
traditional enough for honest-to-good¬ness fanzines; but then maybe I haven't grown
up any, the fan I was back in the sixties is still the fan I am today. Where
everything else has changed, I can still view fandom in the same light, read fanzines
with the same zest; and I wouldn't want that to change.{{ We can't help but agree; we also prefer the
'traditional' fanzine. We enjoy being able to think about our words and hone their
meaning (or even wipe them out entirely) before they get blasted to the universe.
And, for the most part, we like knowing who our audience is, rather than always
wondering who is 'listening in'. We also don't think much of the ephemeral nature of
electronic fanzines and bulletin boards. Somehow, we doubt that years later a fan
will say, "Oh, I ran across your old upload and enjoyed reading it." This is a
common occurrence when new people pick up old fanzines.. }} I've always had a problem responding to
good, well-written but essentially non-controversial fanzines. Mimosa usually
falls into that category, I'm afraid. I read it. I enjoy it immensely. I'm
entertained. I, sometimes, try to write LoCs -- but after saying I like this, really
like that, really really like the other, am Immensely Impressed by the next... well, I
begin to wonder first whether I'll be believed and second whether this rather
simple-minded list of "likes" is the kind of response you and your contributors
deserve. And what I think, usually, is that you deserve better -- so I give up.Or... when you do have something that strikes
a responsive chord, something I could go on at length about, it turns out to be
something I've already gone on at length about elsewhere -- and, depending on whether
it's something that's due to come out or something that's already come out, I'm
reluctant to either telegraph what I'm going to be saying elsewhere in your fanzine or
present it to you second hand, on account of this Thing I have against redundancy.There's an example of both of these things in
"The Fannish Life", your opening comments, Nicki. You list some of the problems you
see in the Worldcon and major regionals, as opposed to how things used to be, and add
"But, no one seems to mind." Well, actually, while I grant you it's been a few years,
I did have a piece in Defenestration called "What's Wrong With The Worldcon" in which
I at least tried to make it clear that I minded -- because so much of the additional
costs go to pay for whole tracks of programming which are of little or no interest to
a reading SF fan. I "minded" even though, I said, it had been some years since I'd
actually had to pay the exorbitant membership fees of the Worldcons and major regionals
-- because, on those occasions when I wasn't a guest of the convention, I "ghosted"
them. I "justified" this, I said, by virtue of the fact that I scrupulously refused
to try to get in to see any program items, even those that might be of interest to me;
I just hung out with friends at parties. In the letters column of the following issue,
Mike Glicksohn opined that, even under those circumstances, I still shouldn't attend
-- that I was, in fact, a "deadbeat", the last thing any of those conventions needed.
My immediate response was one of anger, but before I could formulate a reply which
might have Plunged All Fandom Into War, I realized -- with something of a shock -- that
Mike was perfectly correct. I mean, the folks who come to conventions for those
program items of little or no interest to reading SF fans have to pay the exorbitant
membership fees, even though those fees also pay for the program itens which are of
interest to reading SF fans, so if the convention has anything to attract me -- even
if it's just a bunch of my friends to hang out with -- I should pay (and grumble) just
like everyone else. So: If I can't afford to pay the membership fees, I don't go.It was right around that time that I started
swearing off Worldcons in favor of conventions like Corflu; at the former, you spend
at least a full day pushing through kids wearing Spock ears just trying to find out
who's in attendance, and count yourself lucky if you can (before the convention is
over) get together with more than a dozen fans you want to talk to. At Corflu, you
get a more-than-decent banquet and spend most of your time in pleasant converse with
twice, triple, quadruple that many who fall into that category. So Hell no, I
thought, I won't go.However, just about the time I started to feel
superior to the poor schlubs who were still hung up on attending world conventions,
those devious and manipulative "convention fans" come out of their smoke-filled rooms
with something really low and underhanded -- like making Walt and Madelaine Willis
fan guests of honor -- so as to make fans like myself want to attend their Worldcons
and swear off swearing off same. Boy. Those con fans. They'll get you every time.
Take my word on it.{{ At least something got you to come
back! Actually, we don't see 'problems' with conventions (including the Worldcon) as
much as changes that have happened since we first started attending them. We're not
really sure that increased attendance, by itself, is actually a problem at all, but as
attendances have risen, a lot of older fans have quit going. Unfortunately, though,
they are the only ones who can pass on fandom's traditions to the next generation.
And so, new and completely different 'traditions' (like all-night dances) seem to have
begun. We're glad there still are conventions like Midwestcon, where you can relive
what conventions were like decades ago, and Corflu & Ditto, which are doing a good job
of getting lapsed fanzine fans to 'pub their ish'. }}One thing that strikes me, though, with
respect to the on-going discussion of Skel's article in Mimosa 7 is that
you have fans on three continents (Australia, North America, Europe) involved in
expressing views on what "fandom" is, without any apparent acknowledgement that it is
in many important respects a substantially different thing on each continent. I for
one would like to know what Judith Hanna might have to say with regard to the
differences between Australian and British fanzine fandom, or what Avedon Carol sees
as the difference between U.S. and British fanzine fandom.{{ Well, all we can do is ask! How about it,
gang? }} I enjoyed Nicki's opening comments on
"The Fannish Life". How true, how true. Fandom and fanzines have grown and changed.
After my five-year sabbatical from comics fandom, I was overwhelmed by the changes
there. Instead of three or four comic book publishers, there are now dozens.
Fanzines have virtually disappeared from comics fandom. Most of them are now slick
magazines or newspapers. The only holdouts are apazines in comics-oriented apas.A lot of the fans from the 60s and 70s
have gone on to publish their own comic books in the way they want to see them.
That's great.But I've also seen "fandoms" grow up in
other hobbies. I currently get a pro wrestling fanzine (there are a number of them
and they resemble the "old style" fanzines of the 60s). Baseball and other sports
cards are big business now, but there are many fanzines in that genre.And to top it off, I was watching
Good Morning America on ABC last week and there was a feature on monster movies.
The reporter talked about the "fanzines" being produced by monster hobbiests. He
didn't even define what a fanzine was, and assumed everyone knew.As a comics fan, I'm much more
comfortable buying comics in public and talking about my hobby with friends than I
was 10-15 years ago. But I haven't decided if I've changed with age or the hobby of
comic book collecting has gotten some respectability now and it's easier to admit.
Maybe I'll never know.- - - - - - - - - -
Harry Bond, London, United Kingdom Your editorial, Nicki, is yet another
fanzine piece that makes me wonder what I'm doing in 1990 fandom, when my place is so
obviously in 1975. I'm in my twenties and in college; I can't hardly afford to go to
no conventions (and to purchase good grammar is far beyond my means); the last time I
saw a good restaurant from the inside was when my parents took pity on my
starvation-racked body and bought me a meal... you get the picture. In fannish fandom
I get the impression that I'm looked on as a kind of aberration. As a student of
fanhistory and its ups and downs, I know that the wheel will turn once more... but
waiting for it to do so can be all too tedious.{{ Nicki responds: I guess I'm amazed how many
people misunderstood my essay about fannish life and how 'we' grew up. I wasn't
talking about fandom as a whole -- just about the group of fans who started in fandom
when we did. We matured and are now (mostly) successful adults with families. We're
still in fandom, and often now running the conventions. And now it's us that are
making the traditions! }}Dave Kyle's piece {{ "Chicon Ho!" }} vies for the title of
best in the issue, which, seeing that Harry Warner is a contributor, is quite an odd
thing to say. Perhaps most amazing, though, was to discover at the close of the
article that Dave professes to have written it from memory, and wonders whether any
vintage fmz might carry more details! "Chicon Ho!" reminded me of a visit I
paid a couple of years back to Cliff Kornoelje, known to First Fandom as 'Jack Darrow'.
First active as a letterhack to magazines in the Gernsback era, he attended the First
Worldcon in New York, came back to Chicago, and totally disappeared from fandom within
a year. He's mentioned early on in the Moskowitz and Warner histories, as one of the
most prominent fans, and then vanishes in both cases without a trace.I was curious how someone as absorbed as he
was could gafiate so thoroughly. I found the name Kornoelje listed in the Chicago
phone book, so I decided to plunge ahead and give him a call. To my surprise, he was
pleased to hear from me and asked me to drop over for a visit.I found out that although he stopped being an
active fan about the time he went into the service, he still reads SF extensively and
even maintained his collection of prozines going back to the first Amazing. He
recounted visits he made to Robert Bloch in Wisconsin, and a brief meeting with
Stanley Weinbaum at a Chicago layover. He talked about going to the `33 World's Fair
with Jack Williamson, and visits to the staff of Weird Tales then
headquartered in Chicago. I came to realize that his lack of activity was basically
due to his rather shy nature; he was always pleasant and recalled those early days
with fondness. After his active days, he stayed in touch with other fan friends of
the era, some of whom became pros such as the Binder brothers.All too often, some fans turn against fandom
with an unwarranted bitterness, especially when turning pro. I was glad to find that
here was someone whose memories were pleasant, and was willing to share them with
someone who wasn't even born until a generation after his fan activity.- - - - - - - - - -
Mike Glicksohn, Toronto, Ontario, Canada I guess I'm not a typical fan, at least
according to Nicki's description. I don't have kids, I do continue to read science
fiction, and lately I've found my finances have regressed to my earlier student days
necessitating finding roommates at conventions and even skipping meals and surviving
on consuite munchies on occasions. All necessitated, of course, by being owned by a
mortgage. I suspect that in the next two years I'll attend fewer conventions than in
any two year period since I discovered fandom in the middle 60s. But I should have a
hell of a lot of equity when the time has elapsed.Dave's fanhistorical piece was
fascinating. I imagine most fans have experienced a less severe situation similar to
the one Dave describes (I know I've written at least two articles about breakdowns on
the way to cons although I've got no real idea where they were actually published) but
his must certainly rate as archetypal and has the additional attraction of dealing
with a time and culture most of us have no personal experience with. No interstates?
Tires for $3? What is this, some sort of science fiction? This sort of material
doesn't appear in many places and is just the sort of thing Mimosa will end up
being famous for because it fills in background of fan history.{{ Thanks. Our breakdown-on-the-way-to-a-convention
story was published way back in the very first Mimosa ("Half the Fun Is Getting
There"). Dick says he still has nightmares about it. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Mark Manning, Seattle, Washington Dave Kyle's "Chicon Ho!" brings to mind
that Art Widner's tribute to the Skylark of Foo¬Foo, which took Art and friends to
Chicon, was reprinted in the most recent Westercon program book. Perhaps the fannish
trip report won't do anymore; now we need reports featuring the crummy-but-named cars
of fandom's Oldovician Age.{{ What age was that again? Anyway, one of the
many prerequisites to Trufandom seems to be having once owned a miserable beat-up old
car that kept breaking down at inopportune times, then speaking or writing
nostalgically about it years later. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Pat Molloy, Huntsville, Alabama All of the articles in Mimosa 8
were fun reading, but I most enjoyed Dave Kyle's "Chicon Ho!". This may be at least
in part due to the fact that this was the only article that came close to covering a
fannish topic -- a road trip to and from the Worldcon. All the other stories, while
thoroughly enjoyable, were basically on non-fannish topics, although written with a
distinctively fannish twist (especially Harry Warner Jr.'s "Now You See Them...").{{ Our somewhat broader view of the definition
of "fannish" is: "anything that fans do". Don't forget, we're interested in preserving
bits of fan history; we think that activities of fans who may (or may not) someday
become latter-day Bob Tuckers (or Claude Deglers, for that matter) is worth
chronicling. }}"Chicon Ho!" made me wonder if there are
any good first-hand accounts of train trips to conventions in times past. I would
imagine a lot more fans travelled by train in those days than they do now. I have even
heard mention of fans hopping freight trains to get to cons in days past. Being an
active member of rail fandom as well, this aspect of fannish history would really
interest me.{{ Us too; maybe your letter will prod somebody
into sending us one to publish (seems to us Bob Tucker was derailed on his way to a
Kubla Khan once, wasn't he?). Dick just recently rode Amtrak seventeen hours one-way
to Chicago to go to Ditto, the fanzine fans' convention; he says the trip wasn't all
that epic, but on the other hand, maybe that's not such a bad
thing. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Pamela Boal, Wantage, Oxon, United Kingdom I really enjoyed Harry Warner's everyday
observations carried humourously into the realm of fantastic speculation, "Now You See
Them..." Even though Harry is an active contributor to many of the zines I receive
(at least in the letter columns), I seldom see such fun pieces from him, or anyone
else. Those I do see are from older fans such as Skel, Kench, and Jeeves. Are the
majority of those capable of writing such items too busy with professional writing?
Does younger fandom lack a sense of fun?{{ [a] We Hope Not, and [b] Your Guess Is As
Good As Ours. And since we're always in need of good first-person anecdotal articles
for Mimosa, we hope to hear from some of the Older Fans you refer to (and, for
that matter, from younger fans too). }} I must say it's a long time since I
read so much sense in an opening editorial. I first got into fandom way back in 1948
(having been an avid reader and collector since the early thirties), and I agree that
fandom has changed from its magazine oriented format -- heck, that's all there was in
the early days. We needed to widen our horizons -- but sadly it has brought in this
bickering between the fringes as to 'the true way'. I agree with you that "the hard
SF is difficult to find" and also suspect you're right in saying the glut of fantasy
is mainly read by teens and twenties. Any competent writer can churn out a saga of
Dark Lords against beautiful princesses with strange talents -- it needs a bit more to
write true hardcore SF.{{ There certainly is a lot of bickering about
'the true way' in fandom. In a recent media letterzine Nicki is involved in, the
editor was wondering if the history of fandom (in this case media fandom and its
history of published fan fiction) would ever be written. Nicki is debating if she
should point out that a history of at least one fandom, SF fandom, has been and is
continuing to be written. }}Nice to see the Harry Warner reprint.
If anyone ever deserved to enter the Fannish Hall of Fame, 'tis he. I also enjoyed
the John Berry item {{
"The Amazing
Centrifugal Motion of Spinning Molybdenum Disulphide During the Summer
Solstice" }}. The idea of a fingerprint expert in aqua gear taking
fingerprints off a submerged vehicle boggles the imagination. Each piece in the issue
was highly readable without stirring me to praise or howl in horror at any specific
parts.{{ A lot of readers have commented that
Mimosa, while enjoyable, is difficult to comment on. We're not sure what, if
anything, to do about it. We do pass on all comments (whether or not they are used in
the letters column) to our contributors, so we appreciate and look forward to hearing
from everybody who receives this fanzine -- even if it's just a 20-word
postcard. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Harry Warner, Jr., Hagerstown, Maryland I appreciated very much the place of
honor you gave my article reprint and Steve Stiles's appropriate illustrations for it.
Despite all the stuff I've had published in fanzines down through the years,
comparatively few items have had artwork commissioned for them like this one. And I
thought Sheryl Birkhead's covers were splendid, more massive than most of her artwork
and a promise of even better things to come from her.The Irish John Berry's contribution is
the closest he has come in recent years to recapturing the exact flavor of the fanzine
material he was writing back in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of his recent fanzine
material has been just as well done as ever, but it has been a little different
somehow from that of Goon Berry. He is back in the old groove now, whether by
accident or intention.- - - - - - - - - -
Buck Coulson, Hartford City, Indiana I dunno, Nicki; you must know a higher
class of fan than I do. My friends don't wear designer clothes or "dine out at good
restaurants". Ethnic restaurants, yes, but not necessarily what is considered "good"
by the general public. They also still read science fiction, but then of course a lot
of our friends are under 35. (That's a change; our fan friends used to be our
age. Now most of them are younger...) There is somewhat of a gender gap, though.
At Rivercon, Leah Smith was talking about getting the younger group into "real fandom"
as opposed to the kids who watch the movies and sit in on the gaming. "We're here in
a room party, and I'm the youngest person in the room and I'm 31!" You don't see many
teenagers or people in their twenties at room parties these days, though I hadn't
noticed it until Leah mentioned it. Probably because from the viewpoint of age 62,
age 31 seems pretty young, and one doesn't notice that the fans one became acquainted
with while they were in high school are fully adult now, and complaining about the
younger generation.Good humorous article by Sharon Farber
{{ "Tales of Adventure and Medical Life,
Part IV" }}. Our friend Kay Anderson, who worked for a west coast
physician for a time, said that initially she wondered what 'GOK' on the medical
records meant. Eventually she discovered that it was short for 'God Only Knows',
which seemed to be one of the more common afflictions.{{ What's this about ethnic restaurants not
being good?! Anyway, we have Part 5 of Sharon's "Medical Life" series in hand,
but unfortunately due to space and time considerations it won't appear until our next
issue. We continue to be amazed by the number of humorous and surrealistic episodes
that a medical career produces. }} I always enjoy Sharon Farber's articles
on her hospital internship. Having been through the system myself (Royal Perth
Hospital, 1983), I find it interesting to note that the same things, the same slang,
the same values, attitudes, and aspirations hold true here in Australia as in the USA,
Great Britain, in fact I suspect anywhere in the world which has big, busy hospitals.
Maybe it's like the army, where the poor foot soldier always has and always will be
at the bottom of the big heap -- "(s)He's the Universal Intern, and (s)he really is
to blame."When I went through, we had turkeys
(gomers) to slough (turf) on to other teams in just the same way as she describes.
Samuel Shem's The House of God was unofficial required reading. Of course, we
didn't have the shootings, stabbings, and drug addicts that I guess you see in a big
U.S. hospital, but still the day contained only 24 hours like any other country's, and
we were just as mortal in our needs for food and sleep as any human being the world
over.Abbreviations in the case notes had
always been a glaring fact of life to which the Powers That Be turned a blind eye. As
a result, doctors all had to pick up their peculiar meanings on the 'black market'
(so to speak), which led to its own problems. For example, common convention stated
that 'spleeno' meant 'no spleen felt'. It was two years before I realized that on
writing 'HSo' I had not been indicating 'normal heart sounds' but 'no heart
sounds'.I could have written 'HS NAD', where
'NAD' means 'normal'. 'NAD' is a time-honoured universal abbreviation that is
interesting for two reasons -- firstly it's employed verbally even though it actually
takes longer to say than 'normal', and secondly, no one can agree on what it stands
for. 'No Abnormality Detected' is one version; 'No Apparent Disorder' is another.
Rumour has it that it really stands for 'Not Actually Done', although perhaps it
should be 'Need Another Doctor'.Similarly, in the masses of blood tests
ordered to catch diagnoses like a drift net catches tuna, common ones were urea and
electrolytes (U+E) and liver function tests (LFT). But when in the notes a doctor
requested 'LFT U+E' I fancied that (s)he was in fact asking for “Life, The Universe,
and Everything”.Slang and abbreviations are things the
public can appreciate, even if they're not conversant with their meanings. What they
can't understand but which Samuel Shem depicted uniquely is that within the four walls
of the hospital, the laws of reality cease to function. So, when as a medical student
I asked the intern who was taking a sample, "Shouldn't you be using a charcoal swab
for that, otherwise you won't grow anything on it?" and he replied, "It doesn't matter,
I probably won't pick up anything anyway," I thought his reasoning showed faulty logic,
but later as an intern myself it made perfect sense. Likewise, "Shouldn't you give
that local anaesthetic time to work first?" "No. It never makes any dif¬ference
anyway." Before and even after my years in hospital, such reasoning seemed
nonsensical, except when I remind myself in hindsight that hospitals are officially
designated Non-Socratic Zones.The only reason I stuck with the
horrors of internship was that it was the sole gateway into a monopoly profession, as
crass as that may seem. What worries me is that normal people go into hospitals fully
expecting that they're there for the good of their health, when in truth they've
entered another dimension of reality in which they exist only as hurdles in an
obstacle course whose purpose is to train young doctors in the art of staying alive
and sane whilst learning how not to kill and maim along the way. I have a medical question for you that
has bothered me from time to time. In the August 1990 Smithsonian magazine,
an article about Hugo Gernsback says that when Hugo was a boy, he read a book by
Percival Lowell suggesting that alien worlds might support intelligent life: "The
notion had a profound effect on the 10-year old Hugo: he promptly fell into a
delirium. For two days he thrashed about in the throes of a brain fever ... All the
while, he babbled wildly about Martians and their weird inventions." I had previously
encountered the term 'brain fever' only in 19th century fiction, where it seemed to
have whatever symptoms the author found convenient, especially when a character had to
die tragically and nobly. I wonder if there was a real disease known as brain fever
back then, and if so, what it was. Can Sharon Farber, or anyone else, enlighten me
before unsatisfied curiosity drives me into the throes of a brain fever and I waste
away, tragically but nobly?{{ We've heard that Brain Fever is a disease
that causes people to spend hundreds of dollars each year publishing and mailing
their fanzine. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Leland Sapiro, Lake Charles, Louisiana By contrast with issue #6, your
current number emphasizes terror instead of horror -- what with Sharon Farber on the
interns' box-coffin humor (as opposed to their previously recorded behavior with
corpses) and Harry Warner on the malicious convergence of things from Outside
(contrasted to his earlier account of bodies transported from next door). As to which
is which, to quote Pat Hodgell's "Gothic Novel in Transition" {{ ed. note: from the current issue of Leland's fanzine
Riverside Quarterly " }}.The difference between terror and horror, as Devendra Varma puts it, is "the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.” Terror creates "an intangible atmosphere of spiritual psychic dread"; horror occurs when the source of terror reveals itself in all its uncompromising hideousness... Always we keep in mind Coleridge's
lines (I have to quote from memory): "like one who on a lonesome
road doth walk in fear and dread; And having once looked back, walks on and turns no
more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him
tread."It's terror if you don't look back and
horror if you do. In any case, Mimosa is fright magazine number one.{{ Thanks, we think... }}On "Chicon Ho!", I can't sympathize
with those four Chicon fans after learning how they took advantage of poor Elmer
Perdue. 'Poor' is meant in both figurative and literal senses, since I'm sure Elmer's
income was no greater than that of his travelling companions, and I'm equally sure
they never paid him back. Fer shame, fellers! The main comment hook for
Mimosa #8 is in Dick's closing comments {{ "A
Tennessee Yankee in Prince George's County" }}, where he talks about the
"classic" WSFA Journals of the '60s and how WSFA now seems to be more convention
oriented than it was in those days (when it was supposedly more fanzine oriented
because an impressive fanzine was coming out in the club's name). Well, actually,
The WSFA Journal of that period started up after the club had recovered from
Discon I, which fans who were also WSFAns (including Evans and Pavlat, who compiled a
fanzine index) got to put on after several failed bids. It might also be noted that
Disclave started running on a regular basis in 1958, so the club's being convention
oriented is nothing new.Back to TWJ, as it was known
then; the first issue is dated March 1965, with Don Miller as editor and Dick Eney as
publisher. Maybe it was Eney's fault, but he dropped out by the third issue, so the
classical TWJ was mainly a product of the late Don Miller, and a source of
considerable aggravation to the club. At one point, we had to double the dues (from
$4/year to $8/year) to support Don's publishing habit. At another, Vaughn Bodé
offered us "Sunspot" if we would publish it, and the club debated the issue and
refused to authorize the extra money (not all that much) which would have been
required.This is not to say that they didn't
really like Bodé's story, but under Miller, The WSFA Journal had ceased
to be a clubzine and had become (one is almost tempted to say "metastasized") a
genzine funded by the club and driven by Don Miller's considerable energy. Was there
other support from the club? Well, yes, but as individuals. Eventually Dolly and I
became coeditors of sorts, writing reviews, soliciting material, cutting art on
stencils, and so forth, but Don held on to the publishing end (publishing was what he
liked to do) and in the end he had the last word, Dolly's advice on layout to the
contrary, notwithstanding.What eventually stopped him was an
anal retentive desire to publish everything he received (well, not everything;
everything good, of which he eventually had a surfeit) which led to larger and larger
issues, published at longer and longer intervals, until eventually he collated and put
out the 134-page '71 Disclave issue at the '72 Disclave. The cover says it was #76,
and it was bound with blue tape because no staple gun could be found that would handle
it, but it was the last. TWJ #78 had come out for August-September '71,
and while there was subsequently a scattering of Sons of TWJ, gamezines, and
little miscellaneous pamphlets, Don was having health problems and the club was tired
of pubbing his ish.Besides, energy was flowing to
conventions with the failed bid for '71 and the successful bid for '74. Jay Haldeman,
who was then WSFA's President and Chair of Discon II, moved to Florida in late '73, so
as Vice President I stepped up, and the first question from the floor was: "Are we
going to have a Disclave this year?" Not being heavily committed to Discon (or the
now moribund WSFA Journal), my answer was yes.The point is not that the club wasn't
willing to go on with The WSFA Journal, which in its present incarnation is
pretty similar to what Miller and Eney started out with, but that you need a very
special sort of person for the job. Other WSFAns who put out fanzines that come
easily to mind include Avedon Carol with Blatant, Dan Joy and Somtow
Sucharitkul with Fanny Hill, and Jack Chalker's Mirage, none of which
could be considered clubzines. Currently, the WFSA Press operates in conjunction with
Disclave, publishing a small book from the current year's Guest of Honor, so the
publishing impulse is not dead, only diverted (or maybe perverted) to making a small
profit for the club.What sort of special person? Well, in
many ways Don Miller was a nerd. His idea of the perfect fanzine was no typos and no
white spaces, and he was the first person to make me aware that faneds might not
always be brilliant, scintillating people. Don married an Englishwoman, and used to
spend his summer vacations in England, visiting inlaws, I would imagine. What did
Mrs. Miller think of his hobby, which she had to regard as an obsessive-compulsive
waste of time? When we visited their home, she was always very gracious, but after
Don died, she sold his collections of books, magazines, and fanzines (which was
enormous) for scrap paper and went back to England. This (selling the collection),
in spite of offers from Bob Madle and others which must have amounted to a
considerable piece of change.That should do for now; as the poet
says: "Ask not for whom the club zines, it zines for thee." The rest of your issue
is splendid, and you are encouraged to continue.- - - - - - - - - -
Brad W. Foster, Irving, Texas I hadn't really bothered to try and
figure out why before (if it ain't broke, why fix it?), but a couple of locs this
issue made it clear that it is this decline in general, article-related zines that
makes it seem the 'fanzine' is dying off. I don't get anywhere near as many zines as
I did a few years back, probably due to the reduced amount of artwork I have had time
to draw and distribute recently, but I do find that many of the zines I get are of the
quick-flip variety, filled with things of no interest to me.{{ We have no qualms about trading Mimosa
for clubzines because each issue we sent to a SF club will likely be read by several
people, not just one. Not only does that give wider exposure to the fan writers and
artists who contribute to Mimosa, once in a while we acquire a continuing
letter of comment writer in the process. }} The idea that legendary fanzines like
Hyphen and Le Zombie are no longer being published isn't really valid.
It is only hindsight that gives zines a legendary status and I'm sure that there are
zines around to which fans in the future will accord legendary status. I suspect that
they won't be our sort of fanzines, but that's the nature of evolution. In Australia,
the Melbourne New Wave of fanzines have a lot that will give them legendary status --
I suspect. They have small circulations and they cater to the needs of the current
Melbourne milieu -- perfect ingredients for legendary status as seen with zines like
Hyphen and Le Zombie.- - - - - - - - - -
Richard Gilliam, Tampa, Florida My observation is that there are far
more, not fewer, fanzines being published today than in any previous era. There are
fewer traditional fanzines, such as Mimosa, but then again what we consider a
traditional fanzine today is much different from what was considered a traditional
fanzine fifty years ago.Fanzine history breaks down into three
periods. The Founding Father period goes back to those serious and constructive days
of the thirties and forties. Virtually all of the new SF being published was centered
in a very few pulp magazine titles. Most fans read the majority of what was published.
This shared body of experience allowed fanzines of the era to concentrate on the
relatively few authors in the field.The second period is the Baby Boom
period. Here fandom became a primary fanzine topic, much to the outrage of serious
and constructive fandom. The boom in digest-sized SF magazines of the fifties, along
with the discovery by paperback publishers that there was a market for science fiction,
both expanded and shifted the shared body of fannish experience away from the
published SF toward fandom itself.Lee Hoffman, whose zines pioneered that
era, once commented to me, "We were the Trekkies of our period. The serious and
constructive fans complained we were ruining fandom, writing about other fans and
about conventions. We didn't respect the traditions of fandom, so they said." What
we currently view as a traditional fanzine far more resembles Lee's efforts of the
fifties, than those of the Founding Father era.The third period is the Media period,
clearly marked as having begun in 1969 when the first Star Trek zines began
being published following the cancellation of the television series. Again, this is
tied to an expanding and shifting of the shared body of experience, as well as to the
rapid growth of fandom.By the seventies, even those few fans
who had not seen Star Trek in its original run, had repeatedly been exposed to
it in syndication. Interest in publishing SF exploded following Star Wars
(1977) to where we reached a point that not even the most diligent SF fan could keep
up with all the new written SF.The most frequently shared experiences
were now motion pictures. In the 1980s, most fans saw Blade Runner,
E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is not true of the written
works of the era. The shared experience of readers of science fiction became greatly
diluted. Hobbit and elf fandom rarely picked up Niven and Pournelle, and no one much
read cyberpunk except aficionados and academics.What began in the Baby Boom era and
coalesced in the Media era was fragmentation and crossover. Pick up most any zine
today, especially clubzines, and you'll find a significant portion discussing motion
pictures or television.Thankfully, we still have Mimosa and
zines like it. In these days of diversity I find it best to take an ecumenical view
of fandom. My values were much formed in the sixties when "do your own thing in your
own time" was the motto of the era. My personal interests may lie with traditional
fandom and traditional fanzines, but I am willing to count the media zines as a valid
portion of the canon of accumulated fannish knowledge.{{ So that's why all those Space
1999 fanzines kept turning up in our mailbox! Seriously, thanks for your views
on the evolution of fanzines, and for the kind words about this particular fanzine.
We don't dispute your viewpoint that SF-in-the-media has profoundly affected the
intent newer fan publishers and as a result the content of their fanzines. We are
interested, though, in what people perceive as the 'future' of fanzines, and whether
or not today's rash of mediazines is it. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Lloyd Penney, Brampton, Ontario, Canada I certainly agree with Joseph Nicholas
{{ ed. note: from the letters
column }} when he says that fanzine fandom has changed along with the rest
of fandom. Fanzines were the connection between distant fans; now, it's just one of
the many activities fandom encompasses. Fanzine fandom would have more a place in
fandom as a whole if it was still necessary as a tool to communicate. It will be
interesting to see how fanzines flourish in eastern Europe -- there are plenty of fans
who can now freely publish, but even though they have no travel restrictions to worry
about, they have little money to travel to see one another.. Many people comment on the dearth of
fanzines compared to earlier years. I still see plenty of them around, and receive a
good number. There are also comments about legendary fanzines like Hyphen and
Le Zombie, zines I've never seen. Can anyone quantify what made those fanzines
so memorable? What did they consist of, and what made the writing so fannish? If we
can define this essence of a legendary fanzine, perhaps we can create a few of our own.
I suspect that an attempt would be futile, should we be able to answer any of those
questions -- even well-produced zines with fannish contents are raked over the coals
as being inadequate or even incompetent, given the negative way fans treat one
another.At the end, fanzine fandom seems alive
and well to me, but as Dick says, it does not thrive. Rather than simply bemoan its
demise, how do we revitalize it? I ask the questions, but I don't have ready answers.
Does anybody?{{ Not that we're aware of. On the other
hand... }}- - - - - - - - - -
David Thayer, Euless, Texas The continuing discussion of the
impending death of fanzine fandom is becoming tiresome. It reminds me of the
character in Pollyanna who derives more pleasure in planning her own funeral
than in living. Get a life!{{ Okay, Okay, we will.
Honest! }}- - - - - - - - - -
Richard Brandt, El Paso, Texas Thanks for Mimosa 8 (hey,
there's that cat on the cover again). I was especially pleased by Teddy Harvia's
lead-off art for my courtroom reminiscenses {{ "Five
Years Before the Bench" }}. It's a deliciously apt illustration of one
of the more alarming incidents therein.Dave Kyle's Chicon story reminds me
how fortunate I've been on my fannish road trips, in spite of driving across the
breadth of Texas annually since 1985, and one marathon trek from El Paso to Baltimore
and back. Of course, I had a blowout while driving Poul and Karen Anderson to dinner,
which is its own brand of embarrassment. I'm surprised they let me drive them into
Mexico two nights later in the same car...I ran into Roy Tackett and Len Moffatt
at Bubonicon this weekend. They were considering the theory that fanzine fans, who
originated fandom in its humble beginnings, looked around one day and discovered that
nobody knew who they were, so they created a place where they could hang out with only
the people who knew them and be BNFs again. (Hey, if this philosophy appeals to you,
have I got a deal for you...) Be that as it may, it's clear that the main body of
fandom has drifted away from the center; either that, or fabulous fannish fanzine
fandom is no longer there.While one waxes enthused over the
occasional appearance in the mailbox of a zine like Trapdoor (or Mimosa),
one does indeed wonder how we'll replenish the ranks of younger faces and ensure the
continued survival of fandom as we knew it. Maybe from the United Kingdom... Here in
the States, though, the faces one recognizes tend to be the old familiar faces, some
of whom drop out of sight for a few years and resurface to the grateful welcome of the
old crowd. Even a rosy-cheeked lad like myself fears he will awaken some morning
quite soon and discover he is an Old Fart.Of course, at the same time we bemoan
the scarcity of new blood, we often view with alarm the barbarian hordes at the gates.
When suggesting some area fans who might attend Corflu for the first time, I'm
reminded that they might not feel, well, comfortable trying to fit in with this group
of folks who already know each other and share a body of tradition (and gossip) that
must be obscure and baffling to the newcomer. True enough, and not necessarily an
elitist assumption, but there's plenty of times I've belonged to that band of outsiders
myself. (Why, a few years ago some might have questioned my credentials to attend a
Corflu, and now some folks are asking me to hold one...) This time my attention was caught most
by Todd Mason's letter concerning the US's forgotten socialist history. I have no
background in political science either (assuming that politics can actually be said to
be "scientific"; the terminology is very Marxian!), but his conclusions seem pretty
accurate to me, and I think point towards the reasons why this history is so overlooked.
The frontier, he says, "makes a hell of a mythos", because most citizens "cherish
romanticised notions of individualism"; but he could have just as easily mentioned
several other examples from the general body of the US's national myths. The notion
of the USA as a land of equal opportunity, for instance, from which the 'American
Dream' of limitless success is derived. The idea of the War of Independence as a
revolution of egalitarians against an absolute monarchy, for another. Yet, as such
revisionist histories as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States
and Peter Carroll's and David Noble's The Free And The Unfree show, if these
beliefs were ever true then they were so only for limited groups of people and for
limited periods of time -- but it is because they suit the ideology of the ruling
class that these beliefs have been elevated to the status of unquestionable truths and
deemed to be held by all.I should hasten to add that this
concept of a set of 'national myths' is not unique to the United States; similar
corpuses of belief are held by the peoples of other nations, and help to give both
unity and identity to their culture and society. In Britain, for example, we have the
notion of the English rural idyll, and the factually evasive heritage industry to
which it has recently given rise. Here, too we elevate beliefs and ideas that were
only true of limited groups of people for limited periods of time to the status of
unquestionable truths, ignore or downplay the evidence of movements and events that
contradict them, and sometimes falsify the past entirely -- as in much of the nonsense
churned out during the past year's fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the Dunkirk
evacuation and the Battle of Britain. (For example, the Dunkirk evacuation is often
acclaimed as a miraculous triumph when it was clearly the disasterous end of an
ill-led and under-armed expeditionary force, and its execution is usually ascribed to
a fleet of heroic 'little ships' without which tens of thousands of British soldiers
would have been taken prisoner, when in fact the majority of them were evacuated by
navy cruisers and frigates from the Dunkirk mole at a rate of 40,000 a night. And I
could probably bore you rigid with the blunders and stupidities committed by both
sides during the Battle of Britain...) How these national myths are created in the
first place, and why they come to be accepted as the standard, consensual view of the
past, is intimately bound up with the question of who writes the nation's history, for
what audience, and from which perspective.This is not a matter of censorship:
simply that the more a particular view is repeated, the more widely accepted that
interpretation of the past becomes and so the more marginalised the opinions of those
who disagree with it. Thus, for example, the pushing out of sight of the US's
socialist history, because the nation's consensual, 'official' histories are written
to reflect the views of a wealthy, white, male elite, who in Revolutionary times owned
land and slaves and whose modern successors own stocks and oil wells. As Todd Mason
remarks, the US may not have "formal heriditary class distinctions" but it does have
"practical, informal ones" built on money and the necessity of remaining in office --
which means that any history text which fails to justify this distinction and/or
promote the national myths favoured by the ruling class will have a fairly thin time.
This is true of Britain as well -- indeed, arguments over the way history should be
taught in schools have been in train here ever since the fifties, centred around two
main currents of thought: "history from above" versus "history from below". The
former, generally held by the right, involves a straightforward chronological
recitation of important dates and events, focused on the rulers rather than the ruled,
and thereby excludes such things as trade unionism, nonconformism and pacifism, and the
struggle for electoral reform and women's suffrage; and the latter, generally held by
the left, promotes the ruled and their lives and struggles as the main focus, and sees
individuals (including kings, generals, and prime ministers) as achieving importance
only because they happened to be in the right place at the right time rather than
because they initiated and guided the events in question. You get no prizes for
guessing that the Conservative government favours the former, although it's been unable
to completely eliminate the latter from the centrally imposed new national
curriculum.So, while you're doubtless correct to
claim that "most Americans would probably say that socialism is something going on
elsewhere in the world, but not here", it seems to me that the fundamental question is
why they think this. Is it because they've studied socialism and rejected it in
favour of capatalism; or is it, as must be the case, that they know nothing about it,
and perhaps have barely heard of the Farmers Alliance, the Haymarket Massacre, Eugene
Debs, and the Molly Maguires?It's interesting to speculate on what
might have happened had US socialists succeeded, and what the world would look like
now (Jack London's The Iron Heel is about just such a thwarted revolution), but
also pretty idle. In this post-Cold War world it's more interesting, and important,
to speculate on whether the US's socialist history will ever be brought back into the
mainstream, and if so, what people will make of it. No doubt some people will gesture
gleefully at Eastern Europe, and claim that since socialism has failed there it doesn't
need to be resurrected in the US; but I'd point out that what failed in Eastern Europe
was not socialism but a particular style of command economic management that claimed
to act in the name of the people while in fact impoverishing them. One could almost
argue, indeed, that socialism has never been tried -- perhaps because no one has ever
agreed on what it is or ought to be, but perhaps also because, as Ford Madox Ford
remarked, the triumph of Leninism in the Russian Revolution set the socialist cause
back by at least seventy years. In the event, it's taken seventy-three years; but of
course it could have been much longer!- - - - - - - - - -
Ben Indick, Teaneck, New Jersey Nicki's opening comments vis à
vis conventions hit all the nails most appropriately on the head! Them pesky
young'uns are a different species (and loaded with specie, too!).- - - - - - - - - -
We Also Heard From: Lon Atkins; Harry Andruschak; Martha Beck; Lester Boutillier; Ned Brooks; Russ Chauvenet; Damir Coklin; Richard Dengrove; Cathy Doyle; Tom Feller; Kathleen Gallagher; David Haugh; David Heath, Jr.; Lee Hoffman; Alan Hutchinson; Ruth Judkowitz; Arnie Katz; Irv Koch; R'ykander Korra'ti; Andrzej Kowalsky; Robert Lichtman; Fred Liddle; Guy H. Lillian III; Dave Luckett; Kev McVeigh; Todd Mason; Janice Murray; Bruno Ogorelec; Alexander Popov; Sarah Prince; Charlotte Proctor; Peggy Ranson; Tom Sadler; Julius Schwartz; Bob Shaw; Roger Sims; Alexander Slate; Leah Smith; Dale Speirs; Alan J. Sullivan; Martyn Taylor; Phil Tortorici; R Laurraine Tutihasi; Tony Ubelhor; Kees Van Toorn; Chuq Von Rospach; Michael Waite; Taral Wayne; Taras Wolansky; and Roger Weddall. Thanks to one and all!  Other illustrations by Terry Jeeves, Diana Harlan Stein, Brad Foster, Alexis Gilliland, William Rotsler, Phil Tortorici, David Haugh, and Sheryl Birkhead. |
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