 Fourteen Months Before. It was one of those incautious moments. I was at Boskone 29, enjoying the heady sensation of being a guest and looking forward to liberal supplies of bourbon, groupies, contracts, and coffee. "We can get them all for you," Ben Yalow explained, "except perhaps for the bourbon, groupies and contracts."  The Boskone newsletter (Helmuth ...
Speaking for Boskone) had just been impressing me with its deeply professional
policy of printing anything I submitted. After a few too many beers in the hotel
bar I heard my mouth say, "British con newsletters are usually so boring and stark
and functional." Interested in what I would declare next, I began to pay attention
and found my lips issuing the statement, "What they need is better production, and
traces of literacy, and more funny bits so fans will read the whole thing including
the tedious programme changes." My tongue went madly on to utter, "In fact I
could..."Suddenly I found that even here in
kindly America I was surrounded by committee members of Helicon, the 1993 British
Eastercon, all wearing wide, fanged smiles. "You're on, Dave!" someone cried."Glmmmmmmpf," said my nostril as I
choked on the beer.# # # #
The Langford theory of newsletters
was no more than a few vague prejudices at the time. Keeping it simple seemed a
cunning plan: no elaborate DTP systems that encouraged the priests of the inner
mystery to spend hours at a time laying out perfect paragraphs like exquisite
corpses in satin-lined caskets. An independent survey of what I was already using
for Ansible favoured WordPerfect, into which any fool can type text.
(Technical Bit Which May Be
Skipped: a non-Windows WordPerfect 5.1 with Bitstream FaceLift fonts, if you
really must know. The committee's weird idea that we could move stuff between the
computers using Laplink was rapidly superseded by my own high-tech solution known as
Hurling Floppy Disks Across The Table.)What was the thing going to be called?
Helicon was named for its site, St. Helier in Jersey, and the last con newsletter
there had been called Jersey Yarns, which made me gently puke. Helicon used
a 'sun' logo. Sun ... writing ... Heliograph. "I am not afraid," I wrote to
the con committee, "of the totally bleeding obvious." Harry Bell drew a newsletter
logo and we were in business.Some months in advance I started
writing news items. Editorial policy regarded any white space as a tacit admission
of failure. And no matter how boring the lists of programme changes, I wanted the
whole thing larded with funny bits to ensure it got read from end to end.Strange anniversaries were ruthlessly
researched (with help from Andy Porter's SF Chronicle birthday list, to
remind the revelling fans that time's wingèd chariot was parked outside the door and
blowing the horn). Besides the complete new edition of the Encyclopaedia of
SF, which I luckily had on disk, I consulted that useful reference The
Perpetual Pessimist: an Everlasting Calendar of Gloom and Almanac of Woe (by
Daniel George) ... so the first issue on 8 April 1993 not only had birthday messages
for E.J. Carnell, S.P. Meek and Ralph Milne Farley but also revealed that Helicon
was auspiciously beginning on the anniversary of a failed prediction of worldwide
deluge in 1524.Thus, helped by the fact that the
convention was also a noted fictional birthplace, we were ready for the traditional
First Issue of Newsletter problem (i.e., no news)...WELCOME
TO HELICON. And welcome to Heliograph -- the
newsletter which we understand is pronounced something like "Heliogrrraph." As
noted by Helicon's most famous native, "I have the Heliconian stress on the letter
'r'." (Harrri Seldon, in Forrrward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov.)BICENTENNIAL:
in April 1793, the New England inventor Eli Whitney did a huge service to all sf
professionals by inventing gin. (A Pedant Writes: That was the cotton gin,
you fool. Heliograph: There's no pleasing some fans.)The first item duly provoked an
outraged response in #2, for the benefit of esoterica fans:COMPLAINT:
"What's this in issue #1 about some parvenu called
Seldon being the most famous person from Helicon? What about us, then?"
Signed: Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia
and Urania.But I'm getting ahead of events. All
too many thrills and spills lay between the hapless editor and the first printed
copy of Heliograph 1. I flew to Jersey days early, leaving Hazel to enjoy
herself at home ... our different attitudes can be detected from the phone call when
I got there. Me: "It was great fun, I had a window by the landing gear and
the plane stopped at Guernsey on the way so I got to go up and down twice for one
fare!" Hazel: "Oh! Oh, that must have been so horrible for you..." Being
paranoid about electromagnetic damage to disks, I had one set in my pocket, another
in my suitcase and a third traveling with Martin Hoare on a Channel ferry.
Martin: "It's great fun, the crossing lasts hours and hours, and you can drink
yourself silly all the way over and watch other fans get seasick and vomit all over
the bar!" Me: "What a pity that I foolishly booked a plane."After the usual adventures I was
introduced to my newsroom, which in the interests of total security had a combination
lock on the door. Fortunately this didn't block traffic too much, since vast numbers
of British fans remembered the unchanged code from previous conventions. (Later
remark by Chris O'Shea, quoted in a post-final Heliograph: "The secure store
isn't, Ops doesn't, and the newsletter hasn't.")
As it finally took shape, the awesome
newsletter production equipment consisted of a couple of IBMs as I'd requested, a
late-arriving laser printer (with an interesting scar on its drum that led to
exciting black marks in every left margin and regular hotel-wide searches for Liquid
Paper), and the Chris Suslowicz Museum of Industrial Archaeology. Yes, after each
master sheet slid smoothly from the 1990s DTP system it was carried across the room
and backwards through yawning gulfs of time to an ancient, rickety electrostencil
cutter and a Gestetner mimeograph that had seen service with the Panzer corps.While I first stared in awe, the
committee broke it to me that Chris Suslowicz, the owner and understander of all
this heavy-metal hardware, wouldn't be arriving until -- according to my timetable
-- about halfway through issue three. I retreated to the bar and don't remember any
more that day.Next morning, with large tracts of
the newsroom still commandeered for dynamic, last-minute badge production, I and
all-round technical supremo John Dallman cut two dozen electrostencils of a dummy
front page I'd brought with me. Or, to be precise, we cut or failed to cut the same
one two dozen times, fiddling with all the controls (and wincing at the tactless
comments of badge-makers who evidently hadn't enough work to do) until in a blazing
burst of Null-A insight John noticed that the stylus was bent and changed it. Sparks
flew and the characteristic atmosphere of the Heliograph newsroom immediately made
itself felt: a billowing mix of ozone and random carcinogens as the cutter burned
its way through acres of vinyl. The fine black dust that rapidly accumulated on the
computer screens was a useful index of the state of one's lungs, and to conjure up a
Lovecraftian vision of nameless, blasphemous ichor you had only to blow your
nose.Then came the mimeograph, which after
an hour or two I decided had not after all seen service with Rommel but with
Torquemada. Let us draw a veil over this, mentioning only the anguished cries of
"Can we fucking ink it from side to side, not up and down?" ... the discovery that,
Roneo men all, we none of us knew where you put ink in a Gestetner ... the ransacking
of countless hotel rooms for complimentary packs of tissues after agreeing that we
certainly knew how to make ink come out of a Gestetner.(By happy chance we'd picked the right
electrostenciller. Con chairman Tim Illingworth had provided a second machine out
of the goodness of his heart, having bought it in a junk shop and being sublimely
unaware of whether it worked -- he thought we could have fun finding out. To add to
the 'Lady or the Tiger' excitement there was also a second mimeo which, days later,
proved to be utterly unusable owing to damage in transit...)As the first interestingly tilted and
blotchy issue hit the stands, a part-blind fan labelled as 'Blind Pew' popped in
with a request that all issues of Heliograph be clearly printed in black ink
for the benefit of those with dodgy vision. "Gladly," I cried, and as an
afterthought went to check the huge pile of ink-tubes thoughtfully provided with the
hardware. One was red and the rest were green.# # # #
IAIN
BANKS perpetuated a noble sf tradition by breaking his bed on
the first night of Helicon. (As Bob Shaw discovered after Brian Aldiss broke a bed
during a party there, Tynecon `74 was "a five-bed convention." Go for it, Iain!)After cruel treatment by the Style
Police, the Read-Me authors promise never again to write about 'medias' (see
But What Can Replace a Fanzine, 1100 Monday). "We have now been told correct
datas and rethought our criterias," said a spokesman. "There will be no more such
erratas."ARCTOPHILES "are
warned that the note on an exhibit in the Art Show means it. Do Not Open The
Box if you care about cuddlies!" (Chris Bell)BREAKFAST
NOTES. Q: What's red and invisible? A: No
tomatoes... The Action Committee for Mushrooms At All Con Breakfasts wishes to thank
Helicon for ... sorry, what was the message?HOW TO WRITE
GOOD. Jane Barnett (aged 15¼), when told by her father that her
writing showed poor control of nuance: "I wouldn't recognize nuance if it came up
and gently brushed my leg."... But most attempts to give the
flavour of Heliograph as it turned out run slap into the 'You had to be
there' syndrome. Famous author Iain Banks is a reliable source of eccentric news at
British conventions, and later provided us with another fascinating snippet by
crawling around underneath the carpet in the hotel bar. The 'arctophiles' item
heralded a running gag about Tom Abba's bear-in-the-box in the Helicon art show,
which was shielded from unwary eyes because this unfortunate teddy-bear had been
strung up with ghastly torture-hooks inspired by Hellraiser. ("Bear horror shock,"
began a later item. "A copy of Eon was sold...") Jane Barnett's father Paul
writes as John Grant and under this name was technical editor of the new SF
Encyclopaedia: he realized what a paltry and trivial job that had been when he
came to work more or less full-time on Heliograph.JOHN
JARROLD becomes President of the World! Well, of World SF.
Interviewed by Heliograph, the new President prised a beerglass momentarily
from his mouth and said, "I didn't know what was happening, I wasn't even there,
don't blame me."BRIAN
ALDISS demonstrated his mature technique for persuading one of
Jenny and Ramsey Campbell's offspring to go to bed, culminating in a stentorian cry
of "FUCK OFF!" (It worked.)STOP
PRESS UPDATE: Matt Campbell wishes to
announce Very Loudly Indeed that Brian Aldiss's amazing
Getting-the-Little-Swine-to-Bed technique (Heliograph #2)
DIDN'T ACTUALLY
WORK.This was our first taste of
controversy, when Mr. Aldiss put a mildly stroppy note under the newsroom door
complaining of 'anti-Aldiss material' and asserting that "I told no kiddies, not
even Brian Burgess, to 'Fuck Off'." Assured by witnesses that the first report was
accurate, our protagonist having been a trifle off-sober at the time, we contented
ourselves by printing his rebuttal prefaced by "BRIAN
ALDISS, Sci Fi author, corrects..." Meanwhile he'd
given the newsroom a new euphemism, heavily used for the rest of Helicon whenever
alleged abuse was to be recorded: "Go to bed!"QUESTION.
Why exactly did Lawrence Watt-Evans think that he was Brian Aldiss and that
John Brunner should go to bed?
Trying to make every item at least a
bit amusing was a continuing policy. One slight hitch was noted... Helicon had an
influx of 52 Romanians, who all arrived in suits and strange tall pointy hats, like
a delegation of heavily politicized garden gnomes. My idle fingers recorded the
figure and on impulse (the line looked as if it could do with a bit more text) made
it '52.02'. Well, at least I didn't add 'plus or minus 0.06', but the newsroom had
a procession of puzzled visitors. "We have bad trouble with newsletter. Here it
says [etc, etc]. Is special meaning or" (in tones of deepening menace) "your
Western sense of humour?"Strange tongues were heard everywhere
at Helicon, and to aid translation a complex system of colour-coded ribbons and
little spots on con badges was supposed to indicate who could interpret between what.
Fandom soon reduced the system to chaos. The 'I speak Romanian' ribbons ran out
within 52.02 nanoseconds, and others lasted only a bit longer; soon the committee
was running round trying to clip bits from the overlong and generous ribbons issued
on the first day. Meanwhile one heard explanations like: "And that one-quarter of a
tartan spot on my badge stands for how much Gaelic I know..." Your reporter
confirmed himself to be deaf in seventeen languages.My biggest linguistic mistake on
Heliograph was in allowing my eyes to glaze over each time I tried to read a
contribution from Colin Fine which appeared to be an essay on the artificial language
Lojban. "Too long," I kept saying. "Maybe next issue." Colin had neglected
to hint in his headline that, just after the point at which I invariably fell asleep,
this piece announced a new and imminent programme item in which Lojban would be
discussed. Oops.Besides Romanians there were Russians,
who were doing a roaring trade in obsolete KGB credentials at their dealers' room
table... |
| RED
SALES IN THE SUNSET: 30 people had joined
the KGB at last count. Beware the midnight knock on the door from Brian
Aldiss, the entire Family Harrison and Anne McCaffrey (who will be
carrying a small, monogrammed flame-thrower).TRICENTENNIAL
CYBERPUNK. In 1693 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of calculus fame
invented the first mechanical calculator that could multiply and divide, thus
heralding an exciting new era of arguments over the restaurant bill. ("Fie on you
and your Engine, fir, I had only a fmall falad and a
Pepfi.")JOHN
CLUTE tergiversates: "Text is terrifying!"OVERHEARD: "If
this were a normal con all you'd have to do would be to find someone..." [And
then you'd know where they were -- Ed.] * In Ops: "We
printed out all the programme participant letters and A.N.Other's was three pages
long..." * Programming subcommittee irregular verbs: "I
reschedule, you slip, he runs late."TRUTH
SHALL BE TOLD. The
spellcheck on the mighty Heliograph computer, confronted by 'committees',
suggests 'comatose'...TEN
DAY WONDER TANDOORI.
The Taj Mahal appears to work on the Lovecraftian approach to cuisine: "I am
excited not so much by the actual presence of mysterious Bengali dishes before
me as I am by the eldritch rumour and suggestion that these exotic apparitions
might one day appear." Be warned... (Ramsey Campbell)EROTIC SF
PANEL: "The French are suggesting installing teledildonic
machines in hotel rooms..." Mike Cule: "I'm not sure I would want to put
anything of mine into any such orifices." Dave Clements: "What about your
credit card?" Mike Abbott: "By barcoding suitable portions of anatomy you
could pay at the same time." Brian Ameringen: "Surely, when you cross a
teledildonics machine with a cash-point you get someone coming into money?"DISCRETION. We
are not allowed to reveal the number of the room in which GoH Karel Thole and
Jean Owen broke the bed.In a more serious and scientific vein,
the Hotel de France venue has a built-in chocolate factory and shop, leading to a
blitz of useful information:HELICON
STATISTICS! We have filled 7 Jersey hotels and drunk 1,600
pints of real ale, as at 1300 Saturday. Chocolate sales: 2,500 champagne truffles,
55* of the 5kg blocks, 7 large rabbits, 82 Easter eggs, 1 lifesize Tim Illingworth,
and 20 people have taken the behind-the-scenes tour. (Still 3,000 truffles and
8,500 other chocs to go. Must Try Harder.)
* By the end of Helicon, it was 238.Quite a respectable team of
Heliograph newsroom regulars had somehow coalesced out of all this insanity.
I dutifully credited them all, one of my own favourite ideas being to end each issue
with a credits box using linked literary 'job titles'. It was sheer luck that,
having picked The Hunting of the Snark for the first such theme, I needed to
credit Amanda Baker: Heliograph 1, 8/4/93. Bellman: Dave Langford. Baker: Amanda. Boots: Dave Clements. Boojum: Caroline Mullan. Snark: John Dallman. Ocean Chart: Harry Bell. Strange Creepy Creatures: John Stewart, Mark Young I hugely enjoyed watching fans in the
bar turn straight to the end of each newsletter to find what daft link the credits
had this time. The sequence went on through Niven (Thrint: Dave Langford. Grog:
Paul Barnett. Speaker-to-Duplicators ...), Asimov (First Speaker: Dave Langford.
Emperor: John Dallman. Mayor: Bob Webber. Mule: Chris Suslowicz. Encyclopaedists:
John Grant, John Clute. Prime Radiants: Amanda Baker, Pam Wells. Second Foundation:
sshh!), Dick (Glimmung, Kipple, Conapt, Pink Beam, Vugs), Wolfe (Autarch, Hierodules
... the large person who got to be the Group of Seventeen was unamused), Ballard
(Drained swimming pool, Spinal landscape, Marilyn Monroe, Traven, Talbot, Travers,
Talbert, Travis etc) and more. The real mind-burster that no-one could guess was
based on an obscure passage of Aldiss's Report on Probability A: Impaler of
Distortions, Impersonator of Sorrows, Suppressor of the Archives, Wandering Virgin
-- "Thank you for making me a virgin again!" cried Lynne Ann Morse with mixed
feelings, and was duly quoted out of context in the upcoming issue.Incidentally, The Hunting of the
Snark also gave us Rule 42: 'No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm'. This,
alas, was not rigorously applied despite all my efforts, and urgent stints of
Heliograph typing were apt to be interrupted by arcane queries in strange
international accents. Once, overwhelmed by too many satirical birthday
congratulations (I was 40 on the Saturday of Helicon), I must admit that the editor
rose up and told all the chatterers present to "Go to bed."CLOSING
CREDTIS. Heliograph could not have been brought into
existence without the help of very many people, but nevertheless it was.
(Chorus: "Start again, Langford!")# # # #
Newsroom madness grew more and more
uncontrollable. Short quotations aside, I'd resolved to rewrite every single story
until it was maximally terse, funny and comprehensible, or at least the first two.
Meanwhile Paul toiled over increasingly excruciating headlines... Helicon had a
crowd of weird emaciated punk Finns with nose-rings and things ("Differently
intelligenced ... or differently nostrilled?" I mused) who claimed to be zombies and
sent in countless bulletins on their rotted state: at one point I found Paul unable
to decide between ZOMBIE FACTOID --
IT'S DEAD TRUE!
and DEATH IS NOT THE
FINNISH, and could only break the impasse by using them
both.And then there was Thog the
Mighty.Although we dutifully recorded
programme changes, Heliograph production was more or less incompatible with
seeing any of Helicon's programme. (The exception in my case was the banquet, which
I had to attend because I was giving a speech, on particularly revolting meals in sf.
Later in Heliograph: MARY CELESTE
MYSTERY SOLVED BY IAN
SORENSEN! "Dave Langford did the after-dinner speech.")
One item, however, spread all over the convention and newsletter like some rampant
fungal growth: the scabrous 'If I Ruled the Universe' election campaign.This featured various mighty beings
attempting to sway an ultimate audience vote and thus become Universal Ruler. The
candidates were Sir Edmund Blackadder (Neale Mittenshaw-Hodge), Boadicea/Boudicca
(KIM Campbell), Genghis Khan (Mike Cule, whose cheerleaders' chant of "Yak Fat!
Yak Fat!" still haunts me), Tim Illingworth (Chris O'Shea), Ming the Merciless
(Alison Scott) and Stupendous Man of Calvin and Hobbes fame (John Richards with mask,
cape and of course Hobbes -- a battery-powered growly tiger which remorselessly
crept along tables and fell off the end). Helicon was duly plastered with campaign
posters, mostly vile lies from Blackadder ("ILLINGWORTH
plays with Barbie dolls!") illustrated with grossly libellous Sue Mason cartoons.
In the end the audience vote for Universal Ruler went to a last-minute write-in ...
Hobbes.My favourite silly moment in all this
came when, after talking to a press photographer and coming away muttering that the
bastard wasn't interested in sf but just wanted pictures of weirdly dressed fans,
John Richards found a particularly insulting Blackadder poster in the hotel
foyer. He faded into the secure store and, seconds later, the awesome masked figure
of Stupendous Man lumbered along the corridors. With heroic and theatrical gestures
the offending poster was wrenched from the wall; our superhero turned majestically
away to discover that same pressman with mouth hanging open, fumbling frantically
for his camera. After one ghastly frozen moment, Stupendous Man demonstrated
super-speed.
This is where Thog came in. Idly
filling out a paragraph in which potential world rulers abused each other, Paul
remembered a bit-part character from his own fantasy novels and typed: "Thog the
Mighty doesn't want to rule the world." This could have been a mistake.
From commenting on the hustings ("Thog the Mighty spells universe 'gllb'."),
this brutish entity swiftly overran the whole newsletter with fire and the sword.
Even my carefully researched birthday lists sprouted addenda like: "Every day
my birthday -- Thog." If towards the end of Helicon there was a
Heliograph gestalt, a newsroom group mind, it was undoubtedly named Thog the
Mighty. Wrestling wildly over the semicolons, grown men found themselves talking in
Thog. "Stop nit-picking and let's print the thing." "Hah! When Thog the Mighty
nitpick, nit know it have been picked."Somewhere out there the convention
was reeling along out of control: "Oh God," cried a passing committee member, "the
organization's a shambles, we're just about managing to paper over the cracks, and
that's not for the newsletter." There were fewer and fewer programme changes
to record, and the news items that filtered in grew sillier. When soft toys start
sending in contributions, you know it's time to stop:
LEWIS P.
BEAR complains formally about the anti-bear and bearist
artworks in the Art Show. Arnold Schwarzenbear ... [aw, go to bed --
Ed.]One can even be reduced to raiding
the newspapers:THE
INDEPENDENT's article on Helicon today catches the subtle,
elusive flavour of fandom: "Otherwise it is unclear who these people are. They
could be someone's neighbour or relative..."But the manic Heliograph staff
made the dangerous discovery that news items from 'outside' were hardly necessary.
Desperately witty things -- well, they seemed witty at the time -- were constantly
being said in our own fume-filled room, and could instantly be quoted. If Helicon
had lasted a few more days the newsroom might have become a self-perpetuating news
vortex, feeding madly on itself and generating endless one-liners to be listed in
our ever-longer sections titled OVERHEARD,
VOX POP and the like."You mean I'm -- wow! -- a
CROSS REFERENCE in the SF Encyclopaedia?"
* "Are you claiming to be nubile?"
* "Someone bit me last night and I don't know whom...."
* "Isn't it sad when the snappiest dressers in fandom are
the soft toys?" * "Even Iain Banks doesn't know why he
crawled under that carpet..." * "If I turn the Gestetner up
to full speed I can make it to the Banq -- oh dear" * "I
want to complain! You didn't credit my comment!" (Anon)
* "A draft of artists?" "An acquisition of
publishers?" "A whinge of writers." "A spittoon of Heliograph
staffers." * "Why Thog not in Heliograph credits?"
* "I have a Complaint. Too much chit-chat; not
enough news."I actually sought out the one aged
fan who complained, in the hope of making soothing noises. The conversation went
something like this... Aged Fan: "Yes, your newsletter is full of in-jokes
and I'm not an 'in' person." Me: "But that 'bear' stuff is about the Helicon
art show..." AF: "Never go to art shows." Me: "And this is
all to do with the Read-Me booklet..." AF: "Couldn't be bothered with
that." Me: "And 'Tim Illingworth' is the convention chairman..." AF:
"Never heard of him." Me: "And this credits line is actually an sf reference
to The Book of the New Sun..." AF: "Like I said: all in-crowd
jokes."Suddenly it was Monday evening.
Helicon was miraculously over. I could start eating again, and perhaps even
sleeping! To hammer home the message, I changed the subtitle box of the ninth issue
from Helicon's Newspaper to The Last Dangerous Heliograph and made
sure that all subsection titles referred to sf stories about entropy or the closing
down of universes ('Travelers in Black', 'The Voices of Time', 'Running Down'). The
final, post-closing-ceremony item was typed ... since nothing hugely newsy had
happened, this merely offered an "AT-A-GLANCE
SUMMARY OF THE CLOSING
CEREMONY. See pages 94-146." It was all over.(Actually there was no room to write
up the full horror of the closing multi-channel slide show based on 1,000
embarrassing snaps taken at Helicon itself. Forty-five minutes after the ceremony
was due to start, Martin Hoare and his team of ace technocrats carried in the
projectors and began to set them up. The audience thrilled as the very first slide
that actually appeared read: "That's All Folks!" Every possible permutation of the
guests' pictures and names was shown, with John Brunner labeled as George R.R.
Martin and artist Karel Thole as fan guest Larry van der Putte ... then Brunner as
Martin and Thole as Brunner ... and so endlessly on, to a stream of esoteric
technical remarks like "Now John Brunner's head's in the way of the side
screen." Afterwards Mr. Hoare exulted that the committee had confessed they'd never
believed he could put on the slide show at all.)It was, as I said, all over.
Unfortunately several people said interesting or appalling things at Monday night's
final party, and on Tuesday, as the convention was being dismantled around me, I
found myself typing up a supplementary Dead Dog Memorandum. Our mimeo
experts were not in evidence; the laser printer glowed white-hot as hundreds of
copies churned out to meet the delirious demand. Then I went home.But Heliograph was the
newsletter that would not die. Chris Suslowicz and Cathryn Easthope had a hotel
room full of computer gear, and two more ersatz issues rolled out of my fax machine,
the Undead Dog Memorandum and Embalmed Dog Missive. Excerpts follow,
as rewritten by me for the unbelievably rare Heliograph Souvenir Edition:IT IS
TUESDAY, the newsletter office is deserted and the equipment
has been packed for its eventual return to the mainland. Thog the Mighty has
discovered that his transportation (Horde, one, for the use of) has been misbooked
for the previous day and is sharpening his sword. (Alex Stewart: "Thog say,
plane for wimps. Thog swim.") Langford has departed for the mainland to avoid the
likely bloodshed, pausing briefly to Blu-TackTM 5,271,009
copies of the Dead Dog Memorandum to various walls. "Stop that man and nail
his feet to the floor," screamed an enraged Martin Easterbrook, engaged in
convention poster removal. Too late -- the denuded corridors had been fetchingly
redecorated...FOOD
CORNER. There are no restaurant reports because with typical
selfishness all the reporters are still in the restaurants. There is also an
absence of newsroom -- the final wording on the door was "go away in a huff and
never return," so copy is not arriving, and the Alternative Newsroom is making it
all up from a secret location. Stay tuned.Heliograph 10-ish, 13/4/93. Wook: Dave Langford. Clattuc: Chris Suslowicz. Chilke: Thog the Mighty. Tamm: Cathryn Easthope. LPFers: BSFA Council. Yips: Ops. And then it was really over.
The egoboo was tremendous (as editor I probably got an altogether unfair share, but
that's life). The physical and mental debilitation lasted three weeks. I wonder
what it would have been like to attend Helicon?# # # #
Three Weeks After. It was one of those incautious moments. I was at Jean Owen's and Martin Hoare's wedding party, reduced to a slithering moral jelly by heady speech-making and champagne cocktails, and Caroline Mullan was telling me what she thought of Heliograph. "All right for a mere Eastercon," she allowed grudgingly, "but your approach just wouldn't work for a Worldcon newsletter like ours at ConFiction." "Oh, I don't agree.." my mouth began
to say, until I suddenly noticed we were surrounded by a horde of feral, red-eyed
1995 Worldcon committee members, licking their lips and closing slowly in. For once
my brain managed to insert a few words of its own. "Er, I mean, you're
absolutely right, Caroline." - - - - - - - - - -
Comments received about Dave's article ranged from bemused to near-horrified. Tracy
Benton wrote that the piece "was a great conrunner's microcosm: the inadvertent
volunteer, the late-arriving equipment that fails to work, dealing with offending
(and offensive) people, exhaustion, horror, mass-hysteria, and total collapse. Not
to mention immediately being asked to do it all again. Quite a nice little
cautionary tale, all in all." Hans Persson commented that the article "was very
entertaining, and managed to convince me that I should never get involved in such an
undertaking." And Henry Welch wrote that "[after this] I don't think I'll ever be
able to tell my son to 'go to bed' with a straight face."Besides Dave's article, the contents
of Mimosa 14 included Dave Kyle's mini-history of the old Science Fiction
League, Ahrvid Engholm's look at Swedish fan hoaxes, an installment in Walt Willis's
continuing series about 1950s Irish Fandom, David Thayer's look back at old war
movies, Terry Jeeves' look back at even older science fiction movies, and Shelby
Vick's remembrance of an old non-fan mentor. There was no real theme to the issue,
but we did have a few more articles about contemporary fandom and its history than
usual, including the following one by Mike Glyer:"Heliograph" illustration and logo by Harry Bell Bottom illustration by Steve Stiles and William Rotsler All other illustrations by Steve Stiles |
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