June 2004

--e*I*14- (Vol. 3 No. 3) June 2004, is published and © 2004 by Earl Kemp. All rights reserved.
It is produced and distributed bi-monthly through http://efanzines.com by Bill Burns in an e-edition only.

…Return to sender, address unknown….6 [eI letter column], by Earl Kemp

All Fandom In Peril, by Arnie Katz

"Wake Up, You Lot!," by Bruce R. Gillespie

Science Fiction Versus Life, by John Foyster

Thru A Glass, Greenly, by Dave Locke

Matinee, by Victor J. Banis

$20 Worth of Cinderella, by Earl Kemp

An Afterthought (to $20 Worth of Cinderella), by Lawrence Block

The First Andrew Shaw, by Lynn Munroe

Lie Back And Enjoy It, by Lawrence Block

"Top o' the World, Ma….," by Earl Kemp

I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, by Robert Silverberg

My Life as a Pornographer, by Robert Silverberg

Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man (1971), by Lawrence Block, is an X-rated classic in many ways a companion volume to Westlake's Adios Scheherazade and Dresner's The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books. In those two the authors write about their years writing adult books. This is more of the same, although Block has changed it to a children's magazine, Ronald Rabbit's Magazine for Boys and Girls. Block's alter ego here is named Laurence Clarke. Hilariously nasty.
               --Lynn Munroe, List 24, 1993

THIS ISSUE OF eI is a bit unusual…it's going in a different direction. Flashback to the past, to those glorious pulp fiction magazines of the 1950s, to 1958 to be specific. This issue celebrates those pulps, and two quite exceptional pulp writers who went on to become the best there is, Grand Masters of their genres.

Toward that end, I asked Alan White to go in a different direction for the ecover of this ezine. I said I needed something pulpish and 1958ish and all about detective stories and crime and… And he did that. Here, in all its glory, is Alan's artwork created just for the cyberspace cover of this issue of eI:

THIS ISSUE OF eI is dedicated to four old friends from The Porno Factory: Lawrence Block, Don Elliott, Andrew Shaw, and Robert Silverberg. There doesn't need to be a reason.

In the world of science fiction, it is also dedicated to Bruce R. Gillespie and the effort to Bring Bruce Bayside, a worthy cause to bring Gillespie from his home in Australia to the Bay Area next February for Corflu and Potlatch 2005. It is also in memory of Johannes Berg, Jerry Burge, and Roger Dee.

#

As always, everything in this issue of eI beneath my byline is part of my in-progress rough-draft memoirs. As such, I would appreciate any corrections, revisions, extensions, anecdotes, photographs, jpegs, or what have you sent to me at earlkemp@citlink.net and thank you in advance for all your help.

You are also encouraged to check out my website at http://www.earlkemp.com and the special roast site at http://www.earlkemp75.com for your continuing enjoyment.

Bill Burns is jefe around here. If it wasn't for him, nothing would get done. He inspires activity. He deserves some really great rewards. It is a privilege and a pleasure to have him working with me to make eI whatever it is. And also, Dave Locke continues as eI Grand Quote Master. You will find his assembled words of wisdom separating the articles throughout this issue of eI, as well as his long-awaited fan masterpiece, "Thru A Glass, Greenly," that also sports artwork by the very same Dave Locke.

Other than Bill Burns and Dave Locke, these are the people who made this issue of eI possible: Victor J. Banis, Victor Berch, Lawrence Block, Robert Bonfils, Richard Brandt, Bruce Brenner, John Foyster, Bruce Gillespie, Dwain Kaiser, Arnie Katz, Lynn Munroe, Yvonne Rousseau, Robert Silverberg, and Robert Speray.

ARTWORK: This issue of eI features original artwork by Dave Locke and Alan White, and recycled artwork by William Rotsler and David Russell.

One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: "Give little, give seldom, and above all, give grudgingly." Otherwise, what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.
               --Ruth Smythers, Marriage advice for women, 1894

…Return to sender, address unknown…. 6
The Official eI Letters to the Editor Column
Artwork recycled William Rotsler

By Earl Kemp

We get letters. Some parts of some of them are printable. Your letter of comment is most wanted via email to earlkemp@citlink.net or by snail mail to P.O. Box 6642, Kingman, AZ 86402-6642 and thank you.

Just to prove it, this is the official Letter Column of eI, and following are a few quotes from a few of those letters concerning the last issue of eI. All this in an effort to get you to write letters of comment to eI so you can look for them when they appear here.

Saturday March 27, 2004

Just finished reading your Corflu report....how nice! I enjoyed it a lot, and thank you for the kind words directed my way.

You seem to have exactly the feeling about it that I do. Corflu is a family reunion, a gathering of my most beloved friends. I don't care where it is, or what the hotel is like, or how the food is...that's all icing on the cake. What counts with me is being with the people I love, and the hours are never long enough to make me tire of their company!

I am so glad you found the same. I knew you would; I knew you and I would be seeing the same charm in the gathering.

It's a funny thing, but a couple of weeks or so back, someone sent me one of those round robins that continually encircle the Internet. This one had, among its questions, one that inquired, "Where is your favorite place to be." Even knowing my correspondents would be unlikely to recognize my references, I replied, "At Corflu, sitting between Robert and Ted, with rich brown directly across from me, with Andy right over there, and Frank (Lunney) over here; with Lenny sitting in the corner, and Arnie leaning over to say something; with Ken and Ben and Tom cutting up over there, and YOU right over there where I can smile at you." It is true; I feel happier in that circle than anywhere else...the only thing that even compares is sitting in the circle in Oklahoma with my brother's family.

Everything else, food and drink and smoke and some really great fanzines, is secondary to my pleasure of being among my friends at Corflu.

And I hope it's not as long till I see you again, Earl, as it was since I saw you the last time.
               --Joyce Katz

A mini LoC for Earl:

"It had been mas o menos 25 years since I attended my last science fiction related convention."
Simple math would put your "last science fiction related convention" in 1979. But we saw each other at the 1982 Chicon....
               --Ted White

I don't think Donald wrote that many of the books, Earl. He fairly early on stopped writing them himself and leased out the name. Unless he's confirmed your list, I wouldn't put much credence in it. As far as the putative textual analysis, jesus, we told the ghosts what to put in to make it look like our work.
               --Larry Block

Tuesday March 30, 2004

No way in the world I can keep up with your production. So I just flit around cherry picking, and I like it.
               --Jerry Murray

Wednesday March 31, 2004

It was great to meet you at Corflu. Of course, at that time I hadn't seen your email, nor your fanzine, as I'd been off the Internet since January. I really should schedule frequent visits to Bill Burns' site, rather than just going to specific links when I receive an email.

If Jon Stopa thinks the USA looks like it exists in an alternate universe, he should consider how it looks to those of us from outside the USA.

Paradise Acres sounds like Sun Valley, a morning mist shrouded valley off the main road in the Blue Mountains. You would see the real estate agents taking buyers there mid afternoon, after the mists had burnt off in the midday sun.

When I moved to this small apartment, I was able to send the remains of my fanzine collection to the Melbourne Science Fiction Club. However the odd paper fanzine still struggles in, and I simply have no space to keep them. It is one of the reasons I prefer eFanzines, despite the poor response rate.

Talk of large English estates reminds me of the perils of actually owning enough of a house to continually misplace things. I once had the equivalent of a six-bedroom house. In the usually fannish fashion, it was bulging with paper. Some things I could find. I always filed non-fiction books by Dewey system order. Fanzines by the name of the editor. Fiction by the name of the author or editor as appropriate. However once a book got misfiled, it was invisible. Non-paper was far worse, with items disappearing for years at a time. Now that all my stuff is restricted to pretty much a single room ... I find I still lose things ... however I don't have as much area to search! Why, within a mere three days of returning home from Corflu I've discovered all except one of the things I lost in January when we left home.
               --Eric Lindsay

Saturday April 3, 2004

Every so often -- most recently at the Toronto filkcon that put me in touch with you -- I'm pressured to join First Fandom (auxiliary, one presumes) and/or Corflu. I find both ideas amusing. Sitting around playing "remember when" isn't my bag. I enjoy the long view, and with filkers, many of whom are extremely well versed in history, I get both the past and future. We can speculate musically where we're going because we have a vivid idea of where we've been...but there's "no future in the past," unless you're a history prof or writing historical novels. It's a delight being the den mother of this bunch of musically involved people from 16 to 60. Especially when I startle them by bopping along with their parodies of the latest rock hits.

When I moved to London, OH I went to the local senior center -- once. Quite enough, thank you. What a bunch of unwrapped mummies. Aches, pains, and "oh, she died last year," and "whatever became of...?". Please spare me.

Re your ezine...interested in the comments about Economous. If we -- Coulsons and DeWeeses -- had been tipped off about Phyllis' particular hang-up, we probably would have refused to go to that New Year's Eve blizzard party. None of us tolerated that sort of nonsense. Which also harks to your reference to Beastley's on the Bayou. Another occasion where the "race problem" cropped up its enormously hideous head. Lee Anne Tremper (now Lavell) and I traveled there on the bus (bugged all the way by Ray Beam) and were to meet Buck, Gene DeWeese, and mutual northern Indiana fan friend Bev Clarke there. They never showed.

Near midnight I finally got a phone call at the hotel. Gene, calling from Indiana, explaining what happened. Until then, I had been worried sick they'd had a wreck en route. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, answered my constant questions all day and evening as to whether the threesome had arrived, though I learned much later that any number of fans I asked, including Harlan, knew EXACTLY what had transpired when Buck, Gene, and Bev arrived at Beastley's before the bus carrying Lee Anne and me did. They were refused admittance. Bev is brown. Gorgeous, modest, polite, well educated, and still a very good friend, and unquestionably a "person of color" in the euphemistic terminology. (Both widows, now, though she's recently remarried, we regularly continue to exchange missives, phone calls, encouragement, cheerings up, and share decades of good feelings.)

Those fans, and I know they were out there, who immediately assumed that two white male fans in the company of a black female fan were up to hanky panky were not only totally wrong, they reflected their own vast, ugly prejudice-locked attitudes onto others. There was never anything between Bev Clarke and the guys. The guys sure WANTED there to be, but Bev had no interest in them, and if she had, her mother would have killed her and both white males; prejudice can cut both ways.

Ms Beastley took one look at Bev and said there was no single room at the inn. Buck had made reservations well in advance for two rooms: a double for the guys, a single for Bev. After Ms. Beatley's decision the guys said okay: give the lady the double and we'll sleep in the car. At which point NOBODY had a room. A number of fans stood around the front desk listening to this. Harlan fulminated he'd expose Beastley's outrageous behavior in SF Dimensions, and that all fandom would be plunged into war. (Obviously, Harlan never followed through. Which is why for the rest of his life Buck had little to no respect for Harlan. We both were gifted/cursed with VERY long memories and the ability to carry grudges when well deserved.) Buck, Gene, and Bev got back in Buck's car and he drove back to Indiana. As he told me later, he was so furious that he was in absolutely no danger of falling asleep at the wheel. He delivered Bev Clarke back safe and sound (and dead tired) to her mother in Culver, IN, Gene to his rural residence in Rochester, IN, then drove back to Silver Lake, IN. By then it was Sunday. He was still wide awake and furious and burned off his rage in writings he never published or mailed (unlike certain other members of the fan family). In addition, he took special care to write a profusely abject letter of apology to Bev Clarke's mother (Bev was a minor, at the time), blaming himself and his color-blind assumptions for having caused the mess. He should have known such assholes (politely phrased) as Ms Beastley existed and he should have anticipated the horrible likelihood of such a person turning them away even before they'd undertaken the trip to Indian Lake. So much for happy hopes of a fun weekend.

(Apologizing earned him a lot of points with Mrs. Clarke, though never enough to soften her attitudes about interracial dating one whit. Our get togethers with Bev Clarke were always group fan affairs, such as the '54 trip to Philly Worldcon - Bev, her friend Ed (female) Turner, me, Gene, Buck, and Bob Briney. Bev Clarke never became an active fan, and after her experience at Beastley's, one certainly understands why. Fandom was not a warm place for anyone who wasn't white in the 50's...and on through the decades. Another Bev (DeWeese, nee Amers) and I were active in civil rights on campus before Selma and Montgomery, so I've been angry about this situation a long, LONG time.)

Anyway, vivid memories like that - and encountering far too often First Fandom types who carry exactly the same attitudes as Ms. Beastley - does not make me want to go back and play "gee, those were the good old days of fandom" games.

Feedback and communication, which seem to be the ne plus ultra for most of the Corflu crowd, were never what producing a fanzine was about, to me. That was Buck's bag, and you know how important he thought fanzines were. To me, producing a fanzine was a craft. Proofreading, doing a good job cutting the artwork, making sure there weren't any upside down pages, etc., etc., etc. I was the publisher, not the editor. When publishing was no longer fun and we had other fish to fry and heavy problems in our lives, it was no problem to give up Yandro. Harder for Buck than for me, I admit. I'd done everything I'd wanted to do in publishing. I have no problems communicating with people in person, by letter, and now by e-mail. I didn't need all the aggravations and trouble and expense of putting out an amateur magazine as a platform.

There it is. If I sound sour, I sometimes am. But not when it comes to music. In the musical branch of fandom, I'm still 17 going on 71 and loving it.
               --Juanita Coulson

[Juanita, can I print this as an LoC to eI please? -Earl Kemp]

Sunday April 4, 2004

In Harlan's defense, I would add that he DID fulminate and object loudly to the treatment Beastley's handed out, even if, for whatever eventual reasons, he was unable to follow through in publishing anything to that effect. His behavior in that respect was fine, as opposed to other fans encountered then and since, whose attitude was wonderment that WE were outraged, asking why were we surprised? Of COURSE Beastley's wouldn't "contaminate" their wonderful establishment by letting in...well...you know. Another prominent fan of that era, when we inquired in advance about his con's and his hotel's position, was outraged in the opposite direction from Harlan's: he was terrified and angry that we would "put his con at risk" by "threatening" to bring one of "those" to the con -- afraid that our doing so would give the hotel an excuse to cancel the con's contract and thus get everyone thrown out. As a result, we boycotted that con for several years, until the lawand a younger concom and a move to a different hotel made the boycott moot.

Incidentally, I went through even more ugly and outrageous situations at my alma mater, which continues to send me the alumni mag full of glowing retro articles on how much fun the '50's were on campus and how everyone who graduated then should send nostalgia pieces to confirm their charming take on the era. I sent a blistering up close and personal "I was there, Charlie" e-mail telling them EXACTLY how it was, pointing out that the decade, on campus and nearby, had HUGE ugly racial prejudice pockmarks all over its HAPPY DAYS face. I didn't receive the dignity of a reply. Don't disturb the retro freaks with facts, I guess.

Feel feel to print. I didn't DNQ. I have enough years to be retrospective, but I'm still bitter about some things, understandably. Which might explain my jaundiced view of glowing recruitment campaigns for First Fandom. It wasn't all fun, games, and brotherhood of fandom, guys. Not even close, truth to be told. ZOMBIES OF THE GENE POOL may have exaggerated, but McCrumb didn't miss the mark by so many yards, after all.
               --Juanita Coulson

Today's link is a fun one, it leads to Earl Kemp's latest issue of e*I. The part that I think will be of greatest interest to writers who visit this journal will be the last feature in the issue--an in-house style sheet for Greenleaf Classics. Don't know what that is? They were one of the main purveyors of... well, to put it bluntly... dirty books in the 60s and 70s. The style sheet, however, will be of interest because much of what it says applies still today as far as good writing style is concerned. For the more prurient, there is an interesting list of accepted spellings of words which is somewhat revealing when you take Greenleaf's specialty into account. (It's also interesting to note that straight-sex books were shorter than the gay-sex books, and that chapters had to be twelve--exactly.)

Other items of interest in e*I include an article on Bela Lugosi, bad writing, soft-core porn novels, and an excellent couple of articles touching upon Weird Tales.

Enjoy!
               --John Teehan, Journalscape

Monday April 5 2004

I am a longtime paperback collector, historian and reader. I primarily collect what are now considered "sleaze" titles from the 1960's like the ones you helped publish when you were at Greenleaf. I think your website and fanzine is amazing. I also appreciate what you did in regards to the Illustrated Guide you helped publish back in 1970 for the Presidential Pornography Report. It was a heroic effort against censorship and for free speech.

Thank you and once again, thank you for the wonderful website and wealth of information and commentary you provide.
               --L. Truman Douglas

Sunday May 2, 2004

My apologies, I've been meaning to send you this ever since I read eI13 on Westlake et.al.

I think you did an excellent job on this and I always really enjoy your e-zine. Keep up the good fight.

I see that my usual muddy style confused you on one point I wish to clarify. You got the idea from me that Circle of Sinners was the "collaboration by committee" book. This is incorrect. Dresner told me it was an example of a collaboration, but only between Dresner and Block. Because Dresner asked me not to be specific or reveal too much about Block or others, I couldn't go into more detail then.

The other book, the one written by committee at the poker game, remains a guarded secret. Because Dresner said the lead character was in the Armed Services, I have long suspected that A Girl Called Honey "by Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall", about an AWOL Air Force man, might be that book. But I have no confirmation on that from any of the authors. You are welcome to ask them.
               --Lynn Munroe

Tuesday May 4, 2004

I believe I did meet Martha Beck at one point in my strange fannish career. We did make it down to two Midwestcons, and it may have been at one of those get togethers. Sometimes, you never really know who a person is (or who their dear friends say they are) until they are gone, and the friends emerge to mourn and reminisce. Right now, I am thinking of two fannish deaths, Shirley Maiewski and Johannes Berg, two friends from two completely different areas of fandom.

Dirce Archer was right about fandom…it should be diluted, or perhaps in its strongest form, eyedroppered into water for a weak solution….

Passing along a message from you to Juanita Coulson at FilKONtario this year was a laugh. Her eyes bugged open, and she said, "Earl Kemp…well, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time." I hope you've been able to correspond with her.
               --Lloyd Penney

That one's cause will succeed because it ought to succeed is perhaps the most general and invincible folly affecting the human judgment. Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
               --Ambrose Bierce

All Fandom in Peril
Faan Fiction with a Message

By Arnie Katz

Arnie Katz at Corflu 04. Photo by Bill Burns.

"This must be stopped!" thundered the deep, muffled voice from beneath the crimson cowl that marked the short, but powerfully built man as the person in charge. "That is essential to our plan to demoralize and destroy Fandom!"

Murmurs of assent rippled through the paneled conference room. If the Leader - no one living knew his name - thought it was that important, then they thought so, too. Even those who actually thought about it could see that, whereas they had a completely and totally fool-proof plan yesterday, today the Leader declared that there was something out there that could stop it. That had to be significant.

The group didn't have a name. The Leader had agonized about the matter and it had, in fact, delayed the implementation of his Ultimate Plan to Dissolve Fandom by at least two months. Wracked by embarrassing indecision. He had riffed through hundreds of names. Yet after considering "the something-something Liberation Front," "the yadda-yadda consortium" and other equally unsatisfactory names, the Leader had decided to plunge ahead without adopting a formal name. It had worked for The Band; it could work for their secret society.

The name of the group was, in fact, almost the only thing about which the members of the cabal did not agree. Some thought it should be "The Southgate Illuminati," except that they weren't in Southgate. And moreover, a few of them kept asking what the plan to destroy and demoralize fandom had to do with light bulbs.

Others in the group favored "The Secret Master of Fandom." The problem with that, detractors pointed out, was that they'd have to change it again when Fandom ceased to exist on March 1, 2005.

The Leader thought figuring out a suitable impressive title for himself should take top priority. Director General? Lord Chancellor? Grand Cyclops? None seemed to fit his personality or his role in the group as originator and chief executive office of the Ultimate Plan to Demoralize and Destroy Fandom.

"You may ask what is this sudden danger that menaces our grand design," he said, because he had actually heard at least three of the robed figures mutter exactly that. "The danger comes from one unexpected source, a factor that did not exist when I created the Ultimate Plan."

"No one could have foreseen it," the blue-cowled figure at the opposite end of the table put in quickly. The leader didn't know what his own title should be, but he had already unofficially dubbed this man as Chief Toady. Of course, he hadn't yet shared that information with the person in question.

"Thank you for that vote of confidence," he said, acknowledging the support. "The truth we must face is that the danger is there now and must be eradicated before it frustrates our plan." He looked slowly, searchingly around the room. "We must stop the BBB Fund!"

"The BBB Fund?" the rest of the group echoed.

"Yes, the Bring Bruce Bayside Fund is all that stands between us and Immanentizing the Fannish Eschaton."

"Can one thing like this really derail our foolproof plan?" asked his smart young male assistant who sat at his right hand at the large, oak conference table.

"It is the key," explained the Leader, "the absolute key."

"How can that be?" wondered his less-smart, but exceptionally well built young female assistant who sat within reach of his left hand under the table.

"If the BBB Fund succeeds, then Fandom will have successfully united to bring Bruce R. Gillespie to Corflu and Potlatch in San Francisco at the end of February 2005," the Leader said as he tried to stare down the front of her enticingly low-cut robe. Then he recalled the extreme severity of the situation and admonished himself for allowing his attention to wander. Plenty of time for that, he assured himself, after Fandom is dead, buried, and forgotten.

"He's only one fan," his male assistant blurted. "What can one fan, even this Bruce R. Gillespie, do to prevent the grisly and permanent death of All Known Fandom?"

"My mother, me, and my sister Jeanette. Photo by my sister Robin Mitchell, July 2002." -Bruce Gillespie

"Nothing by himself, but he is not just any fan. "Bruce R. Gillespie is a fan paragon, despite his use of the middle initial," the Leader declared, "Think of the effect his presence would have on the fanzine fans at Corflu and the serious science fiction fans at Potlatch!"

"In what way?" asked his female assistant.

"He combines the stfnal and the fannish in one outstanding fan," the Leader resumed. "If he is in San Francisco before we trigger our Plan to Demoralize and Destroy Fandom, he could stop it in its tracks!"

"What can we do?" his two assistants chorused.

"We can prevent fandom from finding out that they can help raise the $2,500," said the Leader. Shocked gasps filled the room. Was that paltry sum all it would take to bring Bruce R Gillespie, middle initial and all, to Corflu and Potlatch? This posed a serious threat to the plan. If they don't know to send their donations to Joyce Katz at 330 S. Decatur Blvd., PMB 152, Las Vegas, NV 89107" or that they can write to Arnie Katz at crossfire4@cox.net for more information, they might not raise the money."

"Is that all we have to do?"

"No, it will be somewhat more complicated," the Leader admitted, "we might have to take out the fanzine editors who are publicizing the BBB Fund, including that pesky Bill Burns at eFanzines.com, where he posts The BBB Bulletin with all the latest fan news."

"If those foolish fans don't contribute to the BBB Fund, Bruce R. Gillespie will be home in Australia next February and nothing will be able to stop the Ultimate Plan for the Demoralization and Destruction of Fandom," the Chief Toady exulted.

#

Will fans send their contributions to the BBB Fund?

Will Bruce R. Gillespie come to Corflu and Potlatch?

Will he drop that middle initial?

The answers to these and many other questions, dear fans, are up to you!

I was once asked to provide a quote for a Christian novel by Roger Elwood. He was astounded when I pointed out I wasn't Christian. And that Zeus was about as real to me as Jehovah.
               --Robert Silverberg, online chat, 1999

[The following article was written in Australian (mostly British) English. Every effort has been made to retain this language intact and to not translate it into US English. --Earl Kemp]

'Wake Up, You Lot!'*
John Foyster as Science Fiction Critic

By Bruce Gillespie

I

Elaine Cochran Gillespie and Bruce Gillespie. Photo (nd) by Jeanette Gillespie.

Why speak about a period in the history of science fiction in Australia, especially a period in the mid to late sixties and early seventies before some people in this room were born?

First, because events in science fiction today in Australia in many ways are a direct result of events in that far-off era. In 1966, John Foyster began a range of activities in Australian SF that led to the holding of the first Australian World Convention in Melbourne in 1975, and that in turn generated the vast ripple of SF enthusiasm that has spread out continually during the last twenty years.

Second, because one of the most important events of the late sixties - the rise of SF criticism in Australia - has become very reduced in importance since the 1970s. Most SF activity today in Australia is devoted to the writing and publishing of science fiction itself, not reviews and criticism of the field. Thirty years ago, the opposite was true. We had a few writers, some of whom had a little bit of success. Our SF critics were known throughout the world, and John Foyster was one of the best known of them. Today, Britain is the hotbed of SF criticism, and Australia has slipped behind. In losing John Foyster in 2003, we lost one of the great leaders in our field here. In this talk I want to give some idea of what he achieved.

Astonished John Foyster. Photo by Lee Harding dated 1962.

At the end of the 1960s, John Foyster was known throughout the science fiction world as one of its best critics, yet today it would be hard to find evidence of his work. Exploring Cordwainer Smith, a booklet of criticism and interviews based on Foyster's investigations, is still mentioned in bibliographies of works about Smith, yet Foyster's most extensive body of writing dealt with the work of Samuel R. Delany and J.G. Ballard. Only readers who have access to both series of Australian Science Fiction Review (1966-70 and 1986-92) and several other publications of the late sixties and early seventies (especially SF Commentary, Science Fiction Review and Speculation) can gain an insight into Foyster's contribution to SF criticism.

Hazel and Dave Langford with John Foyster. Photo by Yvonne Rousseau.

Foyster's approach, which is the subject of this essay, would now be regarded as old-fashioned because he expected science fiction writers to write well-made stories and interesting prose and readers to be able to judge whether or not a story was much good. Foyster didn't think most SF writers were much good at writing, and he said so. Because of his refusal to 'run a line' - to back any particular theory of literary criticism - his work could not be categorised. It does not fit within today's world of grand theories that reduce writing to merely a type of 'cultural signs'. His heirs are rare, but fortunately one of them, David Langford (especially in Up Through an Empty House of Stars: Reviews and Essays 1980-2002, Cosmos Books, 2003), is still writing vigorously.

Foyster's work is hardly likely to be kept alive by the writers whose works he wrote about. Foyster pulled no punches, and was as severe on the writing of his friends (especially Lee Harding, Damien Broderick and John Baxter) as on unmet persons from overseas. Harry Warner's protest that writers are 'delicate organisms' only strengthened Foyster's scepticism.

By 1966, writers and other critics believed that critics should be polite; John Foyster, in print at least, was never polite. He had before him the example of James Blish, whose collected criticism as 'William Atheling Jr' was issued by Advent in 1966 in The Issue at Hand. In 1967, the collected essays of Damon Knight, an even more impolite critic, were collected by Advent and issued as In Search of Wonder. A similar collection of Foyster's work issued in the early 1970s would no doubt have secured his reputation, but unfortunately no such publication occurred.

Not only was Foyster impolite, but he did his best not to make generalisations about science fiction. As the 1970s proceeded, the practice of the new breed of academic critics was to crush a vast butterfly collection of SF books under the steamroller of critical theory. As SF works suffered under the armies of categorisers and theoreticians, it became increasingly difficult to work out which books were worth reading. Foyster, by contrast, concentrated his critical mind on particular works and authors, leaving one in no doubt as to which were worth reading, and which were not. George Turner, who made his own splash as an SF critic in 1967, called this 'technical criticism', and was proud of writing it. Foyster didn't give a name to his own method; he just invited people to read books carefully.

Lee Harding, John Baxter, and Merv Binns. Photo by Helena Binns dated July 2003.

I'm writing this essay to make people aware of what they might find if they find and read Foyster's work. Also, I'm expressing a debt of gratitude. Not that John Foyster ever took me aside and said, 'Listen, Gillespie, you really should write this or that way.' Lee Harding, who was better at explaining John Foyster to people than Foyster ever was, once said to me: 'Listen, Bruce, why don't you stop writing academic-style criticism? Look at John Foyster's writing; he says more than you do, says it better, and never uses any academic jargon.' Lo! I looked, and saw that Lee Harding was correct, and that it was possible to explain what you want about a work of fiction without using any academic jargon. Not that my work resembles that of John Foyster, but it quickly cured me of writing English III essays for fanzines.

II

Photo of John Foyster by Lee Harding.

John Foyster's writing for fanzines falls into two main categories: 'fannish' writing (about fan activities and personal concerns), and reviews and criticism of science fiction magazines, stories and books. The first category makes up most of Foyster's non-professional writing. The second category, SF criticism, occupies two relatively short periods: (a) from 1966 to 1970, in Australian Science Fiction Review (the original series) and exploding madonna/The Journal of Omphalistic Epistemology (JOE), and (b) from 1986 to 1991, in the second series of Australian Science Fiction Review. Yet those periods of intense activity provide a rich lode of material for the discerning reader.

Australian Science Fiction Review began as a result of a discussion at the science fiction convention in Melbourne during Easter 1966. There had been no such convention in Australia since 1958. It was felt that the enthusiasm generated during that convention could best be kept alive by the production of a nationally focused 'small circulation magazine devoted to the discussion of science fiction'. Pressed to become editor of such a magazine, Lee Harding nominated John Bangsund. With John as editor, Lee Harding and John Foyster became the staff of the new magazine, Australian Science Fiction Review (ASFR). The first issue appeared in June 1966.

Rereading my copies of ASFR nearly forty years later, I get the impression that at first John Foyster did not expect to write a large number of reviews for the magazine. It was obvious that the staff hoped that most of its contributors would be writers such as Brian Aldiss, Michael Moorcock, Langdon Jones and John Baxter, the headline acts in No. 1.

Lee Harding writes a fair number of the pages in No. 1 (including the delicious article 'Communist Chulpex Raped My Wife!', a long review of Avram Davidson's The Masters of the Maze), and John Foyster opens his account with a review of Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which had just been published in a British edition. John does not so much review the book as review the other reviewers, a practice startlingly different from reviews to be found in the overseas professional SF magazines (prozines). As a fanatical Philip K. Dick admirer, I was not much taken with Foyster's dismissal of the book itself (including his assertion that Jack Vance used the drug-reality theme more effectively in 1958 in a story called 'The Men Return'), but was amused to find him wiping the floor with P. Schuyler Miller's review in Analog, Judith Merril's review in F&SF and Algis Budrys's review in Galaxy. It was this sort of scepticism that was completely absent in the prozines. At last! I thought, I've found intelligent people who write about science fiction.

Lee Harding.

In ASFR 2, August 1966, a reviewing format for the magazine began to take shape. Between them, John Foyster and Lee Harding wrote 10 of the 36 pages, with four more pages written by 'K.U.F. Widdershins' (later revealed to be John Foyster) and 'Alan Reynard' (later revealed to be Lee Harding). Foyster's main piece was a lengthy discussion of four short novels by an author I had never heard of: Dwight V. Swain. My reaction: why bother?

On page 26, K.U.F. Widdershins reviewed Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero, which has just been released in British hardback. It is not clear whether or not Mr Widdershins likes the book, since the final lines of the review are: 'All in all, this novel must be extremely highly rated, for its entertainment value is "tops". I recommend it strongly to all readers.' This is the tone adopted by reviewers in the prozines of the time. Even the Bruce Gillespie of 1966 could detect some insincerity in the recommendation. John Bangsund writes as a footnote: 'Some readers have complained about Dr Widdershins's reviews, on the grounds "that he obviously doesn't like sf". I trust the above review will put their minds, so to speak, to rest.'

As the letters of comment, somewhat delayed by the six weeks it took to reach anywhere on the other side of the world, began to pour into ASFR, it became clear that the salvo fired constantly at Widdershins and Foyster would be that they didn't like science fiction very much. Playing with that concept became the hallmark of the Foyster/Widdershins persona.

In ASFR 5, Widdershins reviewed what would eventually become Keith Roberts' novel Pavane. It was appearing as separate stories in the British magazine Impulse (the revamped Science Fantasy):

The . . . stories . . . [each] deal with an episode in the history of Roberts's England. They cover a couple of generations, and each of them suffers the fault of appearing to be truncated; for each the resolution is unsatisfactory . . . As the series now stands, many questions are unanswered: who are the 'people'? Is Brother John the same man as Sir John the seneschal? (And if not, why not?) We may never discover now the secrets of Cordwainer Smith's world, but let us hope that Keith Roberts will reveal, in time, just what makes his delightful world tick.

In his letter of comment published in ASFR 9, April 1967, Keith Roberts writes, among other things:

I've just got to take exception to the Widdershins report, or review, or whatever he calls it, of Pavane in issue five. Whoever is lurking behind that noxious pseudonym really should have his head immersed in a vat of treacle, or sheepdip, or whatever bizarre fluid comes most readily to hand Down There. I've read bad reports of my work and I've read downright vindictive ones but I've never come across such an absolute masterpiece of misunderstanding; I'm well aware that widdershins traditionally go backwards but this is really too much . . .. Mr Ditherspin successfully confuses the whole issue, with I must admit great skill and economy, before moving on to What I Have To Say . . .

To which Widdershins replies:

So that's how Keith Roberts reacts to a review fairly oozing with praise! May I construct the essence of the review? I suggested that the Pavane stories were the best things to come out from Impulse. That all the stories were worthy of expansion, and that I looked forward to this. And that I look forward, in general, to seeing more of the same. I did complain that the stories almost seemed cut off in the middle. I am, of course, quite shaken by this. I feel, and felt then, that my review was straightforward unabashed praise. I admit no other interpretation. Roberts has, almost paranoically, misinterpreted and confused what I wrote.

Had Roberts known it, he would be one of the last correspondents to receive a contrite reply from Widdershins or Foyster.

ASFR correspondents, especially well-known SF writers, reacted more and more strongly to reviews by the ASFR team (which, after No. 10, included George Turner). John Foyster began to think about reviewing science fiction in a quite different environment, which led him, a year later, to the secret publication of exploding madonna.

III

The task of reviewing the SF books that flooded into the ASFR offices had deflected Foyster from his true path - writing full-length criticism. The first evidence of the true Foyster can be found in Issue No. 4, October 1966. An etching of Don Quixote bestrides the cover. In that issue, Foyster devotes 19 pages to 'The Editorials of John Campbell'.

To say that I was dismayed when I received that issue is an understatement. But I did for the first time glimpse the possibility offered by the serious fanzine - as a forum for long detailed articles about single subjects.

I was dismayed, then more than now, at Foyster's taking the SF magazines seriously. True, in 1966 the prozines were still the only sources of short fiction in the field, but they were all at such a low ebb, in the quality of both their fiction and non-fiction, that ASFR seemed a mighty bolt of inspiration by comparison. John Campbell's Analog consisted of little but very boring technologically based stories and dreary right-wing diatribes by the editor or his writers. Production values were high, and Analog was the only magazine paying 10 cents a word to authors. But by the mid 1960s, it seemed unlikely that any ambitious writer would send his or her work to Campbell, except for the money.

However, Foyster wrote:

I think this article does make clear my admiration for the man who has edited the best science fiction magazine for almost thirty years. And in his own writings we can see just why his work has been so outstanding.

Campbell is a maverick: he just won't conform to any mould. The result is that somewhere, sometime, he must offend everyone. But he is always interesting, always challenging. One may think that a given article is meaningless twaddle, but one must always admit that it is well-written, interesting twaddle.

I had long since given up on Campbell's editorials as boring twaddle that pandered to his right-wing audience and challenged nobody. The value of Foyster's long article lies in that giveaway line: 'Campbell is a maverick: he just won't conform to any mould. The result is that somewhere, sometime, he must offend everyone.' Did Foyster ever more accurately summarise his own writing career?

IV

Through the end of 1966 and into 1967, I found that I disagreed with Foyster and/or Widdershins most of the time, but also found that his work, and that of other ASFR writers, shone as the only light in the murky wood of 1960s science fiction. In particular, I couldn't agree with Foyster's admiration for the works of Samuel R. Delany, an author whose earliest short stories had left me spluttering with exasperation, and whose novels proved unreadable beyond the first page.

Nevertheless, the Foyster-Delany correspondence is one of the most satisfactory aspects of these years, especially as Delany steadfastly refused to be offended by Foyster's taunts and jibes.

Foyster's review of Babel-17 (ASFR 10, June 1967) falls into two parts, a review of the book itself, and a critique of some of Delany's earliest published opinions about SF criticism. Says Foyster of Babel-17:

Delany harks back to the old days of sf, when ideas were a dime a dozen and a decent author was not afraid to spend a penny. By comparison with many modern writers, Delany is a positive spendthrift; the material in this novel would provide eight or ten novels for other writers.

It has. Delany's ideas are not new, at least in the sense that they are familiar to readers of sf. At the same time there is a certain freshness about the way they have been handled, as though the author had a deep regard for the stories in which the concepts first appeared. This is not to say that Delany has copied, but rather that he has taken several old strands of ideas and used them to weave a new yarn. As a result, there are strong pieces and weak pieces . . .

Whichever way you slice it, though, Babel-17 is good reading, as sf. Delany has more than average control over his writing, though a few novels published in Startling would have sharpened up a few remaining weaknesses in his writing: a tendency to verbosity, a mild desire to show off, and very occasionally, definite fuzziness around the edges . . . The tendency towards using as many words as possible is understandable when one is paid by the word, but that is not how I understand Ace's method of payment. Nevertheless, no matter how good the author's work (and Delany writes very well), in a story which is basically an adventure yarn, too many words can get in the way. Too many words can slow the action, or at least throw the reader off the track. I may like what you are writing, Jack, but I've forgotten who is training the ray-gun on the Saturnian grulzak.

And when I say that Delany tends to show off, I really mean that sometimes there's a little too much embroidery, too much cuteness. This, too, one can take in small doses. It may well be that my tolerance is low.

Delany replies in ASFR 14, February 1968:

I've never put any hard-science into a tale without checking on it. The 'science' section in Babel-17 that John Foyster got so upset about a few issues back was merely a dramatization of Fredrick Kantor's rather brilliant solution to what was considered a classically insoluble problem - up until 1965: the totally internal determination of location from within a free-falling system. It's a problem that classical relativity maintains is impossible . . . the Kantor solution was hot news at the time. But that was '65. . . .

Foyster replies:

You may imagine my chagrin at not having heard about Dr Kantor's wonderful discovery. This was tempered by the further discovery that neither Physics Abstracts nor Mathematical Reviews had heard of this 'hot news'. None of the 20 or so other journals in the area (aerospace, astronomy, mathematics and physics) which I consulted for a couple of hours seemed to have heard of it, either. So if Mr Delany can tell us where we can read all about it . . .

An author took his chances if he patted himself on the back in the presence of John Foyster. However, Delany did not reply to the much weightier comment from Foyster, that his prose shows 'too much cuteness'.

In the second part of his review of Babel-17, Foyster takes on an editorial by Delany in New Worlds 172, which appeared at about the time that Michael Moorcock decided that Delany was actually a New Wave writer, and Delany was pleased to be so anointed.

The editorial presents, one presumes, Delany's views on sf. He draws comparisons between music in general and fiction in general, perhaps unwisely, compares forms of music as an analogy with the forms of fiction, i.e. sf and mainstream. The unwisdom comes, perhaps, in suggesting that the quartet might stand for sf and the symphony for mainstream. The objection - and I regard it as an insurmountable one - is that while one composer may write quartets and symphonies, there has been, as far as I can see, only one sf writer who has also written in the other field - Cordwainer Smith.

This general assumption, then, seems untenable to me. But there are specific points in Delany's article which further suggest his intense concern with the oneness of sf and mainstream. He wants a critical vocabulary for sf and claims that no one has yet been able to build the bridge between sf and mainstream. I would submit that the need is not for a bridge, but a ladder. I further suggest that the inability of critics to examine sf in the way Delany wants is due to the absence of the kind of sf he supposes to exist . . .

This is almost the first general discussion about the relative merits of sf and 'mainstream' into which John Foyster was ever drawn, and occurs in the same issue in which George Turner published his first article, which protested about the 'double standard' in SF. As Foyster later confessed to Turner, he was rather in favour of the 'double standard' - that is, he thought it difficult to compare works of sf and the best works of literature.

Delany and Foyster continued to argue about such matters during the next couple of years, culminating in a long letter-article that Delany sent to exploding madonna in 1968. In reply to this nine-page letter (em 5, January 1969), much of it in defence of the New Wave, Foyster replies, in part:

Consider the critical performance of New Worlds this year. Sladek's review of Barthelme failed to get much across to me. Sallis's review of Hump is an example of the worst kind of one-upmanship (the sort of thing to which New Worlds is much given, in fact). Sallis reviewing (?) poetry (No. 181) is simply laughable, while Shackleton/Aldiss does a fair job on Hillegas. Notice that it is clapped-out, nearly orthodox Aldiss who does most nearly approach a decent job. The rest can be wiped, with no loss at all.

There is so much in both literature and science that it isn't really possible for any one person to get a good hold on the lot. I don't know that I entirely approve of your approach to literature (dig the critics), but in science things are really tough. I suppose that a full-time reader could keep a broad grasp of the situation, but scarcely enough to claim genuine familiarity.

While you write about the invention of a spaceship (as an example) you forget that science fiction is written as wish-fulfillment for juveniles. This was then and will remain for some time the basic selling point of science fiction: it is simply unfortunate for older readers that they happen to like it too. Whether they have failed to grow up, or do have Broad Mental Horizons, is something on which I'm not prepared to cast judgment. But that's why I find it hard to take seriously the claims of sf as literature - it's basically written as adventure stories, and people like yourself who try to make sf 'mature' are voices crying in the wilderness. I also find it hard to forget Mike Moorcock's origins as an editor, for example.

V

So why - as those ASFR letter writers complained - did John Foyster read science fiction, let alone write about it?

One short answer is that he didn't read a lot of current science fiction, except when reviewing books for both series of Australian Science Fiction Review. I gained the impression that he often riffled back through his collection of the SF magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, which led to writing his interminable 'Long View' articles for ASFR, Second Series.

The other short answer is: for enjoyment. What appeared to annoy John Foyster was the constant scurrying by SF writers and critics to find pedestals to climb on in the hope that somebody would worship them while they were standing there.

In his introduction to the SF Commentary 19, January 1971, which brings together six issues of exploding madonna and three of JOE, Foyster writes:

The trouble with writing about science fiction is that one becomes serious about it . . . One way or another, people get serious about science fiction, the most frivolous form of entertainment yet devised . . .

However . . . I might remark that you are receiving this fanzine because, unwittingly and perhaps unwillingly, you have given me the impression, to quote Widdershins, that you discuss science fiction seriously . . .. If a couple of you are interested, let us stagger into the darkness together. You are, by the way, Mr Brian Aldiss, Mr James Blish, Mr Red Boggs, Mr Algis Budrys, Mr Sten Dahlskog, Mr Samuel Delany, Mr Damon Knight, Mr Franz Rottensteiner and Mr Harry Warner . . .

I do not agree with Mr Warner entirely when he writes: 'A writer is a delicate organism; equally automatically, a reader may be as neurotic as a writer; his criticisms, though mere personal fads, may harm the delicate mechanism' (Horizons 113, page 2204) . . . Writers are not really delicate organisms, in general . . . While many science fiction writers are interested in discussing what is going on in the world of science fiction, there are also quite a few whose epistolatory endeavours are directed solely towards the extraction of egoboo: in a word, you gotta have a proper respeck. I don't, comrades.

Which brings us back to Widdershins' initial clash with Keith Roberts, as well as many other writers. Having found through two and a half years of writing for ASFR that, above all, writers want their 'proper respeck', Foyster decided to speak only to fellow critics, who, except for Franz Rottensteiner, in the end proved as prickly as the fiction writers. This so exasperated Foyster that, in January 1969 he wrote to the recipients of exploding madonna:

Wake up you lot! Here I am with my critical faculties hanging out in the cold and I haven't interested a single soul in talking about the way stf should be approached. Not one. Probably no one cares: it certainly looks that way.

Which, in turn, might explain why, not too many months later, Foyster turned over the whole lot to me. (I had by then, with a few other people, begged my way onto the mailing list). I reprinted exploding madonna and JOE as a 132-page issue of SF Commentary, and by early 1971 Foyster returned to publishing (with Leigh Edmonds) fannish fanzines with such ringing titles as Boys' Own Fanzine, Norstrilian News and Chunder!

Damien Broderick. Photo by Dick Jenssen dated July 2003.

Epilogue I

John Foyster was (and still may be) famous for his admiration of the works of Cordwainer Smith (Dr Paul Anthony Myron Linebarger, who died in 1966 at the age of 53). Foyster at his best can be found in the special issue of ASFR about the work of Smith/Linebarger. It was always my impression that John Foyster discovered who Cordwainer Smith was, using various detective skills and travelling to Canberra to meet the people who had known Linebarger.

However, not long before he died Foyster sent me the enigmatic message that 'it was Damien Broderick who did the detective pilgrimage regarding Cordwainer Smith', not Foyster. This was the first hint that Damien Broderick had ever had anything to do with the Cordwainer Smith project. Through Yvonne Rousseau, Damien sent an email clarifying the situation:

Towards the end of 1965, I read Space Lords shortly after it arrived in Oz. There I learned that Smith lived in Canberra, attended the Anglican church (or something; this is from memory), and his broker was Mr Greenish, whom readers might approach to discuss Smith's credit rating (or whatever; some whimsy). I wished to apply for the Stanford Writing Fellowship, a year's well-paid stint in the States (something both Rory Barnes and Jean Bedford won in subsequent years); I had A Man Returned in my hand, nasty little squib that it was, and felt I might impress the judges if I could get a note from Mr Smith endorsing my cause (I was a naive child).

Paul Linebarger ("Cordwainer Smith") photo by Arthur Burns from the John Foyster collection.

So I flew to Canberra on a venture and a prop jet, located Mr Greenish's office, had a flea put in my ear, wandered disconsolately to the ANU, came upon Bob Brissenden via Dorothy Green's daughter Harriet (whom I'd known at Monash); Bob told me that oh yes, this must be Paul Linebarger, but he was currently in the Pacific islands doing research. I stayed at Dorothy's house overnight . . . then I went home and forgot Linebarger's name. This is almost incomprehensible, but I was a pragmatic child; the plan had come unstuck, I'd used up all my money fruitlessly, so why clutter my mind with such stuff? When I told John Foyster this tale he was, perhaps, and understandably, a little indignant. So he subsequently went forth and repeated some of these evolutions, or at any rate his own version of them, and thus encountered Arthur Burns, and presumably wrote the name down, and the secret was out.

Except for John Bangsund's original introduction, the Cordwainer Smith material has been reprinted several times, first by Andrew Porter as a leaflet called Exploring Cordwainer Smith, then as the last issue of Peter Weston's famous British fanzine Speculation, and then in the second series of Australian Science Fiction Review, No. 21, Spring 1989.

In the Cordwainer Smith special issue of ASFR, Foyster wrote a critical essay on 'Cordwainer Smith', and extracted an article from Dr Arthur Burns about Linebarger, and also interviewed him. Foyster's and Burns's approach to Smith was so original at the time that it influenced, perhaps even warped, all later discussion of Smith.

David Russell did the nice little Cordwainer Smith cartoon for SF Commentary.

Foyster quotes Robert Silverberg, June 1965, summarising my own feeling about the Cordwainer Smith stories:

'I think that Cordwainer Smith is a visitor from some remote period of the future, living among us perhaps as an exile from his own era or perhaps just as a tourist, and amusing himself by casting some of his knowledge of historical events into the form of science fiction.'

Foyster's own view of Smith is very different:

If we examine the stories a little more closely we find that Smith was very much a man of our time, and that his feelings and thoughts were very much those of his contemporaries.

In 'The Dead Lady of Clown Town', 'The Ballad of Lost C'mell' and 'A Planet Named Shayol', to choose only three stories from his collection Space Lords, he writes strongly and with great feeling of the racial problems which surrounded him in his own land. His love of Australia is revealed in the Rod McBan stories. It isn't fair to Silverberg, but there is one way at least in which Smith shows himself very much tied to his time. His story 'On the Storm Planet' deals with an attempt by Casher O'Neill to assassinate the turtle girl, T'ruth. If one turns to page 38 in the February 1965 Galaxy or to page 69 in Quest of Three Worlds, one finds, despite the interference of both editors, the acrostic KENNEDY SHOT. Several pages later a second acrostic appears: OSWALD SHOT TOO. (Mr Arthur Burns, who had it from the author, is responsible for this information.)

This revelation, with many other examples provided in the Arthur Burns interview, set off the Cordwainer Smith industry, best characterised by the work of John J. Pierce, and which led eventually to the publication of the Cordwainer Smith Concordance by NESFA Press. Unfortunately, this has given the impression that Smith is mainly interesting for the number of hidden references he could pack into each story.

Foyster has a much wider view of Smith than Pierce and most other commentators on:

Cordwainer Smith was the first writer to write science fiction which could possibly be accepted as 'Literature'.

I do not make this claim for him. His work does it for me, and for anyone who chooses to look . . .

Smith's approach to the revelation of the future is almost unique. Most sf writers have difficulty in convincing readers of the reality of the future they create. Some ignore the problem, and hope the reader can accept their ideas. Others attempt to make them credible by explaining what is occurring, as it happens . . .. Smith reveals the workings of his world in a natural manner. In 'Scanners Live in Vain', for instance, the nature of the scanners and the habermen is made plain to the reader by the recitation of a ritual or catechism which is vital both to the character Martel and to the plot. It is not something tacked on 'to make it all seem real'.

Robert Silverberg writes of Smith's world as being 'so tiresomely familiar to him that he does not see the need to spell out the details'. This is not quite true. The details of Smith's future are only made clear as this becomes necessary, and those who have read the bulk of his work will realize that it is filled with cross-references which help to give the whole a remarkable unity . . .. Thus any given story by Smith may seem to contain things not seen, not explained. To see, to understand, one must refer to another, perhaps remote, story.

This is one of the first Foyster essays in which he concentrates on the style of the author as well as the structure of his or her stories:

And what of the general style of the stories? . . . He is talking to children; in his stories he is producing history as fairy tales. This is explicit in one story, 'The Lady who Sailed "The Soul"', where the familiar old story is told by a mother to her daughter. But it is implicit in many of his verbal mannerisms, in other stories. This is not to demean, in any way, the intelligence or maturity of his readers; myths and legends have always been told in simple language, by father to son, and to do otherwise would spoil much of their magic.

Because of the casual approach to the opening of a story, and because of the child-like language used, Smith's technique could easily fail; in writing thus he walks on one side of the narrow gap between beauty and fatuity. But his foot is sure. As an indication of his masterly control - indeed, to use the two sentences by which I would be prepared to let his reputation stand or fall, I will quote the ending of a story sometimes forgotten: 'The Burning of the Brain':

Magno Taliano had risen from his chair and was being led from the room by his wife and consort, Dolores Oh. He had the amiable smile of an idiot, and his face for the first time in more than a hundred years trembled with shy and silly love.

Assuming that any other sf writer had written the story, it would have ended with the word 'idiot'.. Go further; try to find any writer who would have finished the sentence more or less in that way. It would not be the same. For the words 'and silly' are unique with Smith. In these words, these two words, he transcends the petty world of science fiction and reaches out into the world of reality.

Foyster also quotes my own favourite Smith sentence, the first sentence of 'The Dead Lady of Clown Town:

You already know the end - the immense drama of the Lord Jestocost, seventh of his line, and how the cat-girl C'mell initiated the vast conspiracy.

This still gives me goose bumps - the suggestion in the first line that we are sitting there at the end of the time listening to a storyteller retell a legend that has already been around for thousands of years.

Epilogue II

The writer about whom John Foyster wrote the greatest number of words was not Delany or Smith, but J.G. Ballard. Anybody who can offer a summary of Foyster's findings on Ballard would be doing us all a favour. Again, this material should be reprinted rather than filleted. At the very least, Foyster offers a less worshipful view of Ballard than David Pringle did a few years later. Watch this space.

- - -
*Continuum version delivered by Bruce Gillespie, June 2003. Copyright 2003, 2004 by Bruce Gillespie. All rights reserved.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
               --William Pitt, British prime-minister (1759-1806)

[The following article was written in Australian (mostly British) English. Every effort has been made to retain this language intact and to not translate it into US English. -Earl Kemp]

Science Fiction Versus Life*

By John Foyster

This is my favorite photo of John Foyster. Bruce Gillespie writes, "It was named 'Two Blade Foyster' by Dick Jenssen. In fact, it was part of a project by Lee Harding to do a graphic strip made up of photos, with the photos starring Harding, Foyster, Bangsund, and Baxter. The graphic strip never was put together, but the great photos we have of those four gents from 1962 come to us because of Lee Harding's photos. Dick Jenssen was there the same day, also taking photos, which is why it's sometimes hard to tell who actually took which photo that day. Foyster is supposed to be a knife-wielding drug addict in that photo, just in case you couldn't tell."

The label 'escape fiction' has probably been applied more often to science fiction than to any other literary form. The reason for this label has recently been put rather strongly by Andrew Sarris in reviewing 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sarris says: 'People who read and write science fiction have always struck me as a bit creepy for expending so much emotional and intellectual energy to cop out on the human situation. I think you have to be somewhat alienated from human life to sit down to consider its extraterrestrial alternatives.'

John Foyster and Yvonne Rousseau in November 2000. Photo by Jenny Bruce.

At the risk of over-interpreting Sarris, who can manage quite well by himself, I suggest that Sarris is referring to science fiction, and science fiction readers and writers as a whole. He does not claim that every person who reads or writes science fiction has this rather fearful failing. However, it has also been put to me rather strongly that possibly no person can be a complete human being unless he or she has, at one time or another, copped out on the human situation and come back again. But this is an aside.

Perhaps the easy line of defence to this attack might be to question whether writers and readers in general do not suffer from this same alienation: one might even go on to ask the same about film producers and film critics. But this is to ignore the last phrase of Sarris' argument, for he seems to see the extraterrestrial factor as the decisive one. Here, at last, is the opening we have been looking for, for 'extraterrestrial alternatives'. Perhaps we should divert towards this aspect of science fiction - or is this just a semantic trap? Does not, in fact, Sarris mean by this phrase 'extraterrestrial alternatives' just alternatives? Alternatives, that is, to our present world and its problems. If so, and I am sure that this is what Sarris intended (or else it is about the strongest argument along this line), then it is at this point that science fiction must be defended - or discarded.

John Foyster ringed.

The claim is that science fiction rejects the present world and its horrible realities for a dream world: a world in which terrors may exist without involving the reader. The dream world may even hold no horrors, but merely be a pleasant exercise: yet even then the horrors of our own world, which seep over into the most innocuous piece of non-sf, are barred from the reader's experience.

It must be admitted, I suspect, that much of science fiction does fit into just the mould which Sarris has cast: much of it does amount to an escape from this earth of ours on the part of the writer. And even more accurately, it all too often represents a means of escape for the reader. It is not the case that to momentarily forget this world is necessarily to 'cop out', but rather that if all that one does is directed away from the real world, then this is not just 'a bit creepy', but thoroughly unpleasant.

During 1966, the British science fiction magazine New Worlds published a series of four stories by J.G. Ballard, a name possibly known to the thronging millions of Melbourne from the publication in the Herald some years ago of his rather poor novel The Burning World/The Drought. Ballard took what he considered to be some of the major myths of our time and threw them together into a hotchpotch in which, so he claims, 'Images and events became isolated, defining their own boundaries'. Not only that, but 'the elements of sequential narrative have been . . . eliminated.' Unpleasant as this may sound, it nevertheless must have been slightly successful, for early in 1967 Encounter, then in the throes of self-examination (from a safe distance), printed the last in the series, 'The Atrocity Exhibition'. Undoubtedly the story was used solely on account of its relevance to today's world and use of today's images: it had very few other merits, if any. But it did, to some degree, deal with the world in which you and I and Andrew Sarris live. It is beside the point to recall that Mr Ballard's best fiction has dealt with worlds of fantasy.

John Foyster, Carey Handfield, Damien Broderick and John Bangsund.

Mr Ballard has now ceased to write science fiction, and has been adopted by ambit, a small magazine in which he runs competitions of doubtful value. He has, as it were, copped out elsewhere.

Sometimes science fiction writers may try to write of the world in which they live in a very different way. Last year a novel by James Blish told of a hero named Baines who set out to destroy the world: it should be remarked that Blish denies all connection between his fictional character and the present president of the USA.

This is the only Cordwainer Smith book I ever worked on. -Earl Kemp

Of course, these are rather trivial cases: neither of them exhibit anything more than a trifling concern, on the part of the author, for the world in which he lives. Blish himself has done much better, and in his A Case of Conscience (1953, 1958) he deals with a matter of some relevance - alien gods. And there are several other authors who have ventured into reality. Gordon R. Dickson, for example, is now slowly starting to examine the differences in human beings (by extrapolating from humans to aliens, admittedly), and Brian Aldiss' latest novel, An Age, although superficially a time travel yarn, is essentially concerned with the evil of our pasts. A notably exception to this list is Theodore Sturgeon, whose writing fits Sarris' comment completely. The fact that Sturgeon is so popular is evidence that science fiction readers do turn their faces to the wall.

But there are, or have been, two science fiction writers whose whole output is the result of, and to some extent reflects, a complete acceptance of physical reality. 'Cordwainer Smith' is now dead, but his short stories and novels, all written with one master plan, are wholly based on our present world or on those ideas which have grown out of it. Smith has inserted contemporary references into some of his stories, but these little word games are all but indecipherable, since they are only a joke on Smith's part. But Smith has built into his fiction the occurrences of his everyday life - cats, children - and some of the important events (?) of his time - the Egyptian revolution. His 'Lords of the Instrumentality' is simply the gov't of the USA, and in writing of Norstrilia he expresses in direct language his liking for Australia and his reasons for so doing. His stories can be read as complete fantasy, but only, I suspect, by those readers to whom Sarris' statement applies.

Samuel R. Delany is still living and still writing. He has cast into science fiction parts of his own life, generally distorting the patterns just enough to give the plot an appearance of fiction. His two most recent novels, Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection, have been exceptionally well received by science fiction readers, winning three or four awards between them. Both are shorter novels, but Delany is now writing longer pieces, with Nova (in press) being about the size of an ordinary novel, and the novel [Dhalgren] he is at present writing (working title Prism, Mirror, Lens) will be over 200,000 words. It is not necessarily easy to see present life reflected in Delany's novels, because of the distortion mentioned above, and because Delany writes with extreme care (which makes him unusual, as science fiction writers go). Delany is, however, the only presently active science fiction writer who faces the world in which he lives squarely and writes about it. Perhaps Brian Aldiss and some others should be included, but if so, then this is not so plainly revealed in what they write.

Andrew Sarris is certainly correct in that many readers and writers fit this description. But their numbers are decreasing, and it is possible that at some time in the future it will not be true of the majority. Until then, writers like Delany, Aldiss, Blish and others will probably continue to make inroads on the world of science fiction slowly: but when the time is ripe, they may be recognised as major commentators on their times.

- - -
*Reprinted from The Mentor (edited by Ron Clarke), No. 13, January 1969, by permission of Yvonne Rousseau. Special thanks to Yvonne Rousseau and Bruce Gillespie for help with this article.

Three Rules for Literary Success: 1. Read a lot. 2. Write a lot. 3. Read a lot more; write a lot more.
               --Robert Silverberg

Thru A Glass, Greenly:
A non-definitive Towner Hall reminiscence

By Dave Locke

Preamble

Dave Locke at the Midwestcon in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1992.

I once wrote an article which killed every fanzine I submitted it to. It got stashed in a desk drawer until the curse wore off, or got tired and ambled away, and then Bill Bowers courageously published it in Outworlds and went on to produce many more fine issues. A brave fan.

Here, I'm afraid, is another article of that type (faanfic, actually, though I called it an "article" to maintain the fantasy), but this has a shorter history in terms of submissions. I wrote it in '82 for Dan Steffan. Two years later I asked him a second time to return it if publishing wasn't in the immediate future. He phoned me on 12/26/84 and said he'd have Boonfark out in February of 1985. I made a Post-It note of the conversation and stuck it on my copy of the article. In true fan timebinding tradition, I never heard from Dan again until this year. Nope, he couldn't find his original of the piece, nor the Ray Nelson illos he'd gotten for it.

Somewhere around 1984 Ted White and I were on the outs, so to speak, for a duration of over a decade. Ted plays a major role in this article. I stashed my carbon copy of the manuscript, which by the way was on green paper, and forgot about it for several years.

Somewhere in the 90s Bill Bowers expressed an interest in it. Several times. I finally gave it to him and both the manuscript and Outworlds disappeared into a stasis field. For a while there was some effort to OCR a fuzzy carbon which had been made on green paper, but I don't have to tell you it failed.

Bill fell further behind on producing an Outworlds, while his backlog of material continued to grow like topsy, and finally admitted he didn't need to take on yet another Locke manuscript with a possible curse on it.

At Midwestcon in 2002 Rich Lynch and I had a handshake agreement that I would produce an article for the final Mimosa. In the long ago Rich and Nicki had accepted another cursed article of mine, the second one, actually, but it never got published. It was lost in their house fire... That article later got totally redone almost from scratch (and memory) and in a vastly different form than originally conceived it appeared in Sandra Bond's Quasi Quote #2.

But, since this was the final Mimosa, and the Lynchs would have only an electronic rendition of the manuscript, I figured it just might be safe for this article to finally appear. Alas, Rich figured his readers wouldn't know most of the people involved. Probably, also, he didn't want his computer to catch on fire.

Earl Kemp is obviously the brave faned for the job. A Hugo-winning fanpubber who has even gone to jail for publishing what he felt like publishing, he obviously has the cajones to face the third and last of the cursed Locke articles and overcome the jinx. Well, the last if we don't count the article which killed the sexual fantasy issue of Denise Parsley Leigh's fanzine... A copy of that now sits alone in my Articles Out folder, where it will probably continue to reside until the entire contents of that file drawer are hauled off to the landfill.

I only regret that this item here never appeared while my friend Ed Cox, another fan with a major role in the piece, was alive to read it.

A note. This was written in 1982, and is about a lifestyle which was in effect in 1976. Bear that in mind if you're not familiar with the social differences between then and now, because the times were indeed different. I won't rewrite history, either real or imagined (and this piece is both), to falsely instill new social sensibilities into older times.

I have resisted virtually all temptation to change anything, except to add Steffan the first time I refer to Dan, and to add one ingroup Towner Hall reference which I picked up in March of last year from Ted White.

Besides the influences which are noted within the story, I was also obviously inspired by Jack Finney's wonderful tale The Woodrow Wilson Dime. Everything up to the point in the story where the Woodrow Wilson Dime is discovered, including the first phone call, is true.

THRU A GLASS, GREENLY:
A non-definitive Towner Hall reminiscence

Dave Locke wrote, "Greenly.jpg is a logo collage for the piece. I did the collage. The darkest green inset, bottom right with the man (me) caught up in gears, was taken from an illustration Alan Hutchinson did for me back in 1980 for my perszine, THE WORKS."

article, by Dave Locke, 12/82

I've never told this story to anyone, and if it weren't for the Woodrow Wilson dime I wouldn't even believe it.

Have you ever awoken with your brain slipping its gears, spinning in place inside your skull and casting off a kaleidoscope of dream images that bear such a sense of reality you'd swear you were remembering something that actually happened? Of course you have. Hasn't everyone? You lie there staring at the ceiling, while your eyes seem to be turned inward watching the images as they flicker, flicker, flicker. It takes a few seconds before the clutch is let out and engages the brain, and by the time you've made it to the kitchen and laid hands on the coffee pot it's ten-to-one you can't remember what it was you were looking at.

But that isn't the way it was that Sunday morning back in December of 1976, because I remembered. And I still remember, six years later almost to the day, and I still think it wasn't a dream even though the Woodrow Wilson dime got lost in the shuffle of packing and moving back a year or three ago. I've moved a lot of times in the last few years, and I don't know specifically when it got lost. It isn't here anymore to reinforce my belief in what happened that Saturday back at the end of 1976, but I've held it in my hand dozens of times since then and there's no question - to me, anyway - that it was real.

The story doesn't begin with the dime. That came later, so I'll get off it for the present. Where I should begin is with the Little Green Things.

Little Green Things is, not are, a drink. It's the invention of Ed Cox who, to everyone else, is more well-known for such things as drinking Coors and building beer can towers to the moon with the empties, and for inspiring the line "Ed Cox doodle here" which has served many fans well when they find themselves with a blank space at the bottom of a stencil. To me, however, he's more well-known for Little Green Things, because this wild and fuzzy drink is what led me to the Woodrow Wilson dime that Saturday in December of 1976. And it was the dime, I think, which led me to visit Towner Hall in December of 1961.

As to how I traveled from Los Angeles in 1976 to New York City in 1961 ... well, as I said, I've never told this story to anyone. You'll see why. As to why I'm telling it now, six years later, or twenty-one years later depending on how you look at it, I'm not really sure. It was agreed that I would write an article for Dan Steffan, and I found Boonfark's series of Towner Hall reminiscences to be compelling because of my own adventure there. The lure to Tell About It was almost too compelling, and the first article I wrote for Dan - but not on this topic - got bogged down. After wrestling with it for months I finally completed it to my satisfaction, but then realized it wasn't a good fit for Dan. I sent it elsewhere, and for Dan I wrote another article. That also wasn't a good fit, and I have it here but it's earmarked for someone else. I'm not a believer in fate, normally (or abnormally), but I get the feeling that for Boonfark I'm meant to write about Towner Hall. I won't fight it anymore.

Nor will I apologize for it, or demand that you believe it. Consider it just a story, real or imagined.

If you take a blender, a bucket of icecubes, a six-ounce (screw metric) can of frozen lime concentrate, a teaspoon of powdered coconut, and a bottle of cheap vodka, you've got yourself the makings for a batch of Little Green Things. This drink is, believe me, quite unreal. I remember standing in EdCo's kitchen as, for the first time, I watched him make it. What I was doing over at Ed's in the first place was simply making a day of it. We were collaborating on a sci-fi novel for Laser Books, a project we later abandoned (and for good reason. I remember we used to keep around us several opened bottles of industrial-strength ammonia, just to kill the odor). After what seemed an adequate amount of time spent working - at least an hour or two - we both noticed the hands on the clock were straight up and we immediately headed for the booze. However, Ed stayed my hand as it grasped the scotch bottle and talked me into trying Little Green Things.

Into the blender went the lime concentrate and the powdered coconut. Ed filled the empty lime can with vodka and poured that in, too, then slapped the cover on his blender and set the machine in motion. As the liquid jumped and swirled he began adding icecubes, one at a time, through the hole in the cover. The mixture slowly rose, and when it hit the top he killed the power, poured two tall glasses of this green concoction, and put the rest in the refrigerator. We clicked glasses, sipped, and retired to the living room to swap stories and lies.

After two more containers of Little Green Things I knew all the secrets of this unreal drink.

Little Green Things is, above all, cold. Very, very cold. An alcoholic slushie, the coldness numbs your tongue and your speech before the vodka does the same to your brain. You sound tipsy, and feel it, before you actually are. Then as you quickly mellow you feel that your mouth is always one step drunker than you are, and you never quite catch up.

It was late afternoon when I volunteered to go fetch a pizza and then phoned ahead for it. The coldness from the Little Green Things had begun its surge from our mouths through our bodies to the nether regions, our brains having gone numb hours earlier. Ed, in fact, was pretty much frozen in his chair except for the elbow action on his drinking arm.

Plagiarizing from our mutual fan friend David Hulan, I said: "Thank Ghod I've got my car; I'm too drunk to walk." As a consequence of trying to chuckle while bending his elbow, Little Green Things ran into EdCo's beard and began dripping from his chin. He set down the glass and began wiping his chin with a page from our manuscript.

"Get some wine while you're at it," he told me, suggesting a brand I hadn't heard of.

As I walked across the street where I'd parked my car, I noticed again that it was a relatively cold day. Relative to Southern California, that is. Luckily, I thought, I had had the presence of mind to put on a teeshirt that morning.

With the pizza warming the seat beside me, I pulled into the supermarket parking lot and spent several minutes staring through the windshield while trying to remember what kind of wine Ed wanted. Olympian mental gymnastics were of no help. I couldn't remember.

There was a public phone on the outside wall of the market to the right of the entrance. Hell, I thought, I'll just call him up. And ask. Hey, EdCo, whathell was that wine you wanted? Eh? Does it have that ring-a-ding flavor, like Ripple? Will the color of it clash with the Little Green Things? Can I remember your phone number, EdCo, because some sonufabitch ripped out the phone directory.

I fed a quarter into the slot. Local calls were only a dime back then, but I didn't have a dime. I thought about putting in the nickel and three pennies I had and getting billed for the two cents, but it was just an idle thought. I wasn't quite that drunk.

I punched out a number and waited through two rings. A woman said hello and money fell into the coin return. I said "is EdCo there?", realizing he probably wasn't, or that he was even more of a fast worker than his reputation would allow, and fished out the money.

"EdCo?" she repeated.

"Yeah, Ed Cox. I'll bet he isn't there," I said, looking at the nickel and dime change that I held in my hand. How could a pay phone give me change?

"No, he isn't," she told me. "I haven't seen him in a couple of weeks. Who is this?"

"Dave Locke. Who is this?"

She gave her name. Doris somebody. Doris Whatsherface. I had the right exchange, but the wrong number. I wondered what the odds were of dialing a wrong number in the Valley and getting connected with someone who knew and had probably even dated EdCo. Probably not too bad, I thought.

"Say, Doris, answer two things for me, will you?"

"Sure, Dave."

I stared at the change in my hand. "What's Ed's phone number, and whose face is on a dime?"

I was pretty sure she wouldn't say Woodrow Wilson.

It has to be a measure of my inebriation that I used the Woodrow Wilson dime to call EdCo. I mean, thinking back on it I saw that I could have used the two nickels; I'd already had one, and the phone had given me another. But, no, I used the dime.

"Towner Hall."

Oh shit, I thought, I screwed up again.

"Is Ed there?"

"Ed who?" The voice turned away from the phone: "Anyone here named Ed?" Silence. The voice turned back to me. "Nope. We've got a Ted, that's me, and we got a Sylvia and a Terry, Carol, Pete, Dick, Pat, Bhob, Steve, Gary, Les, and two Andys, but no Ed. If an Ed shows, who shall we tell him called?"

You'll have to realize that I didn't know squat about Towner Hall in December of 1976. Not at that point, anyway. I may have heard about it, but it didn't stick. There was no recognition on my part.

"Tell him," I said, "that NASA called. One of our satellites just ran through a wall of Coors cans." I hung up.

The Woodrow Wilson dime fell into the coin return slot. It shouldn't have, but it did. I looked at it for a minute, turning it around and around. In God we trust. 1961. E Pluribus Unum.

With the dime in my pocket and a jug of Pisano on the floor of the car on the passenger side, I drove back to EdCo's. Let him drink jug wine, I thought. Christ, we're so pissed we could drink vinegar. Our critical faculties had gotten all mixed up with that third container of Little Green Things.

I parked across the street again, same spot, and got one helluva surprise when I opened the door. In fact, I almost dropped the pizza and vino. I stood outside the car, the door open, and stared at the world with great incredulity.

I didn't know where the hell I was.

Bear in mind now that, first off, there is no snow on the ground in Southern California. Not even in December. Here, there was. Not much in the street, which had obviously been plowed ("just like me" was the thought that ran through my mind), but it was everywhere else: between the sidewalks and the buildings, on the buildings, and, lightly, in the air. A big, fat snowflake alit on the end of my nose and then melted before I could get my eyes focused properly on it.

I shook my head vigorously, but what I saw around me didn't go away. This was not Filmore Street in Arleta, California. For that matter, I knew this wasn't anywhere in Arleta, and had strong doubts that I was in California. Cold. It was very, very cold. I had parked on a residential street and opened the door to what appeared to be an urban location.

Still holding the jug of wine and the pizza, I walked up to the sign on the corner. West 10th Street. I walked back to the car, still unenlightened and by now beginning to feel the cold, but the adrenalin I was pumping kept it from really getting through to me.

I was parked in front of 163 West 10th Street. Two large, heavy men with huge beards came walking down the sidewalk in my direction, one looking like a rabbi and the other like a mountain man. The rabbi, a much shorter but stouter fellow, fell back a bit and bent down to quickly fashion a snowball. The mountain man went on a few paces and stopped, but before he could fully turn around to see what was going on, the rabbi let fly with the snowball and off went the mountain man's hat. It was a good shot, but at that range it was hard to miss.

"Avram," said the mountain man as he walked up to the smaller fellow and paternally laid mittens on his shoulders, "you're reverting to childhood again. Shall I upend you in a snowbank somewhere until these urges pass?"

"A snowbank, Walter, in the Village?" The smaller man sighed. "We would freeze before we found one. Well, perhaps not. Perhaps in Sheridan Square we could find such a thing. But if I beg your forgiveness for my uncontrolled frivolity, and I went berserk only because your hat was so silly and so tempting, Walter, perhaps you may find it in your dark heart to let me retrieve your hat, brush it off, and all will be right with the universe. And," he said, looking around Walter, "we are almost there. Towner Hall lies just down those stairs."

Then they both spotted me. I stood there in front of my car. I suppose I must have appeared conspicuous with my teeshirt, pizza, and jug of wine.

"What in the hell?" said Walter.

"Obviously a Village person," said Avram the rabbi, "though obviously, too, a very demented one. I am becoming very much colder just looking at him, and I suggest we proceed inside at once before he does something distressing, such as falling down and shattering right before our eyes."

"Wait a minute," suggested Walter. Then he called out to me: "Are you lost?"

As plowed as I was, things were beginning to add up. To what, I didn't know. What I did know was that I was in New York City, in the Village, in front of a place called Towner Hall, that I had spoken with someone named Ted who was probably in there right now with a whole crew of other people, and that the two bearded characters in front of me were people I had met in the mid-Sixties: Avram Davidson and Walter Breen. And that of all the cars on the street, mine was the only one that looked newer than the 1950s.

As I said, I didn't know what that all added up to, but under my breath I began to curse EdCo and his goddamn blender.

"What's he mumbling?" Avram asked Walter.

Walter called out to me again. "Are you lost?"

"No, guys, I'm not," I told them, and was surprised to hear my own teeth chatter. "What I am, I think, is kidnapped."

"Do you think he's dangerous?" Walter asked Avram.

"Demented, perhaps, but not dangerous. Tell me, sir," he addressed me, "do you read science fiction?"

"Yes, I'm that demented." I lifted my arms. "I also eat pizza and drink wine. How about you?"

"Follow us," they said, almost in unison, and we went down the stairs and through a door to the left.

"Who'd you bring?" we were greeted. The speaker had a weary, measured voice.

"Hey, hey," shouted another, "maybe it's Ed!"

There were already thirteen people in a long, narrow and dimly lit basement room. With us, the new arrivals, we totaled sixteen. I could still count. People sat at desks or on them, in chairs, on the floor, or leaned against a wall. Three were women, the rest guys: looked like a typical fan party to me.

Avram had peeled off his outdoor winter clothing. He promptly moved to the weary-voiced fan and slapped him repeatedly on the back.

"Ah, Ted, my friend," he said, as Ted grimaced from the pounding, "how good it is to see you again. Ah!" he exclaimed, looking around. "So many good people here tonight."

"Who'd you bring?" repeated Ted, now even beginning to look weary. Avram turned to where Walter had been standing, but Walter had gone over to sit on the floor with his back against the side of one of the desks. Avram and Ted watched Walter as he popped some candy in his mouth and, with a wastebasket just to his left, tossed the wrapper to his right. We watched as it bounced off the toe of a seated woman I suddenly recognized as Sylvia White. I'd seen her at the Chicon III masquerade in 1962 and, still in costume, afterwards. The delay in recognition was likely because I'd never seen her with clothes on. She looked down in disgust at the candy wrapper, and I noticed that Ted was looking even wearier.

Sylvia White in a ChiCon III photo by Arthur Shaw for Life magazine dated September 1962.

It was at that point things fell into place in my frontal lobes, but slowly, because they were drifting through Little Green Things. What with seeing the ages of Walter and Avram, and Sylvia who didn't look any different in 1962 from what I could see, together with the old cars parked outside, and that Ted must be a young Ted White, husband of Sylvia, it all just added up to me standing with pizza and wine at a NYC fandom party somewhere in the early Sixties. I almost dropped the goodies again. Then I wondered how the hell I was going to figure out why I was here, and how, and how was I going to get the pizza to EdCo? To hell with it, I figured: it would be cold as a witch's tit by the time I could get it to the other side of the country. Then again, just to indicate how clearly I was handling this, I figured there was at least no question that I had lots of time to get it there.

"I'd like you to meet our host this fine day," Avram was saying to me. "Mr. Theodore White; Ted to friends and enemies alike." He slapped Ted on the back again, then put his arm around Ted's shoulder and gave him a hug.

"Who'd you bring?"

"Why, a fellow science fiction fan," Avram exclaimed. He took the wine and pizza and held them to Ted's chest. "Bearing gifts and, pour soul, freezing to death just outside your door."

Ted lifted the lid on the pizza box, stared inside, then pushed the lid down. He gestured with a thumb.

"Okay, throw it to the wolves," he said, grabbing the jug as Avram moved past him.

Ted found two glasses, which wasn't difficult as they were all over the place, and poured. Avram came back and took the jug as Ted was starting to set it down on a table. Ted came over, looking at me, and extended one of the glasses. He smiled slightly, lifted his own wine as I took my glass, and then raised it again in my direction before taking a sip. I drank, too, looking back at him, and thinking. Mainly I thought about how terrible the wine tasted after drinking Little Green Things.

It was somewhere around this time that I realized my alcoholic haze was obscuring the problems of this strange reality. I mean, while this realization comes to me frequently, I now incurred it in the Village in December 1961. It probably started when I saw the calendar on the wall. I actually began to think about my situation. About how here I was, 32 years old at a time when I was supposed to be 17 years old. What was I doing here at a fan party, when I was supposed to be either bringing Ed our food and drink on this same day in 1976 on the other side of the country, or in 1961 doing teenage-type things upstate in New York's Adirondack Park. And what was I doing now, as a teenager? Was I writing a letter of comment to Ted about Void right this very minute? I couldn't keep the tenses straight in my mind. Or was my 17-year-old self transposed to Arleta, California in 1976, and what would Ed say to him when he showed up without the wine? Could I call upstate and talk to myself? Could I talk to my dad, who was going to exit the world three months later on the day John Glenn went up? My alcoholic haze lifted just enough to let me ponder the situation. Ponder, ponder. I decided I needed a drink.

I had one. I took a swallow from it.

"What's your name?" Ted White asked me, looking down at my teeshirt and the goosebumps on my arms.

"I shouldn't have withheld it this long, Ted. My name is Dave Locke. You know me."

He shook his head. "No I don't. Dave Locke is a neo upstate. He publishes a mildly promising but mediocre genzine on ditto, and he's 16 years old."

"17," I corrected him.

He laughed. Still smiling, his eyes fixed on mine, he took another sip of wine.

"Now that we've established that," he said, "who are you?"

"Dave Locke."

"Come sit down." We and our drinks moved to two beat-up hard chairs. We cleared off the food wrappers and sat down to talk.