October 2004

--e*I*16- (Vol. 3 No. 5) October 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.

Contents -- eI16 -- October 2004

Earl Kemp by Robert Bonfils, by Earl Kemp

Bonfils Cover Art is Back!, by Robert Speray

Wankering Through Time and Space, by Earl Kemp

…Return to sender, address unknown….8 [eI letter column], by Earl Kemp

1955 Advent:uring Through the Years 2005, by Earl Kemp

The Advent:Publishers Master Archive, compiled by George W. Price

I am A Fandom of One: A Fan's Manifesto, by J.G. Stinson

How I (Almost) Became Ivar Jorgensen, by Mike Deckinger

Incredible (ecover), by Ditmar (Dick Jenssen)

Discovering Olaf Stapledon, by Bruce R. Gillespie

A Valedictorian Forbidding Melancholy, by Bruce R. Gillespie

"Shrink, I Wanna Kill….," by Earl Kemp

The Dragon's Asshole, by Earl Kemp

The Year of the Phoenix, by Earl Kemp

Hot Damn, Vietnam!, by Earl Kemp

His view, reiterated continually, is that our government, however popularly elected, represents only the large corporations that control it, as they control the media, through which they persuade the voters to support only two parties, conservative and reactionary. Wars fill their coffers, so at their behest the government levies heavy taxes for the purpose of waging unprovoked and undeclared wars: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace lists almost two hundred from 1945 to 2001.
               --Edmond S. Morgan, review,
               Gore Vidal's Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson

THIS ISSUE OF eI is dedicated to my pal Bob from The Porno Factory-Robert Bonfils-The World's G*R*E*A*T*E*S*T Paperback cover artist. We are celebrating his recognition in the current issue of Illustration Magazine with several pieces in this issue.

In the world of science fiction, it is also in memory of George Flynn and Pete Graham.

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I would like to call your attention 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 Potlach. There is more about this effort on eFanzines.com and your donation to the cause would be greatly appreciated.

#

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.

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.

Other than Bill Burns and Dave Locke, these are the people who made this issue of eI possible: Victor J. Banis, Robert Bonfils, Bruce Brenner, Robert E. Briney, Mike Deckinger, Bruce Gillespie, Elaine Kemp Harris, Dick Jenssen (Ditmar), George W. Price, Robert Speray, Janine Stinson, Jon Stopa, Jodi Wille, and Dan Zimmer.

ARTWORK: This issue of eI features original and recycled artwork by Ditmar and recycled artwork by William Rotsler.

If the fragile internationalism of the myth of human brotherhood has returned as a moral force in the modern world, it is because partial human solidarities--those of religion, ethnicity, and class--have
dishonored themselves by the slaughter committed in their names.
               -- Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honour

Earl Kemp by Robert Bonfils*

By Earl Kemp

This is Robert Bonfils Celebration Month. The September issue of Illustration magazine finally gives him the recognition and status he deserves. Not only does he get the cover treatment, some thirty plus interior pages are devoted to his story and his art. There are perhaps 100 exquisite color reproductions of Bonfils original artwork and paperback cover reproductions.

Robert Bonfils was The World's G*R*E*A*T*E*S*T Paperback Cover Artist, only no one noticed while the work was ongoing. Decades later, with all his accumulated work at hand, the fact was undeniable.

He grew up in Kansas City and went to the Kansas City Art Institute to learn how to be the artist he became. His classmates were people like Bill and Jim Teason, Ken Riley, Jackson Pollock, Harry Feldman, and with Thomas Hart Benton as an instructor. He did a stint in the Army then moved to Chicago and continued his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago.

He finally landed a job at the prestigious art agency of Stevens, Hall, Biondi and his real education began. The staff of artists there were about the best in town, some the best in the country. They undertook the hands-on task of completing Bonfils' education and turning him into first a professional commercial artist and second the world's greatest paperback cover artist to be.

Here he did covers and illustrations for children's books, covers for Mercury Record albums, and ads for Miller High Life beer.

Eventually Stanley Schrag of Playtime Books and the brothers Sorren of Merit Books all discovered Bonfils, and he began painting his first paperback covers for them.

When Harold W. McCauley retired from Nightstand Books and moved to Florida, William Hamling hired Robert Bonfils to replace him, with a big difference. He was to move to San Diego and help set up an entirely new publishing operation from there. I was doing the same thing. Bonfils was the Art Director and I was the Editor in Chief of what was to become Greenleaf Classics.

Since both of us were moved from Chicago to San Diego at the same time, we were thrown together quite a bit, although we had never known each other while we lived in Chicago.

The best possible thing happened, we became best friends instead of coworkers. We began spending almost all of our free time together; after all we didn't know anyone locally. We partied together, dinnered together, vacationed together, theatered together. We bar hopped all over Tijuana together…we were soulmates if not twins.

He was pretty adventurous in those days, and had lots of things to catch up with that he had repressed forever, like long trips through wilderness areas and overnight camping in gorgeous, remote locations. He had all kinds of maps and guidebooks showing locations of former Indian villages and we would prowl them, harvesting arrowheads, beads, and pottery chards…all over San Diego County and way into Mexico as well.

Bob bought a huge parcel of land in East County San Diego that was a wonderful hideaway for a very long time. There were huge rock boulders to play on and ancient trees providing abundant shade. The pride of the area was a huge private pond, the new home of almost forgotten skinny dipping from my grade school days. Wild animals and birds galore, fragrant blossoms from native wildflowers…the perfect reflecting place.

Another of Bob's requirements was a big sailboat…a really big sailboat. Its record log said that it had sailed on numerous occasions to exotic ports in Hawaii, Tahiti, etc. in its lifetime…everything that Bob secretly wanted to do himself.

We had some delightful times on board that ship, far out to sea, knowing not what we were doing. The boat would sleep six and had lots of moving around room below deck and much more on deck. What it didn't have was a crew, ever. There were half a dozen of us who would eagerly take on the task, and pretend, and drink and smoke some more Indica, and sail down to Mexico and way out to nowhere, now and then pretending to fish. We would dock in Ensenada Harbor (Baja California, Mexico) in the incredible Bahia de Todo Santos and go into town for liquor.

The boat was stocked with empty booze bottles. On each trip to Mexico, we would fill all of them with the same type liquor the bottles once held, then sail back to the USA with one of the best stocked bars in town, at a fraction of the local cost.

On one occasion, the ever-popular U.S. Coast Guard approached us well into Mexican waters and turned about to board us. As they were climbing onto the boat on one side of it, some of us were dumping weighted-down pot overboard on the opposite side.

Once, on vacation in Ensenada, we couldn't get a hotel room anywhere in town because of some convention. We spent hours looking for a place to stay and even began offering bribes for rooms. Finally, a kind desk clerk told us that we could probably rent a room at a bordello, and proceeded to give us directions to one he would recommend. It turned out to be a huge old hotel just at the edge of town in a residential neighborhood. It had once been a thing of great grandeur and delight, but was falling to debris by the time we reached it.

Bob and I spent time examining the overgrown and self-strangling landscaping that had obviously once been quite beautiful. We also checked out the structure itself, most of it boarded up and off limits, lusting for the stained glass windows, the wallpaper, the crystal chandeliers, the hardwood floors in any of several grand ballrooms, etc.

The girls of the establishment, with perhaps a common age of 19, kept pretty busy all night long running up and down the hotel corridors and giggling.

#

The reason we never noticed just how superb an artist Bonfils was around the office was because we were too busy to look at what he was doing. At our peak, we were producing 50 paperback novels every month and one skin magazine every day. It is hard to imagine that today…producing 50 novels a month, painting 50 cover paintings a month…while living and playing and enjoying life.

Posing for some of Bonfils' better covers was an extra special pleasure and just one more fringe benefit of being the boss. One of my earlier favorites, because you can easily tell it was me, was the cover of Robert Silverberg's Sins of Seena (EL306).

Bob asked me to pose for the cover of The Phantom Detective, The Trail to Death (CR108). Only thing he didn't tell me was that I was to be a corpse, coming back to life to haunt evildoers forever….

However, my real joy is the four volumes of Dr. Death that Bob painted covers for based on my customary demeanor around the office. The first in the series, CR118, is my favorite of the four.

I posed for numerous other covers as well over time, only I am not recognizable in any of them. They are best represented by the cover of Song of Aaron, by Richard Amory (GC222). For this picture, Bob asked me to bring along my Killer Kemp black cowboy outfit, my boots, my hat, my holster, and my sixshooter. Then he had me posing as both cowboys on that superb wraparound cover.

In the pose, I and I are lighting a joint to be shared by him and him. I can't be recognizable as either cowboy except I somehow remember looking like that, and wearing those tight-ass clothes for real.

Robert Bonfils is retired now, but he still paints in his studio every day. He concentrates on fine art and commissioned portraits and on recreating, to order, his staggeringly beautiful original cover paintings from the past.

Besides all these wonderful things, I need to urge you to read Robert Speray's "Bonfils Cover Art is Back!" elsewhere in this issue of eI.

*Dated July 2004

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons.
               -- Michael Shermer

by Robert Speray

Kittens Kicks PR 201 - 1969

Robert Bonfils (known as Bob) is the artist who did most of the covers for the paperback books published by the Hamling organization edited by Earl Kemp that are known as Greenleaf Books. Readers of eI have certainly noticed examples of book scans used to illustrate stories and know that Bob's cover art delivers.

Bob's legacy of images has finally become the subject for a wider audience with the publication this month of a lead article about him in Illustration Magazine, THE prestige magazine for reporting on important illustrators.

The best thing about this event is that Bonfils art is back on the newsstand. The issue's cover shows one of his sixties paperback covers and it will catch the eye of modern rack browsers as efficiently as it did when first used. The interior article combines an informative autobiography with critical analysis and includes plenty of illustrations.

The publication of this article marks a key point in a long and twisted adventure spanning decades. A recent run up to this article began when two retired creators and a long time fan got together somehow, and a crew developed to work on a grand project. The creation of the article is the first public output from that group.

I first met Earl Kemp and Bob Bonfils two and a half years ago over a too-short weekend that ended a long search for these characters. Thank you Lynn Munroe for setting that up.

I brought a few thousand Greenleaf books from my collection to the meeting. These were the center of attention as we sat around visiting, looking at the books and letting them stimulate questions and memories.

Bob Bonfils February, 2002

Earl Kemp February, 2002

It was quite a moment, that meeting, and it was a catalyst for both Bob and Earl to reflect on their past accomplishments, to recall those days and the books that they produced, and to see their work as something entertaining, something important, and something that still resonates today.

The meeting inspired me to take the next step beyond collecting the books into a private archive, and to build an illustrated checklist of all the books produced. This would be the definitive resource used by researchers and historians evaluating and understanding the period. It would provide a clear attribution about who had done which covers and who had written which books.

It has been a fascinating time since that meeting.

Earl has been working his memoirs by publishing eI and has maintained a rigorous and large production schedule that adds up to half a foot of paper when printed out to be read without a monitor. Readers should take a moment every few issues to check back on earlier issues and grasp the amount of history and story telling that has accumulated here. It is amazing.

Bob has become active again in pin-up art, re-creating favorite covers for fans. He has become conscious of his legacy and is integrating that past period into his current life. He has also been pressed into service as the main identifier of the artist on every book produced by the Hamling organization.

Bruce Brenner Portrait by Bonfils

Bruce Brenner, a dedicated and serious collector of vintage paperback books, stepped up to the task of scanning book covers and entering book information into a spreadsheet. This is the hard work that turns an idea into reality. Not only did he take on the task of capturing facts about books already on hand, he pursued missing books with focused and sustained searching on eBay, and beyond.

All of us have participated in the spring paperback collecting conventions in Los Angeles for the past two years. Bob and Earl got a taste of the fan interest and appreciation and Bruce and Robert have had Bob and Earl cornered to quiz them endlessly about obscure details that only a obsessed collector can appreciate.

During this time, there has always been a feeling that our efforts would lead to something bigger, perhaps the publication of a book for posterity. A book of substance would imply a widespread appreciation of the work, a full rehabilitation of Earl's reputation, and an acceptance of Bob's stature as an artist. It would also somehow make the collecting process less eccentric with the shading that it had a larger purpose.

Earl, Bruce, Bob, Robert Los Angeles, 2004

During this same period, Dan Zimmer started publishing a high quality quarterly magazine that concentrated on illustration art - Illustration Magazine.

This magazine carried informative stories about many commercial artists who did covers for vintage paperbacks and pulps. The articles were interesting and they always included many examples of the art, both in their original art form, and as they were published. The quality of the reproduction was top-notch and the artists that were covered were the best of those who worked during the last half of the 20th century.

Eventually, a connection was made and Dan Zimmer's desire to publish an article about the work of Robert Bonfils got our attention, and eventually our commitment. Thus began a creative process that has been sweet, tart, and with publication of this issue of Illustration Magazine, finally smooth and filling.

Lynn Munroe Lancecon 1999

Lynn Munroe was drafted into helping out since he had experience in writing about artists, publishing interviews in his own newsletter and sales lists, and publishing articles in Illustration Magazine.

His experience and leadership got us started, and led us to the first step which was to visit with Bob in San Diego for a formal interview. We asked Bob about his life, his influences and his techniques in order to produce a single long story about him and his work.

This meeting produced a written draft by Lynn that got passed around for review. It was reading this draft that inspired Bob to write the story of his life in his own words. It covered many of the same points as Lynn's draft, but with more details and in Bob's own voice.

It turned out that Bob could write an entertaining story himself, and nobody knew.

Lynn reworked his draft into a shorter article using bits not covered in Bob's piece. The new version contained the unique insights and wry voice that are hallmarks of Lynn's writing.

This led to a revised plan to have the article composed of three separate pieces that made up the full story. This meant that I had the job of doing the final piece for the article - a comprehensive review of the cover art, giving my opinion on its pleasure and importance.

Earl did the editing and review of all this writing, helping to tune the final versions into something readable.

Bruce provided an inventory of cover scans to review and a set of about 200 were selected as candidates for use as examples in the article. We used a private web page for sharing images during the review process, refining the set of images until the final set contained about 100 consensus winners.

The review web page was a gallery of thumbnails with full size images available with a click. Selecting the best 200 covers from a set of thousands is easy enough, but selecting the best 100 out of that proved more difficult.

Pieces of vintage original cover art were selected for use and images of the pieces were reviewed using the same technique of a shared web page to display the set of images. A set of about 25 pieces of original art was chosen as final candidates.

A selection of Bob's recent fine art work was provided for review on another web page, resulting in about fifteen pieces selected.

Several photographs of Bob were provided from the archives of Bob Bonfils and Earl Kemp and scans of these were published on another web page for review and selection.

The end result was a set of pages showing low resolution (web quality, jpg format) images that could be selected as examples to use in the magazine article.

Each of these images had a corresponding high resolution scan available. These were digital scans stored in tif format. Images in this form can be used for smaller sized reproduction in a magazine. They are not adequate for full-page sized images.

The tif files were copied to a set of CDs and these were sent to Dan as part of the article submission.

The original pieces of art were photographed by professional studios and four by five inch transparencies were made that could be used by Dan to publish large reproductions in the magazine. These transparencies were sent to Dan who could then do high resolution scans of them for use in large reproductions.

Two art collectors, Jeff Rich and Ron Blum, had original art in their collections and were enthused enough about supporting the story about Bonfils that they contributed transparencies of their art to the mix.

The actual text of the article was developed in Word and the doc files were sent to Dan as email attachments.

Dan then took on the hard task of putting together all the pieces of the article sent to him, and building an interesting layout for the magazine. He had to select which images to use and their size and position. He had to fit the text into the page count while maintaining the integrity of the story line. He also had to select which image to feature on the cover of the magazine.

Layout of opening page in article

He did an amazing job and the result is spectacular.

The article is 32 pages long, with three sections of text written by Bob Bonfils, Lynn Munroe and Robert Speray. There are seven full page reproductions of original art, plus six more pieces shown smaller. 66 book covers are shown, plus twelve record jackets, a magazine cover, three photos, and more.

This is truly a remarkable day. A set of books published on the edges of the culture during the expanding sixties were pushed down and out by the action of the federal government. Those books have been rescued and pulled back into the world. Their covers are now featured in a serious art magazine, giving legitimacy to the pleasure of their entertainment value, and to the reality of their being art.

The last time a Bonfils image was on a newsstand, the country was struggling with an unpopular war and a Republican president was found to be a liar and a crook. What is going on here? Is there some need of American civilization that a Bonfils cover must be on our newsstand during times of political stress?

A lot of effort, sacrifice and will power along with a hearty dose of luck and love, and some early dollops of dirty-old-man brought the books and art forward to this time and place. Let's celebrate and enjoy the result.

The publication of this article is an accomplishment that feels extra fine, as an honor to all those who contributed along the way. It isn't yet the full blown book that still exists in the stars, but seeing the story about Robert Bonfils and the illustrations of his art featured so well gives a deep pleasure, and satisfaction that progress does exist.

It's great to have Bonfils art back on the cover.

Subscribe to Illustration Magazine and tell Dan you saw it here.

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
               --Edith Sitwell

By Earl Kemp

When Harlan Ellison formed Nightstand Books for William Hamling in 1959, Hamling kept rigid control of the covers and the direction of his paperback books.

His editors, as well as a number of his writers, all came from a common background of science fiction and fantasy. As did Hamling himself, and Frances Yerxa Hamling, his wife. As did Raymond A. Palmer and Richard S. Shaver, his coincorporators. As did Milton Luros, Hamling's contemporary, colleague, and sometimes competitor. There had been numerous science fiction magazines in Hamling's past, most notably Imagination and Imaginative Tales. And all the work at The Porno Factory was carried on within what could be described as a science fiction atmosphere.

For many of these reasons, there was a constant attempt to insert some science fiction elements into some of the novels, or something at least a bit on the fantastic side. And, with each of these attempts, whenever Hamling would discover it, he would object and reinform us that our books were about real people doing real things and nothing fantastic or otherworldly could ever be allowed to interfere with that.

Did that stop us? No.

As time passed and things began to change, Hamling relaxed his hold on the covers and then, eventually, turned their production over exclusively to the art department. To Robert Bonfils and to his cohort Harry Bremner. And sales took off.

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Somewhere throughout the cosmos, scattered here and there in cyberspace, are the directly science fiction and fantasy related Greenleaf sleaze paperbacks.

I have assembled a small gallery of them here, to display the progression of time and morals…the very books that lead to uncontrollable ejaculations on the parts of millions of one-hand-reading fans during those halcyon years of unadulterated sleaze.

In making the selection of covers for this article, I deliberately avoided the commonplace sectors, such as witchcraft, voodoo, satanic worship, weird cults, etc. and focused only onto the prime subject matter.

All hands ready? Got lotion? Tissue?

Begin the ritual….

UFOs exist. Flying saucers do not.
               --Mercury 7 astronaut Scott Carpenter

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.

Also, please note, I observe DNQs and make arbitrary and capricious deletions from these letters in order to remain on topic.

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.

Tuesday August 3, 2004

Ian's article really came out well - I see you used my quote on that one! I was so impressed by it when it appeared on Wegenheim, and I'm pleased you got it for ei. I also thought your piece about CeeCee was very powerful, and what a kicker at the end.

I occasionally can't tell if your stories are truth, fiction, or something in between, but I'm very glad to help you share them.
               --Bill Burns

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Too much of a good thing!

Got your latest, and could hardly contain myself from rushing in to read, read, read - especially all of that "Loon" insider info.

Luckily, your excellent eI15 will, hopefully, be right there, waiting, when I can finally get a breather!

Keep up the good work!; it's always fun to read about all you were "up" to (sexual innuendo intended!)in the "good old days".
               --William
               (aka William J. Lambert III, William Maltese, Chad Stuart, Kyle Reich,
                Lambert Wilhelm, William Mauser, Cort Forbes, "Joey", Billy Lambert,
                W. J. Lambert III, Raymond Lang, Raymond Lange, Alex von Mann,
                Bryant Tyler - et al).

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Scanned the latest issue. Wow! How do you do it, where do you find all these fascinating people?
               --TOM Ramirez (Tony Calvano)

Thursday August 5, 2004

You've probably been wondering why I'm behind in commenting on eI. Good reason -- slow modem….However, I did get to download the last three eIs yesterday, and it hit me all over again what a fine magazine you're publishing. A pity it's not in paper version. I could print in colour on Elaine's inkjet printer, but that would take forever and a small fortune in toner cartridge. I actually print on my laser printer, which is much, much faster, but only in black and white, and only one side of the paper. Still the content is there.

In particular, thanks for the material on Lawrence Block and Robert Silverberg. That's a side of the publishing/writing industry that few Australians see, because there is no under-level of profitable hackwork (detective, porn, war, etc) in Australia for which people can write. You either have to have a success with your first novel or you fail. In Block's case, it seems, he had had years of training and practice before he published his 'first novel' under his own name. I read it the other day -- now called Coward's Kiss, and it's a zippy read, especially compared with a few of his recent Matt Scudder books.

I suppose I should write in depth about Block, who is the one writer these days who always provides a good reading experience. Sometimes his books are brilliant, but usually not. But always a totally enjoyable reading experience. Many of his books I've read then given away or sold, so I can't do an authoritative article on him. But there must be someone Out There who
can do an article on all the books officially published as 'Lawrence Block'.

Silverberg doesn't talk to me at conventions (i.e. three Aussiecons) because of the Silverberg special I did for SF Commentary in 1977. You published its cover in your Silverberg section. The brilliant David Levine-ish cover is by Stephen Campbell, who disappears for years at a time, but who turned up only a few weeks ago for dinner. Stephen helped me with most of the issues of SFC I did during its first year in 1969. Steve now looks a weathered late 30s
(although I know he must be 50) this year, whereas I just look middle aged. Steve's new girlfriend was just a bit puzzled by all this talk about people we last saw twenty or thirty years ago.

The issue itself was an attack on what seemed like the pretensions that Silverberg had during the late sixties and early seventies to being an 'artist'. The books from that period were nowhere near as interesting as some of the books from the end of the period that Silverberg seemed to think was his hack era. To do a special issue on a writer and choose articles attacking the work of the writer in question was a Big Mistake by an immature personality. No good apologising after the fact -- it's possible to do great wrong for what seemed like Pure Critical Motives, actually a fit of smart-arsery (as we spell it). I still don't like any Silverberg novels after Up the Line except Hawksbill Station and The Stochastic Man, but I would really like to turn back time and obliterate that issue of SFC (although most of the articles were superb in themselves, especially George Turner's).

Your own adventures are turning into an epic. I look forward to the next issue, and probably I will have further comments on the issues I've just downloaded.
               --Bruce Gillespie

Bruce, do I need to cut any of these Silverberg comments out? --Earl

Friday August 6, 2004

No, you can use my comments on Bob Silverberg any way you wish. It's my version of an apology, even if twenty years too late. I've always loved his anthologies, of course, especially the Avram Davidson Treasury, and more and more I like his short stories and novellas from the 1970s as I reread them in anthologies. I suspect that one day I will go back to the novels from that period and be bowled over by them. And, of course, Silverberg is one of the great non-fiction writers, including the annual issue of his fanzine for FAPA.

The other late 60s/early 70s Silverberg novel I like a lot is Downward to the Earth.
               --Bruce Gillespie

Tuesday August 17, 2004

Eric Lindsay mentions there seems to be a colour barrier in fandom. I can name about a dozen black fans who are friends of mine, so perhaps I don't see such a colour distinction myself. It shouldn't be there; there are fans of every descent. One friend, Wayne Brown of Rochester, NY, says his black friends say that SF fandom is a geeky white interest, and they refer to him as an Oreo cookie. His attitude is the right one; who cares if your fellow fan is black, white or green with red stripes? Wayne is one of the driving forces in Rochester fandom, and he runs the local club and convention.

The Gertzman article is an eye-opener. The lines between literature, erotica and just smut were quite blurred then, as was the line between the so-called pervert and the artiste. I guess the various parties they all attended were more research than anything else? Hm?

We all approach our sexuality one stumbling step at a time, and when we're young, we find out about the pleasures we can bring about for ourselves and the ways they are done. There's no real owner's manual for such a thing, not that we'd read it… For every bit of pleasure, there's some frustration, and for some, there was a lot of the latter, and not much of the former. How many muscular guys and sexually precocious girls got all the attention at school? How many short, skinny guys did without any attention from the girls in high school, and didn't get any action until university? (Just described myself there…at least, I was skinny back then.) The last thing we need, and you got it, Earl, was to have that sexuality portrayed as disgusting and something to hide and keep it hidden. Yvonne and I have many gay friends, and we are among the few straights in that crowd. We figure that love and happiness are tough enough to find as they are; who are we to dictate who they must find it with? At the Worldcon in Toronto last year, eight men walked into a room full of people, and with those people as witness, they emerged as four couples, happy and content and loving. That's what it's all about.

Pretending to be Canadian just so you won't catch it for being an American…there's still a lot of that going on. I know Westerners of many nationalities are getting caught up in the political action in Iraq, but being American can get you killed. The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are starting to mount up, and in some cases, what's going on in Iraq is worse. I must wonder what's going on in the heart of hearts of Bush Sr., wondering what kind of idiot monster he sired.

The rest of the issue is a fun read, but as written before, slightly out of my experience. Avram Davidson is one author I've enjoyed over the years, and one author I'd wanted to meet.
               --Lloyd Penney

#

The problem was that Avram and I had such a pleasant relationship -- from time to time, he would send stories, and I would send money. I've heard he was supposed to be difficult -- I
never found him so. We argued now and then on obscure points -- like whether Pannonia was east or west of Trans-Balkania -- but I would always give in if he insisted, and he would give in if I insisted. It helped that I was using a proofreader that could proof in several languages, including Latvian. On publication of his last book during his lifetime, he specified a batch of the signed-limited copies to go to various friends; I sent him sheets to sign, he signed them, and I sent them out. He did see the finished book, Adventures in Unhistory before he died.

I was always a fan of Dr Eszterhazy, and was lucky to be editing Amazing Stories when he came to write the second series ("Young Dr Eszterhazy," et alii). I bought 'em all, and George Barr illustrated them all.
               --George Scithers

Friday August 20, 2004

The latest opus from Earl Kemp is just as magnificent as those that preceded it; E*I 15 kicks off with a letter column headed by Robert Silverberg, and containing extensive missives from Mike Deckinger and Eric Lindsay. Then there's a political guest editorial by Joni Stopa. And then there's the meat of it: Jay A. Gertzman on Eddie Mishkin and erotic storywriters and publishers, a piece both fascinating and almost academic. Then an essay by Ian Williams about writing; Jan Stinson on her experiences with erotica and porn; and then a busload of autobiographical stuff from Earl. All of the above is illustrated with reproductions of book covers, candid -- sometimes quite candid -- photographs, and also the occasional Rotsler. The 77-page issue concludes with a tribute to a tribute to Avram Davidson by Bruce Gillespie.
Woof. And I'm hardly doing it justice. Earl is a singularity. You can read E*I 15 in html or pdf, available from the Earl Kemp page at eFanzines.com.
               --Victor Gonzalez, http://www.trufen.net

Saturday August 21, 2004

I've recently come across your e*I e-zine, and I'm very impressed. The material is fascinating--both the visual archive and the historical narratives.

I came across your site because of an interest of mine that touches on your history-Richard Shaver and Ray Palmer. I've organized art exhibitions devoted to Shaver (which inevitably involves Palmer), and I'm currently preparing a book about Shaver. I found the short description of Shaver being called to testify in 1966, and a bit about the way Shaver and Palmer became partners in Blake Pharmaceuticals. I'm not entirely clear about their relationships to the various Hamling organizations--Blake, Freedom, Greenleaf, Corinth--if you've written something that will clarify that for me, please direct me to it (I've spent several hours with your site, but have yet to read all of it). Did Palmer or Shaver write any of the sex books?

If you have any memories or suggestions for sources about Shaver or Palmer and his milieu (Bea Mahaffey anecdotes, for example), I'd be most interested. I haven't tracked down much info about their connection to the porno books, and I could also use more "inside fandom" details about the fan move to boycott Amazing because of the Shaver Mystery stories. Any such info would be greatly appreciated.

In any case, I applaud your ongoing project-it's an exemplary use of the Internet. Please keep at it.
               --Brian Tucker

Monday August 23, 2004

The first comment that caught my eye in eI15 was Eric Lindsay's mention of Oz and U.S. fandom being largely WASPs (and I wouldn't imagine that U.K. fandom does much better). That's not literally the case, of course, because WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and I'd say Protestants are probably a distinct minority in fandom, but I assume Eric's using the term as it's often used, a synonym for the "white" or Caucasian race.

My first major quibble with what that seems to imply is the fact that in the sf subculture we have always had a substantial number of Jewish fans -- heck, when I was living in New York, I was made an honorary Jew myself.

Then too, while I can't think of more than a handful of blacks who've been involved -- Samuel Delaney, Octavia Butler, Elliot Shorter (mentioned by Eric), Vijay Bowen [both Elliot and Vijay were TAFF winners] and "Carl Brandon" (a hoax who turned out not to be black after all) being the only ones I can name off hand -- surely their quite obvious and widespread acceptance points away from a conscious WASPish exclusion. (Not, mind you, that I think Eric was attempting to make that his point, only that it might be inferred from what he wrote.)

As for other non-WASPs, we don't have a great number of Asians or people of Spanish descent, but we do have a few. And, again, if there's been any conscious exclusion going on, it's escaped my notice.

I do think the likely culprit is not prejudice/bigotry but the simple fact that there's not a great deal available in mainstream science fiction that appeals to any values other than middle-class American, of which WASP is the primary (but not sole) component. That's probably what has this inevitable impact on the general racial makeup of fandom. Not, of course, that the microcosm is totally "about" science fiction. We don't talk about sf to the exclusion of all else and we've long had the phenomenon of "fake fans," people who participate because they enjoy the company of fans rather than being particularly enamored of the genre. While the latter might at first seem to open fandom's doors to more people of color, the truth is it's a "phenomenon" only to the extent that it's the exception rather than the rule, and to reach the point where we can come to that conclusion about it, most of us travel via some early enjoyment (at the very least) of that Crazy Buck Rogers Stuff. Thus, while fandom has a lot of things that might be enjoyed by people of color, few of them get here to find that out because the genre has little appeal to draw them here.

***

My point being, however, that the administration was not totally off their asses (excepting, of course, where they just flat out lied about it) in their claims that Iraq had at least some WMDs, since so many of them had been directly involved during the '80s and '90s in making profits to ensure that they did. The point of pity comes from their apparent ignorance of how many of them had been dismantled, left to rust and/or sold off somewhere else in the interim. This is partly Hussein's fault, given that his baulking from time to time against UN arms inspections seems in retrospect to have been designed to convince the world, most probably primarily his neighbors, that he still had a few WMDs hidden somewhere. Why, in that "friendly" area of the world, the Iraqis might want to leave that impression is probably far beyond any Bushie's ability to comprehend.

***

It's not that I didn't enjoy Ian Williams' Personal Journey -- I did -- but I kept expecting him to return to a point he only touched on briefly, so I was a bit disappointed that he never did. Specifically: "Who knows, maybe in the writing I'll tell myself something I hadn't realised." Perhaps Ian just didn't recognize that as a revelation when he stumbled across -- or maybe it just isn't the sort of thing that's all that important to him. So perhaps my disappointment is just a reflection of how important that is to me, in my own writing.

I've got about 100,000 words of professional sf/fantasy in print (a novel and close to a dozen shorter works), more than 10 times that as a professional editor and journalist and easily 10-20 times that again in essays, LoCs, articles, reviews, columns, mailing comments &c. as a fan who's been involved in the microcosm for what's approaching the half-century mark.

Charles Burbee once told me that if you want to be a writer it's important to have something to say. Like so many things Burb said, that was succinct, to the point and absolutely true. All writing is the desire to communicate, which is also rather obvious -- but a large part of what I've written has been in response to things others have written (this eLoc being a case in point) and I've picked out what I want to respond to based on my feeling that I Have Something To Say about it. But while I have a general idea when I make the choice, I'm usually not entirely sure just what that's going to be -- until I wrestle with it a while on the way to getting it down in black and white. It's in the process of trying to make my ideas clear to someone else that I actually end up clarifying, for primarily my own benefit, what I actually think. That's the big reason I keep on doing it.

(Of course in my case there remains a Major Problem: I try too hard to nail it all down, to clarify things that are probably already clear enough and to explain anything even remotely associated with my point that might be misunderstood. The result is that I frequently wind up throwing up a host of trees around the one I want to focus on, and that one -- often as not -- gets lost in the forest I'm at fault for having provided. I've been working on that one since 1956. Maybe I'll eventually get it right.)

Okay, now, taking the focus off me and putting it back on Ian, I noticed that he entertained us at a few points by writing a bit messily but then explaining immediately afterward that he knew he'd been writing a bit messily, saying just what he'd done wrong and explaining why he'd done it on purpose. But he did miss at least one when he was talking about grammar (and commas in particular): "Which isn't to say I don't have a good basic knowledge of grammar, of course I do." You, Earl, of all people should recognize 37x when you see it.

Don't get me wrong; I also at times need to stop and wipe the froth from my lips when I get into a passionate discussion of The Proper Use Of The Comma. True, I don't hate the serial comma as much as I once did -- perhaps because something Teresa Nielsen Hayden wrote (albeit not in direct response to me) trumped my concern. By "serial comma" I mean the one that comes before "and" in a list: saying, "A, B, C, and D" instead of "A, B, C and D." It's particularly bad if you have an independent clause inserted after the "and": use of the serial comma would require one to say, "I like A, B, C, and, at times, D" where eliminating it would not have you tripping over so many commas, since it would be "I like A, B, C and, at times, D." Teresa simply pointed out that not having that comma can at times make all the difference, as in the phrase, "I want to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand."

***

Wow. I'm just back from a hearty dip in your own contributions to the issue and I was so fascinated in my reading that I neglected to stop for any comment hooks along the way.

One thing I'm really curious about, though, is something you mentioned in passing more than once -- you indicated that the Authorities routinely went through the Greenleaf offices in burglar fashion at night after the offices were closed. I don't doubt the possibility, but I'm curious about your certainty.

Was this something that actually came out later on, something they admitted to when you were prosecuted, and therefore (presumably) something they had court authorization to do?

Or was it, instead, unauthorized and clandestine and, if so, did you have suspicions that it was going on at the time?

I ask because I think in that position, if it was something I suspected at the time, I would have been inclined first to set up a few little "traps" to be certain it was going on -- and then, once I was, to Do Something about it. You could've done marvels with a few paper matches and a spool of fine dark thread -- setting the matches up in front of doors and tying the thread low between, say, chairs and tables or the bottoms of file drawers, where opening the doors would knock the matches over or broken threads would indicate that someone had walked between the chair and table or opened the filing cabinet.

Once it was firmly established that it was going on, if any pattern of regularity could be established, I think I would have been inclined to try to leave someone behind in the office with a baseball bat to "explain things" to the intruders. Or a .22, to shoot them in the feet. Once subdued, I'd call the local law and do what was needed to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law....

This, of course, is Monday morning quarterbacking of the worst sort; I realize it. But it does seem an interesting and possibly even amusing way to tie of their resources and put them on the defensive, so I kind of wonder why it wasn't tried.
               --rich brown (DrGafia)

Saturday September 4, 2004

I know it's a late LoC, but it's still a LoC.

eI13 was another great read. Particularly enjoyed Bruce Gillespie's piece on J.G. Ballard. I have a question on it. He says a New Wave writer ". . . demonstrates the qualities the New Wavers claimed for themselves: a genuine love of words and fine writing, and an eye for brain-twisting plots that are intriguing and memorable." Given this definition, what about Gene Wolfe? If anyone loves words and comes up with brain-twisting plots, it's him.

While I realize it's probably a typo, anyone who hasn't read the Le Guin classic should know it's titled The *Left* Hand of Darkness.

Bruce Gillespie's description of John Clute as "word drunk" is absolutely perfect; I read Clute's latest collection Scores recently and enjoyed it a great deal. Clute's critical theory still eludes me (haven't read the relevant sections of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction yet), but I delight in his passion for the best in science fiction. As a reader, I'm grateful that Clute is willing and able to turn the spotlight on the legends and the lightweights; the former deserve the notice, and the latter need to be told when their work has failed to complete the task the writer gave it at the work's commencement. In my view, there's nothing worse than a book that doesn't follow through with its set-up.

I would have to disagree with Bruce about the Amber series; I enjoyed it a great deal when I first read it, and will try to re-read it again soon to see if it's as good now. My first experiment with re-reading an SF novel from my own "golden age" was with Andre Norton's Moon of Three Rings, and it was just as good (if not better, in some places; experience brings a new depth) the second time round, which pleased me greatly.

I'm curious if any eI readers think they've spotted the latest New Wave yet.

The excerpt from Victor Banis' novel The Why Not was both funny and melancholy. I thank him for allowing you to share it with your readers, as I doubt I'd ever be able to find a copy of the book.

Interesting trip down memory lane with your thoughts on Donald Westlake. I recall reading some of his mysteries, but never knew he wrote porn novels.

The "Al Bundy" quote at the end of "Partying With the Economous" reminds me yet again why I never watched that show; I've met enough arseholes in my life and prefer to keep the total as small as possible.
               --Janine Stinson

Sunday September 5, 2004

More great stuff in thish. But, a question: why aren't *all* the block quotes (and not just the Block quotes, ar ar) either indented and spaced (without font change) or used in a different font? I got confused more than a few times reading thish as to who was "speaking" from paragraph to paragraph. Could you take pity on this poor reader and delineate the changes in "speaker" more clearly in future ishes? Or is this what happens when your html file is converted to PDF?

If that jacket cover from $20 Lust is supposed to feature the character of Mona, then why isn't her hair the same as the book's description ("long golden hair breaking over creamy shoulders")?

Re: the original illo for "Lie Back and Enjoy It," I have to ask something. If a man sees that illo and gets interested in reading the story, then comes to the part where the "girl" is described by the narrator and reads that she's wearing "dungarees" and "a man's shirt," doesn't that ruin the mental picture the male reader has already constructed and, therefore, cause him to stop reading the story because the art and the writer's description don't match? Maybe it's just me, but it seems the same thing as deducing from dungarees and a man's shirt that what's underneath is delectable, only to find out upon the eventual unveiling that what's underneath those clothes bursts that fantasy bubble.

Perhaps I've been reading outdated research material, but everything I've read says that men are more sexually stimulated by visual materials than women (hence the popularity of Playboy and its ilk).

Anyway, it was fun to read those two pulp stories from Lawrence Block and Robert Silverberg; quite pristine examples of the fiction of their times, I'd guess. And I got a good laugh out of the Rotsler illo about not skipping the boring parts.
               --Janine Stinson

#

I'm digging through your fascinating website and e-zine contribs and want to thank you so much for the work and info you provide. I'm good pals with Bhob Stewart on this side of the Divide, as well as the few other Ron Haydock associates who survive. Ron is my all time icon/idol and I've written extensively about his career(s) as a rock n roller/smut scribe/monster zine editor/film star.
               --Miriam Linna

A tyrant is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
               -- Plato (c.428-348 BC), Republic, Book VIII

1955 Advent:uring Through the Years 2005

By Earl Kemp

Robert Briney
Sidney Coleman (Retired 2001)
Earl Kemp
James O'Meara
George Price
Jon Stopa
Ed Wood (Deceased 1995)

In the first issue of eI, my friend and Advent partner George Price wrote an article under this same heading. It was George's inside view of the history of Advent:Publishers. The thought occurred to me that I should use the same title to introduce George's Master Archive of the titles published by Advent:Publishers.

Originally I wanted George to name the piece "Fifty Years of Advent" only George was adamant. Because it hadn't actually been fifty years of Advent, we couldn't say it. Now, of course, as it is still not quite yet 2005, Advent is still not yet fifty years old.

It's a bit difficult, though, to think of this not being at least the pre celebration to Advent's Fiftieth Anniversary…that will be accomplished with the publication of Joseph Major's definitive study of Heinlein's juvenile novels, Heinlein's Children.

#

Questions regarding the availability of Advent titles, and orders for same, should be addressed directly to http://nesfa.org/press/Books/Advent/index.html who have been handling those tasks for a number of years now and are expected to continue doing so in the future.

Following is George Price's Master Archive of Advent titles:

#

The Advent:Publishers Master Archive

Compiled by George W. Price
(with a little help from Robert E. Briney, Earl Kemp, and Jon Stopa)

[Publisher's note: Because of the size of the Advent Master Archive, it has been created as a separate file. Click here to view it.]

In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love--they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
               --Orson Welles, The Third Man

I Am A Fandom of One: A Fan's Manifesto
Artwork recycled William Rotsler

By J.G. Stinson

I ask the fundamental question: What is a fan?

I answer: I am.

When a person picks up a book that is sfnal in content and likes that book, and wants to read more, a fan is born. When a person chances to see a fanzine somewhere, picks it up, likes what's inside and wants to read more, a fan is born. When a person walks into a hotel off the street, sees something interesting going on, asks questions and discovers a science fiction convention and wants to learn more, a fan is born. When a person sees a film with sfnal content (whether it be story or special effects or critters or whatever) and wants to see more, and does so, a fan is born.

I became a fan the day I started reading "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester and didn't want to stop reading it. Everything after that was an expansion of my fannish experience. There are many doors into fandom, and all of them are right.

When the definition of fan is so narrowly drawn that it excludes any portion of the science-fiction readership, I must question the motives of those who draw it thus. Why is it so important to delineate that term so restrictively? Is it so drawn because those who defined it that way want to create their own tribe and post a sign that says "No Non-Fans Allowed!" Is this the fannish version of the treehouse exclusionary principle? Why can't anyone with an interest in SF be included in fandom? Is there not enough room for that many in Fandom's Treehouse?

Science fiction has been hailed as a literature of inclusion. Why, then, do some proponents of fandom choose to exclude those who are interested in science fiction but not fandom (regardless of the reason)? Is it really down to the difference between fiawol and fijagh? "You just don't get it" is a cop-out. That's not an answer, it's an excuse, and a flimsy one.

Science fiction has now pervaded much of our everyday lives, so why separate fandom from the rest of the world? I thought fandom was for sharing, that it was something to pass on to others with the same interest, not a contest.

Perhaps the most important question I have for science fiction fandom is: Would fandom not be better served by a more inclusionary definition?

There is a portion of the Christian Bible that records Jesus as saying wherever two or more Christians are gathered, there he would be. I say that wherever two or more people who like and want to share their experience of science fiction are gathered, there is fandom also.

That is my definition of fandom. It includes everyone reading this, and everyone who will never see it but has an interest in some form of science fiction, be it books, TV, films, games, or anime.

Am I angry? A bit. Am I angry enough to turn my back on those who consider themselves part of fandom? No. Why?

Because I am a fandom of one. So are you all, and you are all welcome

And Shrub's dad was a shithead, too: July 3 1988 | Mistaking it for a F-14 fighter plane, the American warship USS Vincennes shoots down Iran Air flight 655, killing all 290 people aboard. Despite his country's having recklessly downed a passenger airliner while operating inside Iran's territorial waters, Vice President George Bush declares a month later: "I will never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are."
                --Daily Rotten, 7/3/03

How I (Almost) Became Ivar Jorgensen

By Mike Deckinger

From 1964 through 1971, I lived in Newark, New Jersey. Never known as the most inviting location in the state, Newark was wracked by social unrest in the mid 60's, similar to what was occurring in other major locales. No wonder that I chose to describe my living habitat as: on the very edge of Newark, bordered by their far less threatening towns.

My distant neighbor in Newark was Sam Moskowitz, five miles away. My closer neighbor was pulp writer and editor Paul W. Fairman, who lived half a block away.

Paul had begun writing for Ziff-Davis in the 40's, eventually becoming part of editor Ray Palmer's writing stable. Paul used both his own name and the more popular penname "Ivar Jorgensen." He also utilized several "house names," shared pseudonyms employed by various writers. He wrote primarily action-oriented tales with accelerated pacing and limited character. Paul had also appeared in the "slicks" like Saturday Evening Post. In his later years he wrote The Man From S.T.U.D. soft-core series under the transparent name of F.W. Paul, in counterpoint to The Man From O.R.G.Y. by Ted Mark (Ted Gottfried). As a ghost, he completed Lester del Rey's final three novels, which del Rey had contracted but was unable to complete.

And finally, he contributed to the once thriving gothic genre as "Paula Fairman," a name assumed by his daughter after his death.

We would meet every month or so to chat about the market at that time, as well as his experiences working for the pulps in past years. He always expressed the warmest of feelings toward his associates; perhaps strongest toward former manic editor Ray Palmer. Palmer had suffered a spinal deformity, due to a crippling accident, and was frequently in pain, but he pushed himself with inhuman determination. He wrote, edited, was a father, and a valuable component of weekly poker sessions. No, Paul had never met the infamous Richard Shaver, whose paranoid fantasies of cave dwelling boosted sales of Ziff-Davis pulps during the late 40's, and attracted the studied scrutiny of the lunatic fringe. He did affirm that Shaver's manuscripts were indecipherable messes, always rewritten by Palmer. Did Palmer believe any of the nonsense that Shaver sought to promote as fact? Of course not, but he knew it would sell magazines. The uncomfortable notoriety the "Shaver Mystery" earned for Ziff-Davis eventually lead to the termination of further flights of fancy from Shaver.

Paul was non-committal about the media adaptations of his works. Two low budget science fiction films: Target Earth and Invasion of the Saucer Men, as well as a half hour Twilight Zone and a few other pieces were based on published stories. He accepted the fact that once story rights were sold he, as the original author, was out of the picture. He therefore harbored no regrets about the lack of similarity between the printed and the filmed works. He understood the process, was properly compensated, and had no further involvement in what developed. He had been offered a screen-writing job on another project, but turned it down because he felt more comfortable writing for the printed page, rather than the screen. He rejected a teaching position because he felt incapable of training others in an avocation that he performed with mechanical precision.

"Nine Worlds West," was a Fairman entry in the April 1951 Fantastic Adventures, writing as "Clee Garson." By far the best thing about this novelette was the cover, by boudoir artist Harold McCauley. A girl is depicted leaping into a pit of flame, possibly flung by a green man leering behind her. Unlike most cover models, which are caricatured to resemble the idealized female form, she has a sense of humanity to her. The story seems to borrow heavily from Leigh Brackett's ruthless Martian landscapes, but with none of Brackett's plotting intricacies or sharp characterizations. Two opposing alien races are The Hairless Ones and The Tall Ones, and we have an Earthman named "Butch." The back page displayed a full-page ad for the ubiquitous sect known as The Rosicrucians (not a religious organization). In the 50's and 60's, ads for The Rosicrucians and their mystical trappings were common in sf magazines. The Rosicrucians have survived to the present day, and maintain a museum of Egyptian artifacts, and a mummy or two, in San Jose, California, where they originated in the early part of the 20th century. Check out their web site.

Amazing Stories for April 1951 headlined Fairman's "The Glory That Was Rome," under the house name E.K. Jarvis. This meandering space adventure was situated in a city called New Rome, modeled after ancient Rome by an alien despot. The conceptual ambition of the plot was overpowered by the plodding execution. Isaac Asimov had a minor Susan Calvin story in the issue.

Robert Gibson Jones provided the stunning cover for Fairman's "Invasion from the Deep," (Fantastic Adventures, May 1951). Offering a refreshing variation from the customary metallic bikini-clad lady of pulp antiquity, this woman wore a seductive Frederick's of Hollywood bra cup set, while astride a gigantic, and definitely benign, sea horse. The incomparable Virgil Finlay illustrated Fairman's story, but there was more drama in the cover than the tired plot line. Short fiction from Theodore Sturgeon, Raymond F. Jones, and L. Sprague de Camp rounded out the issue.

Ivar Jorgensen first appeared, as author of "Whom the Gods Would Slay," for the June 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures. A manufactured autobiography, accompanied by a threadbare pencil sketch, introduced Jorgensen as a Norwegian fisherman, from the province of Rogland, who came to the U.S.A. seeking fame and fortune. "Whom the Gods Would Slay" was an epic encounter between seafaring Vikings and alien invaders, written in determined Hollywood Biblical dialect. Imagine how a true Norseman like Poul Anderson, or a craftsman like Robert Silverberg, would have handled this theme. For those who might have been rattled by 1951's cold war propaganda, an ad from Science Kits Limited offered a build-your-own Geiger counter for a very reasonable $29.95.

"The Man Who Stopped at Nothing" earned Fairman the cover of the November 1951 Fantastic Adventures. The emphasis was more on humor than thrills, but humor rarely succeeded in the pulp magazines. Using faux Damon Runyon characters in a misshapen life after death plot, the story flounders along. Its sole purpose was to highlight the slightly risqué cover that promised more than it delivered.

Fairman snared the cover for "The Girl Who Loved Death," published under his own name in Amazing Stories September 1952. The cover by Walter Popp depicted a man manipulating a miniature female over a blazing vat with a pair of Waldos. The story was written in punchy, hardboiled private eye style and featured private eye Nick Saturday chasing a missing person. There was a faltering science fictional element, but the story remained inert. A minor character, noting the reduction in crime, laments."…even Philip Marlowe and Paul Pine are out of work." (Paul Pine was a gumshoe created by editor Howard Browne). Only in the pulps would a paucity of lawlessness be a cause for distress.

"Professor Mainbocher's Planet," by Ivar Jorgensen, appeared in the digest size Amazing Stories of December 1955. The cover depicted a man with an ax frantically flailing away at pink globes sprouting coiling tentacles, which roughly corresponded to a scene in the story. The titular professor is a Dr. Moreau-type experimenter on a distant world. Our hero, on an investigative mission, is ominously warned by a companion that if they are caught: "He will have us killed on sight, or worse." After escalating misadventures, the duo succeeds in overcoming Professor Mainbocher. As he is about to face retribution at the claws of one of his creatures, he pleads: "A brain such as mine should not be allowed to perish." Good try, Doc.

Viliers Gerson wrote book reviews in a column titled "The Spectroscope," in this same issue. One of the volumes reviewed is The Two Towers. Gerson gives the book generally high marks, compares it favorably to The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison, and eagerly looks forward to the forthcoming third volume, unavailable in the U.S. at the time. This was written in December 1955, long before Tolkien infiltrated the college campuses and then the mainstream. In fact, the only place where Tolkien had received any recognition was in the sf world, and it was through this continued acclamation that a broader non-genre readership was established.

If there are any commonalities about the stories cited about, it is that they all are unpublishable, will never be anthologized, and will never be cited as examples of respectable prose. Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures were slanted toward teen and pre-teen readership, and the contributing authors responded with fiction aimed in that direction. Even if they were better writers than the published work indicated, it was still necessary to maintain the magazines' identities.

One afternoon, Paul suggested we expand his own fiction for possible paperback publication. The ground rules were simple; I'd select a suitable story, rewrite and develop it to novel length, and submit it through his agent. The fee would be split and the byline determined later. Why not Ivar Jorgensen? I thought. The elusive Mr. Jorgensen had been resurrected before, why not again?

To this day I don't recall the story we picked, other than it was a typical pulpish thud-and blunder novelette, originally published under Fairman's name. He approved the choice and I attacked it.

The first draft was a struggle. Upon completion he made a number of suggestions, all so absolutely correct that it seemed inconceivable anyone could have overlooked these faults to begin with. I plumped up the action, modified conflicts, created new characters, modernized dialogue and inserted several provocative elements far removed from the story's pulp antecedents. Paul took a hard look, and showed me where to cut off lengthy exposition and blunt dialogue so it sounded like real people talking.

The second draft was better but satisfaction was still beyond my grasp. There were more areas that needed tinkering, more character identifications to be established, and more motivations to be given a semblance of verisimilitude.

Following a third labored draft, Paul felt it was ready for submission and delivered it to his agent.

The agent came back with additional suggestions for story flow, all thoroughly reasonable. More significantly, however, he had some bad news. Paul's agent felt that there could possibly be copyright infringement issues here. A recent case, elsewhere in the country, had been settled in favor of the original publication source, which vindictively then sued the offending author for a small fortune. Neither of us was inclined to take on Ziff-Davis at this point, even though there was absolutely no indication that they would follow the same course of action.

Additionally, I was beginning to feel a sliver of unease. I was participating in the creation of a product I had often harbored faint contempt for. When it came to literature I often thought of myself, with undisguised snobbery, as a "purist." Sure I read the old pulps, enjoyed and savored many of them, and viewed them as a stepping-stone in the natural evolutionary course of sf. I knew pulp writing existed as a pivotal step and did not represent the tremendous strides taken in the maturation of the field. Was this hypocrisy to then participate in the formation of what I viewed as a tarnished by-product?

That's where it ended. A few months later I packed up everything and moved to the West Coast, trading societal upheavals for geological upheavals. I lost contact with Paul Fairman until I learned of his death several years later.

The manuscript I had labored over, as well as the carbons, were irretrievably lost. I never mourned them; I am grateful today that I don't have to suffer the extreme embarrassment of reading them, or worse, knowing others might have the opportunity to do so.

Still and all, I regret neither the time spent in creating this epic, the many revisions, nor its final fate.

Call me…Ivar.

A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.
               --Dr. M.L. King Jr.

I asked Dick Jenssen to have Ditmar create a special ecover for this issue of my ezine.
That ecover should feature Bruce R. Gillespie as a cover boy. Further, Ditmar was to remain silent about that cover so it would surprise Bruce when it appeared here.

This issue is a special double issue with two pieces by Bruce Gillespie, focusing on the world of Olaf Stapledon and Brian Aldiss. Some of the best of Bruce Gillespie, the same BBB to San Francisco next February.

Here is Ditmar's ecover for eI October 2004:

You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
               --Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove

[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]

Discovering Olaf Stapledon*
Artwork by Dick Jenssen (Ditmar)

By Bruce R. Gillespie

Olaf Stapledon [William Olaf Stapledon] had no Scandinavian family links, but even that name "Olaf" made him seem slightly alien in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s, when his books appeared. He was brought up mainly in Port Saïd, where he and his family were the only permanent white residents. When he returned to England, he lived in and near Liverpool, becoming one of the few famous Liverpudlians never to move permanently to London. An earnest man who desperately wanted to help humanity, he proved inept at almost everything he did but writing, and to his perpetual shame was only able to support his family because of the inheritance he received after his father died. He remained an outsider all his life, yet few isolates have produced works that are as interesting as those of Olaf Stapledon.

Why should one pay attention to Stapledon and his works? As far back as I can remember, he has always been the other great British literary science fiction writer. H.G. Wells is the first: the father of science fiction, the great British SF writer whose works I've read. If Wells is an island universe, Stapledon is the next one, there in the 1930s, separated from Wells by mainly black space. Stapledon wrote his major works almost before the birth of modern Campbellian science fiction. His works prefigure everything that came later, but today they are largely unread, and to many people they are unreadable. When his major novels were reissued in 1973 by Penguin, I gave up on Star Maker after reading 70 pages of it, and therefore did not try Last and First Men. A few years ago I sold most of my Stapledon books. Thanks, Dick Jenssen and Alan Stewart, for lending me copies of the books I no longer have.

I've returned to Stapledon only because of Robert Crossley's biography, Olaf Stapledon: Speaking for the Future. And I came across the biography only because of the indirect intervention of Brian Aldiss, who provides its Foreword. A few years ago David Seed of Liverpool University was setting up a program of critical books about science fiction. He asked Brian Aldiss for suggestions for volumes. Brian suggested The Best of SF Commentary. That book still does not exist, although that's hardly the fault of David Seed, but dealing with Seed alerted me to the fine books that had already appeared in the program. A request for review copies followed, and one of them was the Crossley biography of Stapledon. Reading Crossley's excellent biography sent me straight back to the fiction.

Two particular images of Olaf Stapledon stay clearly with me after reading this biography. The first appears in the "Acknowledgements":

The person most instrumental to this project and who most deserved to see it come to fruition is no longer alive. Agnes Stapledon, whose preservation of her husband's papers made a circumstantial account of his life possible, gave me unrestricted access both to manuscripts she had donated to the University of Liverpool and to the great wealth of materials she retained in her possession. Although we had only corresponded, never met, when I first talked with her in a nursing home in 1982, she handed over the keys to her house and invited me to move in and read whatever I found. This was the single most generous offer I have received in my career as a scholar, and now many years later I remain moved by her extraordinary gesture of trust. Agnes Stapledon died in the spring of 1984, three days before her ninetieth birthday. (p. xv)

As Crossley says, "when he died in 1950, nearly everything [Stapledon] had written and everything he had stood for was fading from popular memory."

The second image from Crossley's biography tells us much about the position that Stapledon's work retains today: legendary, but little read:

On 29 March 1949 my only biographical predecessor, Sam Moskowitz, saw Stapledon on a stage at a peace rally in Newark, New Jersey, in his single brief moment of international notoriety. The Cold War was in progress. He had just crossed the Atlantic for the first time in his life and encountered the new American witch-hunt in its first virulent outbreak.... On that March night Moskowitz may have been the only person in the Mosque Theater who had read any of Stapledon's fiction, the only one who hadn't come to hear political oratory but to see a legend. The name of Olaf Stapledon had passed by word of mouth through a small group of American science fiction readers who had discovered his out-of-print fantasies and fables in the 1930s...Theodore Sturgeon... phoned the Waldorf and asked if he could spare time for a social evening with some New York fans of his fiction. Stapledon had reason to make room in his schedule for Sturgeon and his friends. Several science-fiction writers had learned that his funds were frozen when he entered the United States and that he had appealed, unsuccessfully, to an American publisher for pocket money. Frederik Pohl immediately wrote to Stapledon with an offer of help and asked in return only that he try to meet with some of his American colleagues when he was in New York. On 31 March, Stapledon showed up at the West Side apartment of Fletcher Pratt, who was hosting the Hydra Club, a science-fiction discussion group that included two of the most important American editors of the genre--John W. Campbell and Donald Wollheim. A night of handshaking, autographing, and discussion of Last and First Men, Odd John and Sirius with an author who was a legendary figure for American science-fiction readers provided the solitary and wholly unpublicized moment when Olaf's literary accomplishment was recognized during his American journey. (pp. 8, 9, 379)

Why are these images important for understanding the life and work of Olaf Stapledon?

Meet Agnes Stapledon, Olaf's Australian cousin with whom he fell in love with when she was only twelve and he was in his late teens, but for whom he waited more than a decade; a classic love story that has had its own book written about it. Yet she was a woman much sinned against during the last decade of Stapledon's life. Stapledon, who looked youthful until his death while his wife aged at the normal rate, conducted several love affairs during his last decade, and seriously suggested to Agnes the 1940s equivalent of an open marriage. Yet Agnes maintained the marriage and kept her husband's study intact, nearly as he left it thirty-two years earlier. She had been patiently waiting for the biographer who might never have turned up. She was one of the few human beings to whom Stapledon was close, and she is presented in various idealised guises throughout the novels.

How did Stapledon's work slip out of popularity? His first three novels, Last and First Men, Last Men in London, and Odd John, were received ecstatically by reviewers in Britain and America, and sold very well. Crossley recalls the roll call of puzzled praise from journals such as the Times Literary Supplement, Oxford Magazine, The New York Times and The New York Tribune. J.B. Priestley declared Last and First Men as the season's "outstanding odd book", which resisted "any recognised category". The Oxford Magazine said that the "boldest imaginings of Mr Wells pale before the dreams of Mr Stapledon. In the late 1930s Last and First Men was well enough regarded to be picked as one of the first ten books in Penguin's series of Pelican paperbacks.

A decade later after their great success, Stapledon's books could not be bought, except in secondhand stores. His influence remained not in the mainstream of English intellectual life, but deeply imprinted on the field of science fiction, both on writers and fans. He was the author who set off Arthur C. Clarke towards a writing career. "In a medical officer's quarters in India during World War II, Brian Aldiss glanced through a copy of the Pelican edition while he was awaiting an inoculation and was so captivated that for the only time in his life he stole a book. Stanislaw Lem's method of taking an idea for a walk seems to owe much to Stapledon, as does the scope of the work of Cordwainer Smith. Sam Moskowitz, Stapledon's witness in 1949, wrote the only Stapledon biography that precedes Crossley's. It's a 17-page essay, "Olaf Stapledon: Cosmic Philosopher", that appears in Moskowitz's Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction. In fandom, Stapledon's influence appeared in the famous Eight Stages of Fandom, invented by Jack Speer and Robert Silverberg to mirror Stapledon's Eighteen Stages of Mankind.

If, then, Stapledon's memory is kept faithfully but rather vaguely alive only by science fiction people, why remember him at all? I find it hard to answer that question, but I can assert that there would be an enormous gap in the SF universe if he had never existed.

This is the first time I've prepared an essay about a writer whose style I can't recommend. In Last and First Men and Last Men in London his tales are reports from some far-future observer delivering by telepathy a historical document to a receptive scribe of the 1930s. Remember, Penguin first published Last and First Men as a Pelican, i.e. non-fiction. There are few definable characters; instead, the characters are entire races of people. Stapledon writes in a nineteenth-century over-fussy style that must have seemed quaint in the 1940s. Even his two novels, Sirius and Odd John, are related by narrators who are not on stage during most of the events of the book. Relying on secondhand reports, each narrator presents what is more like a documentary than a novel. Only Stapledon's ability to highlight sharp images or events--often very funny images or events despite the solemn imperturbability of the author's sentences--gives artistic power to these books.