Vol. 6 No. 2		April 2007
-e*I*31- (Vol. 6 No. 2) April 2007, is published and © 2007 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 — eI31 — April 2007

Cover: Amazing Stories, May 1964, by Ed Emshwiller

…Return to sender, address unknown….21 [eI letter column], by Earl Kemp

Through EMSHwiller’s Eyes…, by Luis Ortiz

September 1962, by Earl Kemp

Torture Time in Texas, by Michael Moorcock

“The Club House,” by Mike Deckinger

For Members Only, by Earl Kemp

Christ: An Autobiography, by Rog Phillips

Godfather Stories, by Earl Terry Kemp

Roger Phillips Graham Bibliography, by Earl Terry Kemp 

THIS ISSUE OF eI is in memory of two of my dear old friends, Roger Phillips Graham and Ed Emshwiller.

In the exclusively science fiction world, it is also in memory of Elly (Mrs. Robert) Bloch, Mary (Mrs. Robert) Bonfils, Patrice Duvic, David Honigsberg, David Masson, and Kurt Vonnegut.

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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.

Other than Bill Burns, Dave Locke, and Robert Lichtman, these are the people who made this issue of eI possible: Martin Alger, Robert Bonfils, Bruce Brenner, Charles Burbee, Jim Caughran, Mike Deckinger, Alex and Phyllis Eisenstein, Carol Emshwiller, Jacques Hamon, Elaine Kemp Harris, Earl Terry Kemp, Barry Malzberg, Luis and Karan Ortiz, and Robert Speray.

ARTWORK: This issue of eI features recycled artwork by Ed Emshwiller, Ray Nelson, and William Rotsler.

Writing for a living is like being a rich man, without all the worries about one’s millions.  It isn’t really work, in one sense of the word, because as I’ve found, when it becomes work, it doesn’t come out as good work.  It has to be fun.  All absorbing, intensely pleasing fun.
                        --Rog Phillips, “The Club House,” November 1950

A good story can be almost unreadable because of stilted and artificial dialogue.  It’s not exactly any single line of dialogue but the overall thing.  You can argue that the talking is being done by people of the future or of another race or civilization; but the fact remains that if that is accepted as true, the story is still “translated” into language of today, and must therefore sound like people talking. Languages often change but meanings seldom do in the abstract.  Stick to the language the reader knows.
                                --Rog Phillips, “The Club House,” June 1951

Through EMSHwiller’s Eyes….*
…visions of time and space….

By Luis Ortiz

In 1949, a French-Italian publisher Edizioni Mondiale (World Editions) had decided that the American market was ripe for Fascination, a heavily illustrated, romance-themed magazine it was publishing in Europe. The American edition of Fascination was launched and immediately failed in selling to a jaded post-war American audience. Salacious gossip magazines like True Confessions were what Americans were reading. A knitting magazine was attempted and also floundered. Casting around for alternative publishing ideas, one of World Editions’ New York-based editors suggested a science fiction magazine. Galaxy Science Fiction was born in October 1950 with that editor, Horace L. Gold, at the de facto helm. 

Galaxy had to go up against the gold standard of science fiction periodicals: John W. Campbell, Jr.’s long-established and popular Astounding Science Fiction, as well as Anthony Boucher and Jesse Francis McComas’ more literate Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. To fans, Campbell was a science fiction godhead. He was believed to have the magic touch when it came to finding and publishing the best science fiction, but by the early fifties Campbell was beginning to take a bizarre turn into metaphysical quasi-science, including Dianetics, the creation and pet project of pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard.

Canadian-born Gold had little editorial experience before Galaxy. He did have an eclectic writing background: science fiction and fantasy, radio, comic books, and true-life detective tales. Many of Galaxy’s authors remember Gold as a “nagging presence.” Frederik Pohl, an author’s agent at the time, wrote, “Before Galaxy was a year old it was clearly the place where the action was.” It didn’t hurt that Galaxy was also paying the best rates for the material it published, and this forced Campbell to play catch up. Gold had bigger ambitions for Galaxy. As author Barry Malzberg once pointed out, “Horace Gold earnestly believed that Galaxy could eventually appeal to as many people as The Saturday Evening Post.”

The man who directed Galaxy and made it an immediate contender on newsstands was looking to publish upscale science fiction that was intelligent and socially aware. Physically and emotionally, Gold seemed unsuitable for the job. A spinal injury during an army stint in the Pacific would handicap him throughout his life. The whole time he worked on Galaxy, Gold admitted that due to “… being so high on anxiety and Seconal — and having agonizing back pains...my mind was in a constant fog.” Gold also suffered from severe agoraphobia and rarely left his Manhattan apartment.

Unknown to many of its writers and artists, Galaxy’s future was on shaky ground during that first year. Behind the scenes there were rumors that the magazine was going under. In September 1951, the magazine was sold to print broker Robert M. Guinn, who formed Galaxy Publishing Corporation, and for all intents and purposes World Editions left the North American magazine market. Galaxy found its footing with Gold in complete editorial control. Six months earlier Ed Emshwiller had sold his first professional art to the magazine.

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At the start of his art career, Ed focused on the science fiction field. After leaving art school, and getting married to a fellow art student, Carol Fries, Ed decided that fine art was too risky a proposition, and realized that slick magazines like Saturday Evening Post, Look, and Colliers would allow him little freedom. His father was a pulp reader and Ed grew up with the images of science fiction. He thought that in smaller venues, like SF pulp magazines, he would be free to explore his own ideas. By the early fifties, the physical format called pulp magazines, 7 by 10 inches in dimension, printed on low-grade pulpwood paper, were already looked upon as old-fashioned and newsstand distributors mostly saw them as unprofitable. To survive, most of the pulps were moving to a digest size 5.5 by 7 inches format.

Galaxy’ art director, Washington Van der Poel, appreciated Ed’s ability to create evocative cover art that contained a narrative hook. Emshwiller’s appearance, in the spring of 1951, at Galaxy’s midtown offices with ready-to-use paintings in hand was any art director’s dream. From the get-go Ed had no trouble understanding the economics of pulp publishing, especially “ghetto science fiction,” as it was called by one of its early women practitioners, Judith Merril.

Ed’s debut as an artist was the June 1951 Galaxy science fiction magazine, with a gouache pulled from his portfolio. The piece was titled “Relics of an Extinct Race.” It is hard to imagine today that the scene it presented, of alien archeologists coming across the historical record of mankind’s self-destruction — as depicted through the strata of weapons deposited by successive epochs of violent human civilizations — was not painted with Galaxy in mind, but this painting was done at Carol’s parents’ home in Ann Arbor while the first issues of Galaxy were hitting newsstands.

For the most part, H.L. Gold worked out of his apartment in Stuyvesant Town on East 14th Street where it seemed that much of Galaxy’s business revolved around the weekly poker games that Gold held in his dining room. There, between manuscripts, galley proofs, cover press sheets, beer, and make-ready copies of the magazine, the Friday night games of fifteen-cent-limit, seven-card high-low, Stud, Anaconda, or Iron Cross (all played on a green baize cloth that covered the dining-room table) would engage regulars, and such semi-regulars as Jerome Bixby, Fred Pohl, Algis Budrys, Robert Sheckley, and avant-garde composer John Cage. Ed was one of the semi-regulars. (Carol Emshwiller remembers, “I got mad cause he always lost.”)

Like John Campbell, Gold badgered his writers with story ideas. Both editors were constantly polling their readers for their preferences in stories. Gold had even asked the opinions of writers regarding the layout and logo of Galaxy before the first issue came out. Boucher commented once that the SF field was rich in editors that “truly edit rather than merely assemble” by stimulating authors with seed-ideas, then reaping the harvest. Some Galaxy authors appreciated Gold’s coaching more than others.

One writer, William Tenn, wrote of Gold’s housebound working arrangement: “Horace created a unique milieu in that cave in Stuyvesant Town […] just as Campbell had earlier created one in his Street & Smith office. If you lived in that milieu, if you moved in it at all, if you did nothing more than correspond with it from time to time, you were enlarged in special ways and began to move in directions that were novel to you and remarkably exciting.”  Tenn also called Gold  “[…] one of the most irritating and aggravating men I’ve ever known.”

Gold had many contradictions: as an ex-radical he was afraid, at the height of McCarthyism, to publish fellow traveler William Tenn’s “The Liberation of Earth,” a story attacking both American and Russian involvement in the Korean War (Robert “Doc” Lowndes wound up taking the story for Science Fiction). To be fair, Gold did publish other stories attacking McCarthy’s methods, including Asimov’s “The Martian Way” and Bernard Wolfe’s neglected “Self Portrait,” about the sort of person who would thrive in a McCarthy world. However, by the end of the decade Gold was allowing his emotional predilections to color his selection of stories, and authors who knew which buttons to press believed they had an advantage in selling to Galaxy.

On September 12, 1952, Ed was one of the people at Galaxy’s second anniversary party. Gold knew how big an accomplishment it was to survive two years in the magazine world. The party was held at a steakhouse around the corner from Galaxy’s West 40th Street office — without Gold’s presence. Ed memorialized the event on the cover of the October 1952 issue of Galaxy, but pictured the occasion at Gold’s apartment — with Gold at the center of the party.

By any standard the 1952-53 period was a pretty good time for science fiction. Ed socialized with SF writers but got his directives from the various magazine art editors: W.I. van der Poel at Galaxy, and George Salter at Fantasy & Science Fiction, were both creative professionals and not real SF fans. Salter at Mercury Press was a German expatriate who had learned his trade in theatre and book publishing, and possessed an almost ethereal sense of design and typography, which gave the early issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction a sophisticated and classy look. Ed’s early paintings for F&SF reflected a more artistic approach, and a general shunning of pulp clichés. Other art directors, like Milton Luros at Columbia Publications (before editor Robert W. Lowndes took over the job), came out of the pulp field, and Ed’s work for them reflected this pulpishness.

Rates for cover art ranged anywhere from a high of $150 for the top science fiction magazines like Galaxy and F&SF to the bottom rate, starting at around $50. Ed could do a cover painting in two or three days and was soon making a comfortable living. For interior black and white line drawings, Emshwiller would average $20 an illustration.

By the end of 1952 Ed had achieved a big measure of recognition for himself in the science fiction field. Twenty-nine different American science fiction titles appeared in that year, with a total of 153 individual issues — Ed’s art was in a third of all those SF magazines. He had also begun to create dust jacket art and design for (“Doc” Lowndes at) the small SF publisher Avalon Books and in December 1953 Marty Greenberg, publisher of Gnome Press, most successful of the science fiction specialty houses, ordered four hardcover dust jackets. These were black and white paintings that would be converted into color by the printer. On February 3, 1954, Greenberg invited Ed on a trip to Lebanon PA, where Gnome Press did its four color printing, to see how monochromatic artwork was turned into color. Ed learned the printer’s trick of “faking of color” by using overlays to indicate where a particular color ink will appear.

Most of the editors were on friendly terms and did not see each other’s magazines as competitors. Ed saw the clubhouse camaraderie among editors, and began studying the various magazines with the intent of doing art for as many as possible.  Besides his art appearing in three of the four premiere SF magazines Amazing Stories, Galaxy, and F&SF, by mid 1953 Ed was working for Thrilling Wonder Stories, Space Stories, Startling Stories, Science Fiction, Rocket Stories, Fantastic Story Magazine, and Fantasy Magazine. The only place he had not been able to break into was Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction. Street  & Smith had its own established artists and Ed was an unknown quantity to them.

Galaxy’s policy during the fifties was to keep the original art after getting it back from the printer. Ed, however, needed his samples to show to other art directors and asked to get these paintings back. Van der Poel accommodated Ed. Many magazine publishers had the same almost paranoid tic of not returning art—some created “glory walls” to display art in their offices. The official line given for hanging on to original art was to keep it from being used in other competing publications. Of course, once art began to overwhelm offices and storage rooms, it was routinely tossed into trash bins without a second thought.

Ed’s request for the return of his samples saved many of these early paintings and allowed his family to benefit from the sale of original art later. Afterward, Galaxy covers done on commission were not given back. (In an ad in the January 1972 Galaxy, publisher Robert M. Guinn made an offer to readers that they could buy art from the magazine as souvenirs, and in this way he managed to get rid of art taking up room in his garage and make a secondary profit at the same time.)

One incident worked to the benefit of both publisher and artist. Ed walked into F&SF’s offices in Manhattan and as usual spent a little time looking at their “glory wall” of art. He would use his waiting time to examine other artists’ work, but this day he noticed that one of his own works had changed. Looking closely he saw that his first piece for F&SF titled “Love” had two inches trimmed from the bottom of the painting. This had been one of his original portfolio samples and Ed hit the roof.

“What have you done to my painting? You have modified it!”

The original painting had a flat expanse of reddish color in the foreground and this area had been trimmed off to fit the frame they had available. In Ed’s view, the Procrustean cut had changed his whole composition. “We didn’t think it was important,” someone in the office said, trying to mollify him.

“It’s very important. You can’t do that to my art.”

An abashed office worker reassured him that such a thing would not happen again.

“If I can’t trust you to hold onto my art, I will have to get it all back.”

Tony Boucher, and publisher Lawrence Spivak, had an old-fashioned, gentleman’s sense of publishing and had no problem with returning art when Ed’s request was relayed to them. This began a standing policy that Ed had with F&SF. One Emsh art collector, Alex Eisenstein, believes this may have led to Ed doing his best art for that magazine.

In other cases, several of Ed’s unused early samples were eventually updated and refined by him for later use. The cover to Space Stories for October 1952 showed a group of spacemen racing to board a delta-wing rocket poised on a take-off ramp. In the original sample the spaceport is under bombardment by missiles. In the printed piece all evidence of the space battle has been removed (very likely at the direction of an art editor), but the spacemen are still racing to the spaceship, making the viewer wonder, “what’s the rush?”

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Ed and Carol discovered how challenging a Manhattan tenement apartment is when in the summer of 1951 they moved into a tiny, airless one-room studio, with a shared bathroom at the end of the outside hall, on West 110th Street near Columbia University. Ed’s notion of a job went against the grain of what a million other ex-GIs across the country were doing (mostly manufacturing work). He woke early every morning, and after shaving, he would set up his art materials on a small table, along with the photo clippings he had collected from magazines and the Midtown Library Photo Department, and worked on samples or commissions. At night Ed took classes in lithography and silk-screening at the Art Students League on West 57th Street.

Ed’s art was everywhere — sophisticated, artistic scenes for Fantasy & Science Fiction; monsters threatening spacemen for Space Stories; sexy girl art for Startling Stories; gigantic rockets dwarfing the landscape for Thrilling Wonder Stories; the witty use of SF tropes for Galaxy and Rocket Stories. The only other artist in the field nearly as prolific was Frank Kelly Freas. Robert W. Lowndes, editor of Future Science Fiction and Science Fiction Stories (and Avalon books), recalled “Kelly was great fun and came forth with brilliant things; Emsh was more reliable in the long run and could do more with seemingly ordinary scenes – while he seldom matched Freas at Freas’ very best, I do not recall him ever being as thoroughly bad as Kelly could be in an off period. I refuse to try to decide which was the better SF artist; both are unforgettable for anyone who was a science fictionist during that time.” 

There were times when Ed tried to push other styles of art to his clients. On May 6, 1953, he was in the offices of F&SF for an art conference with Lawrence Spivak and George Salter. Ed had the idea to do a symbolic cover for a story called “Letter to a Tiger” (October 1953). At first Spivak and art editor Salter objected to Ed’s idea. Ed spent a few hours talking them into going along with his original concept. Ed said afterward, “As far as I know it is the most symbolic, non-illustrative cover they’ve used since they have gone in for SF covers.” Ed had gotten away with a highly unusual cover for the story “Beyond Bedlam” in Galaxy, though here the case could be made that the art matched the story idea of a schizophrenic society.

Even though Van der Poel tried to have a balance of artists in every issue, the June 1953 Galaxy included Emsh art on four stories. Ed was prolific enough that magazines began using pseudonyms for him: Ed Emsler in Amazing Stories and Planet Stories, Ed Alexander and Willer in Galaxy; other pen names included Harry Gars and Ed Emsch. He worked primarily in gouache, opaque watercolors, since most other mediums were too slow drying for the tight deadlines he had to make many times. Most of his black and white interior illustrations were done on scratchboard (a board covered with chalky substrate which is then inked and scratched with a sharp object to reveal white lines in the manner of a woodcut).

Ed’s SF art was seen to good effect in F&SF and Galaxy due to the better 4-color printing and cover stock used by both magazines, but he got some unjustified flak from fans at other publications. In response to negative letters for a cover Ed did at Fantastic Story Magazine (September 1952), editor Sam Mines replied, “The story on that Emsh painting for September was mostly one of loss in printing. The original cover was very good and very effective. Otherwise we wouldn’t have bought it. But no one could foresee the almost complete loss of detail, which ensued in the printing and the general muddying up.”  This was a problem Ed would encounter throughout his career.

Over the Labor Day weekend in 1953, the Eleventh World Science Fiction Convention was held at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. Some 650 fans and professionals attended, including Ed Emsh. On Sunday, September 6, Ed served as one of the judges, along with Kelly Freas, at the masquerade. Later that night at the overpriced banquet, with Isaac Asimov serving as toastmaster, the first ever Hugo Awards were handed out (though they were only called achievement awards that night) and there was a tie for professional magazine: Galaxy and Astounding Science Fiction (which could be considered a rebuke of Campbell’s pseudo-science dalliances), and a tie for cover artist: between longtime fan favorite Hannes Bok and Ed Emsh. (The awards were for work done in 1952, a year when Bok had been mostly inactive in the field.) Then, as now, the winners of Hugo awards reflected the best of science fiction as recognized by hardcore fans—making it more of a popularity contest.

Where artists like Bok looked to older schools of art, Ed, Richard Powers, and Freas were part of a new generation of post-war artists, steeped in 20th modern century art, who had emerged with the general boom in science fiction. As if to underscore this growth, within walking distance, or a short bus ride, of the convention hotel, there were six SF&f movies playing: It Came from Outer Space; Beast from 20,000 Fathoms; Invaders from Mars; The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T: Scared Stiff; and Four-Sided Triangle. (Obviously, theaters were catering to the SF fans in town, but the wide choice of recent movies is telling.) What the general population thought of science fiction could be seen in the Philadelphia movie houses, and in one local newspaper account of the con: Would Be Zoomies Meet In Philadelphia.

The science fiction crowd saw Ed as a cool “big-name-pro.” For one thing artists were still rare at SF cons: Bok and Finlay avoided crowds; Powers appeared at one 1950s gathering and was not seen again for years. Freas was one of the few regular artist con attendees during the decade. For many journeymen artists, toiling in the science fiction fields was a minor part of their output. A teenaged Harlan Ellison first met Ed face-to-face at the Philcon after having contacted him by mail to get art for his fanzine.

Many SF artists were based in and around New York, but (with very few exceptions) seemed to lack any interest in the cauldron of modernistic schools of fine art bubbling around them, much less catering to science fiction fans. For these artists, art was a job—the more direction they received, the better they were able to produce. Their point of visual reference was more likely to come from B films, such as Rocketship X-M and Destination Moon. And, of course, Hollywood was not above using images and ideas pilfered from SF magazines.

Commercial artists did not endear themselves to art directors by bringing new ideas into the air. Then as today, art editors saw artists as craftsmen deployed in the service of an idea already fixed, if not fully focused, in the art director’s mind. (Richard Powers appears to be the only other artist making any attempt at fusing SF art and modernistic art—in his case, surrealism. Most art directors knew better than to try to give detailed directions to Powers.) Where Ed’s drawing skills and his awareness of modern art led him to experiment, most SF artists were content to stick with straightforward figurative and realistic art. Even though he was shot down many times, Ed was always mixing in a few concept sketches that pushed the boundaries of SF art when making the rounds of magazine art directors.

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In January 1954 Ed produced over $1,300 worth of art, his best month ever. That month he finished four hardcover dust jackets, three magazine covers, and a dozen or more interior illustrations. Ed also learned that he had overpaid his last quarterly income tax for 1953 and had enough credit to cover his first tax payment of 1954. For the first time, he had a sense of doing more than just making a subsistence living. Ed believed that his most recent work had taken a big leap in development and would open new doors once art directors saw it.

In the mid-fifties every newsstand carried a spate of SF magazines and any writer of minimum competence, who could fill the bill, had a better than even chance of selling to the field. It didn’t hurt if a writer was already a fan reading the stuff.  Most of the field’s editors were not looking to transcend the genre—it was hard enough finding writers that weren’t trying to turn westerns into SF. Emsh was seen as someone who could give instant visual cachet to a new magazine. Infinity Science Fiction appeared at the end of 1955, and after the first issue editor Larry Shaw snared Ed as the magazine’s excusive cover artist. Editor Larry Shaw knew what he was doing. He also used Robert Silverberg as one of the primary writers for Infinity, under various pen names.

“Doc Lowndes” was another SF fan turned pro who had been slogging in pulp publishing since 1941 as a jack-of-all-trades for Columbia Publications. Over the interim he had developed close friendships with many SF writers and artists, who he used in an assortment of magazines he helmed: Famous Detective, Future Science Fiction, SF Quarterly, Dynamic Mystery, Sports Winners, and Double Action Western. Lowndes began working in pulps as a young man and was one of the original members of the Futurians, a New York City kibbutz of SF fans that included Damon Knight, Fred Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, and Isaac Asimov. As Lowndes later reflected, “… my connections, and freedom from some of the more pointless taboos of formula pulp fiction, resulted in my getting many stories which another person might not have gotten at the rates we could pay.”

Carol began taking an interest in the contents of the science fiction magazines that came into the house and tagged along with Ed to some of the local science fiction conventions. “I guess what triggered my first stories was wanting to join all those SF people I met through Ed and the fact that they talked about writing as if it was a chess game and a normal person could learn to do it.” The science fiction boom was as fortuitous for Carol as it was for Ed. Robert Lowndes, perpetually working with a shoestring budget, bought Carol’s story “This Thing Called Love” in the summer of 1955 for Future Science Fiction at half a cent a word.

Ed would have his own bust and boom period, times where he would work 60-70 hours a week and times where he would find himself mowing the lawn midweek. He was doing mystery covers for Mercury Publications, including Ellery Queen and Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, and was considering getting an artist’s rep to go after higher paying markets. Digging up new accounts was a “grind” and a rep could do the legwork for him.

He was hoping to crack the paperback field. “If things go through as hoped I’ll get $250-$300 per cover, which is better than I’ve done to date.” He had shown some surrealistic color photos to Van der Poel who was “quite enthusiastic” about them. Ed’s aim was to get him to use them for Galaxy and Beyond, but both magazines stuck to illustrative covers.
 
At the beginning of 1955 Ed heard from the art director of True Detective, who was looking to see some current art samples. Ed felt that this was one more “unproductive” going through the motions, but made the trip into the city. Much to his surprise, he got the assignment to do a cover at $300. This was two to three times the amount his covers had been bringing in to date. The same publisher was putting out Saga, one of the leading men’s magazines and better paying art markets around. Ed had also managed to hook up with Gun and Rod magazine at the same time.

Columbia Publications paid some of the lowest rates in the field for art and fiction, but Ed found Robert Lowndes, who had learned every aspect of magazine publishing from the ground up, one of the more likeable editors to work with and offered to illustrate Carol’s stories published in Future Science Fiction and Original Science Fiction Stories. This led to Lowndes using more Emsh art. A cost-saving trick that Lowndes used extensively was to have stories written around already purchased cover art.

Magazine publishers could get cheaper printing by “gang printing” covers from different magazines on one sheet (this led to many publishers having a stable of companion magazines to cut cost), but this also meant that covers had to be created well in advance, with stories to match — in many cases written later. (Hugo Gernsback got around this by running contests for the best story written around cover art.)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had used Ed’s cover art to generate the story “Love” by Richard Wilson in their June 1952 issue. (It had been one of Ed’s original Ann Arbor art samples, bought straight out of his portfolio.) This practice worked better in theory than in execution, but publishers believed readers looked for stories connected to the cover art in a magazine. All major SF writers did at least one story using this method at some point in their careers. The list includes Sturgeon, Leiber, Merril, Knight, Kornbluth, and Asimov.

Ed was adept at “dreaming up ideas” for his own “story” images, and Lowndes utilized Emsh’s paintings as inspiration for authors to write catch-up stories later.  Lowndes assigned stories based on art to various authors, but was unhappy with the results—until he began using Silverberg.

Lowndes would supply Emsh sketches or a cover proof to Silverberg—sometimes Ed would be in the office and give a verbal description of his next cover, or do a quick sketch for Silverberg. “Ed’s cover ideas were always clever ones, with a clear narrative line visible in them, and I had no difficulty turning them into stories.”

Silverberg, who did quite a number of Lowndes’ art first, story second science fiction assignments, remembers: “[In] one situation Ed Emsh and Bob Lowndes presented me with: a log raft, moving through space with a kind of rocket engine clamped onto the back, with two people sitting upon it. Well, I brooded about that for a while and I worked out what I thought was a convincing enough explanation for how a log raft would be going through space, how it would hold together, and how they would ever get it off the ground. I had them leaving an asteroid where there wasn’t much of a thrust problem.”

Silverberg saw these cover assignments as “amusing challenges.” The space life raft was “…more fun than usual because of the oddball imagery of the painting.”

Another author, Randall Garrett, invented the Remshaw Drive for a story after he was given a black and white photostat of a painting showing a strange gadget. Ed had placed his signature on the circular band of a vacuum tube and Garrett saw it as the partially visible brand name of this piece of electronics.

Ed thought of these narrative paintings as “… poster[s] which [had] a gimmick [….] There have been covers where I have tried to do a little bit more; tried to imply a little sequence of events; but I think that a painting is a very limited medium in that sense. It can, at most, imply and sometimes tell a story. But most of the time, despite the Chinese with their painting that equals a thousand words, the statement that can be made with a painting is only sort of a one-shot, whereas a story is an evolution. I never try to tell that evolution in a painting.”

During the summer of 1957, Ed brought in a cover showing two men in spacesuits on a dismal planet racing away from a glass dome station melting in the first rays of sunrise. Lowndes gave Silverberg a photograph of the art and the author quickly worked out an explanation for the unexpected fiery sunrise by setting his story on the planet closest to the sun. He wrote “Sunrise on Mercury” in a day.  Another time in Lowndes’ cramped, dingy Church Street office near the pointed tip of Manhattan, Ed joined Silverberg to work out an idea for a cover and story. The three hashed out ideas till they settled on one, and Ed and Silverberg walked out to the street—each reassured that they had the story concept well in mind. A week later, artist and author were surprised to see that their finished work appeared to have nothing in common.

Harlan Ellison remembers that a day would be set aside for the viewing of cover art at Amazing Stories. On that day authors would arrive at the magazine’s office to see the paintings already set up on chairs, and select one to write a story around. There would be nine or ten paintings, and if you got there late, as Harlan once did, you might be stuck with a painting of a giant praying mantis watching a girl sunbathing nude on a rooftop. Most SF authors preferred working from Ed’s art, which always used plausible scientific principles. Though Ed stated in a panel at Pittcon in 1960, “I’ve been encouraged to do…flagrantly wrong ideas on covers simply for the effect…. I believe in doing scientifically accurate work in many cases…[but] I will do jobs, gladly, that have an effect which I know full well is not supportable scientifically.”

Ed’s SF machinery looked like it could work in the real world. The cover to Infinity Science Fiction for October 1957 showed a woman (with Carol the model) in a sleek space-bubble craft waving to a man in a spacesuit riding an open tri-rocket-chair that looks perfectly functional — and fun. His robots were not Mr. Machine toys, but show honest thought on how they would function in the real world.

An arbitrary publishers’ quirk that happened to Ed more times than he liked to remember, was changes made to his art without his knowledge. In one instance, Ed had painted a scene of a spaceman in profile with an alien flying insect alighting on his bubble helmet for the August 1955 Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.  His original art showed foliage behind the spaceman, with the nose of a rocket peeking above the treetops. Without informing Ed, the magazine had some unknown artist paint out the foliage and render in its place a sparse environment with purple mountains and a futuristic city in the distance. A space-rocket with fins is now fully shown in the middle ground. The changes were done either on a separate piece of illustration board, that was removed when the art was returned to Ed, or on the film pulled for printing. Even the distortions and reflections visible in the spaceman’s transparent helmet were redone. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason for these changes.

#

September 1962  was particularly special for me. My obsessions and my fantasies were crashing head-on in a mighty orgasmic rush. Ten years earlier those obsessions and fantasies had taken root and then began running almost on automatic. “The Third Eye.” Polaroid self-portrait by Edward Emshwiller, dated September 1962. It was my first Worldcon, ChiCon II, and I was a total nonentity. I had met a few rather prominent science fiction personalities, but wasn’t really sure of that or if I was just imagining I had met them. As it turned out, a few of them remembered me as well, so it wasn’t totally Dreamsville on my part after all. So there I was, from nowhere going nowhere and finding myself in the middle of home. I wanted it all. My way. Just for me. Instantly. I would be content with a Hugo and a Worldcon all my own. The Pulitzer and Nobel could wait; I had time. What ego? Insanity in command, driving beyond the limits, unable to see anything except the goals ahead…. Instantly sure takes a long time to arrive. And a hell of a lot of help from a lot of people. A smattering of blood and tears, eons of waiting, co-conspiring, deal-making, plotting, scheming, defeat, and a modicum of treason…all necessary to bring it about. I felt honored to have had so many people working so hard just for me…and a share in my ambitions…betting that I could bring them all along to share a piece of my fantasy reality. In 1961 I got that Hugo, for Who Killed Science Fiction? [see eI29], sporting a fantastic cover by my friend Ed Emshwiller. In 1962, the rest just naturally followed. And, again, my friend Ed Emshwiller was heavily involved in ChiCon III, my convention. And created the dramatic convention program wraparound cover as well, contributing more of his valuable time and talent for fans…the very same fans who so adored him…his creations…the images from his inner self. By 1962, EMSH was THE word associated with popular science fiction images. He was such an icon that, as he moved around the convention floor, as he made walk-on passes through program items, as he just beamed radiantly outward toward his fans…he enhanced the convention. He graciously allowed those people, trembling in awe, to approach him, ask for his autograph, sigh, maybe even reach out unconsciously and actually touch him…. Oh, my God! It’s really him…! The value Emshwiller gave the Chicago fan group was not countable, it was so enormous. [In all fairness, Guest of Honor Ted Sturgeon also worked his talented little ass off for the convention as well, for two years, while keeping the secret of his Honordom. Only this sidebar is about Ed, not about Ted.] Leigh Brackett, Richard Powers, and Ed Emshwiller judging the ChiCon III costume ball; Sylvia Dees in the foreground. ChiCon III photo by Jean Grant, Chicago, September 1962. Then, to add a little icing onto the cake, Ed became part of what was scheduled to be a three-artist costume-judging panel for the masquerade ball. Margaret Brundage cancelled out at the last minute and the lovely Leigh Brackett, reigning queen of Planet Stories, stepped in to take her place alongside Richard Powers and Ed Emshwiller. Their task was the difficult one, and just beginning. Mine was the easy one, and almost over, until the next obsession came along….                         --Earl Kemp

One quirky SF editor (in a field fraught with eccentric editors) who gave Ed and many writers pause during the fifties, was John Wood Campbell Jr. at Astounding Science Fiction. Campbell spent endless hours tucked away in his cell-like office situated above the printing plant of his publisher Street & Smith. The two things he seemed to like best were smoking and talking — usually done together. In outward appearance, SF was a marginal and disposable literature, mostly alive in magazines from 1926 through the 1950s, but beginning in 1938 Campbell single-handedly gave SF a gravity heretofore unknown by forcing his writers to work harder for their penny a word. He expected his authors to know their science as well as to be able to write to his standards. It is a testament to Campbell’s despotic vision that he did shift the field, single-handedly, onto a new path.

Science fiction may have been on an evolutionary fast track after John W. Campbell, but book publishers still lagged behind, afraid to publish what they considered absurd fantasies. It took two 1946 anthologies, Random House’s Adventures in Time & Space, put together by J. Francis McComas and Raymond J. Healy, and Crown Publishing’s The Best of Science Fiction—both books culled most of their stories from Campbell’s magazine—to alert non-pulp purveyors to some of the marvels available at dime-store newsstands.  In a post-atomic world, both hardcover science fiction collections sold over 30,000 copies at $3 a book, surprising their respective publishers.

On February 14, 1955, Ed met with Campbell in his Manhattan office. Their previous meeting four years earlier had led nowhere. This time Campbell was more receptive, and Ed left with a cover art assignment. Astounding had the best rates in the SF magazine field and Ed was glad to get the work.

For a long time Campbell was the field, but by the fifties Astounding Science Fiction was showing some chips and cracks along its edges. Campbell’s zealous espousal of Dianetics, then the Dean Drive (an antigravity engine), followed by advocacy of the advantages of a future society having a rigorous class system (including slavery), and the pushing of psi sciences of the mind, alarmed and drove away some readers.

Robert Silverberg remembers: “Campbell put everybody who entered his office through an intense philosophical inquiry, grilling them in the Socratic manner about whatever subject was uppermost in his mind that day, and I think Ed felt a little intimidated by that. Sometimes when we left John’s office together, Ed would say, ‘Did you have any idea of what he was talking about?’ or something similar. But Campbell admired Ed’s work and probably didn’t give him a hard time as an artist, just as someone on the receiving end of the day’s interrogation. I’m sure Ed enjoyed his visits with the kindly, twinkling, soft-spoken Lowndes much more, even though Lowndes didn’t pay as well.”

In John W. Campbell Letters, Vol. I, Frank Kelly Freas recalls the limits of Campbell’s art appreciation: “He was perfectly willing to admit that he knew nothing about art, but he knew storytelling and he knew what it took to illustrate a story. John had no use whatever for abstraction, very little for stylization, and barely tolerated anything that approached the fashionable.” Freas records Campbell saying, “Look … if I could send a camera to Mars, or into your bloodstream, or into the future, I’d use a camera. But you’re all I’ve got. So be a camera, Okay?” Ed never felt comfortable around Campbell and only did a handful of covers for Astounding Science Fiction. Freas’ work fitted in with Campbell’s idea of art, and he became the signature artist for Astounding.

Ed’s Astounding Science Fiction covers were not illustrations for interior stories, but freestanding art. He often appeared in Campbell’s office with ready-made cover sketch ideas that would sell or not. One of the first paintings that Ed did for Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction, for the March 1956 issue, showed a bear defending an exploration team from a weird-looking dragon creature. Campbell had Murray Leinster write “Exploration Team” around Ed’s painting.  Ed once told a science fiction convention audience, “It’s fascinating … to see what ingenious ideas the writers come up with….” Campbell usually worked the other way around — giving manuscripts to artists he trusted and letting them have a free hand.

Campbell’s attitude was not unique among SF magazine editors. Ed remembers, “…having many battles about the response (of editors) to modern styles of artwork. The more literal, realistic, documentary (approach) was what many science fiction people thought was the only valid way.”

#

As good an editor as he was, Horace Gold did have his blind spots. He let two of the best all time SF stories get away from him through sheer ignorance: Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” because he did not know how Catholics would respond to it (Boucher, a Catholic in good standing, quickly bought the story for F&SF); and Daniel Keyes’ classic story “Flowers for Algernon” because Gold wanted to change the ending to an upbeat one — a change Keyes refused to do. (On the other hand, it was Gold’s editorial prodding that got Alfred Bester’s classics The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man written.) Carol and Ed read Keyes’ manuscript at Milford in the summer of 1958 and both loved the story. Keyes easily sold the story to Bob Mills, who had replaced Boucher a year earlier at F&SF, and Ed got to illustrate it for the cover of the April 1959 issue of F&SF. He wound up giving the painting to the author as a gift when Keyes’ first child was born that September.

By 1959 science fiction, as a field, was experiencing a morning-after moment. The high of 1952-53 had subsided into a sullen fatalism. In early 1960 Chicago fan Earl Kemp put out a fanzine called Who Killed Science Fiction? with an Emsh cover showing various SF archetypes gathered at a grave for the genre. Kemp had gone around asking SF professionals the headline question and gotten back many responses, quite a few taking issue with the reported demise of the field. Still, people like Silverberg and Freas were getting out of science fiction (although both would return in the mid-sixties).

While the SF magazines and small specialty book publishers had developed the field, the major publishing houses were now muscling in, and in a way helping to kill them off. Although not done deliberately, it was, nonetheless, more flowers on the coffin. Book publishers were mining the magazines for story collections and novelettes that they could expand into novels or use, in the case of Ace, for the unique format they had of putting 30,000 word “novels” back to back for their line of SF paperbacks. Science fiction authors found they could make more money from doing paperback originals. Gnome Press and Avalon, like Ballantine and Ace in paperback, were bringing out one science fiction book a month. Avon published eight to twelve SF paperbacks a year, Bantam six, and Signet five. Ed had cracked most of these markets.

Most detrimental of all of all the tribulations SF faced was the dissolution of the independent magazine distributor, American News Company, which put many marginal SF magazines out of business overnight. Those magazines with better sales, such as Galaxy and F&SF, or linked to a stable of better-selling periodicals like Astounding Science Fiction, Fantastic Science Fiction and Amazing Stories, managed to survive. Close examination of the field shows no signs of editorial exhaustion, except perhaps for Horace Gold, who was involved in an automobile accident on a rare excursion outdoors and soon after relinquished the editorial reins of Galaxy to Fred Pohl. Lowndes’ group of SF magazines limped along and saw their last issue in 1960. Of course, Campbell still had his plow in the same pseudo-science rut.

Even with many SF magazines folding, technically accomplished art with narrative content and a contemporary feel was still selling. Emsh had enough of a reputation to continue pretty much as he had throughout the fifties. The artistic rear guard, which still clung to its pulp palettes, went into other fields of commercial art, including what were then referred to as men’s “sweat” magazines.  These were adventure magazines geared to manly endeavors informed by war, hunting, and the encountering of willing women in exotic areas of the world. Ed, keeping his options open, did burly art for Sportsman, Untamed, Lion Adventure, Man’s World, See for Man, and True Action.

Ed’s style would change depending on whatever commercial art jobs came his way. “I received assignments from a wide range of people. These would run from a specific assignment where I was told practically where to place the people, and how and what they were to be dressed like and so forth, through the case where I was given a manuscript and given a free hand, and other cases where there’s a discussion, give-and-take, an expression of ideas, to cases where they say: ‘We want something different from last month. We had a black cover last month, we want a red cover this month.’”

As the 1960s progressed, Ed became a fixture in the New York avant-garde, experiment film scene. In 1964, the year he was awarded a Ford Foundation $10,000 artist grant, he quit commercial art cold turkey and became a full-time filmmaker. He did a few art assignments for friends, like Harlan Ellison, as favors, but as Ed put it, “...I think that my particular way of seeing and doing has a greater range, a greater potential, in film than I was capable of giving to the static work. I more or less exhausted my vision in that area.”

- - -
*Excerpted from Emshwiller: Infinity X Two, by Luis Ortiz, and used with the permission of Nonstop Press. Copyright 2007 by Luis Ortiz. All rights reserved. Emsh cover paintings Courtesy Alex and Phyllis Eisenstein Collection. Emsh art copyright Ed Emshwiller Estate. Magazine cover scans Courtesy Jacques Hamon Collection http://www.noosfere.com/showcase/ Luis Ortiz can be contacted at lortiz@nonstop-press.com 

…fandom is a big American family of guys and gals that anyone would be proud to belong to and associate with actively.  In a way, I occupy a unique position as conductor of an unedited department in a science fiction magazine, where the fans can get their projects before the general public the way they want it done, without being judged by an unsympathetic outsider in prejudiced and slanted reviews. There will of course, come a day when I no longer conduct ‘The Club House,’ but when that day comes it will not be because I grew too intelligent to like sharing in the activities of the only slice of modern life that senses the drama of progress and the fascination of the universe.
                             --Rog Phillips, “The Club House,” July 1950

Torture Time in Texas

By Michael Moorcock

[I asked Michael to write of his experiences in returning to fandom at Corflu Quire. It was one of the most difficult tasks I’ve performed in a long time. And following is what he wrote spontaneously and emailed to me immediately. Elder god and all that, special powers surely. But undeniably delightful. –Earl Kemp]

The experience was too traumatic, Earl.  How can I ever speak of it again?  Told that my old friend and ex-band member Graham Charnock had been found in an obscure Austin hotel, breathing his last, calling for gin and Moorcock (they thought -- it was later discovered he meant gin and floor-polish, his favourite tipple), I rushed as best I could on one leg to be by his side. 

There had always been some talk of his leaving me his Fender bass and sometimes a person needs to secure his assets before greedy family members attempt to dispute ownership of what is rightfully his.  Linda came with me, since she wanted to ask Charnock if it was true I had burned his old flat (by this time Charles Platt's) down and lost her new boots and jacket in the blaze or (as she suspected) I'd actually had him sell them for me at a nearby pawnshop.

We arrived to discover that we'd been duped.   A collection of ancients, many of them hideously halt and lame, surrounded us in the lobby and bore us off by body-weight alone (and there was some serious body-weight available, let me tell you).

I tried to cry out to passing staff, telling them that I wasn't of this company, that I was being abducted against my will and so on, but they informed me that I was so obviously part of the “convention of curiosities” (as they called it) that my story wasn't in any way credible.  

We found ourselves the “guests” at this Banquet of the Lost, forced to participate in one ghastly ritual after another or suffer the death of The Thousand Jalapeños -- a singularly terrible Texan torture whose details are impossible to retail in a family fanzine -- until we were weeping travesties of our former selves, no longer recogniseable, I was sure, even to our intimate relatives. 

Not only were we forced to listen to Ted White's ritualistic reading of names so strange and disgusting their utterance would have caused even Cthulthu to make an excuse and leave, we then had to suffer the Ordeal of the Million In-Jokes, in which more unpronounceable names were invoked at very slow speeds designed to send us into some awful hypnotic slumber from which, we were sure, we would never awake.  

I can't remember how we were taken from this ritual and borne up, up into corridors without end, chambers without dimension or form, and there forced to drink unnatural and unholy beverages which took me, at least, back into a world of the past, from which I had hoped I would never return, where I was surrounded by grinning faces, mocking masks bearing only the faintest resemblance to human features, who chanted ancient names and phrases -- Eastercon ’58, Brumcon ’59, Loncon ’60 -- the list went on. 

We Met on the Steps of a Moscow Latrine, they murmured.  Hum, they demanded, sway, sway, sway...   No human brain can accept so much horror, Earl.   I even, for a moment, thought I saw your face amongst those.  Worse -- Pete Weston seemed to be there, too, pointing an accusing finger at me as the Man who knew the Man who probably threw The Glass at John Brunner.

Oh, it was worse than that.  Far worse.  But that is all I can recapture now.  Charnock had disappeared, of course, probably born away by these same shape-changers, to suffer even worse than I.   I did see what appeared as his shade, playing an imitation guitar and singing a hideously tuneless version of “Star Cruiser,” the melody's classic beauty and inspirational lyrics reduced to a few bars of sickening grunts and wheezes, to fill me with even greater horror.  But such mockery, such hellish perversion of all that was decent and good and beautiful in the world, was clearly the purpose of these creatures' coming together in that place.

And then, as soon as I had passed out, disappearing into the embrace of sweet oblivion, I felt myself being shaken.   “NO!”  I screamed.  “NO MORE!”   I begged them with all that remained of my immortal soul to leave me in peace.  But it was not to be. 

Linda was standing over me and by her side stood those very phantoms I had hoped to escape -- Kemp, Weston, Charnock -- grinning down at me.  SHE HAD BECOME ONE OF THEM!!!!  

How I ever managed to get to my foot and hop, hop, hop away from there, flagging down a passing car which took me immediately to the nearest Salvation Army hostel, I do not know, but I still shudder, fearing even comforting sleep itself, waiting for the sound of soft shuffling, chinking glasses, and low, chuckling voices uttering nameless names and invoking the unpronounceable -- which come to take me back to that place of horror which is forever Birmingham in 1959 where, call it pride or curiosity or even innocent folly, I lost the right to call myself human.  

They know what I am, even if I have managed to hide it from the world for years.  I know what I am.  And sooner or later the moment will come when I admit it at last and join the shuffling, cackling ranks of those who owe only St Fanthony and Corflu their loyalty, who walk the endless corridors of Roneo, where inky drums beat out a reminder of their wretched addictions and the ancient Stencils of Skyrack are read in a perpetual drone for endless days. 

No, it's no good, Earl.  My mind will never heal and my nightmares will continue to come until I sink at last into that sleep without waking.    Too traumatic, as I say.  You'll have to find someone else -- maybe Linda, who has not been seen since that day -- to help you recall what happened.

But what's this?   Coming through the walls?  The candle gutters and goes out.  The blackness becomes utter.  The wind whistles weirdly through the window?  Is it she?

No!  The face is too hideous.  I recognise it.  It's -- it's -- hang on, my biro's running out of ink -- it's --- aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgh.

Roy Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgh, actually.  I'm not sure who this is meant for, but I'll pass it along anyway.  Poor old bugger's gone, I'm afraid.  Wasn't even aware he knew my name.  

Yrs etc.
Roy A

It was the fanzine that crystallized fandom into an entity and it is the various fanzines that keep it that way.
                                --Rog Phillips, “The Club House,” January 1949

“The Club House”

By Mike Deckinger

The first installment of Rog Phillips’ “The Club House” appeared in the March 1948 issue of Amazing Stories. There were other lesser columns at the time; Robert Madle’s Inside Science Fiction sprinkled news from the professional side, with a smattering of fan-centric topics. Other magazines unveiled brief windows into the world of fan activities, usually conducted by judgmental, if not snickering moderators. “The Club House,” however, rapidly developed into the most probing, substantive, engaging, and observational column of those presented to the reading public.

Amazing Stories was the definitive pulp of its era.  With untrimmed edges, printed on flakey and fragile pulp paper, with lurid covers, garish titles, and a stable of regulars who produced virtually everything in the magazine, it provided a reliable haven for the undemanding reader.

Phillips opened his column by observing:  “It may come as a pleasant surprise to some of you readers that there is a large number of organized science fiction and fantasy fan clubs in existence, not only in the United States, but also in Canada and the British Isles.”

Although Phillips was a charter member of the Ziff-Davis writing stable, he was not as culturally insulated as the other contributing members, nor did he suffer from severe talent-deprivation, as they did.   He read (and occasionally contributed to) fanzines, and attended conventions.   He infused wit and understanding in his unearthing of fan-related topics.  He understood the perspectives of the fan world a half-century ago, and the limited influence they had upon the professional market.  He did not regard their presence as an unwanted intrusion in the industry, or the capricious ravings of unrestrained juveniles.  He made it clear he recognized the league of camaraderie spawned by early fandom, without overtly endorsing their more radical or unprincipled behavioral tactics.

At the time Phillips commenced “The Club House,” fanzines were printed on mimeographs, ditto machines, and hectographs.  A few publications had access to pricey photo contrivances and some laggards even relied on primitive carbon paper.

After a reasoned history of the fan scene, Phillips noted that since there were approximately 50 fanzines being published, each one capable of handling 100 subscribers at most, “fandom can take in only 5,000 more recruits at present.”

The fanzines cited were mostly undistinguished, although a few achieved some measure of fame: Fantasy Times, Dream Quest, The Gorgon, Spacewarp, Fantasy Commentator. He was generally supportive of all these efforts.

In the April 1948 Amazing Stories, Phillips discussed the NFFF and FAPA.  The NFFF (National Fantasy Fan Federation) held its greatest appeal for the “average” fan (his emphasis), with the aim of bringing “publishers, authors, and fans more closely in together.”  FAPA (Fantasy Amateur Press Association) offers “a means of expression for fans who join it, and an audience of highly critical readers who will read and appreciate what you publish.”

FAPA issued four mailings a year that “cost well over a dollar to put out.  To keep this from becoming prohibitive, membership is strictly limited.”  Interested recruits were referred to Charles Burbee and Francis T. Laney.

Among the fanzines cited were Spaceteer, from Floridian Lin Carter, and Molecule, printed by Walter Coslet on an addressograph machine!  The Burroughs Bulletin, with its first four issues, is mentioned. Although the Bulletin is listed as free, Phillips generously suggests reader send a few stamps to defray costs.  “Judging by the issues I have on hand, it should be worth a nickel a copy.”

A contest for the twelve best letters, articles, or stories, appearing in fanzines from, June 1, 1948 to June 1, 1949, leads the May 1948 “Club House.” There would be a first prize of $50 and second of $25.  Ten runner-ups would receive a year’s subscription to Amazing Stories.

It sounded fairly straight forward, and it was up to a point, where a knotty little qualifier was inserted.   Phillips stated “Each fanzine, in order to be eligible for the prizes, must have its readers vote for the best in the fanzine, during that period.”  Huh?  The editor was then encouraged to submit those items winning reader acclamation.

“The subtle and diabolical plot underlying this contest, is of course to entice you readers into the mad world of fandom from which there is no escape.”

The rest of the prose consisted of a guest editorial from Rex Ward, publisher of the monthly letterzine, Fandom Speaks.

Wisely slanting his article toward the vast majority of the readership untutored in the complexities of fandom, Ward offered a brief summation of the nature of fandom and its heartiest adherents.

What do fans do in their spare time?  Ward has the answers: collecting (“few fans can pass up a second-hand magazine shop”), fan gatherings, and correspondence (“it is impossible to describe the fun and enjoyment one can find in writing letters to other people interested in the same type of literature”).

Back to reviews.  Phillips announced the inaugural issue of Loki from Gerry de la Ree. De la Ree, who died in 1993, was a major publisher and collector for many years.

Fantasy Commentator for Winter 1948 carried part 10 of “The Immortal Storm” by Sam Moskowitz, his major history of fandom, from its stumbling inception to the current period of benign refinement.

In the June 1948 issue, Phillips ruefully admitted: “I’ve been bitten by the bug myself now. In the February Spacewar is a silly contribution by me.  In the January Dream Quest is an article by me titled: ‘Where to, Science Fiction?’”  Then comes the big news: on a recent trip to Los Angeles he joined FAPA. He composed a one-shot with five other members.  The title was Soipdalgeif and devised by randomly stabbing a pencil into a newspaper.

The sixth Worldcon, the “Torcon” held in Toronto, July 3 to 5, 1948, received a splash of publicity.  Membership is all of $1.00!!!  I’ll repeat that; $1.00.  A letter from chairman Ned McKeown assured the readership that Torcon is an independent gathering and has no connection with any outside fanclub, such as the NFFF – a training ground for the untutored in the fan world, regarded with derision in many quarters. A favored scenario is that the life members of NFFF exist in a hazy limbo, forever deprived of fannish enlightenment.

Phillips mentions Fantasy Times in his review; ruefully noting that editor Taurasi is losing $5 a month on the magazine’s production.  Fantasy Times was a periodic newszine presenting reviews, news, and items of timely interest.  Later publications that adopted a similar persona included Fanac, Starsprinkle, Focal Point, File 770, and Locus.

The July 1948 column began with a highly laudatory review of Loki, from Gerry de la Ree and Genevieve Stephens.  The first issue offered the dazzling line-up of Eando Binder, David H. Keller, Richard Shaver, Dorothy Quick, Stanley Weinbaum, and Lin Carter.  Remember, this is a fan magazine, not a professional publication.  The price: ten cents.  “Paper costs money.  So do postage stamps.”

The Kay-Mar Trader, a magazine for swapping and sales, offered an ad for “Fandom Atomic Information Fund.” Its laudatory aim is to create a better understanding of the peaceful uses of atomic energy.  Where does Fandom fit into all of this?  We’ll never know.

The August 1948 issue of Amazing was the first one lacking “The Club House.” Rog Phillips, however, was represented big time in the fiction section, taking up most of the page count with two novelettes, under his own name and as “Craig Browning.”  As a fiction writer, he was the most literate and versatile of the entire Ziff-Davis stable, and the only one with the potential to extricate himself from the dismal ghetto of lame plotting, into the more dignified and influential markets.  It wasn’t until the waning days of his career that he actually began the transition.

“The Club House” reappeared in October 1948.  In commenting on the epical history of fandom by Sam Moskowitz, in Fantasy Commentator, Phillips marvels over the fan movement called “Michelism” begun in 1938, which preached greater fan involvement, before it was unmasked as a communist front.  Even then, in a pre-McCarthy era, communism was the ultimate crouching chimera. Always the futurist, Moskowitz foresaw the icy clutch of McCarthyism.

A letter announced the formation of Vampyre Society: a fan club “for girls only, to get girls together for fun and frolic.”  The letter writer signed off as “Marion ‘Astra’ Zimmer”  (Marion Zimmer Bradley).

The November 1948 installment offered a departure from previously formats. A hefty portion of Phillips’ “editorial” section was devoted to letters and inquiries about local fan organizations.  Readers from VA, OH, NH, CA, NY, and IL all either plead for support in contacting a neighboring group, or offered announcements of clubs in formation. Phillips was highly supportive of their efforts and encouraged their continued progress.

Frank Dietz, Jr. appeared with a letter presenting an abstract assessment of fandom.  While his missive may be quite irrelevant in the total scheme of an evolving fan presence, there is a distinguishing factor: Frank may be one of the few individuals quoted who is still around today, after a mere gap of 59 years!!!

Finding one survivor who has bridged those primitive times to the contemporary epoch, in this issue, is stunning.  Finding two is a shattering revelation. Yet, we do. An article in The Mutant is co-authored by Radell (Ray) Nelson.

The ubiquitous Harry Warner was cited for Horizons, which may share some sort of record for longevity.  On a more melancholy note, there is no possible way Harry can be inserted into the same category as Frank Dietz and Ray Nelson, when it comes to survivability in the present.

In the January 1949 issue of Amazing Stories, Phillips pondered how fandom was born and why it persists. He concluded: “it was the fanzine that crystallized fandom into an entity and it is the various fanzines that keep it that way.”

Another magazine that spanned many a year is The Burroughs Bulletin from the Coriells.  Phillips reported on the latest issue, containing an open letter to Johnny Weismuller begging him not to give up his role in the Tarzan pictures. Another article; “How Old is Tarzan,” concludes he is 60 years old (that was back in 1949, imagine his age today).

The Time Machine from Gordon Mack, Jr sported artwork by William Rotsler, as well as a self-portrait of him.  Would I love to see that. Wouldn’t we all?

In February 1949, Phillips opened with a literate and probing essay on the nature of science fiction, concluding (among other things) that “unexplored fields offer the best prospects for continued story development, and advances in modern technology and thinking, are fiercely uprooting them.”

He plugged the seventh world convention in Cincinnati this year.  “An attempt is being made to obtain some original Bonestells from Mechanics Illustrated. Similar efforts are in progress to contact Vic Hamlin for Alley Oop originals.”  It sounds like a lively time will be had by all in Cincinnati.  Just don’t forget to immediately dispatch that one-dollar membership fee to Don Ford.

Phillips reviewed the first issue of Chronoscope from Redd Boggs.  Spotlight contributions are from Marion “Astra” Zimmer, Art Rapp, and Dr. David H. Keller, among many others, “It’s a steal at fifteen cents.”

Quanta, official organ of Washington, DC SF Association, reprinted an article from the May 14, 1948 New York Times.  To quote;  “To support the propaganda of the mighty imperialist war machine, the ‘scientific’ fiction of America shamelessly threatens with atomic scarecrows.  Hooligans with atomic slingshots, isn’t that the symbol of contemporary imperialism?” Don’t ask any questions, it IS written by two Russians and reflects Soviet attitudes toward the Cold-War laden West at that time.

Phillips was abrupt and dismissive when it was demanded.  In a review of Ploor by Walter A. Coslet he said: “I’m at a complete loss to review this, as it seems to be nothing but terse reviews itself, and reviewing a review or a series of reviews….” This was a break from Rog Phillips’ normally very congenial and supportive approach.

At the time the March 1949 issue of Amazing appeared, 1948 had just concluded.  Phillips reiterated the eligibility requirements for the contest first stated in May 1948.  The cash amounts were substantial ($50 for first prize, $25 for second) and winners were afforded the cachet of recognition, and perhaps a reprint in Amazing Stories. Reading between the lines, it appeared there were few suitable candidates, and Phillips was doing all he could to generate attention.

Twelve-year-old Phil Applebaum from San Francisco has a letter exhorting like-minded fans to contact him, for membership in The Junior Club House.  Did this ever amount to anything, and where did Phil Applebaum go from there?   That’s yet another unanswerable riddle.

A review of Stan Mullen’s The Gorgon elicits startling figures. “Eight thousand sheets of paper were required, 7,500 of which were printed on both side.  A thousand operations of the stapler and five hundred foldings brought this issue to completion.  Five hundred envelopes had to be addressed and stamped.  Five hundred envelopes had a copy of The Gorgon individually inserted.  The result pile ready for the mailman was six feet high.  Allowing a half hour for lunch, that makes fourteen hours of work.”

Needless to say, this was in the primitive days when &ldquo