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Please note - this page under continuous revision - last revised 29th July 2005 |
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Chapter 2: reviews: Fanzines and a Big Book |
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Things
That I Used To Do |
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Scoria
(extract) |
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At this point I have no idea what they've extracted, so I'll shut up then. |
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Fouler
on Maya |
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Eyeball
-Fanzine Reviews |
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Burning
Hell -Fanzine Reviews (extract) |
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Burning
Hell -Fanzine Reviews |
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Big
Fat Book |
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It's wonderful really, I heartily enjoy reference books and sf is in my blood, so what better thing on earth than an SF encyclopedia!?!?! I have several. Not just the BIG FAT BOOK - both editions, and I still prefer the first - but also the three-volume Donald Tuck ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION published quite a long time ago by Advent. Now admittedly that only goes up to 1968 (thereby covering the period of sf I am most familiar with, some might sarkily say) but it is a Wonderful Thing and an indispensibly reference giving much info otherise not easily obtained. Even on the web. Doesn't take itself as seriously as the BFB, either. Some of the names mentioned in this piece may be unfamiliar today - Vance Aandahl was once a MAGAZINE OF F&SF regular with some striking little stories, Robert Presslie was a big(ish) name back in the days of the John Carnell NEW WORLDS and in Carnell's later NEW WRITINGS series, Holley Cantine had one strikingly funny and well-worked out story for F&SF in January 1960, and vanished into the mists of time; (his story genuinely did change the way I viewed the world!), David Redd is of course the greatest living Welsh sf writer living in Wales, and Will Mohler had A JOURNEY OF TEN THOUSAND MILES, another one that stirred the foundations of my thinking waybackwhen, in F&SF in March 1963. In fact all the names I mention produced good. frequently great work as writers or artists, and deserve their moment in the sun, denied to them in this edition of the BFB, and probably the next also. Shame. And I still rather like PHASE IV. |
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Now,
Then |
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Alas, I feel that I rather overdid it here. Oh, that doesn't mean that I think the specific things I criticised about THEN are wrong, or that I recant any of them, but just that I was far too cynical about the whole thing. I'm somewhat ashamed of that now. Yes, I still think it annoying that Hansen included the pointless scene-setting, I still find myself thinking "But what happened next..." after some sequences, and all the rest, but I do refer to THEN often and find it enormously useful, either as conclusive information in itself or as a pointer to where I can find whatever it is I'm chasing up. My original 'review' certainly didn't give credit where it was due to this quite substantial piece of research. If only Hansen had had an editor...! Mind you I must say that almost all my use of THEN is via the web or the digital copy on my hard-drive, where its total lack of an index (or joined up storyline as complained about above) is compensated for the the 'Find' button. What can I say, really - it's an excellent reference with all the failings and foibles of any such, so did I have any right to expect better simply because it was produced within fandomby a fan? No, of course not. I am not damning with faint priase, either. THEN is a very valuable resource, with a fantastic amount of effort in it and will never be repeated or, I suspect, equalled. |
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The
Best Fanzines |
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The
Blue Spot Returns |
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As implied in the opening para I really had been standing in a sea of fanzines - well, crouched in one, as I was in the attic, which I have described as being like a medieval copper-mine - and there'd been a bit of problem with collapsing fanzine stacks. I always felt I was in danger of being trapped and killed by a fanzine-collapse in there. Anyway, picking things up and re-stacking them, even in such cramped and uncomforable conditions, I still couldn't resist actually reading a few. That issue of VECTOR was a real classic too - oh, OK, I know you get Big Names of the same caliber (well, much higher when you count in Stephen Baxter) in VECTOR today, and the quaility of writing and thinking is usually much higher than it was almost 40 years ago, but there was a bit more heart to it then. VECTOR and the BSFA were still thought of as being part of fandom, not something that was separate, an organisation that seems ashamed of its roots in fandom proper and seeks to distance itself whenever possible, to the extent that BSFA functionaries and hangers on routinely speak disparagingly of 'fans' and 'fanzines'. I think things were much better, more cohesive, back then, OK, we know from hindsight that there was already a BSFA faction and a fannish faction (just like the characterisations of sercon and fannish which like death has always been with us) and a split existed (which had come into existence about a week after the founding of the BSFA, to tell the truth) but wasn't anywhere of such Atlantine proportions as it was to become later. This is all particularly amusing - in a grimly ironic sense - when one considers the times when the BSFA has been saved from collapse by 'fans'. I find it all unfortunate as I've been a BSFA member for over thirty years and have consistently and enthusiastically recommended all sf fans I know to join (why isn't every sf fan in Britain a BSFA member, I have frequently and loudly said, and why not indeed, I still ask!) and I think the BSFA, or the idea of it, is a Wonderful Thing. There's just something about the BSFA sometimes that is just ever so slightly creepy and I frequently find myself understanding why some people resolutely refuse to join it. Anyway, several people on the old Memory Hole list where this first appeared recommended I send it to the BSFA for possible publication - surely the members of today might be amused or interested by a reminiscence (even if I hadn't actually been there at the time...) of a bit of BSFA history. So I did. Alas, I no longer have the reply (or if I have my email search can't find it) but I described it later thus - "After I wrote this several people enthusiastically recommended I send it to the then-current editor of the BSFA's MATRIX. Which I duly did. To say his enthusiasm was lukewarm would be raising the temperature more than somewhat. To be honest, the tone of his response implied that he barely understood what I was going on about and doubted that the average BSFA member of 2001 would either. I fervently hope he was wrong, but anyway the piece was not accepted for publication.) |
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