Norm Clarke, 223 Bancroft St., Aylmer E., Quebec. : : I am in receipt of your invisible Hyphen 34 1/2 (sounds like a Cult-zine); I never thought you would go to the trouble of producing a special invisible issue just for me... First of all that invisible paper is just about the most indiscernible thing I've ever seen, next to the sort of Canadian currency I use when subscribing to fanzines. The transparent ink, too, has a lot to be said for it: Among other things, it
And what can one sat about such fabulous imperceptible articles by Ted E. Blanc, John Airy, Bob Pshaw amd Aylmer Perdu? Nothing, that's what.
Tom Perry, 4018 Laurel, Omaha, Il : : Has anyone ever told you that the Belfast post office can never resist trying to horn in on the act? Hyphen always arrives with a postal baquote added to the certified Willis-picked ones. This time it is, "Belfast addresses NEED a district number." I don't see the humor in it; in fact I suspect the postal clerks have failed to get the idea and think any sort of remark is acceptable as a baquote. I had a little more hope for them some time back, when they used: "Correct addressing--what a blessing--saves us guessing." This at least had some promise. But they showed themselves up by using it also on the next two or three issues. Perhaps you should type up a list of regulations describing the quality and sort of material you'll allow in Hyphen and send it around to the PO. (-(The PMG is now Wedgewood Benn, and obviously a Wedgewood PO cannot be sat on so heavily. I'm hoping that with the Labour Government's expansion of the economy there will be an increase in the size of the coloured artwork they supply me with. Admittedly it always seems to be the same picture of Ella Parker, but if it was 11" by 81/2" I could use it for my front cover instead of the back, and add my own captions. This issue, "Harlan is my Darlan.")-)
I liked your editorial remarks about the press coverage at Peterborough, though I feel rather sorry for my frustrated colleague. Actually I think the tradition of a convention committee trying to encourage newspaper coverage comes not from thoughts of promoting good ole sf, but from simply not thinking at all. Every convention seems to be want to written up in the newspapers, not for publicity but simply as a matter of narcissism .... The political convention is a classic case of the "non-event", a term semanticists have coined for the event that is planned for and exists for press coverage and wouldn't take place without it.
Applause for your remarks on honesty in trip reporting. If fans aren't frank and accurate in reporting conventions, how can we expect outside observers to be? This sort of honesty is precisely just what's needed. I'll continue to think so, probably, until I come across a pgh in your 1972 trip report. -"Finally met Tom Perry, a thin rather ugly young man with a repertoire of bad jokes made worse by his bad breath. He followed me around for two days, interrupting conversations and picking his nose. I only finally got rid of him by asking for the first instalment of a column for Hyphen he threatened to do years ago, and I presume he spent the rest of his time trying to write it."- Well, I suppose honesty could be carried TOO far. -(Tch tch, I'd never be so rude. Granting your postulates, my 1972 Report might read, -"Had the privilege of meeting Tim Perry more often than I deserved and listened with bated breath to his familiar anecdotes. His features, except for his nose which he picked himself, were obviously inherited from his old wire-haired mother."-)
Rory Faulkner, 7241 East 20th St., Westminster, Calif. : : My daughter treated me to a movie on Mother's day, instead of a sickly sentimental card. She told me to wear my shoes, as it was a "walk-in".
If that esoteric remark needs further explanation, may I remark that in the "drive-ins" around here, it is the fad of the teenagers to go barefoot.
I was greatly taken with your impressions of Chicago. That's where I was born and raised, you know. Marshall Field's was a favorite childhood memory of mine. As to Lake Michigan, it looks blue and sparkling when it is calm, but I have seen it in storms when waves 20' high rushed over the drive on the edge of Lincoln Park, and tore huge granite blocks from the breakwater and laid them out on the boulevard.
Here's another Finangle's Law: Everything now known to be a fact is no longer true. This enables one to start each day with a completely open mind. (-(Thanks for opening our minds so vividly on America.)-)
Dick Lupoff, 210 East 73rd St., New York 10021. : : Reading the instalment of "Chicago Chicago" produced the strangest sense of being doubly time-bound. There I sat reading of your 1962 visit to the Prudential Building in Chicago, and thinking back to the 'recent' Chicon III. Gradually there came to me the shocking realisation that that wasn't last summer, but the year before---where has the mental record of the intervening time slipped off to?
But that's only half of it. The other half arises from your description of the elevators, escalators etc and the view from the cocktail lounge (it's called The Top Of The Rock). You see way back in 1957 when I was in the army and stationed in Indiana, a friend and I went to Chicago for a double blind date with two girls from Northwestern University. We all went to the Prudential Building. As we were leaving, my date suddenly clutched my sleeve and confessed she had this fixation about escalators. Down escalators. She was terrified of them. Up escalators were all right, but she was terrified of down escalators. And there was no other way down. I had to pick her up and plant her on the top step or she'd be there yet.
You know that girl. I married her a year later. (-(I have the eerie feeling that this escalator on the edge of space...it must be much the highest in the world... is the opening of some hyperspatial cornucopia of good fortune. I only got nineteen dollars, but I think you got the jackpot.)-)
Sid Birchby, 40 Parrs Wood Ave., Didsbury, Manchester 20 : : Little did I know that my remarks at Peterborough about the little twiddly piece in fmz saying that one's sub has expired would result in swift action. You put a cross against it, the very next issue. Anyway I repeat my grotch that nobody has ever yet thought up a name for it, though most fanzines have it. Any ideas? All I can think of are weirdies like subsunk, subscribble, subscream. Or what about Conker? Definition: subdue.
Groff Conklin, New York ; ; I spied an X marking the spot, so here's my $1.00. I can only say I cannot avoid subscribing to a journal that contains the following, "When Astounding cost 9d it was worth 5/-: now it costs 5/- and it's not worth 9d." AMEN!
I am having the grim experience of tearing through the last ten years of the sf magazines and cannibalising them for the stories I liked when I read them---making up a budget for future anthologies. A most heart-rending experience. Back in 1954 both Galaxy & ASF used occasionally to have issues in which every story was Class A or B: today, try and find a single Class A story! How are the mighty fallen, and the great laid low!
Charles Wells, 815 Demerius, Durham, N. Carolina ; ; Do you happen to know whether Hugh Hefner really did come to the banquet at the Chicon? I might have been imagining things, but I could have sworn I heard whoever was currently at the microphone announce with a great emceeish whoop that he was now announcing Hugh Hefner, and no one applauded or booed or anything. He is, in case you don't know, the editor of Playboy.
There has recently been made a documentary movie about Hefner. It simply allows him to talk about himself and his magazine, and shows some of the people at his parties, and what it shows is that Hugh Hefner is an absolute ass. (-(Yes, he was there, with two Playmates or Bunnies in mufti. Incidentally I think that no flash purveyor who makes a fortune entirely out of window shoppers can be an absolute ass. The Playboy Clubs were obviously a frust rate idea.)-)
Paul (Mittelbuscher) Kalin, Sweet Springs, Missouri : : In going through what I (with a singular lack of perception) call my "files" the other day I chanced across a letter you'd written me in January 1955...It was an attempt on your part to reassure me that not everyone wanted to fling flaming coals on my head and that I shouldn't leave fandom. It was a letter choked to the brim with the sort of kindness, selflessness and good will that seldom totters our way on Mother Earth. I can't recall whether I ever answered or thanked you for your efforts, but if I didn't may Cthulu come drag me off tomorrow for being the sort of cad the denizens of Hodge Podge (remember that?) thought me.
All those things occurred of course slightly after they invented the wheel, and I'm sure you've forgotten them. But those were grand and gleesome days weren't they, long before Bloch went Psycho and Harris swore off sex-fiending. I'm afraid I'm in the grip of Nostalgia (that's what I call the large female ape I've been experimenting on. back in the cage dear) and I'm becoming a trifle affected with the idea of stepping once more into the Eternal Fires and getting some of my youth back. So whither fandom? I say this because except for a Hyphen sub I've had no contact for lo these many. Who is publishing what, if anything? Or is Hyphen really something like the last Great Redoubt in Hodgson's Night Land? I'd particularly like to know where (and if) such people as Lin Carter, Terry Jeeves and Dave Jenrette be. Lee Hoffman? Redd Boggs? Ed Cox? And so down the Olympian roster. I should like to continue in this vein, as Dracula said, but I really must watch out for Nostalgia. She's just wrenched away half my left ear and a bogus credit card (made out to Arkham J. Dunwich) used whenever I go calling on men's shops and houses of horizontal recreation. (you know I've always wondered just who that WT writer was who, according to legend, reviled in the gratuitous attentions of the ladies of a mid-western whorehouse.) (-(The Lays of the Last Minstrel? // You hear, you other Dwellers in the Night Land? Call Paul for old times sake. If a female ape answers, hang up; you'll know ourang outang. Send a fanzine instead.)-)
Charles Platt, 8 Sollershott Flat, Feschworth, Herts : : Knowing none of the names you mention in your report of your American trip, this doesn't really mean very much to me. It's a very pleasant, leisurely account of a trip that was obviously enjoyed, yet somehow it doesn't interest me. I think it is partly because you describe even the most trivial events, and this slows up the narrative too much for me. I never have been able to read wordy or expanded pieces of work, no matter how good. I get too impatient.
Bob Shaw's article doesn't really appeal to me much either. I just didn't find it very funny. The lettercol: here I get the impression that all your correspondents are trying a little too hard to be funny, knowing they're writing to Hyphen. I'm probably wrong here, of course: not really appreciating this sort of thing I can't really comment. I'm afraid it didn't come home to me at all.
Harry Warner, 423 Summit Ave., Hagerstown, Md. :: I was tickled immensely to learn about the reporter's inability to get information at the Peterborough event. If this system is adopted at fan gatherings in this country, it should help to reduce the severe overpopulation in the race seeking jobs as journalists. An editor would at least consider the possibility that the reporter was telling the truth, no matter what alibi he advanced for his failure to get an interesting story at a convention, but not this one, that nobody would squeal. Every reporter who undergoes this experience is certain to be fired immediately for inability to lie convincingly to the boss. (-(Would he not merely make up his own story, as usual? My twenty years experience with the press in my job, as a Well Informed Circle and more recently as an Official Source, has convinced me that journalists are merely confused by facts. Readers: I ask you to adjudicate in this dispute between Harry and me as traditional enemies, professionally speaking. Has any of you ever seen in the press an account of a matter of which you have personal knowledge, which was not wrong in at least one particular?)-)
Rick Sneary, 2962 Santa Ana St., South Gate, Calif. :: The oft repeated warning about fandom dying at its own hands is a grand sounding phrase without much truth. Despite the blood and gore, I do not believe the majority of the rank and file are seriously moved. Certainly it hasn't run too deep locally. It would have to fight the old LA cry (which I just made up), "Damn the feud, big Party Ahead." This from the old LA habit of fans who refuse to take sides throwing a party and inviting people from both sides. Local fans would rather party than fight so come and look glum at one another. But they pretend to be polite, and that is the first step.
The thing that struck me was your reference to the beauty of the Great Lakes and the beaches at home, and how yours at home were better, but only on much rarer occasions. I thought how few people think about this, when they are at some place which seems either very lovely or very bad. The desert to me can be a place of great beauty, life and change. Yet you, as with most summer visitors, would have seen it as hot and dry, and in the passing glance harsh and lonely. Harsh it is, but it has a beauty and a life for those who stay long enough to see and feel it. Some could never see it, few at first glance. Yet people come to California on a two weeks vacation and decide if they like it or not. You can't see Los Angeles in two weeks, and it is only buildings. (-(Without disagreeing with you about the beauty of the desert by normal standards, it sometimes seems to me it is possible to argue that there is no such thing as ugliness, merely an inability to appreciate beauty. Recently for instance there has been unexpected opposition to a plan to remove the old industrial slagheaps in the English Midlands, on the grounds that they give drama to a monotonous landscape. All the countryside is man-made anyway, not having been seen in its natural state for 3000 years. After only a century the railways are now quaint and picturesque: how long will it be until the presently resented electricity pylons are similarly accepted? I cannot emotionally accept this argument myself, but tend to fall back on it after determined resistance to spoliation of the countryside has failed. on the same philosophy as the old advice about what to do when rape is inevitable.)-)
Re-reading Perry's letter, I wonder if there is a time cycle in fandom. This is the kind of writing that was popular back in 5th Fandom. And only last month an 18 year old fan Rich Benyo wrote me about gosh-wow how he and his buddy enjoyed my letters in Planet Stories, and he is trying to invent a new word 'Corry' for correspondence and uses it ten times a letter. Then last week Forry was telling me about a new fan of his who is now so excited he wants to revive VOM. (The boy is dating the daughter of a girl Forry had a crush on at school.) This "nutty" and "fun" approach to things didn't seem so evident in the new fans after 6th Fandom, and it makes me feel good about the future ... Keep the light burning until Bryan can take over.
(data entered by Judy Bemis)
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