Since Walter hadn't requested me to write my New York Letter for some time, I assumed either that he felt I had violated some rule in the journalistic code by spending two months on the staff of a rival magazine (an American publication by the name of GALAXY) or--and I prefer not to think about this for more than a second at a time--that I had been dropped by popular acclaim. However, upon hearing that I have been going around telling everybody that he smokes sulfadiazine, Walter hastily wrote me that nothing would be more evocative of faint pleasure for him than to receive a New York Letter from me. And so, with equal handsomeness, I will retract the base canard I have been spreading. It is not true that Walter Willis smokes sulfadiazine; he sniffs sulfamerazine.
Everybody is undoubtedly rather agog to know why I left GALAXY. Contrary to popular rumour, Horace Gold did not throw typewriters at me (he has only one such machine and it is very dear to him). The real reason was that Mrs. Gold happens, through one of those coincidences that occur so frequently in real life and so seldom in literature, to be named Ermengarde also.
The phone would ring.
I would answer it.
"Ermengarde?"
"Yeah," I would reply in the quiet cultured accents suitable to the dignity of an editorial office, "this is her."
"Ermengarde, what's wrong with you?" the telephone would wail. "You sound perfectly awful! Why don't you lie down and call a throat specialist at once?"
This kept going on for weeks until my ego was so depressed that every time one of the goldfish snarled at me I would burst into tears. So I quit; there was nothing else I could do. I understand I have been replaced by Sam Merwin and a marmoset.*
Of course there was a bright side to this pleonastic compellation. Whenever Mr Gold would call "Ermengarde!" each one of us would affect to think it was the other he meant. Thus, neither one of us answered, and he had to do whatever he wanted done himself. This was very good for his character and he would undoubtedly have risen to the editor of GALAXY, if it hadn't been for the unfortunate fact that he already held that position.
I have no exciting news of the science fiction world to relate, because, owing to my having changed my address, the Hydra Club announcements arrive a day after the meetings have taken place. Of course I could give the secretary my new number but that would be the coward's way out. Furthermore, I have been lying low ever since, as an ardent devotee of science fiction, I undertook some scientific experiments myself---on the cocour of my hair. There are so many days when I can go out only at night, heavily veiled (so, even if people see the hair, they won't know it's I underneath it). I wouldn't mention such a personal matter in the public prints except that everybody is so confoundedly polite and pretends that he or she doesn't notice that my hair has now turned bright green, when I am bursting to tell people about how I mixed the chemicals with my own little white (now also green) hands and wasn't it clever of me to get even the roots emerald so nobody can tell it isn't natural. I don't claim credit for the fact that it now shoots sparks--that was a purely fortuitous result.
*Mr Gold has pointed out that my departure had such a salutory effect upon GALAXY that its circulation immediately shot up to top place among science fiction magazines. He does not realise that this occurred because, although I am no longer with the publication, I have left a part of myself behind me--to wit, a finger, which got caught in a desk drawer.
This is HYPHEN #5, November 1953, edited and published by Walter Willis, 170 Upper Newtownards Rd., Belfast, N. Ireland. Subscription two issues for 1/6 or 25¢ or one US promag or sf pocketbook. Exchanges welcomed. An X after your name on the wrapper indicates the demise of your subscription. (Could somebody please renew with a copy of STAR SCIENCE FICTION?)
(data entered by Judy Bemis)
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