Chunga 24 - eFanzines.com

chunga24

Ar t i s t s th i s i s sue

Jeanne Gomoll front & back covers

Richard Levett 4 (photo)

Stu Shiffman 8–25, 34, 45

Steve Stiles 26-7, 35

Dan Steffan 28, 30, 33

Lars Scott 31

Teddy Harvia 46, 52, 54

carl juarez design, 2

❦

CHUNGA, surname, most probably derived from the Middle Austrasian cognomen Choona, “Bag-Holder.” Brought to the New World in the 1660s by the Belgian Hougomont Guisarme Chunga (1642–1718), an early selectman of Norwalk (then Norwaukee), Connecticut. Descendants

include Jeroboam Chunga (1731–1793), veteran of the planes of Abraham; Camille Jefferson Chunga (1804–1875), who established the first grommet and aglet works in the Americas; and Gregor Chunga (1888–1934), who turned into a mutant gypsy vacuum cleaner (see last issue).

1 Tanglewood an editorial

3 There Was A Tear, and Some Beer, in Reading by Curt Phillips

Remembering Stu Shiffman

8 Loving Him Was Easier Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again by Andi Shechter

12 The Slan of Baker Street & The Adventure of the Empty Page by Taral Wayne

16 Stu Shiffman, Travelling Jiant of 1986 by Rob Hansen

18 The Nonpareil by Andy Hooper

22 Doing the Mayan Shuffle Fanzine reviews by Chuck Serface

26 Crabs of Our Solar System by Steve Stiles

28 The Ort Cloud Scraps by Randy Byers

36 The Journal of Federation and Monster Culture Studies by Andy Hooper

46 The Iron Pig a letter column by divers hands

  Issue 24, April 2016 

Edited by Andy ([email protected]), Randy ([email protected]), and carl ([email protected]). Please address all postal correspondence to 1013 North 36th Street, Seattle WA 98103.

Editors: please send three copies of any zine for trade.

Available by editorial whim or wistfulness, or, grudgingly, for $5 for a single issue; PDFs of every issue may be found at eFanzines.com.

Contributors’ addresses

Contributors’ addresses have been removed from this edition.

Chunga Roca 1I found I needed five cats to cover one octave.

TanglewoodGolden Years

phase of treatment, the hope is that the cancer will still be in abeyance, and I’ll be able to take time off from treatment to travel and enjoy whatever remains of my life. One of my oncolo-gists is optimistic that I’ll make it into the cohort of 10% of peo-ple with Grade IV GBM who live at least five years, but there’s no guarantee. The news that I’ll probably die sooner than later is of course not happy, but while I’m definitely wrestling with a lot of anger and confusion at what’s happening to me, the amazing thing is that I’m actually feeling surprisingly calm about my prospects. The outpouring of love and encouragement from family and friends has been eye-opening, although I had, in fact, gotten a glimpse of it already at Worldcon, when many friends pitched in to help run the fanzine lounge while I was feeling wiped out after the first seizure. When I was feeling particularly over-whelmed in the run up to the convention, I told Ulrika that she would have been a better choice to run the fanzine lounge, and she replied that my popularity had helped me recruit a large and capable crew. That did help us out in the end. Now fandom is rallying around me in a way I’ve never expe-rienced before, and I find myself floating on an oceanic feeling of connection to something larger than myself, which very much includes my family, with whom I’ve always been very close. The thing I’ve come to realize in recent days is that this something larger will survive after I’m gone, and the fact that I’m connect-ed to it means that my life hasn’t been a complete loss, even if I never have achieved my dearest and oldest ambition of becom-ing a great writer. It’s all very comforting, although it’s still early days yet. But for now I’m coming to the conclusion that while Fandom Is a Way of Life, maybe It’s a Way of Death (or Dying) too. Not to get ahead of myself! (Ho ho ho.) I live in hope that, in Catherine Crockett’s words, I may be a statistical outlier and out-last my twelve month sentence. Go, modern medicine!

— Randy

andom is most united by its affection for story- telling, and we seem to be reading the end of a great many stories at present. Part of the experience is an inevitable

negative image of the population surge that followed World War II, and from which so many of this zine’s readers and contribu-tors draw their own origins. We seem to be enjoying something of a Death Boom, baby, and as Sunny Jim Moriarty recently commented, “Dead is the new sexy.” I can think of no other rea-son why Randy would choose to upstage the already prodigious volume of memorial material in this issue with his own regretta-ble prognosis. Naturally, dear old Fandom has stepped up to pour a consistent stream of pure love and hope toward both Randy and those closest to him since he shared his diagnosis, making me confident that I chose the right peer community, after all.

ometimes life has a way of hitting you upside the head, and in 2015 it did that to me pretty much literally. It started with an utterly miserable summer. I was

incredibly stressed out at work due to a co-worker who had become more than slightly unhinged, and I was also neck deep in organizing the fanzine lounge for the Worldcon and feel-ing completely overwhelmed by all the decisions needing to be made, despite the fact that Ulrika O’Brien was making more than half of them. In July the stress manifested in a case of shingles on my ass and (to put it delicately) genital area. Oh, joy. But amazingly, it got worse. In August, while I was on vaca-tion in Central Oregon with my family, I had a seizure. I was completely conscious while it happened and even managed to stay on my feet the whole time, but I was otherwise convulsed. My family called 911, and I was taken to the ER. The ER doctor checked me for evidence of stroke or electolyte imbalance, but when those were both negative he bought my narrative about the stress and shingles getting to me and diagnosed it as a pseudo or partial seizure, meaning it only affected part of my brain, not the whole thing like a grand mal seizure does. My regular doctor agreed that a single partial seizure was probably not something to worry about, but if I had another . . . In November I had two more, including one while driving on the freeway. Fortunately I managed to ease myself over onto the shoulder and come to a stop without killing anyone. The next doctor I saw scheduled an MRI, and the MRI revealed that I had a tumor in my right frontal lobe. Just to punctuate that sen-tence, I had another seizure after the MRI. Eight days later I was in a high tech operating room with huge screens playing scans of my brain and the tumor in it. The neurosurgeon removed as much of the tumor tissue as he could, and I recovered from the surgery quickly. However, the pathologists diagnosed the tumor as a Grade IV glioblastoma of a type called astrocytoma. This is a very aggressive form of brain cancer, and I was told that the average survival time for people with this cancer is twelve months. I was told point blank that no matter how long I sur-vived, the cancer was very likely to shorten my life. Needless to say, my life has been turned on its, er, head since this all happened. I haven’t worked since the beginning of December, so I’m getting an early taste of retired life. Not bad, other than the nasty treatment part of things. Along with the surgery, which required four weeks of recovery, I’ve already completed six weeks of simultaneous radiation and oral chemo, followed by another four weeks of recovery. At least this treat-ment prevented the tumor from returning, so now it’s on to the next phase of treatment, which will be another course of oral chemo as well as a high tech device called the Optune that is worn on the head and uses electromagnetic signals to interfere with the mitosis of the cancer cells. Once I get through this next

2 Chunga Roca I came here on the advice of my hairdresser, and was not disappointed.

Because there have been times . . . the past two years or so seem to have been heavily salted with incentives to flee fan-dom. SFFWA snarking, sexual harassment scandals, Gamer-gate, the idiot Puppy Pile, the Worldcon trapped inside a Forest Fire — one would certainly be forgiven for feeling the impulse to run screaming into the smoke. I’m not sure if I would have maintained even my current fitful connection with fandom if not for working on the Lost World Fanzine Lounge at Sasquan last summer. I’m so grateful to Randy for taking on the job and letting me be part of his staff. The Fanzine Lounge was a com-fortable place for conversation and chocolate sales, and because it was sort of tucked into the waistband of the main exhibit hall, most everyone came walking by at some time during the week-end. As ever, there were people I had not seen for many years, and others I am sure I will never see again. It was fascinating to watch the incandescent nova of TAFF delegate Nina Horvath’s debut in North American fandom, and I remain profoundly curious to see what more will come of that love-fest. TAFF’s purpose is to forge new connections between transatlantic fandoms, and I can’t imagine we would ever have met Nina without it. I hope that we may have something from her in Chunga #25, for which we have already accepted another piece of writing. My wife Carrie lost her mother Saramae “Sally” Baker Root in November of 2015, and so we were involved in the closure of her affairs and her memorial in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Carrie and I had spent a week with Sally less than a month before she passed, more or less as unexpectedly as the end of any life span-ning 90 year can be, and so we treasure those recent memories most keenly. Sally was my mom too, for just a few months short

of thirty years. When Carrie and I got married without ever hav-ing met her parents, Sally welcomed me to the family without hesitation. I loved her, and I miss her calls inquiring after the whereabouts of grandchildren, and the many topics that she wanted to explore. Sally was a teacher, and never stopped learning — on her book table when we cleared out her little apartment was Ron Chernow’s massive biography of Alexander Hamilton, which she had recently finished reading. And because she remained in Las Cruces after Carrie’s father Ted passed away, we both had many opportunities to see the Organ Mountains and so many other beautiful New Mexico sights on frequent trips to visit her. I’ll miss those, too. On one of our last days in New Mexico we drove up into the Aguirre Springs area to look for samples of volcanic rhyolite that I could take back to Seattle for an after-school group I helped out with this fall. It was a startlingly beautiful twilight, with the pale shape of White Sands just visible in the distance. Poking around there for red rocks to give to kids, in a place where Sally had also loved to go, seemed like a little memorial of our own, and certainly a moment to remember. I think I’m learning to grieve on the move. I’ve not even mentioned the succession of veteran fans that have died in the past twelve months, including Ned Brooks and Art Widner, or the sad December suicide of Las Vegas fan Harry Simon, who roomed with Arnie and Joyce Katz. I’m also pretty unhappy about the prospect of losing my much-loved and appreciated co-editor, but we’ll curse that darkness when it gets here. Until then, marvel at what we do in the face of certain doom.

— Andy

Chunga Roca 3There’s a magnificent melancholy about him, this shadowy figure performing an act of unrequited love.

Fish & Chips at a pub in Cam- bridge. Indian cabbies arguing animatedly in Hindi on a side street in Reading. Drop-

ping by unannounced at a small country Fire Sta-tion, getting a full tour and being presented with their uniform shirt when they learn that I was a firefighter from America. No. 88, Gray’s Inn Road, London. Punting on the Cam. The beach at Clacton–On–Sea. Shaking the hand of a 94-year-old tail-gunner on an RAF Lancaster bomber in WWII and being told, “You’ve just shaken the hand that once shook the hand of Winston Churchill, my lad.” The Worldcon. The Fans. From across England, from across Europe, from across the world; always, the Fans. The hard part of writing a trip report seems to lie in getting started. I went to England as the 2014 TAFF delegate in August of that year, and after all this time my memories of that trip comprise a whirling mass of amazing and improbable wonders that still swirl through my every waking thought like a 3d kaleidoscope as big as my mind. I point at one bright spot in that whirl of memories and it opens up to replay that moment in England. There I am, walking through the gate at Heathrow airport and being met by two of my favorite people in Fan-dom, Keith Freeman and Claire Brialey. There, and I’m setting in a pub in Reading with Keith, Dave Langford, Martin Hoare, Uncle Johnny and Audrey, where I had my first taste of British pub ale. There, and I’m at the Globe theater in London watch-ing Anthony and Cleopatra with two Australian friends; Clare MacDonald-Sims of Melbourne and my cousin Nick Falkner of Adelaide. There, and I’m watching the only two flyable WWII era RAF Lan-caster bombers left in the world today fly past as I stand on the beach at Clacton–On–Sea. And there, and there and THERE, and I’m at Loncon 3; the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention in London.

And then the kaleidoscope turns and I’m back there once again. . . Reading, Berkshire — it says here in the guide-book — is the largest town in England that isn’t a city. It’s located 36 miles due west of central London, has a maritime climate, and a population of roughly 156,000 people and at least four fans. Actually it doesn’t say that last bit about the fans in the guidebook; I performed that survey all on my own. There may well be more than 4 fans in Read-ing — Keith did mention that there was some sort of science fiction club — but I was only there for 2 or 3 days and didn’t get around to meeting everybody. It was to Reading — pronounced “red–ing” — that I went after Keith Freeman picked me up at Heath-row Airport just outside London on August 9th, my first day in England. After a rather long and decidedly weird over-night flight — I’ll write about the sheer ecstasy of modern airline travel elsewhere sometime soon — I staggered in moderately sleep-deprived stupor through long serpentine lines of my fellow travel-ers, who, curiously, all seemed to be either excitable and athletic looking young people on their way

There Was A Tear, and Some Beer, in Reading by Curt Phillips

Keith Freeman and Rob Jackson anxiously await

my arrival at the airfield

An abbreviated excerpt from Curt’s 2014 TAFF trip report, forthcoming . . .

4 Chunga Roca In virile 240 volt Britain, however, sheer survival demands that we manly hunks

to or from some sort of sports camp, or irritated and rumpled looking business types who watched sharply for any chance to cut the line. I eventually found myself at a Customs desk where I handed over my brand new passport to a young woman with a uniform and a badge and — I gathered — the authority to ask me many pointed questions about who I was, why I had come to England, who I was staying with, what I was going to do, and so forth. I suspect that she also had the authority to order me back on a plane and out of the country — or worse — if she found my answers lacking. When I confessed that I was there to attend a convention she perked up and asked, “Exactly what kind of a convention, sir?” In an instant, somewhere in the back of my mind, the ever lurking monster of paranoia — fed by a lifetime of scorn and ridicule over my love of science fiction — awoke. I could feel the spirits of all of my high school English teachers crowding close around me in cackling glee as if to say, “We told you that all those crazy sci-fi stories would ruin your life!” Before those spirits could call in a legion of my friends and family for reinforcement, I drew myself up, looked that Customs agent in the eye and replied in clear and ringing tones, “I’m here to attend Loncon 3 — the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention!” The Customs lady smiled. “Oh yes,” she said as she stamped my passport. “I know about that. Have a good time, and welcome to the United Kingdom.” And as easily as that I was waved towards the exit and into England. The first sight to greet me once through those doors was a fannish one. Keith Free-man — with whom I’d stay for a couple of days, and a surprise greeter, Claire Brialey, who had taken a break from her job in central London and come out to greet the arriving TAFF delegate. I must pause here and discuss Claire and her monumental efforts both before, during, and after my two weeks in England to make certain that

I prepared properly, arrived safely, was constant-ly under the supervision of qualified fans who wouldn’t let me wander off and get run over by the number 6 bus from Basingstoke (a possibility which I believe Claire had evaluated and had cor-rectly concluded was small, but impossible to dis-miss outright); that I’d always have a ready supply of food, shelter, transport, and fanzines; that I’d get to see as much as possible of what I wanted to see and do in England and meet as many of the fans whom I’d long wanted to meet in England; and that above all else I’d have the best TAFF trip to Eng-land that I possibly could. It was wonderful! You see, those who know Claire Brialey best know that one of her many superpowers is her superior ability to plan things. To plan just about anything at all, evidently. Claire had been one of my TAFF nominators and as such she evidently felt some responsibility to make sure that my trip got off to a good start. One example among many: Immediately upon greeting me at the airport, Claire handed me a TAFF goodie bag which she’d put together for me. It contained:

• An umbrella

• A pre-paid cell phone with charger

• An Oyster card (which is a pass to travel on the trains and busses of London) with a very generous prepayment on it. It even came in a Loncon 3 Oyster card holder

• Banana Wings 56

• Loncon 3 Progress Reports # 1, 2, and 3

• A Loncon 3 mousepad

• A DVD from Interaction (the previous UK Worldcon in 2005) with fanhistorical photos and other stuff

• A “London A–Z” book of city maps and other London travel guides

• Two boxes of OXO cubes for my British mother-in-law (because Claire knew that my M-in-L had asked me to get some for her while I was in the country

• Two packages of Flake candy bars (because Claire knew that this is the favorite candy bar of my wife Lizbeth — who is also British)

It’s good to be the TAFF delegate; but it’s even better to be a friend of Claire Brialey’s! After talking a bit about some plans for later in my trip, Claire went off back to work and Keith expertly stowed me and my luggage into his car for the hour-long drive to Reading. Keith and Wendy —

Slightly behind schedule, my flight finally arrived

Chunga Roca 5practice strict Clean Living and Save Ourselves till the Right Connection comes along.

his wife — are very good friends of Liz and myself and stayed with us the previous summer while they toured the Southeastern US. Plus they had hosted Liz and her mother a few years prior to that when those two traveled over to England without me, so we talked and caught up as old friends do. This was my first experience with British driv-ing and I have to admit that I found left-side-of-the-road driving decidedly unnerving. Keith made it all look so easy, as though he was completely unaware that to me it looked like the way that people would drive in Alice’s Wonderland. You know, “Through The Looking Glass”? Compact British cars shot by us in the other lane continuously. I kept expecting to see Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond race by us in quarter-million pound sports cars, but sadly they never did. After watching for a while I realized that although I might be able to manage to drive in England myself, if I concen-trated very hard and never let myself get distracted, sooner or later I would get distracted or would let my concentration lapse just for an instant, and the local Reading news would be reporting about the crazy American who wound up under a bus from trying to drive on the right hand side of the road. Happily, I never once had to try to drive any-where during my two weeks in England thanks to all my British friends assuming — quite cor-rectly — that I’d in all likelihood get myself killed if they let me try it. I didn’t miss the experience one little bit. Instead I just gazed at the English coun-tryside that we drove past and imagined how it all must have looked 75 years earlier in the early days of WWII. The war years are a constant preoccupa-tion of mine and looking about me I found remind-ers of 1939–1945 everywhere. “Windsor Castle over there,” Keith remarked, as we drove past a formidable looking fortress off to the East. And he wasn’t kidding; it was Windsor Castle! “Do you suppose the Queen is in residence?” I asked. “I doubt it,” replied Keith, apologetically, as though he’d somehow failed me by not insur-ing that the Queen remained at home during my visit. “She usually spends the summers in Scotland, I believe.” “That’s too bad,” I mused. “So she’ll have to miss the Worldcon then, do you think?” “I suppose that’s so,” replied Keith. “But then I don’t think she’s actually a Fan, really.” “What?” I shot back, astounded. “You mean she doesn’t even watch Doctor Who?” “Not since that Tennant fellow replaced Matt Smith, or so I’ve heard,” he said conspiratorially. That’s when I knew that Keith was pulling my leg, but I didn’t let on that I knew. I did, however, make

a mental note to repeat that comment to Matt Smith if I bumped into him at Loncon 3. We shortly arrived in Reading, somehow bypass-ing the highly built-up downtown area that one sees pictures of in the Wikipedia article about Reading, and driving straight into the residen-tial area where Keith and Wendy live at the end of a cul-de-sac. Wendy greeted me with a beam-ing face and a very nice lunch of ham sandwiches and Coca-Colas, a supply of which she had laid in especially for my visit after observing that I seemed to live on the stuff back home in Virginia. Very thoughtful of her. Wendy is quite adept at planning things herself and kept me very well fed, entertained and com-fortable throughout my stay. It was Wendy who introduced me to a British TV series I’d never heard of before called Mrs. Brown’s Boys, which turned out to be a hilarious domestic comedy that I doubt we’ll ever see broadcast in America due to, well. . . er, you might want to go to YouTube and search on that title to find out for yourself why we’ll probably never see it broadcast in America. “Thought you’d like that,” remarked Wendy with a grin.

After assuring Keith that no, I wasn’t a bit tired, he and I went out to walk to a fish & chips

shop that Keith favored to fetch the evening meal, and along the way we stopped in at a few of the small grocery stores and thrift shops nearby. Those small grocery stores, which the British just refer to as “the shops,” are about the size of a small gas station food shop in America, but they have a much more comprehensive line of items that I suspect are to some degree tailored by the shop owners to meet the needs and wants of the local neighbor-hood. I popped in to one of them just to get a sense of the place and was amazed to see that you could find just about everything in there. Newspapers,

Near Keith & Wendy’s in Reading

6 Chunga Roca And the British are a xenophobic people in a quiet sort of way: they are disposed to feel quietly superior for having

magazines, fresh fruit, candies, all manner of basic foods including fresh fish and meats, household supplies of every kind. Later in the trip I visited a large grocery store called Tesco’s that was much like similar stores in the US, but clearly one could get just about everything one actually needs in those smaller neighborhood shops, plus you can get to know the shop owner and make an actual connection to the neighborhood itself. It used to be that way in America, long ago — or so I’m told. But that was before my time, and I never had any real idea of just how much we’ve lost in this country by allowing large mega-stores to drive our small shops out of business. That point struck me there in Read-ing that afternoon. Knowing that hunting for used books is a pas-sion of mine, Keith led me into a couple of nearby thrift shops, which all look very much like thrift shops in Virginia only these in Reading had cooler stuff. This first one had an interesting used book section with far more US editions than I was expecting. In fact, throughout my trip I noticed US editions in every book shop, new or used, that I visited, and I don’t mean just a handful. One

large book shop in Cambridge turned out to have a very thorough stock of books that seemed to include around 20% US editions. And all the used book shops I visited had a great many US editions throughout their stock. One of my goals on this trip was to look for and buy some of the more obscure British SF that had never been published in Ameri-can editions. Unfortunately I didn’t see any such books — not one — until I got to London and entered the Loncon 3 Dealer’s Room and Fan Lounge, but that’s a story for another article. I did find one good book in that first thrift store; a very nice first edi-tion of a Robert Bloch hardback, The Night of the Ripper. That’s a nice book to find on either side of the Atlantic, and it only cost 49p, or about 75 to 80 cents. Doing quick pounds to dollars conversions in my head was a talent that failed me constantly in England, but then I didn’t really buy very much aside from occasional meals at the convention.

I wound up spending a lot of time with fans in pubs during those two weeks and buying

the TAFF delegate a drink or a meal seemed to be the thing to do. I had to actually insist on step-ping in to buy a group of fans a round of drinks one afternoon after they’d all taken turns buying rounds themselves. And I could — and probably will — write a whole separate article on drinking in England. You see, I don’t drink, usually. Just don’t like the taste of beer and never have developed the habit of drinking it in America. But in England one doesn’t generally go out to a restaurant, one goes out to a pub, and pubs mean drinking. Well, I didn’t have to worry about driving anywhere, so I deter-mined to try a taste of a tall glass of beer that was placed in front of me on my second day in Reading. You know what? I rather liked it. Beer in England is a far superior thing when compared to that found in America. The taste just isn’t even in the same league, and I can’t understand why American beer brewers can’t be bothered to travel to England to learn how to do it properly. Money — no doubt — is at the heart of it. Keith had called David Langford, the well-known fan, publisher of Ansible, and 1980 TAFF Delegate; Martin Hoare — technical wizard of Brit-ish Fandom; John Nielsen-Hall — “Uncle Johnny” to trufans in the know, who, along with Unc’s wife Audrey, convened at the Roebuck, a pub in Read-ing. David and Martin live in Reading, and Unc and Audrey drove in just to see me, as they weren’t planning to go to Loncon. “Guess what I’ve got in my truck out there,” said Martin, with a gleam in his eye. “No, I’ll tell you,” he said before I could guess. “I’ve got a TARDIS,”

Two random fans at Loncon 3 [Curt and Greg Pickersgill]

Curt Phillips, Gay and Joe Haldeman

Chunga Roca 7been born in their own particular heartland and to look down on outsiders with a mixture of pity and mild disdain.

Dave Langford, Curt Phillips, and TARDIS

he announced in clear, ringing tones. “Then why are you driving the truck?” I asked. “Couldn’t you just have arrived in the TARDIS?” “No, no,” explained Martin. “It’s not a real TAR-DIS; it’s a full sized model that I’m hauling to Lon-don for the convention opening ceremonies.” And so he did. Dave Langford and I would later have our photo taken with that very same Tardis, and it was quite a nice one too. Martin was work-ing with and possibly in charge of the Loncon 3 Tech Crew and had stopped off to have a drink with us while hauling of load of convention stuff to London. And just after Loncon he had to load it all back up in the truck and drive it all up to Dub-lin for the Eurocon the following weekend. Martin seems to be heavily involved with technical work in British conventions, and I gather that he works at this professionally too. I’d hoped to meet up with him again in London, but our paths rarely crossed there, and when they did Martin was on his way to solve one problem or another with the convention. But then I got the impression that Martin rather enjoys busying himself with making sure that things work well at these events. I’d met Unc and Audrey before at the Richmond, Virginia Corflu just a few months earlier, and Unc and I hang out regularly at an on-line watering hole on Yahoo!, so we had a good time chatting about various matters of cosmic significance. This was my first time to meet Dave Langford though, and I was thoroughly impressed with everything about this legendary fan. I’d subscribed to Ansible

— Dave’s award winning news zine — many years ago when it was only published on paper, and had been reading the online version for the past several years. (You should too, and you can find it at news.ansible.uk). I’ll admit that I was a little intimidated to meet him, but he immediately put me at ease by handing me a stack of booklets and fanzines “for your TAFF auctions,” he explained with a smile. Dave was the TAFF delegate in 1989 and ever since has been the spiritual foundation of the fund. His TAFF website at taff.org.uk is labeled “The Trans Atlantic Fan Fund Unofficial Home,” but that’s the website that every TAFF administrator since 1989 has used as the best possible source for news and information on the fund. Everyone who has been involved with TAFF in any way, and all who will be in the future owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Dave Langford. That morning the newspaper that Keith read mentioned that “the worst storm of the year was currently drenching all of Britain.” When Keith read this at the breakfast table I glanced out the window. It looked like a bright, clear day in Reading just

then, and it stayed that way all the way to where we met Dave in the Roebuck’s parking lot. Dave had just handed me that stack of fanzines I mentioned, and then said, “and here’s something spe-cial for the auction” as he handed me a postcard autographed by noted writer Christopher Priest. Just as Dave handed that card over, a single solitary drop of rain; in fact, a particularly fat and wet drop of rain, fell from the brilliantly clear English sky, not only into Read-ing, not only into that car park, but right onto that card, hitting exactly on the spot where Christopher Priest had written his name in a rather vivid blue ink which, unfortunately, proved to be so soluble to water that in all likelihood, people in excessively dry and arid parts of the Earth probably use that ink to seed clouds from airplanes to make it rain. That single drop of water was absolutely the only evidence of rainfall that I encountered during my entire two week stay in England. You can still tell that it says “Christopher Priest,” sort of, but one gets the impression of a Christopher Priest who was evidently undergoing a tremendously emotion-al experience when he signed it. I’m still going to put it in the TAFF auction at Sasquan this summer, but I’m going to tell people that the water stain was caused by a tear from Dave Langford as he handed it to me that day in Reading, momentarily overcome by parting with such a rare sf-nal treasure. And who’ll start the bidding?

— Curt Phillips, May 2015

London — 42 miles straight ahead

8 Chunga Roca “I’m very bad at South American monkeys.

would understand if I didn’t get this written, I have to try. This reminds me, acutely, of what I had. And yes, I did know and oh yes, I did appreciate. But it still reminds me, acutely, of what lost when I lost Stu.

I want especially to write about Stu for Chunga, but not because he was a mainstay of the zine, and the Chunga troika were all his admirers and friends. That’s a perfectly great reason, mind you, but other folks can cover that, probably have. It’s that this is a fanzine. This is a true paper, repro-duced fanzine with fannish content, writing and art. It’s where Stu was at home. It’s where Stu belonged. And because I owe the best years of my life to the fact of fanzines. I found science fiction fandom in the Bay Area when I moved there after attending grad school. I grew up on the east coast, and had visited my sis-ter, then living in Oakland. It took two days, and I was in love. I also got lucky in finding home and community relatively early on. One thing I started to learn about was fannish publishing and fanzines. Within a few years, I was attending west coast con-ventions sort of regularly, hanging out with just the best damn people, fans, writers, booksellers, read-ers, and it happened. I don’t know when or how, but there I was, getting cool stuff in the mail. I remember a lot of it coming from Seattle. And a lot of it had cartoons and artwork. And a lot of that was by Stu Shiffman. When I finally met the guy, that shy guy sorta standing around his own apartment at his own party, I knew who this was. So cool. By then, I

Loving Him Was Easier Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again

by Andi Shechter

A few words of introduction to this collection of memories and appreciation for the late Stu Shiffman would seem in order. Much of this material appeared in a slightly different form in The Slan of Baker Street, an electronic fanzine

in Stu’s honor published by Toronto fan writer and artist Taral Wayne in 2012. Knowing that many of Chunga’s readers didn’t see that zine, I asked Taral if we could reprint the contributions from Rob Hansen and he, along with my own article, in this issue. Adding the unique and loving perspective that Andi Shechter had of her husband Stu brought the picture into three dimensions; and Taral’s addendum to his earlier comments seem to speak for many people who knew Stu best in his youth, and missed him keenly when he and Andi relocated to Seattle. Combined with the selection of Stu’s art presented in this issue, I feel we have two thirds of the tribute complete — and the other will be satisfied with the publication of an anthology of Stu’s written work, a project which must inevitably occur before too long.

— Andy

This has turned into the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to write. That includes a Master’s Thesis (on prisoners’ rights, you’d have loved it) and a couple of very tough, angry letters. Nothing com-

pares. I’m up against a deadline and while I know, I totally know, that anyone

Chunga Roca 9They’re my absolute worst animal.”

knew from fanzines and art, and fandom and con-ventions. By then, I had left the West Coast and had moved to the Boston area. I knew I’d like the guy because well, so many of my friends were his friends. And I had seen his work. Would we have met if that situation had not been part of my life? It’s hard to tell. I tend to doubt it. Doesn’t matter, of course. It happened. Stu and I used to look at each other and shake our heads, saying, “Where were you when I was younger?” That was silly too. We were growing up, making mistakes and getting there. Where we needed to be. A couple of weeks ago, with the help of friends, I finally unearthed Stu’s Hugo from its box in the storage unit. I cried. The memory of him getting the news is still crystal clear. The long spate of nominations and the years of losing, even that pre-vious year when he thought that maybe, since there was a tie, he had a chance. The significance of this award is multi-layered. When I took it out of the backpack hours later, and put it, finally, on the fan-cy-schmancy bookcase we had gotten for it (We’d had to give up the fireplace at the last apartment. No fireplace, no mantle. Where the hell do you display your utterly fabulous rocketship award?), it felt so great. Awful, yes, because Stu never got to see the damn bookcases. Stu never got to the new apartment, although he and I chose the bookcas-es. Whatever I wasn’t sure of, I’d ask and over and over he would say, “I trust you.” The fancy case was for the Hugo, the Rotsler Award, his brag shelf of books with Stu stories and cartoons and drawings. It also holds a bunch of very special books, dedicat-ed to, or inscribed, significantly, to him. And to me. It contains a lot of stuff from our wedding. But it never looked okay until that day a couple of weeks ago when I finally put the Hugo on the top of the case. It represents everything it should. It represents Stu’s amazing talent, his love of fandom, his appre-ciation for the world of fanzines and humor and friendship, the generosity of giving away dozens, hell, hundreds of drawings, hundreds of cartoons over a very long career. It’s about arcane references, Tuckerizations, obscure films and Yiddish jokes, air-ships and more arcane references. Television shows, comedians, archeology, Egyptology, anthropology, Nero Wolfe, klezmer music, Sherlock Holmes. And bunnies. So this is thank you. And this is for Chunga and all the faneds, fellow artists, writers, cartoonists, apahacks, TAFF voters, program book editors, convention flyer designers, comics fans, folks who wrote and drew alongside him.

Like every artist, he had doubts about his talent. Like every artist, he’d feel proud then hesitant about his work. But if anyone — anyone — knew Stu Shiffman, I did. And I know he knew that he was talented. I know he knew he was appreciated. I know he knew he was loved. When I talked with Randy about writing this, I expressed concern that it could end up being maudlin. When he basically gave me permis-sion to go ahead, I figured well, he either trusted me or that’s what editors are for. It seems important to tell a few more things about Stu and me and us, so I hope I can find the balance. Because Stu Shiffman was most definitely a cartoonist and an artist and a writer, but oh, he was so, so damn much more. It all started with a teddy bear. She was a lovely little black bear with floral fabric on her paws. I don’t think there was an occasion. Stu just brought her to me. Then there was a Husky puppy dog. Huskies are the mascot/team name/team identity of the Uni-versity of Washington. (They are also the mascot for the big state university where I grew up. It took me years before I understood why such an animal was the mascot for the University of Connecticut, known as UConn. (If that’s not working for you, say it out loud a few times.) Now imagine having been born and raised in Connecticut and not getting the joke until long long long after moving away.) The toys showed up early on after our move to Seattle. I was working then. Walking then. We walked all over. We saw, and heard, and did, and tasted. They were for Valentine’s Day or, “I’m sorry you had a bad week. Your boss is a shit,” or birth-days, anniversaries, I love you days.

10 Chunga Roca The thurible made a nice racket as it bounced

After the sky caved in on us and we learned that I had this thing wrong with my bones and it was so complicated, but I had to stop working, the small fuzzy ones showed up more often. Stu explained that he was worried about me and wanted me to have company, or to be watched over, I can’t

remember quite what he said. Probably both. Then it got serious. Okay, I jest. But there was that day that Stu brought home the small soft toy gorilla with the propeller beanie. That was the day I met Murray and a small soft toy gorilla star was born. I was so intrigued by our new little buddy that I went back to the store a few days later. It was his expression that was just so beyond wonder-ful: a sidelong look, maybe furtive, maybe guilty, maybe protecting his soft toy banana dinner. Most of the other gorillas were just, well, adorable soft toy gorillas. With straight-ahead looks. But one. I actually bought that one and hid it away. In case of flood or gorillanapping. One thing that happened over the years of acquiring soft toy monkeys and apes was that it developed my love for monkeys and apes. Yes, I am a hedgehog (it’s my totem animal, thank you, Ikea) but oh. Chimps! Gorillas! Orangutans! The last time that we visited the faboo toy store in our neighborhood, we acquired Theodorangutan (Stu named him) and a very small snow leopard. Stu thought her name was Betty Sue and I thought her name was Giffords. She’s a rarity in our traveling fuzz sanctuary to have both a first name and last name. As a fly on our wall, you might hear: “I’m from the Medium Sized Small Hamster Division. We’re here checking to see if everything is going the way it should. If we are being suffi-ciently cute, soft and cuddly.” Or you’d hear us cheebling to each other. (See Esther Friesner). Mooing. (?) Occasionally intoning “bark bark bark”. This latter would lead the other person to ask “Is that you, Gaspode?” (See Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures.) Murray slept in the space between our two pillows, and accompanied us to important events, like anniversary dinners. (See Randy? Maudlin?) There are too many possibly cloying stories so I’ll be careful here. Just two more things to know. When Stu had the stroke, in June of 2012, the nurses in the ICU suggested that I bring stuff that was familiar to Stu. Pillowcases, favorite thises and thats. I traveled daily with a familiar. Also known as a fuzzy. Often I would tuck the toy in with Stu when I left There was little room, but the staff knew and was encouraging. I don’t remember when it happened, but it did. For days, and maybe weeks, I would touch Stu with Murray, or Sam (the chenille wonder monkey) or Fresno (he of the choc-olate raisin nose) or Neville (named for the Neville Brothers. He has heart glasses. Ooooo, how roman-tic. There were dozens more but these four were the top monkeys. Neville and Fresno were special

Posted to Facebook by Moshe Feder, November 27th, 2014

What a strange fannish night. It was supposed to begin with my doing a small favor for Lucy Sussex at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, but I ran short of time, and instead headed straight to my dinner appointment with Doug Faunt at the soon to be missed Edison Cafe. After enjoying our meal there, we braved the horrible weather to walk up Broadway a few blocks to 52nd Street to see “The Last Ship.” We had nice orchestra seats, mine a birthday gift from Doug. I’m not quite as taken with the show as he is (it was his second time), due to issues with the book, but the cast was excellent, and I really liked the music. I’ll certainly buy the cast album when it comes out. Then Doug got a call from Geri Sullivan with the news of Stuart Shiffman’s death. So very appropriately, the fannish grapevine brought the news of the passing of my oldest friend in fandom. I met Stu in college at the SF club I started, introduced him to fandom then watched proudly as he flourished

as an artist, writer and faned, hosted Fanoclasts in Washington Heights, and became a BNF. He went on to win two of fandom’s highest honors, serving as our TAFF delegate to the UK in 1981 and then being awarded the Hugo for Best Fan Artist in 1990 (which I had the pleasure of accepting for him at the Hague). I still live a mile from where he grew up, but he moved to Seattle where he became a key member of the fannish community, eventually marrying his darling Andi. Now I regret even more that I was unable to attend their wedding. Stu has been a constant in my fannish and personal life for 44 years, and the world will be a duller, sadder place without him. But as long as there are fannish fans, his writing an artwork will continue to be appreciated. My thoughts and sympathies tonight are with his bride Andi, his brother Harvey and his sister Robin. It will be a long time before any of us can get used to this.

Chunga Roca 11down the stone steps of the sacristy.

buddies of Stu. I’d try tucking one under his hand, touch being so important to us. Then it happened. Stu had clearly retained his personality, much of his memory, his humor, his intellect and while he could not communicate, he was there. One day I was sitting by Stu’s bed in the Neuro ICU and Stu reached out his left hand and, as he regularly used to do, he patted Neville on the head. Neville stayed with Stu after that for months and months, getting lost at the nursing facility more than once. Then came the day at Seattle Medical when Stu told me to take Neville home. “Are you sure?” I had to check a couple times. He was. He was going to be okay without a small furry companion It was time for Neville to come home to keep me compa-ny. Stu was doing what Stu always always did. He was checking to be sure that I was okay. After all, that’s why he started buying fuzzy toys for me to begin with. Mostly. Stu had always looked out for me. When we got together, we’d had a very serious early-on conversa-tion about health and future problems. He told me about the AVM (it happened before I knew him) and I told him about the back surgeries. There was never a day that we were together that we didn’t look out for each other. There wasn’t a day that he didn’t try to find something to make things not hurt. And as time went on, it just was another way to say, “I love you.” When my primary care doctor finally met Stu some years ago (she was to become his PCP as well) her first words to him were, “So, you’re Andi’s support system.” He couldn’t fix things — which drove him batty, he was big on trying to fix things and make them better. He did make them better. I told him so, repeatedly. Some-times, then most times, he believed me. When Stu had the stroke, I told him over and over that this was not payback. I was not there for him because he had been there for me. I was there because I loved him above all else, because I needed him, needed to be around him. And he believed me. Because, quite simply, it was true and he knew it. It wasn’t just for him. I’ve lived with chronic pain almost all of my adult life. It’s gotten worse, then better. Then worse. It’s not fixable. It is treatable. Somewhat, although

things are getting worse. Stu and I went through hell together. I felt so bad that he was saddled with a partner who couldn’t work, was only bringing in an income that was a third of what she had when she worked. All those places we could not go, things we could not do. Stu hated it, resented it, but mostly because it was hard on me. And on us, yes, but he never quit. He never thought of walk-ing away. He got frustrated and tired of it, hell yes, but what we had got us through. Through almost everything. And it wasn’t just hanging on. What we had. . .whenever I try to come up with the words, I fail because they all sound corny, cheesy, trite, romantic, ridiculous. Unbelievable. But we had it. When I was lying in bed, feeling crappy, wait-ing for the drugs to work, wondering why they weren’t working today, cursing myself for overdoing it, resenting the things I could not do, the places I could never go, Stu not only got me past it, but he gave me love, joy, silliness, whimsy and laughter. All the things you find in his work, his art, his writ-ing. Some weeks ago, I read Cary Elwes’ book about the his experience working on the film The Prin-cess Bride. In it, he said something very simple, and very obvious. When the Farm Boy says to But-tercup “As you wish,” of course, he is saying, “I love you.” Stu said it to me every day. As I said it to him. Without being obligated, without some sort of agreement, it was easy between us to say that to each other because it was so clear, because it was so real. Sometimes it took the form of, “Here, hold this monkey”. I will never have that again. I was lucky. I was loved. I miss him beyond words and beyond imagination.

12 Chunga Roca He said that everyone on his Earth is dead, and also apparently had

There was a time when I remembered such things. That’s how long ago it was when I met

my friends from New York fandom. Stu Shiffman was not the first — that honour probably goes to Moshe Feder — but he was one of those who I con-tinued to count as a friend the longest. It goes without saying, too, that Stu immediately caught my eye as an artist of great individuality, bringing a prodigious breadth of interests to his cartooning. He was as much a master of pen and ink as he was of stylus and stencil. There was no keeping up with him, either. Stu not only produced a bulging portfolio of fanart in an amazingly short time, he also stood in good stead as a fanwriter and editor of his own fanzines. For a number of years, he was, in fact, an embarrassment! An embarrassment to me, that is. Stu was the very model of major modern fanartist. While I was still floundering, still trying to work out what it was fan editors wanted from me and how to best provide it, Stu was already the Quintessential Fan-artist of his time. It was clear that Stu was also an embarrass-ment to fandom. Ten times, fans nominated Stu for the Hugo as Best Fanartist, but when push came to shove they dithered, lost their resolve and awarded the rocket to someone else — who, often as not, gafi-ated a year or two later. Fandom only got its act together and gave Stu his well-deserved rocket on the 11th nomination. Fandom went on to nominate Stu another 4 times, for a total of 15, but showed the grievous bad judgement not to follow up his one Hugo with another. Shame on fandom! All the same, his is a record that Steve Stiles and I are still struggling to equal. In its time, Raffles was one of the more fun fan-zines on the scene. It was fun to read and fun to contribute to its unique blend of popular futurism and Victorian bric-a-brac. You might say that Stu was one of the pioneers of the steampunk esthetic, 30 years ahead of his time. And if the Long Island Worldcon bid wasn’t one of the best remembered fan “hoaxes,” it patently ought to be. Time is limited, though, and Stu had many interests. Eventually, his involvement in Sherlock-ian activities and detective fiction edged out science fiction fandom. Stu was living in Seattle with Andi Schecter by then, and I saw little of him for many years. It was always a treat to see some example of his art that had escaped the orbit he was in and appeared in an orbit that I inhabited. Sometimes, I discovered Stu’s presence in unlikely places . . . such as Captain Confederacy, the black-and-white comic produced by Will Shetterly and Vince Stone, and published by Steeldragon Press. For a number

The Slan of Baker Street

by Taral Wayne

Chunga Roca 13time to work up an appetite because he “walked here from there.”

of issues, Stu wrote and drew a backup feature, involving two steampunkish characters named Saks & Violet. A play on sex & violence, per-chance? But there was nothing X-rated about it. I’m not sure if the story made sense, but I was too busy looking for fannish references anyway. There were even bunny rabbits who walked and talked like people. Yes, Stu Shiffman was an early furry, well. He had the good sense to be too busy with his Sherlockian interests, though. It is a measure of how out of touch we grew that there is little I can say about that side, or other sides of Stu. Time will have its way with all of us, though, and, when Stu suffered a stroke just a week ago, I was shocked by this demonstration of just how increasingly fragile all the people I know in fan-dom are. I was reminded of an incident as far back as 1984. That was the year I made my first pilgrimage to Los Angeles. I stayed seven weeks, spending most of the time with Marc Schirmeister. It was also the year that the Worldcon was in LA, but that was mere coincidence from my point of view. I was there to see mountains, deserts, the Bradbury Building, Termite Terrace, Tijuana, Disneyland and weird shit like that. One of the events Schirm organized was a drive up the peak of Mt. Wilson, to walk among the observatories and view greater Los Angeles from a lofty perspective of just about 6,000 feet. Schirm invited a number of people along, and, while I no longer remember all of those who were with us, my memory of Stu stands out. He seemed to be having trouble with the alti-tude. Some people do, but when you’re 30 or 35 it isn’t usually such a big deal — you take it easy, walk as slowly as you must, sit whenever the opportunity presents itself. I had no problem with the altitude myself, indeed, would later on be climbing to about 11,000 feet on the Mt. Whitney trail with Schirm. But Stu was hanging back. I’d look around and he wasn’t there, or was sitting in the shade somewhere. When we finished with Mt. Whitney, we drove down the observatory road to the Angeles Crest Highway and turned north toward the Mojave Desert. Our next stop was a jagged, tilted rock for-mation called The Devil’s Punchbowl, which also happened to be the visible manifestation of the San Andreas fault line. The Punchbowl lies at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, on the north front, at a mere 4,750 feet of altitude. Schirm parked in the visitor center, thereupon we all exeunted his old green Honda. All except Stu, that is. I realized, this time, that something was wrong. He was hang-

ing back in the car, sitting half in and half out, tak-ing it easy in the shade. When asked if he would follow, he said no. It was only much later that I really understood. Stu will have to forgive me if I relate this imper-fectly, but he had an abnormal connection between the blood vessels of his brain that allowed venous blood to mingle with arterial blood. The intermix-ing robbed his bloodstream of oxygen, and he tired easily. As a native of New York, a coastal city at sea level, no doubt he was more troubled that the rest of us by the heights we trod. Eventually, Stu had corrective surgery, and showed a marked improvement in his health all around. Thirty years later, after hearing of Stu’s stroke, my mind went right back to that incident. We are not only more fragile than we know, but we are more fragile than we know from the start. Perhaps it is never too early to learn to appreciate each other more than we do. This one-shot is submitted in appreciation of Stu Shiffman; fan, artist, follower in the Great Detec-tive’s footsteps, good friend and gentleman.

14 Chunga Roca Note the handy head cage which you can lower onto the subject’s head

It was a rum thing. When Stu Shiffman left New York to live in Seattle with Andi Shechter, no

one expected still another big change in his life. Yet there was. It was too long ago for me to clearly remember the sequence of events, but it seems to me that Stu more or less stopped doing fanart shortly after his move to the West Coast. From his new home in Seattle, he published only once that I know of, in a zine about folk music titled Folkal Point. This seemed to signal that Stu’s interests were drifting away from SF fandom as such. Instead, Stu had gone full immersion into the Sherlockians and Mystery Fiction fandom. While his artwork vanished from the pages of 1980s fan-nish zines, his drawings were probably finding their homes in the pages of Holmes and Who Dun-nit fanzines that I knew nothing about. Their gain was our loss. All the same, I didn’t entirely loose sight of Stu Shiffman in those years. In 1995, some friends of mine in Seattle, Alan Rosenthal and Janice Mur-ray, ran Ditto 8, and flew me into town to attend. I stayed a while to see the city, do some hiking and visit other fans I knew in the area. Inevitably, this meant a Chinese dinner in fine old New York style with Jerry and Suzle Kaufman, Stu, Andi Shechter and at least a couple of fans I didn’t know. I am fairly certain that Andrew Hooper and probably Randy Byers were present also. You know dinners with large crowds, though. A lot of talk goes over the visitor’s head. I wanted to see more of the local fandom than merely a dinner, though. I recall visiting Hooper at some point, though that may have been during a subsequent visit to Seattle the next year, or the year after that. I made a special point to pay a call on Stu and Andi, though. Alan drove me over to a small house or building in the evening, when it was too dark to get a good look at it. It seemed as though Stu and Andi rented a flat within the place. I recall a dimly lit, clut-tered front room with a kitchen off to the side, and a passage to the bedroom and a small studio for Stu to work in. At least that’s what I recall. There were a lot of books, which hardly need be said, and I scanned the spines with interest. Many of the books were SF and quite a lot were mysteries. They had a music collection that included a large section of what I thought of at the time was “Jewish folk music” . . . sort of like “Hava Nagilla.” That shows you how little I knew about the subject. Actually, now I know that what I was looking at was a col-lection of “Klezmer,” secular music from Eastern European Jewish communities, performed by small bands.

The Adventure of the Empty Page

by Taral Wayne

Chunga Roca 15to guide the bacon slicer (or the vegetable peeler for delicate work).

We looked at a little of Stu’s recent art, but then someone yawned, and we all yawned, so we made an early night of it. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that’s the last time I ever saw Stu.

Which brings me inexorably back to where I left off in “The Slan of Baker Street.” Written

in 2012, I published it with a number of other arti-cles and art in a one-shot of the same name. The intent of the zine had been therapeutic. Stu had suf-fered a stroke. When Stu was ready to see the zine, the tributes it contained would hopefully raise his spirits, and help in his recovery in a small, small way. I gather that he did see it, eventually, but it was to take longer than expected. There was a great outpouring of affection for Stu at first, but time passed remorselessly without him regaining consciousness. Reports came from Andi on a frequent basis until Stu finally awoke. But Stu made painfully slow progress in Andi’s subsequent reports, I thought. To be honest, at this point I felt forebodings about the long-term prognosis, but kept them largely to myself. In fact, this is probably the first time I’ve mentioned it publicly. Alas, for once in my life, I was prescient, too. Stu’s condition improved glacially, and then there was a setback, followed by more glacial progress. Don’t ask me to reconstruct the timetable — there are others who are far better informed than I. And then Stu had a fall, and all the progress made to that point was seemingly wiped out in an instant! Falls in recovery are usually a very bad sign. As I feared, the news of Stu’s death followed not long after. Of course, Andi has lost the most, and Stu’s friends have also lost a very great deal. As merely one of Stu’s peers as a fan artist, what I’ve lost is rather remote and abstract by comparison, but nev-ertheless genuine. There have been many fanartists of great talent and personal charm, but there were few who left their imprint as profoundly on the history of fanzine fandom as Stu did. There was Bill Rotsler, Bob Shaw, Arthur Thomson and Jack Gaughan — who are also no longer with us — as well as George Barr, Alexis Gilliland, Dan Steffan, Steve Stiles, Tim Kirk, and others who still remain. The name Stu Shiffman certainly belongs among them. What I’ll miss about Stu’s work is his quirky sense of humour, and the deft mixture of his diverse interests in archeology, pulp literature, sci-ence fiction, detective fiction, musicals and fandom itself into the unique potpourri of Stu’s fan art. Nor was Stu any less fascinating when he switched hats

to become a fan writer. His fanzine Raffles was one of the role models for any enterprising neofan of the day. I say “we miss him,” however, as though this were a new condition for fandom. In fact, most of us began to miss Stu long before his 2012 stroke, when he turned his gaze from our fandom to another . . . At least, during the intervening years, there was always the possibility that Stu would revisit SF fan-dom. He was still friends with many people in our field, and it was always possible that, sooner or lat-er, they might have rekindled his interest. However, that chapter of fandom’s history came to a too-sud-den close. Now we are left looking at blank pages where Stu’s art might have shone once again.

Although there is not yet a definitive collection of Stu Shiffman’s fan art, as tentative sample can be seen at The Zine Artists, www.thezineartists.com

— TW

16 Chunga Roca I don’t know whether I am of a cruel and bloodthirsty disposition,

Saturday 27th SeptMet Stu at Victoria station around 12.20, and we walked down to Joe Nicholas and Judith Hanna’s flat in nearby Pimlico. Sitting around, we engaged in the usual fannish gossip and Judith fed us a rather peculiar cabbage soup. Afterwards we went for a walk, crossing the Thames and ending up in Battersea Park where we all admired the recently erected Peace Pagoda, which is an actual Chinese pagoda right there in the park. To our delight a genuine Victorian fairgound had also set up shop, one of whose rides was still steam-driven (it blew smoke rings through its stack). This was the same one Michael Jackson would later try to buy for his Neverland ranch. We all rode this and all almost lost our lunches, too. I said there was something peculiar about that cabbage soup.

Monday 29th Sept Today Stu and I visited the ‘Museum of the Jewish East End’ on East End Road, which was in Finchley oddly enough, London’s Jewish commu-nity having long since moved from the East End to North London as they prospered. The museum was in a few rooms on the third floor of a Jewish school and was disappointingly sparse. Even so, accord-ing to a wall plaque the museum had two full-time workers paid for by the Greater London Council. In which case it may not have had them for too much longer since Maggie Thatcher was in the process of abolishing the GLC. Later, we took a bus-and-tube trip to Colling-wood in order to visit the RAF Museum, which is one of the truly great London museums, IMO. It’s a fair way from London’s main tourist areas so probably doesn’t get as many foreign visitors as it deserves, but the sheer number and range of air-craft on display is breathtaking. The museum is split in two, with the Battle of Britain having its own separate hall, outside of which and displayed on stands that are basically larger versions of those we mounted our model aircraft on as boys, were a Spitfire and a Hurricane. Since both are now valu-able antiques it wouldn’t be a good idea to leave such prized machines exposed to the elements so these were actually fibreglass replicas. Sadly, by the time Stu and I had oohed and aahed our way through the main exhibition hall there wasn’t time to visit this. That’s all that my diary records for that particu-lar day, which is surprising since it also appears to have included Stu’s first meeting with Neil Gaiman. How I know this is that a couple of years ago on

Stu Shiffman, Travelling Jiant

of 1986by Rob Hansen

Stu stayed with Avedon and me when he visited London in September 1986, which is now more than a quarter of a century ago (jeez, we’re all

getting old). Back then, we still lived in our small flat on Greenleaf Road and, according to my diaries, we went out socializing pretty much every night he was with us. Here are a few reminiscences:

Chunga Roca 17or not. Most likely I am, but not more so than any other historian.

‘Making Light’ Neil mentioned that the first ever appearance in print of a cartoon by him was in one of Avedon’s zines. That cartoon has been pinned to the wall over my desk for more than twenty years, and when he drew it Neil dated it: 29.9.86. Puzzled by this omission, I asked Neil about it:

We used to see you pretty often back then so I suppose we could’ve all met up at a pub after-wards. Strange that my diary doesn’t mention it if we did, though. The thing is, I was there when you drew that picture, and it was either in a pub or at a con. The nearest entry I can find that mentions you is a week earlier at UKCAC ’86, the only com-ics con Avedon and I ever attended. Perhaps you drew it there and misdated it?

Neil replied thus:

Rob — I remember meeting Stu with you, so my guess is that it was done in the pub that evening. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it at UKCAC. I inter-viewed Alan and Dave about Watchmen there, though. In a suit, as befitting the occasion.

In my defence I did see Neil pretty much every week back then. Also, he was still Neil Gaiman and not yet NEIL GAIMAN!!! Right, just one more entry I think, since this is a reminiscence designed to bring back a few happy memories rather than an exhaustive trip account:

Thursday 2nd October The first Thursday of the month and the day on which London fandom traditionally gathers in a central London pub during the evening. But before that Stu and I had another appointment. We’d arranged lunch with Len Talan, a cousin of Stu’s who was in town doing some post-production work on a movie for Children — Hansel & Gretel — that he had just directed in Israel for Cannon. Len turned out to be round, bearded and jovial, making up in girth what he lacked in height. We ate at a restaurant in Chinatown, and over a good hot’n’sour soup and a poor beef and beansprouts Len talked films. He told us what a nice guy David Warner is, how he and Morgan Fairchild had spent long hours playing cards at a hotel in Israel, and how Chris-topher Reeve had lost all his hair due to a nervous condition and would be filming the forthcoming Superman IV in a wig. Afterwards Stu and I took in the Virgin Mega-store (a huge record store now sadly no more) fol-lowed by lightning visits to Leadenhall Market

(later to serve as the entrance to Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter movies), and the George — the only galleried pub left in London. Following dinner with Avedon at an Indian Restaurant in Farringdon, we trooped over to the nearby One Tun pub, venue for the first Thursday meetings since 1974, though not to be for much longer. At one point meetings at the One Tun were the largest regular fannish meetings in the world with 300-400 people present, but not on this occa-sion. Lots of good company and great conversation followed, I’m sure, but all I noted in my diary was something that occured in the street outside as people were leaving and someone was hit by a car. Here’s that entry: “The One Tun was less crowded than usual, the main item of note being that Paul Oldroyd ran over Arthur Cruttenden. At first, from the way he went over and his beer went all down Maureen Porter’s back, I thought he’d been hit full on, but it turned out only his foot had been run over.” Never let it be said that London fans don’t know how to put on a show for for their visitors.

18 Chunga Roca We returned to Riddled Laboratory to continue our research into splicing the Psilocybe

careers. The bass vibrato of its four huge Wright “Cyclone” radial engines could be felt as much as heard, as it wandered over Seattle, giving rides to a few venerable Air Corps veterans and their many friends and descendants. This particular aircraft, known by the name Aluminum Overcast , was built under license at Lockheed Aircraft’s facility in Burbank, California, and completed on May 18th, 1945, too late to join the air forces operating over Europe. Now owned by the Experimental Aircraft Association, it flew out of Seattle as a kind of “Bomber in Residence” through the early summer months, before return-ing to the EAA show at Oshkosh, Wisconsin in August.

The Nonpareilby Andy Hooper

Between the Brothers Hildebrandt clouds that populated the sky, a deep voice rolled down onto the ravines and ridges of the Emerald City, a famil-iar mechanical song that once filled the skies over Europe with majesty and suffering. A meticulous-ly-restored and maintained Boeing B–17G Flying Fortress swam through the thick air above Seattle, where so many identical aircraft began their

I first composed this article about my friend Stuart Shiffman on the 25th of June, 2012, on what passed for a fine day in Seattle that summer. Broken

and harmless clouds let the sun shine through the long hours of the after-noon, but the temperature lingered around 65 degrees F., and the air never completely lost the clammy moisture of the morning. The last gasp of a Pacific hurricane had passed through over the weekend, and weeds everywhere were having a party.

Chunga Roca 19weraroa and Tinea pedis genomes to produce a hallucinogenic variety of athletes’ foot.

The flights are as safe as one can make a ride in an antique airplane, but I felt just a little uneasy as I peered between the trees and clouds to see the tall tailfin float by again. Another flying B–17, Lib-erty Belle, made a forced landing in Illinois in 2011, and was totally destroyed by the fire that followed. Aluminum Overcast drifted overhead so slowly that it gave an impression of searching for something, like an aircraft lost in an old Twilight Zone episode, confronted with the 21st–Century landscape below. Those anxious fantasies came easily to mind that week, because I was waiting for someone to get well, someone whose condition seemed analo-gous to an aircraft trying to make its way home through a persistent fog. Stu Shiffman was one of my oldest friends in fandom, a longtime collabo-rator, correspondent and colleague. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on June 14th, 2012, and then a fall in its aftermath left him with a broken nose and knee. For the ensuing 11 days, Seattle fandom had held its collective breath as we waited for him to recover from the effects of two life-saving surger-ies; that afternoon he was well enough that doctors performed a third operation to repair his damaged knee, something which I took as an extremely hopeful development. There were many reasons for hope. And many of those hopes were rewarded; in time, Stu regained consciousness, awareness, some motive control and speech. His life would continue for over two years, with remarkable moments of joy and love that might not have occurred had he never suf-fered the stroke. He would build close relationships with the staff at the convalescent center where he spent the majority of his remaining life; we saw some them crying happily at the party when he and Andi Shechter announced their engagement in 2013. Fans like Tom Whitmore and Ellen Eades went to remarkable lengths to help Stu and Andi, and it became a local priority to encourage travel-ing fans to visit him. His room became a constantly changing gallery of his art, populated with familiar totems like the much-beloved Murray the Gorilla.I think that you must know a person very, very well, if their life passes before your eyes when an illness or injury threatens them. My acquaintance with Stu goes back over 30 years; like so many great fanzine fans, I knew him through his writing and art at least a year or three before meeting him face to face. Reading the “Celluloid Fantasia” arti-cles he wrote for my “local” fanzine, the Madison, Wisconsin–based Janus had a galvanic effect on me in my neofan stage. It was my first exposure to the playful, freaky “funny animal fandom” extant in the 1970s, and I became an avid consumer of

work by artists like Stu, Ken Fletcher, Todd Foster, Marc Schirmeister, Reed Waller and many others. Stu’s portrait of Donald Duck reimagined as the Consulting Detective looked down at my desk as I wrote this, under the title Sherlock Dux. The sly “Flushing in 1980” Worldcon Hoax Bid of which he was a primary conspirator was anoth-er example of the invention that attracted me to Stu from afar. When I finally met him, at an early iteration of Wiscon, I was delighted to find he was even more entertaining in person than he was on paper. We cracked each other up; doing stupid voic-es and old jokes from Monty Python or Beyond the Fringe or the Goons, and sharing a love of the late Victorian British Empire to be found in the pages of adventure fiction and in movies starring Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn. I had such a crush on him that I developed a foolish plan to make him Wiscon’s fan guest of honor, despite the convention’s legendary emphasis on feminism, women writers and female fans. He seemed to fit in well with the convention’s other guests, Chip Delany and Avedon Carol, but I was told there was no money in the budget to bring him to the event. I promised to raise the money needed myself, and was given permission to provi-sionally invite him on that basis. For the next three months, I greeted my fan friends with a demand for a $1.00 donation toward this cause with the phrase, “Gimme a buck for Stu.” This activity no doubt led some casual observers to conclude that I was a panhandler using an oddly specific tactic to secure a free meal; but the impromptu fan fund met its goal neatly, and Stu created won-derful art for the program book’s cover to help justify the committee’s faith in his fitness. Stu was also a remarkably patient guest of honor at a tiny convention in Racine, Wisconsin, organized by Chicago trans-plants Jim Rittenhouse and Rich Johnson. I think they eventually covered his expenses, but the small turnout made cash flow an issue on the weekend of the event. Stuck in a hotel in Racine for the weekend with relatively little going on, we spent most of the time trying to publish a one-shot fanzine on a mimeograph. This was already too late for the fans involved to possess the skills to compose on stencil, and we struggled to pro-duce pasted-up dot matrix copy with an ozone-belching electro-stenciller, a machine that worked

20 Chunga Roca Police found Dear wearing “a homemade vest made of silver coins and duct

so slowly that we could have recited the fanzine’s contents to the con’s membership one by one in the time it took to finish cutting the stencils. Although the resultant fanzine was only intermittently legible, the highlight was the art that Stu had cut for it by hand. Being there while he created that was one of the more fannish moments of my life to date.

When Stu finally left New York, Carrie and I visited him and Andi in Massachusetts, and

we drove to Corflu 7 in Manhattan together. Stu’s partnership with Andi was obviously an answer to so many things for him that it quickly became dif-ficult to remember life before they were together. The time in Boston was only a relative interlude, however, and when they relocated to Seattle, it was a major incentive toward our own move here just a year or so later. Having Stu “in town” was a remarkable luxury; he generously contributed to well over half of all the fanzines that I’ve pub-lished since moving to Seattle. Chunga #19, which appeared in April of 2012, had a cover illustra-tion in which Stu merged references to the then-recent movie adaptation of John Carter of Mars

with a character that Ross Chamberlain created for the Brooklyn Insurgents’ fanzine Quip a mere 3+ decades ago. It was a perfect salutation to that group’s latter-day survivors now living in Las Vegas, including Ross, and made the fanzine into a greeting card with several layers of reference to the discerning fan’s eye. When I put together my first genzine, Take Your Fanac Everywhere in the mid–1980s, the best part was Stu’s excellent “Leath-erstocking Tales” cover illustration. I believe I sub-consciously anticipated that his art would appear on and in my last fanzine as well, and the possi-bility that he would not be here to see it had never occurred to me. Stu was best known for his cartoons and graph-ic art, particularly understandable given his 1991 Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist. But as I noted ear-lier, he first came to my attention as a writer, and it is the written work that he never had the chance to complete or compose that I think I miss the most. After years of aspiration, he had made several professional fiction sales in the years immediately prior to his stroke, and there was every reason to believe that more were forthcoming. Wvwn leaving his professional output aside, Stu straddled several fandoms — sf, mystery, comics — and I doubt any one individual has ever read it all. Of course. I am intimately acquainted with thou-sands of words of Stu’s professional output, as we worked together to generate content for The Collect-ing Channel, the notorious Internet boondoggle that employed what seemed like half of fanzine fandom at the turn of the millennium. I became the site’s Toys Editor in early 1999, and when I was asked to find several more writers to staff my “department,” Stu’s was the first name I thought of. Madison fan Bill Bodden was my expert on action figures, and Seattle/Texas transplant A.P. McQuiddy took responsibility for die cast cars and models. Stu’s formal job title was Editor for Antique and Vintage Toys, but in practice, he was my expert on toys inspired by characters of all kinds, from Bugs Bunny to Ming the Merciless. Paging through a series of Stu’s articles was like reading the titles of a collection of Big–Little Books: His stories were populated by Dick Tracy and Tarzan and Little Orphan Annie, all explicated by the licensed para-phernalia and playthings that they inspired. He was a diligent researcher, but his best asset was a native appreciation for the appeal of his subject matter. Stu really loved the lore of toys, the many American and International companies that made them, the artists and inventors who designed them, and the moments in history that they represent to modern memory.

Chunga Roca 21tape.” Dear returns to court later this month for a mental competency hearing.

Our generation has clung to childhood and adolescence more enthusiastically than any in cul-tural memory, and so it was easy for us to evoke the desire for all the toys that had eluded us as children, and to appreciate all the effort and art that had gone into making our childhood almost magically indulgent. All of us were good at report-ing the salient facts around a toy franchise and its profile with collectors, the common and affordable models, the sought after short-packs and exclusives. But Stu was the best at explaining why something was cool and worth collecting, and awakening an interest in owning it in readers who had literally never heard of it before. I mean, he made antfarms sound cool. Because the entire purpose of the Collecting Channel was to entice some large Internet por-tal into buying it, the endeavor had a very short shelf life. The four of us were together in the “Toy Department” for only a little over 9 months, but over that period we generated content at such a pro-lific pace that the experience seems to have taken far longer than that in my memory. Toward the end, we were sent to cover the 2000 New York Toy Fair, and that was a particularly vivid experience. We covered a gala celebration for a flamboyant fashion doll designer at an address on Central Park West, restlessly roamed the Javits center for three days, and even visited the old “Toy Center” buildings at 200 Fifth Avenue. And all of it was infinitely richer and more comfortable for the presence of a native New Yorker like Stu. Since the demise of the Collecting Channel, we both scrambled to find ways to make all that toy knowledge work for us, with limited success. Our subsequent collaborations were mostly in the pages of fanzines, and seemed to puzzle as much as they entertained. But even now, nearly a year after his passing, when I write something, anything, for fans or gamers or that elusive “general audience,” I imagine Stu as being part of that audience. My response to his death was admittedly selfish — I wondered who was left who would get me, who else could remember Baker Street and Peter Sellers and the Louis Marx Toy Company with me? And of course there are people who know about some of the things, and will smile indulgently if I bring them up. But there is no one who knows it all the way that Stu did. His command of the things we agreed were simply fun was without peer. It has been a little less than a year since he died. I think of him often; we presented a grab-bag gal-lery of his art as Sasquan, and had a small celebra-tion of his work at Prolog(ue). And I’d like to put together a little collection of his articles for Chan-

nel Space, and post them where fans might read them; so few had a chance to see them when they were first published. And I thought of him again this summer when Aluminum Overcast made another visit to Seattle, and floated noisily over the city. A funny associa-tion; Stu was of a generation that resisted wars as furiously as their parents had fought them. But he was not really a Victorian adventurer, or a time traveling anthropomorphic beaver, for that matter. As time advances and generations dwindle, the big bomber appears ever more like a phantom materi-alized from the afternoon glow, slowly chewing the air with its broad propellers as if it were powered by steam. Sometime soon the ride will end, and the big silvery beast will settle onto the concrete at Boeing Field, and taxi up to the little terminal to unload its blinking, grinning passengers. Was that like the one you flew over Italy and Roma-nia, Grampa? Tell me again, and I promise we’ll remember it together.

— June 2012 and October 2015 Seattle, Washington

22 Chunga Roca Deodato has said in interviews that he had no intentions

Spartacus #8 Publisher and Editor: Guy Lillian IIIA fanzine of opinion, Spartacus features commen-tary on politics, fan-related events, and whatever else Guy Lillian feels compelled to discuss. In this particular issue, he covers recent deaths, the Reli-gious Freedom Act of Indiana, and the deplorable Puppygate scandal. Also included are consider-ations on Dzokhar Tsarnaev and the death penalty, letters of comment, and two film reviews. Lillian possesses a lively voice which engages the reader from beginning to end. Lillian’s short tribute to Peggy Rae Sapienza

and her kindness reminds me of our all-too-brief friendship. I’d only met Peggy Rae in 2012, but we developed a quick rapport and worked together on Nebula Award weekend projects. Within the three years I’d known her, she imparted a library’s worth of information about conventions, SMOFdom, fans, and general organizational principles. I will miss her at each Worldcon I attend from now until my death. I will miss dinners, long conversations, and her direct but loving advice. Indeed, the fan world may never recover from this loss. I also send con-dolences to Lillian for the loss of his mother-in-law and for the death of his longtime friend, Pat Adkins. Next, Lillian moves from the personal and delves into national politics, especially the “depth-less lunacy” of the Republican Party and its “attempt to schmooze evangelicals with covert anti-gay legislation,” most recently involving the Religious Freedom Act of Indiana and the similar attempt in Arkansas (2). He’s correct in noting that these actions have backfired, especially in Arkan-sas where the businesspeople who run Wal-Mart realized that such discrimination would cost busi-nesses and thus the state sizeable income. He’s also correct when he defines the most important com-mandment of the GOP Bible as “Thou shalt not cost corporations money.” (2) His summation may be a bit more realistic than I’d prefer, since I bear no love for corporations. Nonetheless, he’s right. And, oh, Puppygate raises its ugly head again with bloc voting, a demand for good-old-days sci-

Fanzine reviews by Chuck Serface

Doing

T o date, my understanding of fanzines remains quite limited. Three years ago, Christopher J. Garcia asked me to write about my first Worldcon, Chicon 7 in 2012, and since has recruited me to write about

subjects including Superman, silent films, 1980s cinema, The Wild Party, vari-ous book studies, Wonder Woman, Captain America, and Richard III, all of which have appeared in issues of The Drink Tank and Journey Planet. My fan reading, however, hasn’t expanded so quickly. My friends Andrew Hooper and Randy Byers added me to mailing lists for Chunga and FLAG, and I’ve visited efanzines.com where I examined Argentus and a few others, but largely I’m a pilgrim in, for me, uncharted territory. When Andrew Hooper asked me to review fanzines, I decided to exploit the opportunity for self-education. My selection process involved joining the FAANEDS group on Facebook and choosing the first three fanzines I encoun-tered with recent releases. Despite this “point my finger and choose” method, I learned much and will continue to define and color my map amid further expeditions. The following, then, outlines my investigations into Spartacus #8, Broken Toys #38, and Tightbeam #272. Parenthetical citations in each section refer to pages from the issue of the fanzine under discussion.

ShuffletheMayan

Chunga Roca 23in Cannibal Holocaust but to make a film about cannibals.

Spartacus #8 Guy Lillian III 154A Weybridge Circle Royal Palm Beach FL 33411 [email protected]

ence fiction with no social justice components and solid, far right conservatism. Yes, fans who equate Vox Day’s Castalia House with Finland just because it’s headquartered there are making a grave error. Yes, their legal but highly distasteful nomination tactics rankled, causing an immediate and explo-sive wave that pulsed throughout social media. Yes, the repellant propagation of terms such as “Social Justice Warrior” constitute but one example of pathetic attempts to dominate the conversation. Yes, we’ve hit upon a ghastly turn of events. The above disturbs me, but that these Sad and Rabid Puppy slates represent calls to action with no call to thoughtfully scrutinize possibilities irks me especially. Nowhere do instigators ask their audi-ence to read, to view, or to experience their list-ed “suggestions” before nominating. Why bother? Nominate straight from our slate and make a stand against injustice! For three years now I’ve touted my favorites within the annual Bay Area Science Fiction Association (BASFA) process for suggesting potential nominees. Kevin Standlee devotes great time and energy, each year gathering and collat-ing our picks. Although a few have dubbed us a bloc, we suggest nothing we haven’t read, viewed, or experienced directly. In fact, we encourage others to test our suggestions before making up their minds. Our technique celebrates active col-laboration. That’s what’s missing from the Puppy slates — how genuinely disheartening. Lillian maintains an honorable fairness when discussing Dzhokar Tsarnaev and his death sen-tence for the Boston Marathon bombing. Had he been a juror, Lillian would have taken into account the need for closure:

Putting Tsarnaev on death row means that his case will linger for years — perhaps many years. Closure — the hope of every victim, beyond even justice or rank vengeance — will be in abeyance while the appeals process works its way. A life sentence would have parked Tsar-naev in a solitary supermax cell in Colorado, where he would rot. (11)

As a crisis interventionist, I’ve witnessed the toll lingering trauma demands. Families disintegrate, jobs evaporate, and suicide risks elevate. Closure clears away blocks keeping survivors from mov-ing beyond pain. If carrying out death sentences occurred more expeditiously, perhaps one could feel better about it? Anyone with quick answers has not pondered the matter adequately. Finally, Lillian inspects The Age of Adeline and Mad Max: Fury Road. Read these to enjoy his

thoughts on where female roles in each succeed and fail. Spartacus #8 inspires thought, and while Lillian enjoys his soapbox he never dissuades oth-ers from voicing their opinions. His including let-ters of comment, in fact, encourages a forum atmo-sphere, if only briefly. I’ll happily read new issues when they appear.

Broken Toys #38 Publisher and Editor: Taral WayneAlthough I’ve never met him, Taral Wayne’s reputa-tion precedes him. Christopher J. Garcia has shared Wayne’s articles from The Drink Tank with me, and I’ve experienced his fan art when he received his most recent Hugo nomination. Broken Toys is his latest fanzine venture and so far the only one I’ve explored. I’m sorry about his various ailments, among them myasthenia gravis. He admits that he’s sliding into pessimism, and who could blame him? He’s not the only individual who consoles himself with science fiction and fan activity. Thank-fully we have that, at least. Generally, I look for science-fiction commen-tary and criticism, but I’m beginning to appreciate personal fanzines. Fans can muster support, share ideas, and connect with a community spread thinly across the map. Like weekly club meetings, these journals provide bridges between conventions, keeping fans connected and engaged. Wayne and others have every right to solicit support about per-sonal matters. I dream that such discussions forever will inspire the catharsis Wayne admits happens through writing:

24 Chunga Roca

I’m happy to say that I’ve hit rock bottom, however, and am now on the rebound. I wrote ‘Who Needs a Satan?’ to wring out the last drop of negativity, and then felt remarkably clean — almost buoyant — after-ward. I’m the sort of guy who listens to the Broad-way recording of Sweeney Todd to cheer myself up! (3)

The community hears and responds to Wayne’s laments. The enormous letters of comment section entitled “Leftover Parts” shows how much. What an impressive breadth of correspondences. Score one for Wayne. Personal fanzines build community also when fans audit favorite things and Wayne scores again by depicting his reunion with Men into Space, a realistic black-and-white television drama envi-sioning a fictional space race. The entire series, which ran thirty-eight episodes, recently has been released on DVD. Before reading Wayne’s reminis-cences, I’d never heard of this show. Since actively joining fan life, I’ve been reconnected to many lost wonders. I’ve also been exposed to films or litera-ture I wouldn’t have found otherwise. With an article called “A Gift Horse,” Wayne turns his confessional voice toward narrating a con-versation with a female acquaintance who casually imparted explicit sexual information. Wayne labels this occurrence as his “brush with one of the great male fantasies,” but he couldn’t tell if her openness

represented an invitation or if she, like many, mere-ly provided too much information out of harmless habit (26). Ah, life. If only we felt more comfortable with expressing our desires so many opportunities wouldn’t slip past our plates. Before ending Broken Toys #38, Wayne uncov-ers why he doesn’t cosplay. His reasons stem from a realization that struck him at age twelve, when he’d played army with his friend, Mark Britain. One afternoon, the bubble burst:

That very afternoon, however, somewhere between the second machine gun nest and the minefield, I suddenly felt like a complete ass. I looked at my friend Mark, and saw a 12-year old boy in ordinary cotton shirt, pants and running shoes, glasses, tousled ginger hair, carrying a cheap plastic gun with “Marx” in raised letters on the side. This was no “Great Britain,” no hardened veteran of a hundred combat missions in embattled Europe. Then I pictured myself, looking much the same except for darker hair, with a silly noise-mak-ing toy in my hand. I was no “Murd’rous Mac,” either. (30)

My only experience with cosplay happened at Lonestarcon 3 in San Antonio, Texas. My friend Kevin Roche needed people to wear flying saucers he’d devised for the masquerade. He devised the flying saucers, complete with flashing lights and shoulder straps for support. Additionally, the others had sewn their outfits, adding reflective surfaces and lights for effect. I, not being a costumer at all, just purchased what I wore. I discovered the great care many cosplayers take when crafting their cos-tumes. Sure, there’s an aspect of make-believe, but the play involves displaying one’s art as well. My ineptitude with sewing, molding, and fabricating matches my apathy toward learning to do so. Occa-sionally, I’m happy to model others’ creations when they need someone my type for effect. Like me, perhaps Wayne feels no passion for the creative process. Unlike me, perhaps he doesn’t appreciate the efforts of those who do have passion for it. Cer-tainly he’s not against the practice, however. I’ll read Broken Toys again to appreciate lost or undiscovered corners of science fiction that Wayne may disclose. His extensive letters of comment sec-tion parades before me names and fanzine titles that I’ll analyze down the road as well. While writ-ing this section, I took a break and detected that he’s already released Broken Toys #39. How can I ignore such dedication? You shouldn’t either.

The Journal is largely given over to promoting Steady-State Universe theories, veritable neologasms of deeply-

Broken Toys #38 Taral Wayne 245 Dunn Ave. Toronto, Ontario M6K 1S6 Canada [email protected]

Chunga Roca 25

Tightbeam #272 David Speakman PO Box 1925 Mountain View CA 94042 [email protected]

Tightbeam #272 Publisher: National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F), Editor: David SpeakmanCurrently, Tightbeam emphasizes fictions and reviews, not fan news or N3F news. Annual mem-berships for N3F run $18, which includes a hard-copy subscription to their fanzine. N3F has endured ups and downs over the decades, but never really achieved influential status. Tightbeam’s subtitle “The Springboard of Ideas” possibly indicates an interest in fan writing, amateur fiction, and, begin-ning with this issue, flash fiction. I look forward to researching the history of this fanzine and its par-ent organization. Whatever Tightbeam may have been, now the editorial board hopes to develop a platform for amateur and beginning writers. As stated above, this issue contains the inaugural group of N3F fan flash fiction. To qualify, submissions must: (1) be between 5 and 500 words; (2) must include three elements chosen by Tightbeam readers on the N3F Facebook page; and (3) have a setting that is science fiction, supernatural, or fantasy compat-ible. The three elements for this issue are a candle, a key, and the moon. Writers submitting for next issue, then, must include time travel, a curse, and a crippling phobia. Additionally, N3F is support-ing the 2015 N3F Amateur Short Story contest. First prize will net $50, second will go home with $30, and third will pocket $20. Another example highlighting the above phi-losophy is Jeannie Warner’s short story “Not the End of the World,” starring Chris, a sixth child who inherits a family curse that brings an angel with a voice like “trumpets and warm whiskey” he uses to bellow, “Anti-Christ! Unclean! Stand and pre-pare for battle, beast! The end times is at hand!” (5) Despite this challenge, the overall blasé tone at one juncture lends wonderful irony and humor, but at another point bluntly strips a character’s credibility. Small changes to how Chris’s grandmother delivers a news item and to how Chris reacts to the news could rectify this unevenness. Beginning and amateur writers need outlets like Tightbeam to learn about publishing and maybe gain meaningful feedback about their efforts. I applaud what seems like a shift in emphasis, and I fervently wish that chances for firm but kind nurturing flourish. Who knows? Today’s fan-fiction writers could one day find themselves standing onstage in an as-of-yet undetermined convention center or hotel, grasping that shiny rocket and smil-ing big for the cameras. Yes, others covet my opti-mism. Why do you ask? Editor David Speakman speaks without hyper-

bole when he announces, “This issue is dominated by a mega-sized review section that takes on books, comics, and a few classic genre-adjacent films.” (3) His cadre of contributors provide brief descriptive snippets with short evaluations. I prefer longer reviews, ones that dissect themes and compare/ contrast the work in question with others inside and outside of the genre. I do, however, thank Heath Row for reintroducing me to Infra-Man, a terrible film I’ve only seen in part on Bob Wilkin’s Creature Features from the 1970s. Obviously, this turkey doesn’t compare to Men in Space, but once again I’ve been exposed to an indispensible aspect of science-fiction history. Again, my thanks go out to Heath Row and to Taral Wayne. I’ll read Tightbeam to savor amateur fiction and fan flash fiction — to see how creative entrants get with the three elements they’ve been handed. I can go to SF Site, Locus, and other sources that plunge deeper into content and themes when surveying literature or film. As stated above, I’m also curious about the N3F, which will necessitate perusing past issues of Tightbeam. “The Springboard of Ideas,” indeed.

meaningful word coinage lavishly illustrated with what appear to be Christian Psychedelia album covers.

26 Chunga Roca

C r a b s o f O u r

MERCURY: Mean and grumpy, these anti-social crustaceans regard most others with some contempt. Quick to criticize

their perceived inferiors, they are rude on the telephone and have

no bedside manners.

EARTH: Good to eat sprinkled with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Usually fried in

butter. Earth crabs go well with beer, fries, and tartar sauce. (Unkosher, tref.)

VENUS: Very religious! Venusian crabs are known to glow after death. A mauve

glow is said to denote a reward in paradise, while a mauve or shit brindle

glow means eternal damnation. Plaid glows are very special!

MARS: Different shades of red sand pass for currency denominations on Mars.

Martian crabs spend most of their time “trying to make a pile” while foraging

around long-vanished tidelines, or standing on line at the sand bank deposit windows.

LUNA: Moon crabs are quite derivative. Susceptible to fads and crazes from Earth, they have no culture of their own. Rabbit ears went over big, as did hula hoops and

the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty!”

JUPITER: The gas crabs of Jupiter are hard to spot. They are natural impersonators, crab “chameleons,” and can be anything

— comic book publishers, skunks, weasels, screech owls. Ted Nugent is a gas crab

from Jupiter.

Chunga Roca 27

S o l a r S y s t e m

TITAN: Largely a philosophical race, these crabs spend all their time pondering the

nature of God, Reality, Truth, and that kind of stuff. Many are on welfare but some are wealthy through armaments investments.

URANUS: Coarse and vulgar, hairy and smelly, covered with mucus, these crabs are overgrown with neurosis and cannot endure disagreement or criticism of any kind. Basically self-centered assholes.

SATURN: Since Saturn is the most disgusting evil planet there is, it stands to reason that any crabs “living” there must be equally obnoxious. All our energy, our resources, must be devoted to the utter

destruction of Saturn!

NEPTUNE: Inhabited by the longest living crabs in our solar system, also the slowest: they were tying their shoelaces during the

Mesozoic and waiting for the morning bus in the Jurassic. While we were living in caves

and painting ourselves blue, they were living in condos and painting themselves blue.

IO: The place where the action is! Io is trendy, chic, with it, and “groovy.” These crabs’ clothes are “far out”! The female crabs (“chicks”) often wear skirts with

Op Art designs on them.

PLUTO: Crabs on Pluto are very creative: among them can be found artists, writers, musicians, actors, playwrights, sculptors,

and poets — all starving on Republican welfare. They all have no talent whatsoever.

28 Chunga Roca A novel element is added to a bowling game by incorporating an ultraviolet light-sensitive

with Art at conventions is drinking and smoking with him. One of my favorite moments came at what I think was an Orycon in the ’90s sometime, although it honestly could have been any of the larger conventions I saw him at, when he sneaked out the side door of the hotel to have a cigarette with me and Tami Vining. His doctor had advised him to stop smoking, and I believe he’d quit smoking in his day-to-day life but still liked to have one or two when he was drinking at a convention. So he bummed a cigarette off one of us, and we were smoking and yakking away when suddenly the door flew open. There stood Art’s girlfriend of the time, whose name I think was Sheila. When she saw what he was doing, she put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Busted!” Tami and I cried, as Art looked chagrined. Then Sheila burst out laughing, and so did Art. How can you be mad at a naughty boy who’s 80 years old? Art was always a great story teller, and as I say he didn’t initially tell me much about his early days in fandom. What I remember were stories about his trip to Russia with a group that included the science fiction writer Joe Haldeman (although I’ve always remembered it as Roger Zelazny, for some reason), and I especially remember him telling me that the Russians could drink even him under the table, so when they got into a heavy drinking session he’d dump his vodka into the near-est planter when no one was looking. He also talked about his trips to Australia, starting with his 1991 Down Under Fan Fund trip and continuing with various visits with his grand daughter in Sydney after she moved there with her husband and fam-ily. There were other travel tales too, because he loved to travel. This was long before I learned that he had been known as a travelin’ jiant in his younger years, when he used to hitch hike to visit far off fans or when he drove the Skylark of WooWoo (a 1928 Dodge) to the Chicago Worldcon in 1940 and the FooFoo Special to Denver in 1941. Eventually I got sucked into fanzine fandom myself, and thereby received more education in fanhistory, including Art’s history. He and I shared a room at the 2006 Worldcon in LA

The Fan Who Was Always There: Art Widner (1917–2015)

The Ort CloudScraps by Randy Byers

The Ort Cloud

I probably met Art Widner sometime in the ’80s, although from what I’m reading now it appears he started getting active in fandom again (after thirty years away)

in 1979, which is when I went to my first convention. It was a Norwescon, and I definitely saw Art at Norwescons, so maybe he really was always there in my fannish life. It certainly seemed as though he’d always been around, such was the air of connec-tion he brought to every social circle he encountered. I don’t think I ever asked him why he came to so many Pacif-ic Northwest conventions, but I saw him at Norwescons, Orycons, Westercons, Potlatches, Corflus, and I don’t know what else up here. I suppose it was because they were close enough for him to drive to. He was always around and always ready to chat over a cigarette and a drink. I’m pretty sure that when I first met him I wasn’t aware that he’d been a Big Name Fan in the ’40s, and for example had been at the very first Worldcon in 1939. I wasn’t much interested in fanhistory in those days, so Art’s fannish past was not something that came up a lot with me. I liked hang-ing out with him because he was fun to talk to and because he enjoyed having a good time. So what I remember from the earliest days of hanging out

Chunga Roca 29dye or pigment in a bowling surface, a gutter, a bowling ball, and/or a bowling pin.

(Art liked to share rooms at conventions to spare his pension), and every night when we came back to the room in the wee hours, Art would pour us both a shot of Aberlour and tell me stories about the old days. What I particularly remember from those chats was his stories about F. Towner Laney, who was a pugnacious Insurgent fan writer in the ’40s and more than a bit of a homophobe. Art told me that Laney was insecure in his own sexuality, which did not come as any surprise at all, consid-ering the strong link between homophobia and sexual insecu-rity. I can’t remember now whether it was in those sessions or a later one, when Art came up for one of his many visits to the Art Car Blowout at the Fremont Street Fair, that he told me about a period in the late ‘40s after he and his family had moved to LA and he was still trying to hang out with Burbee, Laney, Perdue and the other LA Insurgents. As I recall, Art said he’d go over to Burbee’s house to drink and play poker, but it didn’t sit well with his wife. Did he tell me that he was essentially sneaking out behind her back? Perhaps Art was a naughty boy even then, and perhaps it wasn’t so forgivable at that point. It was not long after this, I think, that he left fandom behind for a time. If he told me much about his three wives, I don’t remember it. Another powerful memory I have of Art is from the Potlatch in Eugene when he told a table of us in the bar about one of his sons who had disappeared from his life years ago. He had three sons, and one of them had already died by that time. Art cried as he told us about the missing son. Eventually he learned that that son had died as well, but I don’t remember if there was any contact between them before then. He outlived all of his kids, which had to be unfathomably hard to bear. I met two of his granddaughters, both of whom lived in this area for a while, although one eventually moved to Sydney with her husband. Art visited them there fairly frequently, and for all his sadness about his children, he at least had four loving grand children and the great grand children they bore. At that 2006 Worldcon Art would sleep in our room almost all day long, and I worried a little bit that he would die in his sleep. He would’ve been 89 at that point, and of course he lived another eight years. He was still driving long distances up until at least a couple of years ago, when I last saw him at the Portland Corflu in 2013. Typical of the way Corflus work, I didn’t really get a chance to talk to him at that one. The last long conversation I had with him was probably at the 2011 Cor-flu in Sunnyvale, where I distributed the collection of Art’s old travel fanwriting that Kim Huett had put together. (It’s called Travlin’ Jiant, and I still have a few copies if you’d like one.) Art was terribly pleased by that collection, and he had some ideas about other collections of his writing that he said he was going to pitch to Kim as well, although I don’t know that he ever got around to it. We sat at the little bar in the Sunnyvale hotel drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and Art enthused about the past. He probably railed against encroaching fascism too, because he was an ardent leftist who took a dim view of mod-ern political developments in America. As a child of the Depres-sion and FDR’s progressive triumph, no doubt the Reagan Revo-lution was not a welcome turn for him.

He was a man of many stories who was always surprising me with new ones, such as the fact that he had invented the first sci-ence fiction board game, which was called Interplanetary. (Mike Glyer, in his fine obituary at file770.com, says that LASFS still has a giant Interplanetary board.) It may have been at the 2006 Worldcon (or the 1996 one, also in LA) where Art chewed my ear off about his love of the Frankenstein story in all its incar-nations. I believe he was thinking about writing a book about it, or maybe an issue of his FAPA zine, YHOS. He also loved to tell tales of his experiences during World War II, when he was a guinea pig at the Climatic Research Lab, where they tested vari-ous equipment in conditions of extreme heat or extreme cold. Art thought it was pretty funny that his wartime experience con-sisted of freezing his ass off in a laboratory. Well, my memories of Art are pretty much endless. There was the time at the Thai restaurant in Portland when he rubbed his eye after touching a red pepper. There was the time at a sushi restaurant in Anaheim (this was the 1996 Worldcon) when I stayed behind with him after the rest of our group had left, because Art wanted to try the green tea ice cream. There was the time he pitched for his team at the Corflu softball game in 2000, when he would have been 82 years old. He could still run the bases, although, okay, he couldn’t run very fast. There was the 2001 Westercon when he was still bumming cigarettes off me in the bar. (I quit smoking later that year, and I guess that’s what it took to get him to stop bumming cigarettes off of me.) There was the time at the 2008 Corflu in Las Vegas when Art sang Jack Speer the song Jack wrote that’s been called the first filk song. Jack was on an oxygen tank and didn’t have much longer to live. Art outlived him as he outlived so many people he loved — the curse of a long life. Then again, Lenny Bailes once told me that Art had the most matter-of-fact, upbeat view of death he’d ever encountered. “He told me that he thought he’d visit Vega, his favorite green star, when he passed into the next plane of existence.” Lenny said that Art accepted the inevitability of death, but didn’t believe it was necessarily the end of everything. So now I like to imag-ine Art on a cosmic journey to Vega, and it’s easy enough to think, given his amazing ability to find a comfortable place in seemingly any social circle, that he’ll fit in just fine amongst the

The Ort Cloud

30 Chunga Roca Correspondent Lisa Guerrero wore a fitted black blazer and stilettos when she busted with her camera crew into

Vegans too. Here’s hoping they’ve got good single malt there and know how to appreciate an artful spoonerism.

Hush, Puppies!

Well, it’s been a long while since all fandom was plunged into war, hasn’t it? As you may have noticed, there was

a controversy regarding the Hugos last year. Two groups of con-servative writers and fans, calling themselves the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, produced slates that they encouraged their followers to nominate for the Hugos. Between them they placed 61 items on the final ballot, out of a total of 85, although two of their nominees ended up removing themselves from consideration. Still, that’s 70% of the final ballot that came from the two Puppies slates. Needless to say, people who didn’t support the slates were pissed off by this result. I’m not sure how many slate-supporters nominated, but it’s for sure a minority of the total nominators. Because of their lockstep voting, they overwhelmed the more scattered, diverse nominations of everybody else. The various Puppies have been arguing for a few years that the Hugos are controlled by a cabal of liberals and “Social Jus-tice Warriors.” They feel that conservative, old-fashioned science fiction like they wrote in the good old days is getting a short shrift. The idea that the Hugos are controlled by a cabal is actu-ally true, but their characterization of the cabal is plainly idiotic. The cabal is what I would call the Worldcon community — the people who regularly buy memberships in the Worldcon and thus are allowed to nominate and vote in the Hugos — and while the Worldcon community, like every community, is insu-lar, cliquish, and full of fuggheads, it isn’t actually a conspiracy against conservatives. All you have to do to join the cabal is buy a supporting or attending membership to a Worldcon, although if you nominate and vote in the Hugos like a normal person you’ll have to suffer the same disappointment that the rest of us feel when most of what we nominate doesn’t make the ballot. In recent years I have only been nominating and voting in the fan categories of the Hugos, because I don’t keep up with contemporary science fiction. (Well, okay, I do watch a lot of movies, so I tend to nominate in the dramatic long form cat-egory too.) In 2014 I nominated but didn’t vote on the final ballot, because I didn’t feel any interest in most of the nominees in the

fan categories. (Sorry again, Steve Stiles! It was lazy of me.) This year, however, I voted in most of the categories, and I even read three of the five novels on the final ballot. Like a lot of other people, I voted for No Award above anything that made it from either of the slates, because I think slate voting should be dis-couraged, even if something on the slate is of high quality. The Puppies claim that one of their goals is to increase the number of people voting in the Hugos, and by golly they suc-ceeded on that front as well. As news of what the slates had done to the final ballot spread, a wave of people bought sup-porting memberships in order to oppose them. Therefore this was the first Worldcon with more supporting than attending members, which is an interesting result in itself. It will also be interesting to see whether the massive increase in support-ing memberships, which has been a growing trend in the last two or three years, will continue and what effect it will have on Hugo nominations and voting going forward. We have entered unknown territory here. For this year, at least, it resulted in a massive denial of the Puppy slates. None of the Puppy candidates finished above No Award, and this meant that there was no award given in the five categories that had nothing but Puppy nominees in them. I was at Sasquan this year and followed the Hugos from the conven-tion center, where it was shown on a big screen in the bar. The mood was cheerful, and indeed there were cheers even when it was announced that the voters had chosen not to give in award in a category. I think the upbeat mood was because of a shared sense of community that came from voting against the slates. Some people have expressed sadness that worthy people were denied an award this year, but I don’t share the sadness. Worthy people and works fail to win the Hugo every year. Hell, worthy people and works fail to even make the ballot every year. That’s the nature of awards, and this year didn’t seem much different to me on that front. On Facebook Mike Glyer and Ulrika O’Brien have made the argument that what happened to the Hugos in general this year is the same as what has happened to the fan categories in recent years. I know Mike has argued that the Best Fan Writer award has been taken over by aspiring professional writers looking for an easy win to boost their careers (cf. John Scalzi and Kameron Hurley, and now we can add Laura Mixon to the list), but as much as the fan categories have lost the connection to fanzines

Chunga Roca 31Get Hooked, a casual seafood restaurant in Hudson that on occasion hosts micro-championship little people wrestling.

that they traditionally had, I don’t see what’s happening there to be anything like slate voting. It’s not the same thing as a small group of people forcing their choices through lockstep voting. It has actually seemed just the opposite to me: more people are nominating and voting in the fan categories, and most of them have never heard of fanzine fandom. They vote for who they’ve heard of, which tends to be up and coming pros writing essays on blogs. But maybe I’m wrong about that, and I hope Mike and Ulrika will apply the clue-by-four of loving kindness where nec-essary. Meanwhile, a new amendment to the constitution govern-ing the Hugos is in the works that will make it harder for slates to dominate the ballot in the future. Beyond that, however, my sense is that a lot more people will be nominating for the Hugos this year. Maybe it will be enough to overcome any slate vot-ing that might be attempted. We’ll have to see. As much as my unsuspected protectiveness for the Hugos was fired up this year, I won’t be nominating in any other categories than I usually do, since I still don’t read much new science fiction, but maybe I’ll read more of the nominees again. I liked all three of the novels I read this year and was quite happy that Cixin Liu’s Three-Body Problem won.

Ping

The New Yorker recently published an article by Maria Kon-nikova called “What Your Tweets Say about You,” which

reports on a study of just that, but also at the end has this obser-vation about blogging and social media in general:

For decades, Pennebaker’s studies have shown that when people keep a journal they tend to fare better emotion-ally, recover more quickly from negative experiences, and achieve more academically and professionally. Other recent work suggests that social media provides the same benefits, despite the fact that, unlike a journal, it’s inher-ently public. A 2013 study found that bloggers received the same therapeutic boosts as people who keep regular dia-ries; what’s more, the highest benefits came from writing entries that were open to comment, which were actually more beneficial than private journal entries. Researchers want to use social media to learn about you. But by writ-ing in a public space you may also be learning about — and helping — yourself.

This was news to me. I kept a journal for many years, start-ing probably in junior high school. My memory is that early on it was a place to write about my “ideas.” The last time I looked at those oldest journals, which was probably twenty or thirty years ago, I found them painfully and relentlessly intellectu-alized, with very little about what I was feeling or what was going on in my life. As I got older, however, and especially after I got some counseling in my 20s, I started writing more about my emotional and day-to-day life. I probably did think of it as being therapeutic, but I also felt that it was a journal of frustra-

tion and anxiety and self-doubt. I believe I stopped keeping the journal sometime in my late 30s or early 40s, and in retrospect it seemed to be because I had grown more accepting of myself and my limitations. I no longer felt so frustrated with my life and with myself. I apparently didn’t need the therapy anymore. Or did I? One of the things that happened around the time I stopped keeping a journal is that I started getting involved in fanzines. Publishing a fanzine is not all that different from mak-ing a public journal entry, so maybe fanzines have the same therapeutic effects as social media, although I certainly have never thought of fanzines as a therapeutic experience. When I started writing on LiveJournal in 2005, on the other hand, I recognized almost immediately that it satisfied pretty much the same itch as my old paper journal, except it wasn’t private. That’s part of what’s so interesting about that quote from Kon-nikova’s article. I remember showing my paper journal to carl when we were freshmen in college — perhaps the only time I showed anybody else my journal — and how the sense of con-nection that resulted was almost overwhelming. My LiveJournal has been pretty personal at times, but it has gotten less so since I put my real name on it and opened it to search engines. But there’s still something powerful about putting your thoughts out in a public space, whether it’s in a fanzine, on LiveJournal, or on Facebook. It doesn’t feel particularly therapeutic to me anymore, but perhaps it really is. Perhaps there’s more therapeutic value in sharing a book review or a memorial for a friend than I realized. I guess one thing I have noticed is that, on the most primitive level, publishing things, whether in a fanzine or on the internet, is a bit like pinging a server. It’s a way of saying, Are you out there? Can you read this? Are we connected?

32 Chunga Roca Without an effort of concentration I am uncertain whether my reveries encompass the present world at all,

On the last Saturday in September 2015

word arrived that D. West had died of cancer the day

before. I hadn’t known about the cancer, so the news was completely unexpected. It had only been in May that I received a letter from him talk-ing about the struggles he was hav-ing with the piece we’d asked him to write for Chunga, but there was no hint of ill health. In August I

received a cryptic Facebook message from Hazel Ashworth say-ing that he was “out of action at present and unable fulfill any Chunga functions anytime soon.” I had no idea what that was about, but in retrospect I now realize this must have been after he’d received the cancer diagnosis. I only met Don West once, on my TAFF trip in 2003. I’d cer-tainly heard of him before that and had seen his artwork and cartoons in fanzines, and thanks to Victor Gonzalez, who prac-tically worshiped the man, I had read some of his fan-writing, including the brilliant conreport “Performance,” which deliv-ers (and embodies) an epic length metaphor of active partici-pation in fandom as performance. Victor introduced me to the man himself in 2003, when he joined me in Keighley, outside of Leeds, and took me to a pub to meet Don and Hazel. I spent a couple of days in the area talking to Don and Hazel and a couple of the other members of the old Leeds Group, which had mostly disintegrated by that point. I was intimidated by Don, largely because of his KTF reputation, but for the most part I found him very congenial. Still, he wasted no time telling me how much and why he hated Chunga’s layout and how he couldn’t understand the praise it garnered. He offered to write us a piece, but only if we dropped our standard layout for those pages. (I believe the pitch was that it would be about an old bus route he used to ride, perhaps to fannish destinations, and the title would be “Route 666”.) I turned him down with a smile, and that seemed to be okay by him. He offered us a pair of covers instead, and I gladly accepted. It almost felt like a rite of passage of sorts, or a trial by fire. He threw some punches, I shrugged them off, and then he pro-ceeded to give us some of his incredible artwork. I can’t claim to have known the man well enough to fully understand his character, and I’ve certainly seen that trial by fire approach turn into an antagonistic relationship with other fans. But to me it seemed like he was basically taking the piss and then judging me by how I reacted. It probably helped that I thought his criti-cisms of our layout were really funny, in the over-the-top, exag-gerated way that a lot of British invective has (cf Monty Python),

and I halfway suspected he was halfway pulling my leg. If he had really thought Chunga was such an awful-looking piece of shit, he wouldn’t have given us any of his work at all, or at least that’s what I told myself. I also felt that there was something of the Tall Poppy Syndrome going on. Chunga was currently all the rage in some sectors of fanzine fandom, and he wanted to bring us down a notch. Considering how easy it was for me to think we really were the hottest shit ever in the history of fan-zines, it was probably a good thing for someone of his looming stature to fire a couple of shots across my bow. He never stopped criticizing our layout or letting us know if we had fucked something up in his eyes, but he pretty much always had a reasoned argument for his perspective. We printed those first two covers of his on dark-toned paper, and he let us have it with both barrels. The dark colors destroyed the contrast with the black ink of the artwork, he said. Looking at the print-ed covers (two masterworks of pointillism), I had to agree with him, and since then we’ve only used pastel or astrobright colors for our coverstock, unless it was white for a color cover. I didn’t always agree with his stances, however, and not just when it came to Chunga’s layout. When he refused the Rotsler Award in 2011, he blasted Rotsler for dashing off a lot of thought-less, substandard work rather than putting his all into every-thing he did. This was similar to his take on fanzines as a whole. He felt fanzines were an art form and that if you didn’t put your best work into it you were traducing the art form. He had no time for people who just do fanzines for fun or for the social and communal aspect of it. He was painstaking in his own contribu-tions to the field, and he seemed to have little respect for anyone who was less painstaking than himself. This is too harsh an approach, in my view, and I think he was completely wrong about Rotsler in particular. Rotsler represents a kind of open, fecund, spontaneous approach that I think was simply alien or antithetical to Don’s mindset. He told me a fair amount about his life in our conversations in Keighley and Skipton. I remember he said that his parents moved to Yorkshire when he was a baby, and he wryly noted that since he hadn’t been born there the locals still considered him an outsider sixty years later. The perfect fannish origin story, I thought: we’re all outsiders of some stripe or another. He also told me that he came to science fiction fandom relatively late in life, and I’m guessing he meant convention and fanzine fandom, because from what I’ve reading on Facebook since he died (there’s a public group called ‘Don West Memorial — art-ist & fanzine cartoonist’) he discovered the British Science Fic-tion Association sometime in the ’60s and contributed to their publications. It appears he got into fanzine fandom around 1975, when he would have been 30 and where he immediately con-nected with Ratfandom and began writing his infamous KTF

D. West Amongst the Tall Poppies (1945–2015)

Chunga Roca 33or whether they are merely revivals of old memory loops, duplications of the phantasmagoria of the past.

(Kill the Fuckers) fanzine reviews for Roy Kettle’s True Rat. I actually only know those KTF reviews by reputation. For the most part the only things I’ve read by him are in the giant col-lection Deliverance (he gave me Mal Ashworth’s old copy on my visit) and what I was able to read of the other giant collec-tion, Fanzines in Theory and Practice, one afternoon sitting in Hazel’s living room in Skipton. By the time I got into fanzines in the late ’90s he wasn’t really writing anymore, but he was still drawing and cartooning, just as brilliantly as ever. Because I was the only one of the Chunga triumvirate who had met him, I was the one who communicated with him to solicit contributions. As with so much else, he was too old-fash-ioned to do email, so our correspondence was letters sent by post. He gave me little tidbits of his life with Hazel (they had gotten together after Hazel’s husband, Mal, died — the three of them were long time friends) and the action movies he was watching, but he didn’t get much into his personal life. I vaguely knew he had at least one child from his own past marriage, but I had no idea until he died that he had four children and six grandchildren, or indeed that his children were known to the fans who first met him in the ’70s, and vice versa. A year or two ago I was looking at a book about Romantic painting that was focused on Casper David Friedrich and imme-diately wondered if Don had been influenced by the Romantics. So I wrote to ask, and he seemed charmed by the question. He wrote an enormous letter about his artistic influences and the knotty question of influence in general. It was completely fasci-nating, and I asked if we could print it as an article in Chunga. He counter-proposed that he would write something fresh about

art — he wasn’t quite sure what — but only if we agreed that 1) we wouldn’t run any of our linos (which he had always detested) on those pages, and 2) we would only illustrate it with his own artwork (he also detested unrelated artwork or cartoons being used in an article). At least he wasn’t asking us to drop our lay-out entirely this time! We readily agreed, and that was what he wrote to me to say he was struggling with back in May. He said that writing had become difficult for him, and art was always easier. Would we like any more covers? By then he had done three pairs of front and back covers for us, all of them amongst the best covers we’ve published. Now we will never get any more covers, or anything else. D. and I weren’t personally close, although we were colleagues and friends of a congenial sort. I always hoped to see him again sometime, and I certainly do mourn the loss of that possibility. But above all it is the loss of his creativity and peculiar genius that leaves me feeling forlorn. He was one of the true giants of the fanzine field, to my mind. There are other fan artists that I admire as much as him, but there are none I admire more. When you add the quality and nature of what I’ve read of his fan-writing, well, he was simply unique and irreplaceable. He was a tall poppy in his own right, and I’m sure he was perfectly aware of the irony of his discomfort with other tall poppies. His own fanzine was called DAISNAID, after all. I always thought it was a Welsh word or something like that, but in fact it stood for Do As I Say Not As I Do. As his son Graham said on Facebook, “He was an angry young man, an angry middle-aged man, and a grumpy old man, but always with a twinkle in his eye.”

34 Chunga Roca I am here now, I have been here before, but am I experiencing fact, memory or dream?

Given the opportunity to sponsor benches at LonCon 3 in 2014, members

of the Seattle Vanguard party / email list commissioned these plaques (complete

with obligatory transcription error) to remember those of our community

who have passed.

Vanguard Remembers

Chunga Roca 35The Rerum failed to cause the cancer cells to be eaten: At the end of three days, they were still there.

36 Chunga Roca “So nice of you to greet us, Madeline. I thought you would

can–American at the time, she fabricated an origin for herself as the orphaned daughter of lost Arapaho parents, adopted by a pair of unnamed traveling artists who permitted her emancipa-tion at the age of 15. Other publicity copy writers portrayed her as being of South American ancestry, and she was sometimes known as “The Venezuelan Volcano.” Captive Wild Woman was an attempt to return to the human/animal hybrid themes explored by The Island of Lost Souls, using the proven technique of transplanting a human brain into the head of a gorilla. At the opening of the story, Cheela, an unusually intelligent and affectionate gorilla (por-trayed by Ray “Crash” Corrigan), is brought to America in a large load of animals collected to appear in the Whipple Cir-cus. Cheela’s unusual qualities emerge when she saves animal trainer Fred Mason (Stone) from being mauled by the big cats, and she attracts the attention of endocrinologist Dr. Sigmund Walters (John Carradine). When Walters steals Cheela, he implants human glands into her body, and she is transformed into a beautiful young woman — played by Acquanetta, usually billed by only her putative last name. When a horrified assistant points out that without a human brain, the young woman will only be a human body inhabited by an animal instinct, Walters kills her, and transplants her brain into the body of Cheela, now renamed Paula Dupree. Thus the original precocious ape is sac-rificed completely, transformed into a beautiful woman with a curious effect on animals. “Paula” is undone by the jealousy she feels for Fred Mason’s fiancée, Beth Colman (Evelyn Ankers). Her emotions transform her back into a murderous beast much as the moon transformed Lawrence Talbot into the wolf man. After she murders another woman where she expected to find Beth, Paula returns to Dr.

Monster Culture Studies

A Jungle Girl in Passing

continue to enjoy weekly telecasts by Sven-goolie (Rich Koz), the

Chicago-based Horror Host now syndicated to most of the U.S. on the MeTV network. Sven has a new coffin to emerge from and return to in each episode, as well as an improved set and a new opening montage. But the heart of the show is still the familiar roster of monster movies from Universal Studios and Universal International. It is a continuing challenge to find pic-tures that Sven hasn’t shown before, but this year he pledged to show 52 different movies in 52 weeks, and introduced viewers to the Captive Wild Woman sequence, including its two sequels, Jungle Woman and The Jungle Captive. All three movies are quite terrible, the sort of thing only Howard Waldrop could truly love, and rely heavily on footage borrowed from The Big Cage, a 1933 circus picture starring Clyde Beatty. Character actor Milburn Stone, largely known for playing Dr. Galen Adams on the long-running TV show Gunsmoke, was chosen as the male lead for Captive Wild Woman in 1943 because of his physical resemblance to Beatty in 1933. But the real attraction was Sven’s two-part profile of

the actress who called herself “Bur-nu Acquanetta,” but who was actu-ally Mildred Davenport (1921–2004). Acquanetta was actually of African–American heritage; her brother Horace Davenport is acknowledged as the first African–American Judge to serve in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Hoping to avoid being restricted to the roles and movies open to an Afri-

by Andy Hooper

The Journal of Federation

I

Author’s note

Once again, no hokum here! Any movie or television program

referenced does, to the best of my knowledge,

actually exist.

Chunga Roca 37still be crushed under that house in Munchkinland.”

Walter, and he concludes he must repeat the surgeries which created her — including the acquisition of another human brain. When the proposed donor frees Cheela/Paula, the captive wild woman kills the Doctor and departs, leaving Beth and her sister Dorothy unharmed. Returning to the circus, Paula repeats her earlier actions, saving Fred Mason from his perpetually unruly lions, but is mistakenly shot by a policeman and dies. The movie was directed by Edward Dmytryk, from a script attributed to four different screenwriters. It seems to creak under the weight of its own melodrama — it is hard not to feel that it would have been improved by the presence of Abbott and Costello, or at least the Ritz Brothers. But knowing what we do about Acquanetta’s life and career, it is hard not to see some parallels between her story — an African–American model and actress passing for a Venezuelan Arapaho — and that of Paula Dupree, a gorilla passing for human. One hopes that the writers knowingly took advantage of white fantasies about the alleged animalism of African–Americans in creating Paula, a character meant to be both alluring and terrifying. The French surname Dupré, which literally means “from the meadow,” was used by free people of color in 19th century America, and their descen-dants were numerous and well-known in both the 20th and 21st centuries. Of course, it is also a story about a lunatic transplanting a series of women’s brains into the body of an ape, with deleteri-ous effects for both. The perils of unfettered scientific inquiry were always a dependable theme, and no deeper subtext was required by matinee-loving audiences. But Acquanetta’s racial identity seems to have been something of an open secret, judg-ing from the attention paid to her by African-American press agencies. The fact that she was cast as a love-struck gorilla pass-ing for a dusky, murderous woman seems too arch to be a coin-cidence.

From Cheela to Cheetah

That this slipshod fantasy was successful enough to warrant a sequel, 1944’s Jungle Woman, was largely attributed to

the impression made by Acquanetta as the magnetic but danger-ous Paula Dupree. Her death at the end of the first picture was no obstacle; taken into the care of Dr. Carl Fletcher (J. Carrol Naish), an admirer of the late Dr. Walters, she is found to be miraculously still alive, and in his care, she makes a full recov-

ery. Although she has not received the glandular treatments and brain replacement required for her previous transformations, Cheela the ape spontaneously returns to the human form of Paul Dupree. At first she cannot speak; but when Dr. Fletcher’s lovely daughter Joan (Lois Collier) and her handsome fiancé, Bob Whitney (Richard Davies) appear, Paula’s powers of speech are restored, and she soon becomes enamored of Bob. Her efforts to secure his affection are still both childish and murderous; she tips the couple over while they enjoy a moonlit canoe ride, and nearly drowns both of them. Subjected to the attentions of “Wil-lie” (Edward M. Hyans Jr.), another neurotic patient of Dr. Fletch-er, Paula strangles him and hides his body. There is a lot more confusing business involving dead dogs and chickens in Paula’s vicinity, and another consulting physi-cian, who finds that Paula is suffering from mental instability and possesses remarkable strength. Eventually, Fletcher pre-pares a sedative and attempts to capture Paula, but she resists violently, and he accidentally overdoses her, and she dies. He is put on trial for her death, but at the end of the picture, the coroner brings the jury and other principal characters into the morgue to reveal that Paula has assumed a half-human, half-ape appearance in death. Dr. Fletcher is immediately exonerated. Jungle Woman was written by Henry Sucher and Ber-nard Schubert, and directed by the tireless Reginald LeBorg. Although the running time was a brisk 61 minutes, Acquanetta enjoyed slightly more screen time than she had in the first movie. She had to do a lot of acting without speaking, and the role of Paula Dupree was a worthy succes-sor to speech-challenged protagonists like the Gill-man or the Frankenstein Monster. She glowered magnificently. Ms. Acquanetta apparently did not care to renew the contract with Universal that had brought her to such gems of the cinema.

Some of the many faces of Acquanetta, featuring Ray “Crash” Corrigan in Captive Wild Woman (this page, left)

38 Chunga Roca “The milieu was largely and faithfully captured at

Her management secured a new deal with Monogram Pictures, but no movies resulted from the relation-ship, and she was permit-ted to jump to RKO in 1946. Her tour of poverty row studios climaxed with her only large role in a picture with a reasonable budget, Tarzan and the Leopard Woman in 1946. She portrayed Lea, the vicious

Queen of the Leopard Cult. Not long after shooting the movie in the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, she fell in love with and married a Mexican–Jewish millionaire named Luciano Bashuk, and left Hollywood. She gave birth to his son, Sergio, in 1948.

The Third Brain

Meanwhile, Universal had decided to go one more round with the Paula Dupree franchise, and gave the green

light to The Jungle Captive in 1945. The story was written by

Dwight Babcock, a veteran of the Black Mask dime pulps, with screenplay contributions from Marriott Webster, who collabo-rated with Babcock on another Rondo Hatton vehicle in 1946, The Brute Man. Harold Young, a Portland native and occasional actor, directed a new heavy, Otto Kruger, with designs on Paula Dupree. He sends his henchman, the unfortunate Hatton, to collect her body, still in the morgue where Jungle Woman con-cluded. Kruger, portraying a biochemist called Stendahl, has a touch of the Frankenstein magic, and can restore dead animals to life; with Walters’ original notes, retrieved from the hapless Dr. Fletcher by the murderous Hatton, he applies the techniques to Paula’s corpse. She is restored to life, and human form, now portrayed by Vicky Lane. But the restoration is accomplished at the expense of Sten-dahl’s assistant Ann Forrester (Amelita Ward), whom he chloro-forms in order to extract significant amounts of her blood. Ann becomes the real focus of the movie as both the henchman Hat-ton and Ann’s fiancé Don Young (played by the equally-generic Phil Brown) seek to thwart Stendahl’s plan to harvest her brain for insertion into Paula’s head. Paula more or less wanders off as business surrounding the search for Ann goes on for a sig-nificant part of the movie’s 63–minute running time. (Modern readers that wonder at the ability of mid-century audiences to sit through a newsreel, a short subject, a cartoon, and two fea-ture films in an afternoon, running times that barely exceeded an hour were one reason why it worked.) With Don tied to a chair, Stendahl prepares to conduct the operation. But Don explains to Hatton that the procedure will cause Ann’s death. Hatton turns on Stendahl, who coldly shoots him at close range. But the gunfire and sounds of death cause Paula to revert to her ape-creature form, and she kills Stendahl in turn. With Don still stuck in the chair, she prepares to attack Ann as well, but the police arrive in the nick of time and shoot Paula dead. Again. Most of the exotic allure that Paula possessed in the first two films is missing from the third. Her character is also much less of a “monster” than either Hatton or Kruger. Although Vicky Lane was very attractive, the Irish-born actress had none of Acquanetta’s obsessive intensity. The Jungle Captive was her last feature; her only later credits were an appearance on The Ethel Barrymore Theater in 1952, and an episode of Dad’s Army in 1969. She was married to tough-guy actor and eventual mur-derer Tom Neal from 1948 to 1950 and trumpeter Pete Candoli from 1953 to 1958, with whom she had one daughter. She died young in 1983, still just 57 years old. Burnu Acquanetta’s first marriage was equally stormy, dis-solving in a hostile divorce and custody fight, which ended when her son Sergio died at the age of 4 in 1952. She made some halting effort to get back into pictures, appearing as a

“Native Girl” in Lost Continent (1951), alongside Cesar Rome-ro. But at some point in the mid–1950s, she relocated to Phoe-

Acquanetta in Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946): with unknown leopard person and Johnny Weismuller (left top); Dennis Hoey (middle); and for two minutes in Lost Continent (1951) with Cesar Romero (bottom)

Chunga Roca 39the time by the magazine Sleazoid Express.”

nix, Arizona, where she met and married a car dealer named Jack Ross. They would have four sons together, and she achieved local fame for her appearances in her husband’s television commercials. She remained devoted to the notion that she was of American Indian heritage, and this is one of the recurring themes in her 1974 book of poetry, The Audible Silence. She frequently lent her name and time to charities raising money for native groups and cultural institutions. And for a time in the late 1960s, she hosted a Friday night movie broadcast, including an interstitial segment called “Acqua’s Corner.” No wonder Sven-goolie wanted us to remember her! She passed away in 2004, at the age of 83.

Man Made Monsters

The Captive Wild Woman cycle reflects the gradual trend toward science-fictional origin stories for the Universal mon-

sters. Frankenstein was pure SF, definitively so, but Dracula, the Mummy and the Wolf Man all arose from supernatural, gothic fantasies of legend. These remained popular characters straight into the Technicolor era, and their absence from other pictures even created a kind of subgenre of “Rational Horror,” in which beliefs in the supernatural were manipulated, but eventually de-bunked by science. An example of this is Weird Woman, a 1944 picture in which Evelyn Ankers tries to convince Lon Chaney that Anne Gwynne is a Voodoo priestess — the first of three movies inspired by Fritz Leiber’s novel Conjure Wife . Another classic is the 1941 George Waggner adventure Horror Island, in which a mysterious phantom tries to keep a trio of Princeton grads from finding the pirate Henry Morgan’s treasure. (A prem-ise also familiar from several dozen Scooby-Doo mysteries.) Some monsters were cryptozoic — The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) was their most famous cryptid, and unknown animals were also at large in The Yeti (1938), The Mad Ghoul (1943) and The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). Later, giant animals, such as Tarantula (1955) and The Deadly Mantis (1957) were a fact of life in the Drive-in Age. But Univer-

sal’s screenwriters seemed to be at their most creative — some-times disastrously so — when making monsters out of human beings exposed to the effects of unfettered science. The Invisible Man (1933) was the template — Jack Griffin is given a remark-able power, but both the drug that induces it and the social vio-lation that his invisibility represents combine to destroy him. Of course, Jack Griffin’s transformation was a deliberate act — there could be far more pathos when the subject received his “powers” in an accidental manner. Lon Chaney Jr. made his horror movie debut in Man Made Monster (1941) as Dan McCormick, the only survivor of an accident involving a bus and a high voltage power line. McCormick is mysteriously immune to the effects of high energy current, and can store and release large amounts of electricity from his body. He tours as a sideshow performer, Dynamo Dan the Electrical Man, until he attracts the attention of two doctors, one good, and one por-trayed by Lionel Atwill. Atwill’s character gives Chaney higher and higher doses of current until Chaney’s mind is ruined and he becomes addicted to the juice. When he accidentally electro-cutes the “good” doctor (Samuel S. Hinds), Atwill makes sure Dan is convicted of murder and sentenced to death, because he wants to see what effect the electric chair will have on him. When the switch is thrown, Chaney’s body feeds the electric-ity back, overloading the system. Now possessing superhuman strength, he breaks free and kills several of his captors, includ-ing Atwill. But as the current finally drains from his body, the unfortunate Dan weakens and dies. Bombardment by high-energy or cosmic forces often has remarkable effects in modern American mythology, from the alien Ka-El, who only had to bathe in the light of the sun to become Superman, to Dr. Manhattan of Alan Moore’s Watch-men, who found that cosmic awareness and humanity were fun-damentally incompatible. There is a surprisingly early exami-nation of these themes in The Invisible Ray, a vehicle built for Karloff and Lugosi by director Lambert Hillyer in 1936. The screenplay was written by the prolific John Colton, who also penned the script of The Werewolf of London (1935) and adapted Somerset Maugham’s Rain for Joan Crawford in 1932. In this,

Lon Chaney Jr.: with Acquanetta in Dead Men’s Eyes (1944) and in Man Made Monster (1941)

40 Chunga Roca There were cords and ropes everywhere, and great setpieces of hitching posts and

their third pairing, producer Edward Grainger was clearly trying to give Karloff and Lugosi what they wanted. Although Karloff would become a monster once more, the make-up effects were limited to a curly black wig and a pencil-thin mustache. Lugosi, as the noble Dr. Felix Benet, is arguably the hero of the picture, or at least he seems profoundly benign in comparison to Karl-off’s megalomaniacal Dr. Janos Rukh. The story is a mash-up of cosmic phenomena and pulp adven-ture that could have right at home in the pages of Astound-ing Science Fiction. The brilliant but unstable Dr. Janos Rukh announces that he has discovered a new frequency of energy, or a “ray,” and developed an apparatus to capture and interpret it. These rays carry reflections of events that occurred in the dis-tant past. With an audience of stunned colleagues, he observes images of a large meteor striking the Earth millions of years ago — a body which he believes to be responsible for the emis-sion of the unknown energy on Earth. The meteor appeared to fall into central Africa — which, unencumbered by modern theories of tectonics, looks exactly as it does now. An expedition to Africa is mounted to discover and harness the source of this miraculous energy.

Radium X

Even the great Rukh cannot accomplish such an effort alone, and he reluctantly accepts the patronage of Sir Francis

Stevens (Walter Kingsford) and his wife Lady Arabella (Beulah Bondi). Rukh’s wife Diana (portrayed by actress Frances Drake) accompanies the party, and there are obvious sparks between her and the expedition’s handsome leader Ronald Drake (played by actor Frank Lawton, in a clear attempt to confuse latter-day archivists). Dr. Benet also agrees to make the journey, but first has an interview with Rukh’s mother (Violet Kemble Cooper), who was rendered blind by her first exposure to the incred-ible cosmic energies. The mother and son are clearly intended to be metaphorical analogs of Paul and Marie Curie, the Pol-ish–French researchers who did much early work with unstable elements, and eventually both died of the effects of radioactive poisoning. If her saintly, slightly Slavic mien is not enough to seal the deal (she also reminds one of Maria Ouspenskya as the gypsy Maleva in the Wolf Man cycle), Rukh dubs the new ele-ment in the meteorite “Radium X” as they set off to find its rest-ing place. Once in Africa, Rukh becomes profoundly worried that the

others intend to steal his discovery. When the smoking, glowing, sparking mass of Radium X is discovered, he sets out to harvest it himself. Although he uses protective equipment straight out of a Flash Gordon serial (in which several sets from this movie, along with composer Franz Waxman’s music, were re-used), Rukh is saturated with the unknown radiation. He discovers that his touch has become instant death after innocently trying to pet his faithful dog. And when in darkness, his skin issues a ghastly green glow. The resourceful Dr. Benet develops a serum which can tem-porarily limit the effects of the exposure, but it inevitably loses its effects within a week. Unable to share the company of others, and all too aware of the growing affection between his wife and Ron Drake, Rukh decides to fake his own death, and allows the party to return to their lives in Paris. Benet and other scientists are able to harness the energies of Radium X in a number of benign ways, including medical applications with miraculous effects. One of the first to benefit from these is Mother Rukh, whose sight is restored by the treat-ment Benet provides. His discovery appears to have the poten-tial to change life on Earth for millions, but Rukh is consumed with rage. He sees others taking the credit for his discoveries while he pursues a miserable existence in hiding. He returns to Europe, and begins to kill the members of the expedition one by one. He intends to save his wife and her new husband for last, but when he confronts them, he cannot bring himself to kill Diana. He is cornered instead by his own mother, who shat-ters the bottle holding the serum that prevents him from “going critical.” In a last act of compassion, Rukh leaps from the room’s window, and bursts into flames as he falls. The scene fades swiftly from the open window and Rukh’s smoky contrail to the closing credits. While it eventually devolves into a more predictable revenge tragedy, The Invisible Ray contains a number of cutting-edge subjects for a 1936 B–movie. I’m open to correction, but I’m rea-sonably convinced it was the first Hollywood movie to portray both the poisonous and potentially beneficial effects of radio-activity. (Alexander Korda’s film of H.G. Wells’ Things to Come was released the same year, but was an entirely British produc-tion.) “Atomic Engines” were becoming the state-of-the-art in Space Opera, but practical applications of atomic energy were still years away. Radium was still being used in the creation of luminous watches and other instruments, although the famous “Radium Girls” law suit of the 1920s had highlighted its dangers

Chunga Roca 41iron rings. The rooms had names like Long Splice and Mainbrace and Slip Knot.

and brought about a revolution in work place safety regulation in America. Radium’s luminous proper-ties were thus engraved in the public consciousness as the hallmark of radioactivity, and atomic monsters and their victims have glowed in the dark ever since. What is perhaps even more exciting is the story’s initial premise that the distant reflection of the energies of Radium X can illustrate events which took place thousands, if not millions of years ago. The true distances between the stars were becom-ing more commonly understood at the time, and Americans had briefly gone mad for astronomy after their countryman Clyde W. Tombaugh confirmed the existence of Pluto in 1930. The first observation of the spectral shift of distant galaxies was also made by an American, the astronomer Vesto M. Slipher, in 1912. The observation that the other galaxies were receding away from the Earth at dizzying speeds was the fundamental discovery underlying contemporary theories of the origin of the universe. Monsignor Georges Lemaître, a Belgian physicist and astronomer at the Catholic University of Leuven first elucidat-ed what we call the Big Bang Theory in 1927, two years before Edwin Hubble’s more famous paper on the subject. In 1936, most astronomers still preferred the Steady State Theory espoused by Einstein and many others in the field. The idea that great distances in space also represented a great distance in time was slowly gaining understanding, and John Colton’s screenplay subtly points the way to the theory of the expanding universe, although it employs an imaginary superluminal agency in the emissions of Radium X. This was the last collaboration between Karloff and Lugosi in the first wave of horror pictures at Universal Studios. A few months later, Carl Laemmle Jr. had to sell his interest in the studio after a series of increasingly unprofitable pictures, and a temporary British ban on American horror movies forced the new executives to torpedo anything demonstrating “weird” tendencies. Universal only returned to the genre after a theater owner screened a double feature revival of Dracula and Fran-kenstein in early 1939 and reported packed houses. The film that announced the second wave was the delicious Son of Fran-kenstein, which brought Karloff and Lugosi back together with

Basil Rathbone and Lionel Atwill. Rathbone was a windfall acquired when 20th Century Fox declined to continue the Sherlock Homes franchise after The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, both released in 1939. Universal couldn’t match the budgets that Fox brought to the property, but Rathbone was a consistent box-office performer. Although the studio chose to bring the Consulting Detective into the present day to fight Nazis and other contemporary threats, Universal horror pictures of the 1940s were still enhanced by the investment which the studio had made in sets suitable for the Holmes franchise. Pov-erty row was much swankier in the days of Abbott and Costello than it had been under the Laemmles.

Kickstarting the Galaxy

Another pleasant viewing event of spring, 2015, was the release of the fourth episode of Star Trek Continues, a

fan produced web series which strives to extend the narrative which ended with the third season of Star Trek in 1969. In the new story, “The White Iris,” Captain James Kirk confronts his feelings of guilt toward the many women whom he has loved and lost — particularly those who died as a result of their rela-tionship with him. The production is characterized by perfect recreations of the original Studio 9 sets on the 1960s Desilu lot, but the resemblance continues through the scripting, editing,

Stills from The Invisible Ray (1936); Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff (right)

42 Chunga Roca “He’s a sorcerer, that one. He reads

lighting, costumes, sound and music cues. I really appreciate the remastered versions of the original shows that currently air in the hour before Svengoolie’s show. Without them, I don’t think I would appreciate how faithful Star Trek Continues is to the source, because my childhood memories of them are still occlud-ed by a decade of UHF snow. Star Trek Continues is produced by web entrepreneur Steven Dengler and Vic Mignogna, a prolific vocal actor who has writ-ten and directed episodes, as well as portraying Captain Kirk across the series. The production is partially funded by Kickstart-er campaigns, and from contributors like Dengler, who are will-ing to pay for the pleasure of watching a new Trek story. The fact that the series is shown completely free on the web apparently

leaves Viacom/Paramount/CBS no legal grounds to suppress it, although CBS briefly bullied YouTube into delet-ing it in late May, an action that was soon reversed and characterized as a

“mistake.” Viacom pursued copyright litigation against many webmasters in the 1990s, but also lost some of those judgments, and was eventually forced to adopt a less restrictive definition of “fair use” of its properties. Star Trek Continues might have disturbed lawyers at CBS because it represents a significant advance in the quality of fan-made Trek. Most of the people involved in the actual creation of the show, including the actors, are compensated at union scale rates; only the people paying for the produc-tion are nominally “fans,” in that they

receive no compensation for their contribution, other than their name in the credits. The existence of this sort of competition was almost surely one reason why J. J. Abrams chose to establish a new continu-ity in his 2009 Star Trek feature film. The old canon is like a bed-pillow room with a maze of twisty passages all alike to the uninitiated viewer, none of whom would care that there was no Genesis Device in Khan’s torpedo. And the new non-profit-but-

still-professional productions have attracted a roster of actors from previous Trek and other genre series, like Michael Dorn and Marina Sirtis, who both provide computer voices in Star Trek Continues. Other episodes have featured Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica), Erin Gray (Buck Rogers), Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk ) and Colin Baker (the sixth Doctor Who, 1984–86). Other cast members include Grant Imahara (famed as a robot builder and cast member of Mythbusters) as Mr. Sulu, and James Doohan’s son Chris as Mr. Scott. Other stories have featured the rights of an Orion slave (“Lolani”) in the hands of the Tellarites, the results of the spark of revolt which Kirk planted in the “Mirror Universe” (“Fairest of them All”), and the fate of the god Apollo, portrayed by Mike Forrest, reprising his role from 1967’s “Who Mourns for Adonais” in “The Pilgrim of Eternity.” (It must be a gas to work with a guy whose credits include an appearance on Alcoa Theater.) One episode has been released in each of the last four years, and since the production company has just finished completing their own permanent studio facility in south Georgia (much more con-venient than South Georgia), it seems likely more are coming.

Continuity Commandos

I am very late to the party as regards to fan-produced Trek shows. Readers have been extolling them in letters to this fan-

zine for over a decade, ever since the first episode of Star Trek: The New Voyages appeared in 2003. Now re-titled Star Trek: Phase II , its producers James Cawley and Jack Marshall have completed nine episodes through December of 2014. Three more are currently in production, including “The Protracted Man,” a story of Kirk’s cadet days written by David Gerrold. The New Voyages is the only real rival to Star Trek Continues as the most convincing fan-produced series, and has featured series actors including Walter Koenig, George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney. (Update: Since writing the paragraphs above, I had the oppor-tunity to watch a Sasquan screening of “Mind-Sifter,” based on the story of the same name written by Shirley Majweski and published in the Star Trek: The New Voyages anthology edited by Sandra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath in 1976. I thought it was great fun! Populated by familiar characters like the Klingon Captain Koloth and the Guardian of Forever, the story strands

A melancholy aside to say goodbye to Leonard Nimoy, who passed away on February 27th of 2015, aged 83. His character Spock was inspirational to me when I was a child, but Leonard Nimoy was even more impressive to me as an adult. We will miss him.

— APH

“Mind-Sifter,” Star Trek: Phase II

Chunga Roca 43the thoughts in my head.”

Kirk, his memory compromised, in the early 1960s. His claims of space captaincy lead to incarceration in the State Psychiatric Hospital. There he meets a doctor that reminds us of the social activist Edith Keeler, from “City on the Edge of Forever,” who seems to have had as much effect on Kirk as she did the course of human history. Spock and McCoy are able to rescue Kirk from the past, explaining to the Doctor that she must remain in her “native time,” so that she may effect advances for her gender. None of the actors resemble the originators of their roles very closely, but “Mind-Sifter” still looked and sounded like an epi-sode of the original series. Well worth spending an hour on!) After that, one must admit that the quality varies wildly. Some series feature some good writing, but their amateur casts find it difficult to do the material justice. Others are badly writ-ten, too. Several have tried to advance the “Roddenberry Conti-nuity” beyond its official terminus in Star Trek: Nemesis, includ-ing Star Trek: Dark Armada and Star Trek: Intrepid, the only version of the franchise shot entirely in Scotland. Star Trek: Hid-den Frontier is set in the years following the end of the Domin-ion War, and ran for more than fifty episodes, and has inspired six spinoffs, the audio dramas Star Trek: Grissom, Henglaar, M.D. and Diplomatic Relations, and the video series Star Trek: Odyssey, The Helena Chronicles and Federation One. Star Trek: Exeter and Star Trek: Farragut both follow the careers of two Constitution–class sisters of the Enterprise, at roughly the same era as the original series. Several other fan productions have been framed as feature films or mini-series. One of the first was Star Trek: Encarta, a four-film series created between 2000 and 2004. Set in the years after Star Trek: Voyager, it features effects work that could be created on a personal computer about 15 years ago. I had much higher expectations of Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, directed Tim Russ, who played the Vulcan Tuvok on Voyager. This was portrayed as a 40th anniversary gift to Star Trek fans, set in the later days of the 23rd Century and starred Nichelle Nicholas, Walter Koenig, and a cross-section of actors from most “official” iterations of the series, including Russ, Ethan Phillips, J.G. Hertz-ler, Chase Masterson, Gary Graham, Cirroc Lofton, Garret Wang and Grace Lee Whitney. There are a number of twists in ST: OGAM that ought to please the nerdiest Trekker; at the story’s end, Captain Uhura gets married to the Vulcan Stonn, portrayed

as he was in 1967 by multi-lingual actor Lawrence Montaigne. If you’re curious as to how Stonn, previously seen as Spock’s rival for the affections of his arranged bride in the episode “Amok Time,” is even available to romance Uhura, you’ll have to watch the picture. And be patient while doing so. The performers are all work-ing very hard, and the script has points in it that seem quite germane to the continuity, such as, who exactly decides when and how the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one? The basic premise concerns an effort to restore the “timeline” that we and the characters are familiar with, and that’s pretty ironic in the light of Abrams’ continuity-busting story of just a few years later. The problems generally have to do with pacing. Some of it is the long takes that Russ prefers, in which several characters have to deliver difficult lines, and there is inevitably a rather stagey gap between them. These pauses are edited out and often intercut with reaction shots in productions that can afford a multi-camera setup, but it looks like many scenes in ST: OGAM were shot with a single camera. Watching through its nearly ninety-minute running time really made me appreciate the brisk delivery of Star Trek Continues. Many of the same people are involved in Star Trek: Ren-egades, so far just a pilot for a series set in the years after the Voyager ’s return to the Alpha Quadrant. There have been three different fund-raising campaigns in support of the show, and there were once plans to attempt to sell the finished product to CBS. The 88–minute pilot episode is finished, and can be viewed at startrekrenegades.com. The alien make-up effects really need work, and the Icarus may be the cheapest and dirtiest spaceship in the history of the galaxy, but I would still watch more.

Soon we’ll be Shipbuilding

Two other pending projects seem particularly worth noting, if only to observe the tendency of contemporary fan produc-

ers to tell war stories in the Star Trek universe, something which Gene Roddenberry always preferred to avoid if possible. There have been a number of fan shows that seem to take their setting and storyline from one or more Star Trek ship combat simula-tions, and there is even a name for the subgenre of stories told by lifting effects from video games: “Mechanime.” But two com-

Star Trek: Of Gods and Men

44 Chunga Roca “Of course, they could have done the entire movie

pletely original films about the Federation’s early conflicts with its Imperial neighbors are currently underway. The first is Star Trek: Horizon, a story of the nascent Federa-tion’s war with the Romulan Empire. Uniforms, tech and ship designs all mark Horizon as a very close contemporary of Star Trek: Enterprise. The project is the brainchild of writer/director Tommy Kraft, and looks quite polished, although most of the cast appear to be amateurs or semi-professionals; Ryan Webber, the creator of Star Trek: Encarta, has a small role. As with many of these projects where one person wears a half-dozen hats, post production work has been time-consuming, but the movie is supposed to be released in the winter of 2015–2016. The second project has attracted significantly more attention, both because of its large cast of professional actors, and its clev-er 20–minute trailer, masquerading as the third part of a docu-mentary on “The Four Years War” between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. “Prelude to Axanar” focuses on the arms race between the two belligerents, which resulted in the familiar Klingon D7 Battlecruiser, and the Constitution class command cruiser, on which the original series was set. Another treat is the presence of Captain Garth of Izar, one of the Federation’s great-est military heroes. Portrayed by Steve Ihnat in the 1969 episode

“Whom Gods Destroy,” Garth was one of the more intriguing antagonists faced by Kirk and Spock. Jim Kirk listed the “Palm Leaf of the Axanar Peace Mission” among his decorations, and had regarded Garth as an idol before the latter’s injury and descent into insanity. It’s safe to say that some of us have been curious about his life and career for 46 years. So apparently is Alec Peters, a writer, actor and the official Star Trek properties archivist for CBS. Peters first played Cap-tain Garth in the Star Trek: Phase II episode “Going Boldly” in 2012, and served as a line producer for later episodes of that

series. This apparently awakened an interest in developing his own prequel to the original 1960s version of the show, one which would tell the story of Garth of Izar’s greatest triumph. But unlike most fan productions, which rely on amateur performers with one or two professional cameos, Prelude to Axanar stars an impressive cast of professionals with previous Trek or other genre experience: Gary Graham, Richard Hatch, J.G. Hertzler, Tony Todd and Kate Vernon joined Peters in the “UFP Historical Society” short, and Garret Wang is to join the cast of the feature film, as the captain of the first D7 battlecruiser. Prelude to Axanar has been quite ubiquitous on YouTube and other Web venues for the past year, and the production team has now raised very close to a million dollars through public subscription and private grants. They too have purchased a former warehouse and are building a dedicated soundstage, where shooting is expected to begin in October of 2015. (One hopes they will spend some of the money improving the make-up Richard Hatch wore as “Kharg the Undying;” in Prelude to Axanar he seems to be more latex than man.) Axanar ’s effects are the most impressive I’ve seen in any amateur production, and the script was pure ham in the best sense: Tony Todd’s speech as the new admiral of the fleet is stirring, and all the cast have some excellent lines. The fact that Hertzler is cast as a human captain instead of his typical Klingon rogue is also fun. (Another Update, January 2016: At the very end of 2015, Axanar Productions was named in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by CBS and Paramount. CBS and Viacom had announced in November that they would be developing their own “web-only” Star Trek series for release in 2017, and trailers for the new “official” big screen film, Star Trek: Beyond began to appear soon after the 1st of January. 2016 is the 50th anniversary of the franchise, and it seems likely that someone at Paramount

Paramount v Prelude to Anaxar

Chunga Roca 45inside the studio, but movie people like to travel.”

decided that they would rather not share the spotlight with a fan production that both looks and feels more “canonical” than the reboot movies. Axanar had received a new director in late 2015; Robert Meyer Burnett has directed TV episodes and worked in production on films including Agent Cody Banks, and was the creator of the well-known fan film Free Enterprise. Production and fund raising appear to be continuing in spite of the law-suit, which asks for $150,000 for every instance of infringement. Spock’s pointed ears are given as one example of a specific infringement, but whether each ear warrants $150,000 or if the damages are attached to the pair is not yet clear. David Gerrold has leant his voice to Axanar ’s cause, and fan sentiment predict-ably runs largely in their favor. No one is really talking boycott or schism just yet, but knowing fandom, some escalation seems inevitable.) I’m only naming some of the better-known players here; in particular, there are many audio series set in the Trek universe, some of them with dozens of episodes released. The byzantine relationships between different producers, writers and creators within the fan community are just as complex as those behind the broadcast versions of the franchise, and delays and disap-pointments are just as common. Star Trek: Phase II announced their intention to film a story that Norman Spinrad had sold to the original show prior to its cancellation in 1969, but CBS asserted their rights to the material, and ST: P2 had to drop the idea. Their newest episode, “The Holiest Thing,” in which Kirk meets his great love Dr. Carol Marcus (played by occasional Glee actress Jacy King) has been mired in a mysterious post-production hell for nearly two years. But they have three more episodes in some stage of production, so I don’t expect them to give up on such a clear labor of love. This situation has been evolving steadily since fans first

began writing their own Star Trek stories nearly fifty years ago; that they would eventually shoot their own shows is a blindingly obvious development. Star Trek has a unique place in the history and mythology of fandom; at times, its passionate sustenance has been a point of demarcation between hipsters and nerds even within the subculture. Through all of it, the characters and their universe have remained fascinating to me, and understand-ing what a patchwork of writers and editors participated in its creation has convinced me that they have no more right to its all-sacred Continuity than the fans do. Kirk and Spock have now become eternal champions, like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan of the Apes and Freddy the Pig. Stories will continue to be written about them, even after the last fan who saw them broadcast on NBC in the 1960s is long dead.

46 Chunga Roca

is a bit of a “mixed bag,” but an enjoyable one for all that. Thanks for sending it along. I like to think that in Randy’s article on the issue’s original conceptualization and invitation to artists to participate, I was that “one of our favor-ite artists declining the invitation and telling us that the framework was over engineered and too restricting.” If I wasn’t, then I must have been second or third in line to deliver the message. I still stand by that view, but have to say that I was intrigued by how the participating artists grappled with the challenge. Randy does manage to enlight-en us a bit more on WTF the idea was all about, but I still feel like I am reading some fanfic based on a TV show that I never watched. Here’s the problem: I was never much of a Zappa fan. I do remember that blissful moment when my pals and I, on a record-buying trip to E.J. Korvettes, came upon the Mothers’ first album and snapped it up and took it home to ingest it. Wow! Weird stuff. We fancied ourselves freaks, so here was a double LP at right angles to just about anything else com-ing out of the music industry. But in time I lost my patience with Frank. I tried. I really did. When 200 Motels came out, we dropped acid and went to see it. Zzzz. A self-indulgent piece of garbage? Just maybe. In the end, I think I owned about four Zappa and/or Mothers albums, but I rarely listened to them. I did have friends who were totally into Zappa and lovingly followed his conceits from LP to LP to LP, but I was not on that train. So . . . this whole thing is an upward battle for me. I must have listened to Chunga’s Revenge, but I have no memory of it, nor of its centerfold, nor of any words or music associated with it. So, I would have been totally faking it to take on the proposed framework and so I didn’t. Oh well. Now, what of those who rose to the challenge? Ulrika’s covers were a fun riff on the theme and had the added charm of reminding me that, yes, Chunga is a fanzine. Put Patrick McGoohan on the cover, along with those Prisoner signposts and there is no denying it. Half the time, Chunga comes off as a “little magazine”, but this ish was fannish all the way. And I did appreciate Ulrika’s explica-

TheKaren Schaffer

Chunga Sevagram — What a brilliant idea and brilliant execution! All of the rendi-tions warrant repeated readings. I’m sure I’m missing many subtle (or not so subtle)

jokes, but I love that Philip Kafka Van Vogt’s eyes change in Brad Foster’s version after the singular-ity implosion. Also the Cosmo/Versy dogfight, and the closet conversation, and, and, and . . . . Too many great bits to mention them all. Congratulations to you and the artists. This issue is going down in fannish history as one of the great ones. And those who missed out on the opportunity will be sorry — too bad for them.

Randy sez: Your enthusiasm is very much appreciated, but as for those who missed the opportunity being sorry, here’s somebody who missed the opportunity right here:

Jay Kinney

Well, gents, Chunga 23 was received and consumed in record time, which must mean it is a success, at least if your measure of success is inducing recipi-ents to read it without delay. By other measures, it

The general structure of the chapter where the guy in disguise gets discovered had

Karen Schaffer kschaffer@hidden- knowledge.com

Jay Kinney [email protected]

Chunga Roca 47

tion of the covers’ genesis. Now I get the McGoohan and Beardsley components. As for the inside contributions, some worked bet-ter than others, in my view, but I read and enjoyed them all. My favorite? Probably Mr. Steffan’s, as he can do no wrong (™). But each had its virtues and served to accentuate each artist’s particular strengths (and weaknesses). I did feel that the scan-ning resolution was a bit dodgy on a couple of them, but I’m almost certain that that wasn’t carl’s fault. Speaking of carl, nice layout design as always. Also, a shout out to Teddy Harvia for his return to fan art and obviously putting his heart into his two pages. Very nice spotting of blacks and whites. A tad wordy, perhaps, but comics are a wedding of art and words, so his strip was well within the perimeters. Andy’s profile of Cal Schenkel was very well done (though I did wonder from where he amassed all his data. No bibliography, dude!). Too bad that I never really thought much of Schenkel’s work. His art always reminded me of that produced by guys who only lasted one or two semesters in art school before dropping out from smoking too much dope, which apparently fits Schenkel’s biographical par-ticulars. Zappa obviously had the clout to maintain Schenkel as his house artist and I don’t fault that. He at least had the virtue of being exceedingly peculiar, which raises him above 80% of commer-cial art out there. Timebinding? You pulled it off, lads. Kudos.

Randy sez: Yep, you were the dissenting art-ist I quoted in my introduction to the comic strip material. Thanks for giving the finished product such a fair and generous reading. As for 200 Motels, I saw the movie a couple of times in the late ’70s or thereabouts and was none too impressed with it myself. The album, however, is one of my favorite works by Zappa. Love all the Varèse-inspired musical interludes. And I had to laugh about your “little magazine” snipe, because I imagine our covers this issue confirm your worst (or least fannish) impres-sion of us!

Andy sez: Zappa had affectations which made him attractive to a certain Freak-friendly, mon-

ster culture Big Daddy Roth-influenced demo-graphic, and I think he was completely happy if people related to his work on that level. He genuinely loved cheap space opera with card-board sets and cheap rubber tentacles. He nev-er left that kind of vaguely scatological humor (yellow snow, titties and beer) completely behind. But over time, the music became more and more complex, increasingly like the avant garde compositions that had inspired him as a kid. And there were works with defiantly juve-nile lyrics, but organized into operatic stories, like Joe’s Garage and Thing-Fish, and featur-ing licks that only the likes of “stunt guitarist” Steve Vai could actually play. Some of his piec-es, like “Peaches en Regalia,” “Son of Mr. Green Genes,” ”Little Umbrellas,” and “Watermelon in Easter Hay,” are simply beautiful, and require no indulgence or countercultural context. It’s so easy to browse through the assembled cata-log of the world’s musicians now, I just encour-age anyone who was turned off by Frank’s antics to listen one of the songs mentioned above and see if it makes you smile.

Ray Nelson

Robert Lichtman’s LOC gives a pretty accurate picture of the fan involvement in the University of California Press episode, but I would like to at least tweak it a bit. Back then the Wobblies had been in the process of a long slow death, and by then they had shrunk to basical-ly an alternate name for Bay Area Fandom, more or less equivalent to The Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns and Little Men’s Chowder, March-ing and Science Fiction Society. They handed over to us their ancient flat bed printing press, together with an imposing set of hand set type and a few cuts

iron pig

been in my head since last winter, but I didn’t find out he was an octopus until I wrote it.

Ray Nelson [email protected]

48 Chunga Roca

of cartoons by me, and hired some of us to serve as the House Band at Red’s Spaghetti House, their one remaining union shop. We performed Saturday evenings under the name Vince Hickey’s All Stars, with me on guitar and banjo, and Vince playing drums which, by the way, he borrowed from me and never returned. Our playbook consisted exclusively of ancient Dixieland standards, and though we were not legal-ly entitled to sing, just play, I sang The Saint James Infirmary Blues at least once whenever we played. I had worked out a really black arrangement earlier as a street singer back in Paris. I sounded amazing-ly authentic, even without burnt cork makeup. When I stopped working as a warehouseman at the press warehouse in Richmond, it was not by being fired, but by moving up to a better position in the press pecking order. Working under August Fruge in the front office, I became the press com-puter programmer, programming the IBM 1401 to take over the functions formerly performed by a human accountant. I managed to swing a deal that would allow me to test my programs after everyone else had gone home. There I was, all by myself with a computer big enough to take up an entire second floor of a building the size of a city block. You can bet I taught that computer to balance those books as they had never been balanced before, and just for ducks I also got it to play a somewhat mechani-cal version of The Saint James Infirmary Blues.

Randy sez: Vince Hickey’s All-Stars sounds like a band Art Widner would’ve loved, since he loved old timey jazz and didn’t care much for bebop or more modern stuff.

Andy sez: I think fandom’s historical connec-tion to political movements is one of the things which is now generally unknown to contem-porary fandom. But my early fan contacts were with part-time employees of The People’s Bookstore, and a dozen cooperatives, and fandom shared the revolutionary aesthetic of the moment. It was something of a shock to discover that many fans had learned to love the bomb and were waiting longingly for Big Brother to arise.

Steve Bieler

Chunga is the best-designed, most sophisticated fanzine I have ever seen. It delights me even before I start reading. Thank you for bringing Lilian Edwards and her ova to my attention. I have replied to her under separate cover. She shouldn’t bother you again. I was so sorry to learn of Stu’s passing. If life

is a voyage, Stu sailed in good company, and left much joy in his wake. Moby-Dick always takes a hyphen. Star Trek Into Darkness never takes interior punctuation. I’m not saying these forms are morally right. I’m just saying they are. Just sayin!

Jason Burnett

Just now sitting down to write a LOC on Chunga #23. First off — WOW! What an impressive-looking ish! It’s amazing what a variety of images you were able to inspire with your prompt. Andy’s section of Tanglewood provided me with proof of how small our world is: One of my Live-Journal friends had a piece of his art displayed in the steampunk exhibit at the Royal Observatory

— and he lives in Seattle! (Also proof of how weird our world is: I had to go online to look up his “real name” because I could only remember his LJ name. It’s Matthew Dockrey.) Randy’s section of Tanglewood got me to think-ing about the nature of Worldcons and all the things that go on behind the scenes. It’s really kind of amazing to me that Worldcons happen at all. It’s one thing to have a local con that’s grown into a large event, because the growth tends to happen a little bit at a time. I like to imagine the would-be Worldcon-runner starting out with a meeting with their contact at the hotel. “Hi Bob. How’s it going? You know that event we hold at your hotel every year that uses all the function space and fills the hotel with odd people, some of them in costume, who spend practically nothing at the restaurant but more than make up for it at the bar? We’re hoping to host another event like that in the fall, about 3 years from now, but about an order of magnitude larger. Bob? Bob? Hey, Louise! Bob’s fainted!”

Brad Foster

So pleased to see this “super-special” issue come together. I love the idea of artist jams, and the myr-iad ways they can be done. As a creator it moves me out of my comfort zone, to see what I can do under new rules/guides/restrictions. As a reader, I love seeing how different artists all “solve” the same problem, with no two ever alike. It’s great that you got eight artists involved with this in the end. As Randy notes, it would have been great to have had more folks out of the initial list of names you sent this out to. But, with 30 requests sent out, that’s like, what 27% return? That’s not really all that bad if you think about it. I mean, we all know that trying to organize artists is like try-ing to herd cats. (By the way, isn’t it amazing how many things in life are said to be “like trying to

We ask you to stop holding back your right hand, and to

Steve Bieler 7667 SE 21st Ave Portland, OR 97202

Jason Burnett [email protected]

Brad Foster PO Box 165246 Irving, TX 75016 [email protected]

Chunga Roca 49

herd cats”? I wonder, has anyone ever actually tried it? Herding cats, I mean. Maybe it’s not as bad as we have just come to assume it is. Somebody con-tact the Mythbusters!) I was totally unaware of the work of Cal Schen-kel, though I now know I have seen much of it over time. Thanks for that article bringing more atten-tion to him. And speaking of artists and attention, I do hope you will be able to devote a good amount of space in an upcoming issue to our buddy Stu. A huge tal-ent, gone too soon.

Andy sez: Zappa and Schenkel shared an affec-tion for robots and other anthropomorphic appliances (and what is an intelligent vacuum cleaner but a robot that really sucks?), and they make both visual and lyrical appearanc-es in the Zappa canon (“Plookin’ too hard on meeeeee!”). This alone ought to be enough to inspire you to further explorations.

Murray Moore

Patrick McGoohan as the Prisoner and the bust statue with I expect camera eyes, on the front cover, I comprehend. Ulrika’s complementary bacover of Sevagram signpost and a pre–Dyson, malfunc-tioning, tank-shaped vacuum cleaner spewing its contents however . . . is this what AE van Vogt meant by “Here is the race that shall rule the sevagram?” Perhaps van Vogt fan Randy can explain? Maybe the vacuum cleaner is the device the kidnapper Villagers used to release the gas that knocked out Number Seven in his apartment in the beginning of the first episode? A container to which no one would give a second glance, outside of the Village? Is this use of a vacuum cleaner the origin of the term cleaners in espionage? Do I win a prize? Ah. Having read on page 3 the excerpt from Chunga 1’s editorial, the source of the covers is explained. But, do I win a prize? Tracy Benton explains how her borrowing books from her library is the methadone to her former $40 a month books-from-Amazon buying hab-it. Myself, I brought home today from our public library a copy of Peter Carey’s Amnesia. But Feb. 13, shopping for a Valentine’s Day card, I also bought remaindered copies of a history of the Battle of the Somme plus SF Masterwork editions of Half Past Human and The Godwhale by TJ Bass. And yester-day I bought a copy of the March issue of Asimov’s. I have decided on an experiment to buy and read the 2015 issues of Asimov’s and of Fantasy & Sci-ence Fiction. When I think I am interested in a title, if the library has a copy, I add it to the list of

the books that I never get around to actually, you know, borrowing. However I do borrow sufficiently regularly that I am reading fewer of the books that I buy. I am considering for my obituary the found quote, bottom of pages 32–33, “Moore hedgehog than man, he cherished predictable rhymes and a ridiculous wooden hatte but nonetheless wrote sum thinges.” And yesterday evening I did commit my very occasional on-line book buying: The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories both volumes, Le Guin, and Lovers and Fighters, Starships and Dragons by Tom Purdom.

Andy sez: So what was that thing they used to exhaust the knock-out gas into Patrick McGoo-han’s flat in the opening of The Prisoner? That program was full of quizzical, and sometimes semi-magical tech organized from more pro-saic materials, an approach that was dictated by its modest budget. An intelligent and poten-tially malevolent vacuum cleaner would have fit right in. Or at least a paranoid suspicion that a simple vacuum cleaner was both intelligent and malevolent, which accomplishes the same thing from the storyteller’s viewpoint.

Lloyd Penney

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Prisoner–ori-ented piece of artwork in a fanzine, let alone one for the cover. Well done, Ulrika . . . I’ve never been a big Prisoner fan, but still . . . Have there ever been any Prisoner fanzines, even with fanfic? And then, all the spectacular artwork in the middle. Sentient suckers and sevagrams for all. Could we go back in time to much younger tech, and have someone send me a sevagram? I like the similarity between sevagram and Seagram’s; well done, Schirm! I hope there will be more artistic

take it from the folds of your garment and overcome them.

Murray Moore murrayamoore@ gmail.com

Lloyd Penney 1706-24 Eva Rd. Etobicoke, ON CANADA M9C 2B2

50 Chunga Roca This awesome awakening, the shifting and sifting and the exposing of this rabid bite

marathons like this one in future issues. Like Ulrika, Yvonne and I have gotten ourselves into local steampunk fandom and steampunk cos-tuming, and I suppose I could send along a picture of myself in full costume to blow whatever fanzine fan street cred I might have left.

Mark Plummer

I was sitting on the fanthology-reading sofa the other day when . . . No, no, I think I need to immediately backtrack, as I don’t want to give the impression that our home is littered with highly specialised fanning-furniture: the FAPA-perusing arm chair, the British newszines 1940–1979 chaise longue and so forth. Really, it’s simply that my study has a sofa bed in it, a space that suffers from being a flatish surface and thus something on which piles of things are put and as such it’s often not much use for anything else. However from time to time it achieves a modi-cum of order, when it’s not too buried in recently received fanzines, stray bits of correspondence, and back issues of Military Modelling magazine. The shelf with the fanthologies, trip reports and other special collections is just behind it (all my own work, I would add, the shelf that is; the closest thing I ever got to carpentry) and so I slump on the sofa bed, allowing it to fulfil at least one of the pur-poses inherent in its name, and browse a fantholo-gy or two, in search of fannish inspiration from my forebears. And so that’s what I was doing the other day when my hand fell on Wassamatta U, ‘The Fannish Education of Randy Byers’. And surely you don’t need me to remind you that that collection includes ‘Corflu Gossip’ from Floss! #2 (May 2002), in which you (Randy) note that ‘Jae . . . suggested to Victor that paper fanzines might be evolving into vehicles for art’. You also mentioned, where that ellipsis

appears, that she’d got up to study my accent, a detail I confess I’d forgotten. I wonder how she got on? Who knows, maybe there was some kind of qualification at the end of it. But back to that quote from Jae, this is presum-ably the incident referenced in the Chunga #1 edi-torial, which in turn inspired Chunga #23. Contex-tual continuity at work there, I’m sure. I feel a little guilty writing about the latest issue, because clearly the artwork is the main event — and it’s all good stuff — but I find myself with little to say about it, and even saying that is a bit of fannish cliche. We can all find plenty to say about the writers but words defeat us when it comes to artwork. Most of us can’t even muster a drawing of comment. So instead this is mostly about Andy’s Cal Schenkel piece, which either taught me a lot about Schenkel or reminded me of a lot that I’d once known and forgotten. You’ll have to forgive a bit of Zappa pedantry here, but Jeff Simmons didn’t replace Wilfred Bram-bell in 200 Motels. Or rather he did, but he also quit before filming and so he was in turn replaced by Martin Lickert who played the part of Jeff in the film. Brambell was a peculiar piece of casting in the first place. To a British reader he’s less likely to be known for playing John McCartney, Paul’s grand-father, in A Hard Day’s Night, and if he’s remem-bered for anything at all it’ll be as the eponymous Steptoe of Steptoe and Son. God knows what thought processes led FZ to conclude he’d be the right person to play the bassist in the band but it seems he quickly quit the movie anyway, and was replaced by Simmons who also quit the film and then the band. As I understand it, an exasperated Zappa told the assembled company that the next person to walk into the room would have the part. That was Lickert, Ringo Starr’s chauffeur, returning from buying some cigarettes (or, according to some accounts, after retrieving a box of tissue from the car) for his boss. This has a couple of personal resonances. In one of the less obvious career progressions, Lickert subsequently became a criminal barrister in which capacity he did some work for my employers. I would also note that the way in which he secured his 15 minutes of cinematic fame has certain simi-larities with my own recruitment into one of your (Andy’s) plays at the Sunnyvale Corflu in 2011. I’d not usually count myself much of a fan of Schenkel’s work. I think that’s mostly because I tend to associate him with albums like Just Another Band from LA and Cruising with Ruben

Mark Plummer mark.fishlifter@ googlemail.com

Chunga Roca 51for them to hang on to any kind of relevancy and to hang on to their gravy train.

& the Jets, and that simple, naive, bold colour work doesn’t really do a great deal for me. I’d forgotten that he was also behind those collage covers on Uncle Meat and Burnt Weeny Sandwich which I do like, although I suspect I would like them more were it not for the fact that Zappa is to me person-ally a CD artist. This may simply be generational but Zappa’s music eluded me until the early eighties, when some pal got a copy of Joe’s Garage Act 1. A bit later I remember hearing a tape of Sheik Yerbouti in a crowded bedsit, and specifically catching that line in ‘Flakes’, ‘ . . . And the toilet blew up later on the next day’ and having to resist the temptation to dive across the room to rewind the tape and find out why. But I didn’t really start buying Zappa until CDs were the thing, and I’m sure Schenkel’s art-work — most album cover artwork, I imagine — suf-fers from being reduced to less than a quarter of its original size. But you did get me to take down my copy of The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, Ben Wat-son’s epic analysis of FZ’s oeuvre, and read the sec-tions about Schenkel therein and a few other bits and pieces. And then . . . this odd coincidence. I saw this men-tion in Ansible of a memorial for Paul ‘Gamma’ Gamble, ‘famous book distributor, literary agent of Barrington J Bayley . . . Was seen sober once in 1985’ (Dave Langford, in Guide to UK Fandom, ed. Bridget Hardcastle [Bradshaw], 1995 — and, in sec-ondary coincidence, filed within about two feet of Wassamatta U in the Shirley Road fan household). Others could probably give you more and better stories about the bloke, so I’ll confine myself to not-ing that amongst many, many things, Gamma (who died in 2010) was an extreme devotee of Mr Zappa. And I’d just been reading about Cal Schenkel and flicking through The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play and I read that there’s this memorial for Gam-ma nearly five years on, and one of the Facebook organisers is Out To Lunch, a pseudonym of Ben Watson. Well, as they say, well.

Andy sez: I must agree that album cover art immediately began a rapid decline when com-pact discs became the standard form of music storage. I feel confident that all those vinyl albums that one can’t sell at any price will one day be rather more prized for the graphic art in which they are wrapped, then for the sonic content of the record. That remains relatively mute without the proper turntable, wheras one

only need working eye to appreciate the cover art. The connection between yourself, Gamma and Zappa is delightful and probably inevitable. Zappa’s career was so long and bounced so fre-quently off the speculative genre, I think most fans are only two or three steps away from contact with Frank.

John Purcell

As for the idea of scanning all those issues of Swed-ish Science Fiction Review, as Robert Lichtman suggests, I have bad news: Ole Olaffsson has closed up the Big 12 Bar and moved on. He changed his name — added another ‘s’, figuring that would work just fine around here — and went to who knows where. When I stopped by a couple weeks ago I noticed that yet another Mexican restaurant was occupying the Big 12 Bar’s space, called Olé Molé Guacamole Bistro and Cantina Royale. I kept driv-ing, saddened by the loss of a trusted confidant and friend. I was also saddened by the length of the sign: it continued over the entrances of the next two establishments, crowding out their signs. I sus-pect an ugly lawsuit is forthcoming. But this means that getting those old issues scanned and posted to efanzines is now a moot point. Which reminds me: was there ever a fanzine titled Moot Point? Just curious. I thoroughly enjoyed both the Frank Zappa arti-cle (I think I still have a 45 rpm of “Who Are the Brain Police?” around here somewhere) and that Gregor Chunga cartoon jam. Great stuff all around by the artists, who cranked out some very funny material. I can honestly say that none of these are better than the others, they are all so good. What a great idea and well executed. Well played, lads.

Andy sez: Sorry to read of the loss of your imaginary friend. And the ignominy seeing a local watering hole replaced by another loca-tion in the Ole Guacamole chain! The version of real Texicantina Smorgasbord that O.G. B. & C. R. serves, ais but a shabby burlesque of the creamed herring and lime frijoles that our grandfathers enjoyed at the original Malmo House of Plano. The Queen Christina chipotle meatballs are addictive, but there can be no excuse for the lutefisk chimichanga.

David Redd

Thanks for the paper Chunga 23, courtesy of the Fishlifter Publishing & Distribution Co. Ltd. Stellar line-up of artists, I see. While appreciat-ing them all my very favourite is actually Ulrika’s

John Purcell [email protected]

David Redd [email protected]

52 Chunga Roca “With such an established reputation in the premium space, we saw an opportunity to extend the brand into the macaroni

back cover. Good enough to frame. Strange that her art has actually bent the brief further than anyone else, but appeals to me the most. Because it’s image as Concept not Story? The Shenkel article was the other highlight for me. (My son was in a short-lived school band called Hot Rats, but their material tended more to Com-mitments covers than to Zappa.) As in most zines, the passing details also catch my eye. Herb Cohen had a great bunch of acts, I notice. A Tim Buck-ley video sometimes reappears here on BBC4; he whines the terrific “Happy Time” (or whatever) in grainy b&w like a signal from another planet. And I sort of respected Don Van Vliet. While I’ve never desired to collect any Zappa album, more into Don-ovan and “Jennifer Juniper” myself, I have owned and indeed re-owned a Beefheart album. So Chunga 23 is about the art and here am I talking about music? Blame Graham Charnock for setting me off by mentioning Bob Dylan last year. Lettercolumn gems include somebody — Robert Lichtman, of course! — reminiscing about his UC Press days and incidentally enlightening me as to what Joe Gibson did next, after his sterling years of locs to Startling and Thrilling Wonder. Nice to know. Lloyd Penney asks himself, does he need to loc every issue? Good grief. Like Steve Jeffrey I have retained the tendency to scribble microscopi-cally, but have not retained the ability or patience to decipher it afterwards. Nice of carl to elucidate the #22 front cover. The other other highlight was from Dan Steffan, both art and words, in the panel “A SEVAGRAM and SEVEN AS USUAL, MY SWEET?”

Randy sez: See D. West’s letter for another opinion on what was going on in the front

cover of #22. Which raises the age old philo-sophical question of whether we can take the artist’s statement of intent as the final word on the matter.

Andy Robson

Thanks for the copy of Chunga 23. It was intrigu-ing how all the artists had managed to create dif-ferent types of vacuum cleaner. D. West’s super-cilious alter ego seems to be putting on a bit of weight these days — perhaps there’s a touch of Dorian Grey’s going on here. Even though it didn’t happen I still think there’s mileage in a double page script of the Prisoner being trapped in the debauched world of Aubrey Beardsley. (Er, maybe it’s best not to dwell too much on the presence of the vacuum cleaner in all this Palladia.) The pieces all work remarkably well as I can see why the concept of opening with a frame of a gypsy mutant vacuum cleaner in bed freaked out some people. I read the full version of Rip Van Winkle when I was about 11 years old and have often wondered why this strange look into the future has never been revived beyond a kiddie cartoon. Written when the trendiest ‘app’ of the day was the horse-drawn rake it’s still quite a mind-bender to think that ‘one day there will be pepper-pots’ was once a dream. There’s doubtless some petty copyright ownership conflict but after so long of nil-pub-lication it should have resolved itself unless the contenders are both shuffling towards 125 yrs old! Not exactly an action-packed take so it won’t be on GameBoy — that’s for sure.

Andy sez: I was also struck by the variety of vacuum cleaner designs used by the art-ists contributing to issue #23. We didn’t really take that into account in choosing the order of the pieces – a very different issue would have resulted if we had published the comics in chronological order of vacuum cleaner designs. The recent successful transplantation of Ichabod Crane, Washington Irving’s other famous protagonist, to the present in the Fox Network’s Sleepy Hollow suggests that a big screen revival of Rip Van Winkle can’t be far away. Product placement of pepper pots alone ought to drive it to the green light stage.

Paul Skelton

Ah, so the next Worldcon is in Spokane, a city upon whose doubtless famous streets I have yet to tread. It almost rhymes with ‘Spain’, but only almost. The reason this occurs to me is that I’ve also never been to Spain (which latter fact finds me situated somewhat adjacent to Hoyt Axton, albeit

Andy Robson 63 Dixon Lane Leeds LS12 4RR Yorkshire United Kingdom

Chunga Roca 53and cheese category to help us reach consumers who no longer shop the shelf-stable macaroni and cheese aisle,”

that he’s dead and I’m not . . . so hopefully not too adjacent). However, unlike Hoyt, I don’t “kind of like the music”. To me Spanish music is like Irish music, best tied in a sack, thrown off a bridge and drowned at birth. However, whilst I’ve never been to Spokane, I have no idea whether or not “I like its music”. So what I guess I’m saying here is “I’ve never been to Spokane but, be that as it may and, all other things considered, not to beat about the bush, I have no feelings either way about the qual-ity of its music . . . always assuming of course that Spokane has music that is unique to itself.” God, but they don’t write songs like that anymore. Thank Christ! Mind you, the foregoing always assumes that Spokane hasn’t clasped Frank Zappa to its bosom as its musical zeitgeist. Because if it had then I know I wouldn’t like the music. You know how it is with music. You hear something and think “Hey, I kind of like that. I must look out for some more stuff by him/her/those guys.” So you buy it and either you get hooked on him/her/them or find the original piece was atypical and don’t buy any more. But if you like the first stuff you heard then you always at least seek out more. But I have never ever bought anything by Frank Zappa, so I must never have heard anything of his that I liked (which, giv-en that I like Hoyt Axton, may not come as a total surprise). The alternative, that I have never ever heard anything by Frank Zappa, has to be considered unlikely in the extreme. Come on, I’m sixty-seven years of age. How could I have gotten through those sixty-seven years without once hearing Frank Zappa? Really, Zappa, a man who, according to Andy Hooper in Chunga 23, appears to have made more albums than there are atoms in the universe, or something like that? Of course I could have just tuned him out after hearing Chuck Partington drone on and on about how wonderful he was, dur-ing all those 1970’s MaD Group meetings. But this is in danger of taking us away from Spokane itself. I’ve always felt that Spokane was more a Science Fiction name than a real name. It sounds like the sort of place that Chanur might have visited on her early trading circuits . . . the Spokane Cluster. No, given the ‘spoke’ element, it would have to be The Spokane Hub. Alternatively, you could see Honor Harrington fighting battles out there, couldn’t you? The Battle of the Spokane Hub has to have more about it than the Battle of Jenkins’ Ear, whichever way you look at it. The Spokane Cluster, or the Spokane Hub . . . I can go with either. What they really call to mind is

a fondly-remembered novel by (I think) Ken Bulmer. I hope it is Ken Bulmer because he was a great guy who used to receive my fanzine and who told me he enjoyed it . . . and there are not many professional authors who’d bend over backwards and lie to a faned to make him feel less inadequate. The other reason I hope the novel in question was by Ken is that it’s the only professional writing of his that I do remember with such particular affection. I’d love to track down a copy and re-read it, even though I know it’s bound to disappoint on some levels. I wonder if any of your readers can identify it for me. I suspect the version I read was an old English ‘Digit’ paperback, which might never have had a US edition. This was after all in the pre-Beatles days, when the US appreciation of ‘English’ was, Public School, probably a fag, almost certainly a spy for Russia . . . so no change there then. But would a US publisher have picked up a minor UK author/novel? Maybe some of your English readers could help? The scenario was basically humans (and no oth-er races) spread out throughout the entire galaxy in the far future. Somehow Earth had gotten lost, a little, but not much, more than fable. There were all these empires, hegemonies, spheres of influ-ence and whatnot out there. Among these galactic systems the agents of Terra travelled incognito, pre-tending to be inhabitants of other cultures. Not cul-tures too small, that they’d be treated with disdain and contempt, but also not cultures too prominent that they might be outed by their supposed peers. These Terran agents sneak around aboard space liners of the various empires and occasionally bump into each other. I’m not sure if they recog-nise each other from various get-togethers back on Terra, or alternatively via something akin to the Secret Handgrip of Fandom (pace Ro Lutz-Nagy, and there’s possibly a page on this that might crop up in response to a future Flag, depending on how they go). Anyway, the main Terran agent gets caught, but then Terra itself decides to ‘come out’ by means of an enormous space armada, all ends well and children yet abed in Stockport can sleep soundly in the knowledge that the universe is safe for humankind which is, after all, a race destined to eventually rule The Sevagram. Randy was interesting in explaining why Chunga 23 was mainly full of boring comic strips and, most surprising to me, Andy’s Zappa/Schenkel piece was well readable (though I will take issue with you on one point later). So technically that’s quite a lot of interesting words, but that’s not how it felt here at the sharp end, where a LoCer’s gotta do what a LoCer’s gotta do, so I stand by my initial

Paul Skelton 122 Mile End Lane Stockport, Cheshire SK2 6BY

54 Chunga Roca We consider four geometric distance calibrations of Cepheids: (i) megamasers in

response. Also, when I wrote “Thank God you men-tioned Spokane!”, it was for dramatic effect because Ulrika also mentioned Spokane and thus it was for me (obviously discounting the pages of boring comic strips) the main theme for the issue and not just some pounced-upon word (though indeed it was that too).

Randy sez: Actually, it’s pronounced spo-CAN, not spo-CANE. Not sure why you felt the need to respond at length to an issue you found bor-ing, unless you just wanted to go out of your way to insult the artists who apparently didn’t turn your crank, but you should know that C.J. Cherryh now lives in Spokane, so your feeling that the Chanur might show up there isn’t com-pletely unwarranted.

Andy sez: Having seen it destroyed by fire and Mongol attack this past summer, I can only agree that Spokane is as fictional as Frank Zappa and Ken Bulmer.

Jerry Kaufman

It’s a beautifully designed and laid-out issue. Ulri-ka’s covers impressed me no end, but I now think I was wrong when I told her, last night, that the sign post must be Chunga’s “small wooden sidekick.” It’s much more likely that the bust on the front cover (the Roman Cicero, I’m sure) is the friend — assum-ing it’s carved from wood and not marble. The linework and lineage of the drawing reminds me of Aubrey Beardsley. Thanks for the serial walks through the worlds of eight artists — Ulrika, the six people who showed us the many lives of Chunga the vacuum cleaner,

and Cal Schenkel. Is it too much to hope for follow-up features in later issues of the cover art of Roger Dean, Joni Mitchell, and the Hipgnosis Studio? The letter column is lively and complete. No fan-zine is complete without a letter from me in it — and you have passed the “completeness” test. Too bad I’ll only be in the WAHF department next issue.

Randy sez: Oh no you won’t! However, you seem to have received a defective copy of the last issue, because there were actually seven artists in the sevagram, not six. Let’s see if you can figure out from the other LOCs which artist was missing from your copy.

Joseph Nicholas

Chunga 23 was . . . interesting. But rather difficult to comment on, because so much of it is illustration, some of which works because it follows a narra-tive line which in some way connects the opening and closing sentences — and some of which does not because the opening and closing sentences seem to have been pasted on to a story which has little if anything to do with them. Having said which, I now realise the source of your fanzine’s name; never having been a Frank Zappa fan, and thus not owning a single one of his albums, I was hitherto unaware of the link. But I did appreciate Andy’s article about Zappa’s album covers, which explained a lot (while not filling me with any desire to rush out and buy any of Zappa’s music).

Paul Di Filippo

Chunga 23 was outrageously good! The self-fulfill-ing trick reminded me of the famous time Camp-bell did that w/ an issue of Astounding based on a LOC. Let me know if you need any of the snow that nearly crushed Boskone. Easy shipping terms!

D. West

I think you slightly misinterpret (page 2) my objec-tions to “unrelated cartoons” or other unrelated artwork. After all, I send you such stuff myself. My objection is not to the work as such but to the way in which it is misused i.e. banged in the middle of text with which it has no connection whatsoever. Used not in between articles the said unrelated cartoons are perfectly ok. Though they should not at any time ever be referred to as “fillos” or “filler”. Calling something “filler” is the same as calling it “any old piece of worthless disposable interchange-able crap” and is an insult to both contributors and readers. It also indicates that the editor is not exactly on the ball, if this is the best he can man-

Jerry Kaufman [email protected]

Joseph Nicholas excellenceingardening@ gmail.com

Paul Di Filippo 197 Medway St Providence, RI 02906

D. West 16 Rockville Drive Embsay Skipton BD 23 6NX United Kingdom

Chunga Roca 55NGC4258, (ii) 8 DEBs in the LMC, (iii) 15 MW Cepheids with parallaxes, and (iv) 2 DEBs in M31.

age, and he doesn’t even think it matters. I also liked the full page interior from Fawcette, which has a nicely dream-like quality. As does some of the other contributions, such as España Sheriff’s, at least in the sense of wandering through a series of mysterious and inconsequential asso-ciations of ideas. (That was what I was aiming for myself, though I wish I’d put a Chirico-type train in the background of the “Welcome to Kindred” panel on my first page.) Of the others, I was entertained most by Steve Stiles, being able to pick up referenc-es to Wallace Wood, Dagwood and Mr Dithers from Blondie, Superman’s origins and (perhaps) Grant Wood. Also, though not highly detailed and fairly loose, the drawing makes it quite clear what is hap-pening in each frame. Dan Steffan, on the other hand, though sharper and tighter, gives the impres-sion of drawing with colour in mind, with the result that there is less distinction between shapes, and foreground and background merge together. In colour it would have been fine, but in black and white it looks rather flat and confused. Brad Foster, too, would have looked find in colour, but here his uses of greys seems merely wishy-washy, much inferior to his usual stronger black and white style. With a comic strip I think the first requirement is that one should be able to see what is going on immediately — not after a struggle to interpret some blotty piece of impressionism or muddle of undifferentiated detail. Style is important, yes, but it should always be secondary to the telling of the story, and the story must always be legible, not blurred and confused, like an art film shot out of focus with deliberately eccentric lighting. Marc Schirmeister’s effort is too chaotic altogether, and not helped by the absence of white space around the panels. Note that the requirement here is not for realism in the sense of photographic fidelity, but simply for recognisability. One needs to know what one is looking at. The style can be as quirky as you like — providing that the scene is clear. However, clarity alone is not enough, as Teddy Harvia demonstrates. His very simplified render-ings are certainly clear and recognisable, but they are also completely static and completely uninter-esting. Nothing happens or seems likely to happen. The visual interest is nil, the story interest is nil, and the whole thing could have been produced by a rather rudimentary computer programme or a sheet or two of oldtime Letraset. This is going from over-artiness to an almost complete rejection of any art at all. Schirm’s splashy style is too loose for my taste, but at least it shows some sign of imagination and liveliness. Harvia’s super-simple schematics might be just about passable for a single frame, or

even three or four (with a sufficiently strong script) but twenty four frames is at least twenty too many. Simple or sketchy, in all cases what suits the art-ist’s convenience should not be confused with what suits the particular artform, and with artistic merit in general. Perhaps all this sound ungracious. Well, to criti-cise the work of other artists is always difficult, because there’s a strong possibility that all one is really saying is “I would have done that differently myself”. Also, the verdict here is not just on the art but on the story, which the artists are not entirely responsible for. Maybe results would have been bet-ter with a less restrictive specification. Or maybe not. Whichever way you do them, comic strips are not as easy as they may seem. And even a two pag-er can be quite a lot of work. What can be looked at in a few minutes may take several hours to draw. So, whatever else, everybody involved deserves some credit for making an effort and doing the work. Now I guess it’s up to the neutral part of the audience to deliver judgment. It was an interesting experiment, even if not quite all that was hoped for. By the way, Murray Moore was right, and the “blurry image on the back of the fanzine held by Space Suit on Mars (front cover) is the image filling the back cover (Space Suit on Venus)”. It just wasn’t very well drawn., being added casually at some late stage. So I’m afraid Carl’s flattering view that I am too smart for such an obvious move is incorrect. The moral here is that the significance ascribed to an artist’s work is easily exaggerated: some-times we’re just bumbling along at random and not thinking of anything at all.

Randy sez: I don’t see a lot of agreement or commonality in the various reactions to the comic strips. Perhaps all art is really a kind of Rorschach Test in the end. Regarding Teddy Harvia’s contribution, I side more with Jay Kinney than with you. I really liked the static, iconographic, word-oriented thing he did. It struck me as utterly unique in approach, with a finely crafted style of its own that made it real-ly stand out from all the other contributions. That’s why we put it in the final slot — the clos-ing parenthesis to your very different opening. Still, I’m sorrier than I can possibly express that we won’t be able to argue about this (or, even better, about my posthumous characterization of you) in future lettercols or just plain letters. Sometimes it’s not much fun having the last word.

We also heard from:

Taral Wayne I probably acknowledged receiving Chunga earlier ... but I’m not sure. If not, I’m acknowledging it now. I’ve had it for about two weeks, I guess.

Darius Rike I received your most recent copy of Chunga (23) for my father David Rike. I’m sorry to say but David passed away on November 1st of 2014.

Nic Farey A brief note of thanks, this definitely files under

“Wish I’d thought of that!” And another superb piece by Andy!

William Breiding I am returning to Tucson — finally! — after 10 years in purgatory.

Dave Langford All thanks for the very super Chunga 23 with its thematic art extravangaza. This reduces me to saying things like Gosh Wow. I had a sevagram once, but the multiverses fell off.

Don Anderson I still have my pleasures, among which I treasure my issues of Chunga.