1) Added OTTAWA SF STATEMENT (#411) July 2013 edited by Grant Duff, under SF Zines, Zines You Can Read, Ontario Zines, Ottawa SF Statement.
2) Added GENRE PLAT (#1) Spring 1977 edited by Allyn Cadogan, Susan Wood, Bill Gibson, under SF Zines, Zines You Can Read, British Columbia, Susan.
Contents: Editorial, Toronto Storm, Moderm Mysteries Solved, Faneds Song, superb Loc Column, Canada Day musings, on Censored, Enditorial. Comments: In his ‘Emotorial’ Taral reveals the joy of social relations and recognition in his fanac means more than SF as an interest, the problem being that it somehow adds up to not being enough. Every fan’s problem really, unless your sense of accomplishment can compensate… Ah the remarkable inconvenience of a major storm, well described… Why do dishes scoot across the counter by themselves? Taral knows. He can even duplicate the ‘mystery.’ Like most ‘mysteries,’ easily explained once you know the answer… Song explaining the decline of Faneds. Great repro of ‘First Fandom’ badge based on the club badge Gernsback used to give out in the early 30s… The extensive loc column concentrates on politics (depressing), the loc column itself, collecting vs hoarding (Taral makes the point that every zine collector thinks he’s preserving a unique collection of great value to future civilization, to which I add it’s no sillier than many an in-house motivational ‘myth’ employed by corporations) and what’s wrong with the Hugos… ‘Notional Holiday’ involves transit travel and dinner with friends, with much puzzlement over crowded conditions on bus and subway till late in the evening when Taral remembers it is Canada Day. I too, now that I’m retired, often fail to notice holidays, discovering them only when the Skytrain is jam-packed. When you are no longer a wage slave, holidays become a nuisance… There follows a thoughtful review of the issues of CENSORED Taral provided for this site… In his ‘Enditorial’ (written to fill in a blank half page) Taral wonders why “Canadian fans are so literal at naming things? Couldn’t Graeme’s site have been named something like ‘The National Gallery of Mimeo Art?’ …no doubt Graeme would say that nobody would find the site then. He may be right. But maybe nobody is looking for it either…” Not counting my own popping in and out to add or adjust things, I’m averaging over fifty visitors a day. This justifies my utilizing my site address as a meta-tag in and of itself. Online, ‘literal’ is a good thing, a necessary thing.
See BROKEN TOYS #19
1) Added Taral Wayne’s BROKEN TOYS (#19) Late July 2013, under SF Fanzines, Ontario Zines, Taral.
2) Reviewed Broken Toys #19. See Sidebar.
3) Added essay ‘THOUGHTS ON CENSORED’ July 2013 by Taral Wayne to SF Fanzines, Historic, Censored.
4) Added Mike Glicksohn & Susan Wood’s ENERGUMEN (#4), the 16 issue run hosted here is now complete, under SF Fanzines, Zines You Can Read, Ontario Zines, Taral Wayne Zines.
Besides, I recently decided to start counting from 50. Currently that makes me 12 years old, which fits in well with my second childhood. The way I see it, I won’t enter middle age until I celebrate my centenary. Oddly enough, that’s probably when I will transform into a sprinter…
1) Added VCON 3 (1974) Program Book under SF Conventions, VCON 3.
Haven’t done much lately, tomorrow probably nothing (it being my birthday), but I will pick up the pace after that.
1) Replaced CENSORED files with improved scans as per request of Taral Wayne, the owner of the originals.
1) Added CENSORED (#5) Fall 1942 — edited by FRED HURTER JR. — under SF Zines,Historic.
Taral informs me he is busy scanning CENSORED #5 from 1948 and will send it to me shortly. Huzzah! Then the site will host 3 out of the 6 issues produced. Fantastic. Anybody have the other three (#1,3,6) and willing to scan?
Looking through the two issues already posted, now I understand why Forrest J. Ackerman accused Barbara Bovard of being Leslie A. Croutch in disguise. They share the same lowbrow, rather crude (though rarely rude) puerile sense of humour. Almost indistinguishable in fact. Lest modern readers turn up their nose, I consider their columns, japes and jests to be a sort of historical artifact reflecting the typical humour of young fen in the 1940s, and valuable evidence for what fandom was like back then.
Alas, as a fan historian I wish the contributors had spent more time writing about each other and themselves rather than ‘timeless’ humour columns. Not to mention, writing articles about contemporary fandom rather than printing fiction. But tis a fact many zines in that era were still hung up on the idea of imitating prozines (a big fad in the 30s and slowly fading in the 40s).
It must have been sad for Nils Helmer Frome to see one of his art pieces reproduced in CENSORED but have to read in the same issue Fred Hurter Jr. grudgingly admitting that Croutch’s publications predated CENSORED as ‘the first’ Canadian fanmag when in truth Frome’s SUPRAMUNDANE STORIES had been the first (#1-1937, #2-1938) to make a big splash. It does seem that Frome’s role as a faned was unknown to fellow Canadian fen within 3 or 4 years of his last issue. He seems to have been viewed as a fan artist, writer, and loccer, but SUPRAMUNDANE COMPLETELY forgotten, if they ever knew about it in the first place. Sad.
Also somewhat sad, I’m getting about 12 spams a day and zero comments. Oh well. I prefer to imagine all of you are too busy reading and researching the zines for your own pleasure to make any comments. This is the sort of site I always dreamed of having access to, and now I’m in the position to create it for others. Great fun actually.
But what I do hope will happen is that those of you with rare early Canadian fanzines in your collection will offer to scan them and send me the pdfs so that I can post them and make them available to all who may be interested. That would please me very much.
Cheers! The Graeme
1) Absolutely fantastic day! Checked my email and discovered Taral had sent me scans of two zines from his collection, namely the legendary CENSORED by Fred Hurter Jr!
CENSORED (#2) October 1941
CENSORED (#4) June 1942
Words can not describe how excited and thrilled I was to receive these. Literally never thought I’d live to read any CENSOREDs, never mind two of them! So naturally I’m posting them on this site immediately!
It is a day full of exclamation points! I’m grinning from ear to ear!
A quiet day for these pages because:
1) I continue to research nominees for upcoming Faned Awards and prepare a new issue of THE FANACTICAL FANACTIVIST to promote same.
2) I am busy contacting authors for the three writers workshops I am moderating at VCON 38. Already have a full slate of ‘newbies’ to submit manuscripts to the authors but people are welcome to ask to be added to the waiting list. Sometimes people drop out at the last minute and the first individuals in the waiting list can be plugged in. See VCON current status if you are interested.
3) Have to start thinking about my next FAPA and eAPA contributions, not to mention my next SPACE CADET.
You can get a lot of fanac done when you’re retired!
NOTE: I just added info re the upcoming July 28th VCON Summer Picnic and more info on the Writers Workshops to the VCON current status page.