1) Added CENSORED (#5) Fall 1942 — edited by FRED HURTER JR. — under SF Zines,Historic.
July 20/2013 — Another Censored!
Reply
July 19/2013 – THOUGHTS ON ‘CENSORED’
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
July 18/2013
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!
July 17/2013
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.
July 16/2013
1) Added 1988 CUFF Trip Report — Taral Wayne under CUFF.
2) Yesterday I wrote four zines reviews, striving to keep each under 50 words so that the whole-mini-review could be absorbed in a single glance. Today I decided ‘Not good enough!’ and rewrote all four with the format of first listing contents and then commenting in some length on same which requires the reader to click on the title of each post in order to ‘read more’ i.e. read the review in full. I will adopt this format from now on.
3) Today I am actually researching my own site looking for potential nominees for the upcoming Faned Awards. See? This site not entirely useless after all.
July 15/2013
Yea! Thanks to Jean Hollis Weber for adding sidebar to home page.
1) Wrote 4 capsule descriptions of latest published zines ‘BROKEN TOYS’, ‘ONE SWELL FOOP’, ‘OSFS STATEMENT’ AND ‘BCSFAZINE,’ and placed in sidebar.
2) Added ‘What’s Happening?’ Latest News Current Status pages for BCSFA and the Faned Awards.
REVIEW: BROKEN TOYS #18 June 2013 Editor TARAL WAYNE
CONTENT: Editorial: Fandom as cult? I Dream of Jeannie retro-review. Essay on an artist’s work ethic. Steve Stiles Hugo advocacy. Fictional character Saara Mar birthday. Excellent loc column. Essay: In Defiance of the Received Wisdom of Ayn Rand. COMMENT: Perzine.Taral is Canada’s most prolific fan writer and artist. Been going strong since 1970s. His editorial and musings on commissioned art suggest he is getting tired and jaded to the point of ‘Been there. Done that. Nothing new under the sun.’ But also concern over the lack of recognition or egoboo available to fen who put huge effort into fandom/zinedom. I was always under the impression it was ever thus. Still, in the past, at least, zines generated an enormous response percentage compared to say, newspapers (Don’t get excited kid. Tomorrow they’ll use your column to wrap fish.”) Lots of people read newspapers and magazines (even online ones) but few can be bothered to write letters to the editor. Those that do tend to be cranks. In the days of paper hard-copy zines the level of response was both high and (most of the time) relatively civil. Today, ezines are read, but not responded to (either because the reader figures they have no obligation since it cost the editor nothing to send it to them, or because the few fen active in zinedom are too busy producing their own zines to take time out to write locs). Taral seems to think lack of response means no one reads his work, so what’s the point of knocking himself out for nothing? But I think zines are in fact read, and appreciated, enjoyed even, but the modern trend is not to respond, a trend which is unfortunate for faneds as it lessons the influx of egoboo, but is irrelevant to the fact that zines do indeed get read. Hence the rising importance of segoboo (self egoboo) wherein the faned imagines ‘the’ reader who enjoys his work and that’s the person he writes for. Any response, any response at all, is mere icing on the cake. Or to put it another way, I view zinedom as the ideal hobby for solitary individuals who take pride in the creation of their zines and simply assume that other fen appreciate the effort when they read their latest publication. One should not not require ‘proof’ in today’s era since praise is no longer in vogue. In his editorial Taral wonders if fandom is now a ‘cult’ since, to him, all modern fen seem very much alike. Personally, I would call fannish zinedom a ‘religion’, inasmuch as it requires ‘faith’ to be successfully motivated to carry on. In short, the evolution of fandom has transferred emphasis from egoboo to segoboo, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from pubbing their ish in my opinion. It’s just the way things are these days.
See Taral zines
REVIEW: ONE SWELL FOOP #9 May 2013 Editor GARTH SPENCER
CONTENT: Perzine. Reflections on moving, aging, population growth. Loc column includes fannish fandom advocacy/debate. Articles on convention running, silly editing symbols, Garth’s Society for the Perpetuation of Fandom Facebook group, ‘Who Wants to be a Mad Scientist?’ Taral on US fighter plane competition. COMMENT: The usual eclectic mix, but unusual (in zinedom generally) for emphasis on the motivation and practice of fannish fandom, subjects which most fanzines (oddly enough) avoid completely. I believe it is fair to say that Garth consistently writes from an academic viewpoint, so much so that sometimes even his humour comes across as sercon to those not used to his dryly intellectual style of humour. For the uninitiated everything comes across as deadly serious, which, of course, is not Garth’s intention. The thing is, Garth doesn’t so much ‘live’ fandom as ‘think’ fandom. He can always be counted on to question everything, and in that sense comes across as a bit of a gadfly since most (regular as opposed to fannish) SF fans don’t care about the past, or the future for that matter, they just want to have fun NOW! But to those fans (like myself) who are fascinated by the origins of fandom, revel in current zinedom, and care about where organized fandom is heading, Garth is always interesting and certainly thought-provoking.
See Garth Zines
REVIEW: OSFS STATEMENT #410 June 2013 Editor GRANT DUFF
CONTENT: Clubzine Ottawa SF Society. News on Landset 8 satellite. List of mostly Ontario upcoming conventions. Three book reviews, including 1972 L. Sprague de Camp’s THE FALLIBLE FIEND. Lloyd Penney loc. Articles on old astronomy ideas and spaceport in orbit. COMMENT: Most issues put emphasis on astronomy. This is OK with me, as I like astronomy (especially planetary geology) but might not appeal to all fen (it being a curious fact that many fen ignore space doings as being too mundane!). Editor Grant Duff laments the decreasing amount of fanac in the club, especially as it impacts contributions to the zine. A problem with all clubs these days, it seems. From my experience as ‘God-Editor’ of BCSFAzine years ago, the trick is to convince lots of people to write regular columns (a trick I learned from the previous editor Steve Forty). This involves the care and feeding of said individuals with much egoboo, but no editor can afford to take his/her contributors for granted. In fandom, egoboo is the coin of the realm. Encouraging loc writers another good trick (especially if you can actually manage to do it). A loc column, with editorial interjections, can make for a lively debate that sparkles up any zine considerably.
See OSFS STATEMENT
July 14/2013
1) Added “Links to ‘WHAT’S HAPPENING?’ latest news update pages” line in the home page ‘welcome’ section. So far points to VCON. Will add AURORA Awards, reviews of newly published zines, BCSFA & WCSFA as soon as I’ve done up their pages. And maybe other items in the future.
Not much action today, as I’m off to the monthly VCON ConCom committee meeting. Happy to say the writers workshops I’m in charge of have a full slate (12) participants submitting manuscripts. But if you’re interested contact me at rgraeme[at]shaw.ca and I’ll put you on the waiting list (so far none on list). Last year three people dropped out at the last minute so the first three people on the waiting list got to participate. No promises this year, just possibilities. NOTE: to qualify, you must be A) serious about writing, and B) a paid-up member of VCON (see ‘What’s Happening?’ VCON link above for details on membership rates and how to sign up).