The Drink Tank 001 (2005).pdf

Talking about fanzines

So, I've been reading fanzines since I was about five years old. My Dad had a tonne of them, old Granfalloons,

Space Ships, a bunch of Niekas and SF5Ys. Later, I got a hold of the collection of a friend of mine that had about five

thousand titles dating from the fifties through the early 1990s. Most of my life, whenever I came across a fanzine, it had

been out for at least a decade before I read it.

Thank God for efanzines.com.

I've read everything available on efanzines.com, and since they are current, I've even sent in a few LoCs. Without

efanzines.com, it really wouldn't be possible to get so filling a slice of the work that's out there. While I had been keeping

up on Mimosa over the years through their website along with Cheryl Morgan's Emerald City, I hadn't managed to read

much else. I picked up a copy of Niekas at Westercon 57 in Seattle and that got me interested in trying to get back into

reading fanzines. I found efanzines and then went to town. Immediately, I found that not too much had changed.

So many of the names I recognised from the 60s, 70s and 80s were still at it, and some of their stuff hadn't

changed much beyond the fact that it was being done on computers now. There were some finds of people I had somehow

missed. Arnie Katz was one. Jan Stinson who does Peregrine Nations (a fantastic piece of work which has featured one

of my articles) thought that I might actually have been Arnie playing a rib on her. She pointed me towards Flicker, Arnie's

fanzine. His stuff is fantastic, and he's a wrestling fan, which is highly applaudable. I read a few issues of Flicker and was

hooked.

Another find was a gentleman I had heard of long ago: Mr. Earl Kemp. For some reason, my friend Johnny (see the

August 2004 edition of IRoSF.com for my article The Downing of Fanzine One-0-Two) had several issues of Safari. The

thing that I wait most anxiously for updating is Earl's eI. It's Kemp's way of collecting his memoirs and it is fantastic. By

far the best thing in fanzines today. His issue that dealt with Robert Bonfils was the single best issue of anything, pro or

fannish, I read all last year. The others that have held this distinction for various years include the WorldCon Wrap-up

issue of Emerald City for 2002, and the final issue of Mimosa, and neither of those are in the same league as that issue of

eI.

So, without efanzines.com, I'd have no idea what was out there. I only hope that more and more things end up

there so that those of us without access to giant collections will have access to a giant collection.

Me, Writing...

I'm a writer. Sadly, that remains the case. I had hoped to be an author by this point, but it's not meant to

be. I've basically decided that there'll be no more fiction writing. Well, I'll still write the occasional story and will try

to keep getting things in Nth Degree and various other For The Love locations. Why am I stopping? Not only due to

my inability to get stuff into the larger venues, but because most of my non-fiction is doing very well. Other

Magazine has one of my stories in this go 'round. I had the IRoSF article last year, and a few other places over the

lastfew monthsr. That, my FanboyPlanet.com articles and fannish stuff will take up enough of my time.

You know, I started writing for fanzines with Stacked Decks, the amazingly precient zine about Poker

Playing, Porn and Low-Fi music. Half of the final issue was my story Searching For Doyle Brunson. I then didn't

write anything until 2000 when I started writing things for various newsletters and programmes. In 2002, I

managed to start having things show up in Nth Degree, and then a hundred other places. Sadly, I've had more art

reviews in the Globe than stories in SF magazines. Odd for a guy who is, at best, Middle-Brow.

SO, No more fiction, more fannish writing, and a few articles in interesting magazines. Hopefully, it'll be

enough to keep me from writing any more scripts.