LOC for This Here... #27, 32, and 51

The following is a letter of comment sent to Nic Farey, editor of This Here... commenting on issues #27, 32, and 51.

Dear Mr. Farey:

I had forgotten that I’d even written you that letter of comment way back when and was pleasantly surprised to see it show up in This Here… #27, which I’d missed when it first came out but found belatedly while trawling eFanzines for any of my old apazines that might still be floating around in the ether. I’d received #32 through the National Fantasy Fan Federation’s franking service and also recently read #51 so I was relatively up to date. Given the issue gaps in between, you can tell I’m not a dependable reader. As Justin E.A. Busch and John Hertz can attest, I’m an even less dependable correspondent, outside the pages of an apa.

Regardless, thank you for including me in the conversation of #27’s lettercol. I was flattered to earn the banner quote—“Now I want to read Van Vogt!”—and have belatedly located my Van Vogt books in storage so I can do so soon. Apparently, the inspiration was fleeting. (First up is finishing Larry Niven’s Ringworld before proceeding to Jack L. Chalker’s Midnight at the Well of Souls on the recommendation of a friend.) It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance to read about Mike Lowrey’s aborted TAFF ventures in “TAFFnessabeys” given that he’s just now posting trip reports after such a long delay (Ahoy! There he is in #51’s “TAFFnessabounds.”) So glad the man finally made it even if I was unsuccessful in connecting him with friends in Spain.

I shall have to pay attention to Radio Winston on an ongoing basis. Every week, friends and I gather to share songs online via Jqbx and Spotify, effectively a collective radio show, and I post weekly playlists of music that’s tickled my ear drums. You can see—and hear—a recent example at https://tinyurl.com/MD20220416. Your recommendations might even make it to my song sharing with friends! Thank you for that. Between RW and the classical music conversations in APA-L, my ears shall certainly stretch.

In transcribing my previous letter, you seem to have done a pretty decent job scrying my scribbly handwriting, and I appreciate the effort. Hopefully this emailed attachment—as good as a properly mailed letter, perhaps!—is easier to decipher. I’ll have to check out BEAM #15, as the cancel culture discussion continues, with occasional political skirmishes showing up even within the N3F membership, a decidedly vocal conservative portion currently contributing many of the reviews to The N3F Review of Books, and occasional comment threads online that border on outright bigotry. There’s room for speculative politics in science fiction, but is there room for science fiction in mundane politics? We shall see.

Having just signed up as a supporting member for May’s upcoming Balticon, you inspired me to check on my supporting membership for Corflu 39. Indeed, I signed up in late March. Phew! #27’s lettercol featured a lively and impressive cast of characters, and as an infrequent letterhack at that point in time, I was in fine fettle and good company.

That brings me to #32, which was distributed to Neffers in two sections. I found Lloyd Penney’s comments on his letterhacking process intriguing. I’ll have to look for his LiveJournal archive and consider repurposing my LsOC as blog posts over at my infrequently tended to mediadiet.net. Recently for my LASFAPA apazine, Faculae & Filigree, I included some LsOC I’d sent in to various comic books as reviews of a sort. And it made me think about my apahacking process. Like Lloyd, I tend to read through once, then skim again looking for comment hooks for the Comments section of my apazine. It seems reasonable that writing LsOC to fanzines requires a similar approach, though fanzines—even with the best lettercols—are less discussion oriented. (Your practice of interspersing editorial comments throughout the letters argues against that point of view. I like it!) Some members of LASFS’s APA-L and LASFAPA would go so far as to say that comments are the whole point of apae. To paraphrase Fuzzy’s Law, you’ve got to give comments to get comments. So kudos on the ongoing health of This Here…’s lettercol.

In that ish’s lettercol, Leigh Edmonds asks, “​​As a technical aside, since so little of this issue is written by the editor, is it a perzine or a genzine?” In my opinion—and others might have already hashed this out in greater detail given my late reading—it’s less whether a lettercol dominates a fanzine that makes the distinction, but the kind of content the editor contributes. For example, a fanzine of mostly personal comments and news, even if eclipsed by a lettercol, could still be considered a perzine, while a fanzine of more formally structured articles, essays, interviews, reviews, and stories all written by the same person might be considered a genzine. (Though, that could also be a sercon fanzine, I suppose.) It might not be who the contributors are, but the kind of content offered. I’ll defer to older fans, but it could be as simple as perzine = one person writing and genzine = general contributors (outside of letters). It might not even matter, but it’s sure fun to think about!

Onward to This Here… #51, which helps makes this letter less dated. “FAAnWank” considered a controversy I’d entirely missed out on, though The Incompleat Register recently alluded to it. Arguably, podcasts can be published, because they’re posted (published) on the Internet and syndicated through distribution services, even as simple as RSS. Regardless, I’d still argue they’re not fanzines. They’re podcasts. And perhaps they deserve their own category to be grouped with other podcasts rather than with fanzines. Apples to apples. Oranges to oranges. But I wonder how fen handled such matters back in the days of tape trading and earlier forms of audio. At one time, the N3F had an active Tape Bureau that, according to Fancyclopedia, “stockpiled authors’ readings from cons. Ann Ashe was buhead in the mid-1960s, and Joanne Burger beginning in 1969. Ann published at least five issues of the N3F Tape Bureau Newsletter from 1965–67. A separate taping bureau read and recorded books for the blind.” In that historic example, the tapes themselves were not fanzines, but the newsletter would have been. Outside of sf fandom, the closest I’ve come to this was an old punk mixtape fanzine called Troop Librarian. It was a regularly issued tape series, structured and compiled like a fanzine, but I don’t know that it would have been considered a fanzine. Would the radio program Hour of the Wolf be considered a fanzine? Probably not. That might be a better standard.

In Bob Jennings’s LOC, he mentions BFFs. “Big Fucking Fanzines”? If so, I love it. Were we to apply traditional standards to it, perhaps a BFF is a fanzine so thick that a standard staple (fine wire) is insufficient to keep it firmly bound. BFFs require medium or heavy wire staples.

As ever, the lettercol is a joy. You come to This Here… for the face that is Nic Farey, perhaps for Radio Winston and commentary on all things FAAnish, and you stay—and return—for the lettercol.

The new Brad W. Foster illos are absolutely delicious.