COMPACT MAGAZINES ALTER FORMAT. Say goodbye to Science
Fantasy. The March issue, out at the end of February, will see the
title changed to Impulse with more pages, a slightly larger page
size and a price increase to 3/6d. The issue will be an "all-star"
affair, with contributions from James Blish, Brian Aldiss, Harry
Harrison, James Ballard, Jack Vance and Richard Wilson. In addition
there will be Poul Anderson writing on the theme of "sacrifice."
New Worlds 160, out at the same time, will feature similar page
size and price changes and will include material by Ballard, Zelazny,
Jones, Platt, Masson and the U.S. poet Bill Butler as well as a
new Brunner serial. (MJM)
FAIRLY FREQUENTLY PUBLISHED AUTHOR MARRIES. Saturday,
11th December 1965, dawned bright and lovely in Oxford and many
and wondrous were the SF notables who assembled there to celebrate
with strong drink and mighty oaths the joining in wedlock of Margaret
Manson and one Brian Wilson Aldiss. Kyril Bonfiglioli clashed glass
with Michael Moorcock, Tom Boardman nibbled sandwiches with your
reporter, Kingsley Amis cheered on Jim Ballard who suffered virus
or flux and drank but cold water (!) and when the happy newlyweds
left for Paris only Harry Harrison and Michael Moorcock were fool
enough to throw rose petals and received from BWA the scowl they
so richly deserved. Merriment and cheer and drink were the order
of the day and I am sure that all Skyrack readers and lesser fen
join us in wishing the couples all of the very best in the years
to come. (HH)
PRONEWS. Jim Ballard's new novel, The Crystal World (Cape,
May) has been bought by. Panther for a record fee, the highest paid
for an sf book. Panther outbid both Corgi and Penguin (who have
published Ballard's other work in pb) for paper-back rights.
JIMMY GROVES TO EMIGRATE. James A. Groves, one-time BSFA
Publications Officer and Editor of Vector, and the man at present
in charge of the Association's Information Service, is to emigrate
in the very near future to the United States. With a job lined up
in Phillipsburgh, New Jersey, Jimmy, who was the LonCon II Treasurer,
should have sailed before the end of December but there has been
a delay in putting his papers through the Department of Labour who
are somewhat tardy in informing the American Embassy. Meanwhile,
Jimmy sits on his packed trunks and chews his nails. Watch this
space.
THE SCIENCE FICTION CLUB OF LONDON held its Annual General
Meeting at Courage House, Surbiton, on 12th December when Ethel
Lindsay was elected Chairman. Ian Peters is the new Treasurer and
Keith Otter Secretary. The Club agreed to sponsor a series of open
meetings, the first of which has since been held, on Sunday 9th
January in the Dunbar House Hall, West Kilburn. Some 25 people turned
up to hear guest speaker John Brunner on "The Fiction in Science
Fiction," a talk which was immediately snapped up by Michael
Moorcock for New Worlds. The next meeting is at 4pm, Sunday, 13th
February, when Frank Arnold will speak on "Characterisation
in SF," and the following meeting will be on 13th March, also
at 4pm. A charge of 2/6d will be requested to help with the cost
of rent and refreshments. Suggestions for future meetings will be
heartily welcomed, as of course will be any would-be attendees.
I'm asked to mention that fans who intend going along to either
of the two forthcoming Meetings would help greatly if they could
notify Ethel Lindsay, Courage House, 6 Langley Avenue, Surbiton,
Surrey, though of course this should not preclude the attendance
of anyone who finds himself at a loose end at the last moment; just
take the Bakerloo, Watford Line tube to Queen's Park Station, turn
right, cross the bridge and William Dunbar House, Albert Road, is
some three and a half inches along on your left. The hall is on
the ground floor.
TAFF. The Trans-Atlantic Fan-Fund campaign to send a worthy
delegate to the Cleveland TriCon in September is now under way and
forms should be included as a flier to most copies of this issue.
As you'll see, the Candidates are Eric Jones, Peter Weston, Bo Stenfors
and the man Skyrack is plugging, good ol' Tom Schluck, who certainly
deserves a better fate than to have his name misspelled on .the
Stateside voting forms. As of the beginning of the campaign there
was in the British TAFF kitty some £53 made up as follows:
£41 carried over from the last Campaign, £4.18.7d from
Ken Slater’s LonCon midnight auction, £5.10.0d various TAFF
bonds, 10/- Carl Brandon Jr., 2/6d Ivor Latto, and 5/- from Rich
Mann, Eduard H. Lukschandl, Hubert Strassi, Peter Ripota and Axel
Melhardt.
I’VE BEEN ASKED TO PUBLISH THE FOLLOWING LETTER from Alan
Dodd: “In December 1964 I sent Kyril Bonfiglioli a story on
behalf of a friend in America and then in January 1965 I sent a
further story from the same author. I received no reply for months.
I wrote a total of some six letters and cards and never received
a single reply. I then wrote a director of the publishers who sent
me back a letter stating the longer a story was held the better
chance it had of being fitted into magazine issue - a load of twaddle
if I ever heard it. Eventually I got a tiny letter from Bon stating
he would like to know the titles of the stories sent him. I sent
a further three letters, the first two to which I again received
no replies. The last I threatened to send him (sic) insulting postcards
the longer he kept me waiting. This finally got a reply returning,
after one year the first of the stories and a vague promise to try
and find the other story. No word of explanation as to what was
the reason for refusing to answer all my other letters and I feel
that to protect anyone else who may foolishly consider sending anything
to Science Fantasy should be strongly warned against it, as strongly
as possible."
THE PROFESSIONAL FRONT. Reveille recently published a
story by Arthur Clarke ::: The BBC is planning a longer series of
sf plays, following the success of their first series, and are at
present trying to commission original plays from well-known authors
in this country ::: Compact have lined up for publication Arthur
Selling's Time Transfer for March and James Colvin's The Deep Fix
for April. February's title, The long awaited Charles Harness book
The Rose is due out next week ::: New Worlds 161, out at the end
of March, will feature James Ballard's The Assassination Weapon
which deals with the “false” deaths of such people as Kennedy,
Oswald and Malcolm X ::: Gollancz’s SF choice for February is The
Worlds of Robert F.Young - 16 stories and an Avram Davidson introduction
for 18/-, whilst the March choice will be Poul Anderson's The Star
Fox; Between the two, John, will come an 18/- affair called All
Flesh is Grass by one Clifford Simak ::: Tarzan will be a colour
TV series in the States later this year :::
Cartoon favourite of many fans, Batman, has been dug up in London
this last week in the form of a 23 year old film serial of which
all the episodes have been joined together to form a feature film.
Reviews indicate that the whole affair has been a great success
with new heights reached in audience participation (one day I must
learn how to split hyphenated words) ::: Surely they can't be trying
to promote sales? London's avant garde bookshop, Better Books, ran
an sf panel-discussion in December under the title, “SF - Does it
Matter?” Douglas Hill (Tribune SF reviewer), Bill Butler,
George Hay, John Brunner and Michael Moorcock were the panelists.
The tone of the discussion and the questions from the floor ran
high and were sympathetic to the genre, but no real conclusions
were reached ::: Michael Moorcock (who should be mentioned in Skyrack
occasionally) and Harry Harrison were due to address University
College, London, at the end of January, but no details are to hand
as yet.
CONVENTION NEWS. A reminder that the 24th World SF Convention,
TriCon (P0 Box 1372, Cleveland, 0hio 44103) will take place at the
Sheraton-Cleveland Hotel, from 2nd to 5th September with L. Sprague
de Camp as Guest of Honour. Copy deadline for the Second Progress
Report is 1st March with rates varying between $1 for fillers and
$8 for full page adverts. Galaxy Magazine is sponsoring a futuristic
fashion show for which costume designs are invited. One does not
necessarily have to be an artist to enter; merely sketch or describe
your costume ideas. Deadline is also 1st March. Contact Luise Petti,
601 S.Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif 90005 for details. The
TriCon's voting forms for the Hugo Award nominations are now out.
Voting forms should appear with the next issue of Skyrack.
The coach trip proposed by Tony Walsh to travel to this August's
Vienna Convention has fallen through. Despite much initial spade-work,
Tony had but five replies to his circulars.
LonCon II has a British Money Order for 21/- sent for a membership
from Hannover-Linden 7 but as yet unclaimed. Languishing would-be
LonCon member please contact Jimmy Groves, 29 Lathom Road, East
Ham, London E6.
Some very good fanzines have arrived since the last issue, fanzines
probably worthy of more space than afforded here:
VECTOR 37 (Jan 66; BSFA) Another small size, professional
looking Vector and another issue full of good reading. R. Haldricks
analyses Russian sf, Ken Slater chunters on book and magazine news,
Vic Hallett looks at sf films, Chris Priest reviews British prozines
and Jimmy Groves answers sticky questions. The cover is by Eddie
Jones and is well up to his best. As if all this were not enough
there is an excellent article on the economics of writing sf by
John Brunner.
BRENNSCHLUSS 6 (Ken & Irene Potter, 4 Hartington St,
Lancaster) Once upon a time, way back in the murky reaches of the
forgotten sixth and the dusty seventh fandoms, there was a fanzine
named Brennschluss. It was a darn good zine, full of personal Potter
gems, big names and esoteric humour. Ah…how are the mighty…keeping
up the good work! This is well up to the Potter standard, with homely
verbal doodles from Mike Moorcock, Mal and Sheila Ashworth, Nigel
Lindsay, Ken and Irene and the far too infrequently published Don
Geldart. The duplicating is a little thin at times but the overall
atmosphere of, to me, nostalgic, good faanish humour isn't.
DEADWOOD 2 (George Locke, 86 Chelsea Gardens, Chelsea
Bridge Road, London SWl) Published for the FAPA's February mailing
this is highly readable but a little below the usual high Locke
standard. Readable and worth a try, however.
POT POURRI (John Berry, 31 Campbell Park Ave. ,Belfast
4) Numbers 39 to 43 have arrived in a batch and feature an excellent
spectrum of subject matter in an aptly named zine. Again, highly
readable; one can only dream of a return of Retribution with material
like this to whet one's appetite.
ZENITH-SPECULATION 11 (Jan 66 ; Peter Weston, 9 Porlock
Crescent, Birmingham 31; 2/-). The latest Zenith lives well up to
its Hugo nomination reputation with sf, rather than fan news and
reviews and excellent appraisals of Ballard and Anvil by Joe Patrizio
and Pete Weston respectively. Definitely highly recommended. Were
this zine a little more fantasy slanted it could easily be mistaken
for a reborn New Futurian.
SOL 42 (Thomas Schluck -- yes, our boy for TAFF -- 3 Hannover,
Altenbekener Damm 10, W. Germany) A large size English language
edition, with amongst other goodies, Harry Warner on fan polls (Ploy,
yet - Ploy!!! - what are you doing to me?), Lois Lavender and James
White on the London Worldcon and a Mario Kwiat art folio, to say
nothing of photo pages from the FranCon and LonCon II. Good stuff
all round.
FANNY HILL is an extremely bulky art folio, also by Mario
Kwiat, decidedly of interest to any fan artist and available also
from Tom Schluck.
YANDRO 152 and 153 (1/9 each, 12 for 14/- from Alan Dodd,77
Stanstead Road, Hoddesdon,Herts) are in from Buck & Juanita
Coulson. 1965's Hugo winner in fine fettle and full of the Great
Ace-Tolkien War. Great, great. When I stay up to 1.30am reading
a fanzine it has to be good.
NIEKAS 14 (Dec 65; Felice Rolfe, 1360 Emerson, Palo Alto,
Calif; 2/6 per and worth every penny from Gray Hall, 57 Church St.,
Tewkesbury, Glos) 74 pages of superlative material and featuring
a complete printing of John Brunner's “How to Get High Without Going
into Orbit" speech which was generally agreed to be the highlight
of the London Worldcon programme.
Apologies for the second issue in succession for the fact that
there has been a period of about two months between issues, but
in addition to a couple of bouts of illness, one the flu epidemic
which is going the rounds, I had a slight argument with a car early
in December, running into it whilst riding my moped. Nothing serious
- the car pulled out from a minor road across my path and did not
stop. Hit and run! Gladiator sports!
SNIPPETS. Astounding Checklist part II from Terry Jeeves,
30 Thompson Road, Sheffield 11 is 5/- not 4/6 as quoted in an earlier
Skyrack. My apologies to Terry who has lost several pounds because
of the errors ::: Colin Steele, 49 St Michael's Road, Liverpool
17 is looking for a copy of the Zenith which has in it the review
of Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold ::: In protest of Ace Books' ethics
in printing the Tolkien trilogy, Poul Anderson is refusing to have
any more of his work published by Ace ::: Lee Hoffman has sold her
first novel, a western, The Legend of Blackjack Sam, to Ace :::
Yarcon news - the main con hotel, the Royal, is now full except
for 6 double rooms. With 95 members on the books this con is quickly
heading for its century. Contact Dave Barber, 1a Walsoken House,
Walton Rd., Wisbech, Cambs ::: Sutton Breiding, 616-8th Street,
Morgantown, West Virginia 26505, is looking for British contacts
of about his own age, fifteen ::: New Bristol public house is called
The Man in Space, part of the city's preparation for the '67 con,
says publicity minded Tony Walsh ::: Help - At the Globe in September,
someone asked Dave Kyle for a number of Stateside addresses. Dave
(Rte 4,Potsdam,NY 13676) is eager to help but has no record as to
the name of the fan concerned. ::: Various German conventions lined
up for this year -- Eastercon at Marquartstein Castle (which now,
incidentally, has a new owner), 1st May FairCon in Hannover to coincide
with the annual Hannover Industrial Fair, the VlohCon in Vlotho
at Whitsun, the 4th SusiCon (named after Mario Kwiat's charming
wife) in October, to say nothing of the August WienCon in Vienna,
which is being looked upon by many as a full scale try-out in preparation
for a later Worldcon bid, possibly 1970 with Frankfurt as the site.
::: Just in is Scottishe 39 from Ethel Lindsay, 6 Langley Avenue,
Surbiton, Surrey, the first issue for just a year - very readable
without reaching the heights of the previous half dozen or so issues.
All too short, however, is the three page glimpse into the Willis
letter files at gems by Bloch and Ashworth ::: Arthur Clarke on
TV, Sunday 6th Feb -- in advert for Daily Express!
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