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| Cover by John Hastings II |
“As he dodged diners and servers in the hall, the
repeated miniscule navigational challenges reminded him of Proust’s comparison
of a restaurant in action with the whirling planets of the solar system, which
had struck him as fanciful…until he had seen it himself in restaurant after
restaurant…[H]e was in fact hooked: he was very, very interested in whatever
she might say or do. He was even willing
to consider stupidities like birdflight in the clouds of Saturn. How could it be? To a woman not even his type – ah, Marcel, if
only you knew – this Swan was worse even than Odette.” 2312
“Many years have passed since that night. The wall of
the staircase…was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have
perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving
birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have
foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand.” Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
“Summer is halfway over, I’ve been fired from my job,
booze nor dope nor money have I none, so to fool myself into thinking I’m doing
something useful I am sitting in front of this typewriter watching the words
flow onto a piece of blue celluloid and trying to make this fanzine a living
entity.” John Hastings II,
True!Lust!Romances!, The Journal of Outlaw Fandom, Premier Issue, September
1972
Remembrance of Cons Past,
Swan’s Way, and the Infidelity of Memory
Sacramento fandom was
heating up in 1972, and in preparation for the Worldcon, HJ and I gathered
together some “prominent names” and started a zine called
True!Lust!Romances! In addition to our
contributions, it had articles by Larry Inchausti (“The Day I Met Mike
Douglas”), James Kimball (“Trash Box”), and Steven Kendrick (“Emil the Bazoo”),
and terrific art by Jim McLeod. HJ and I
brought copies to Worldcon, and decided that we would like Harlan Ellison to
write for us. Realizing the chances of
this were minimal, we figured the only way to possibly get this to happen was
to make sure our pitch to him was memorable.
So we decided to go meta: we would approach him like fans who had overdosed
on their own nerdiness. Immediately
after one of his panel appearances, we rushed him, waving T!L!R! in his face
and whining, over and over, “Haaaaaarlan, Haaaaarlan, would you please write
for our fanzine?!” Of course, if you
know anything about Harlan Ellison, you know we got a blistering earful of
curses and invective. But he did take a
copy as he turned his back on us and stormed away.
It has been brought to my
attention that the Transvestite Ball, discussed in my last post, did not in
fact happen at this Worldcon, but at a Witchcraft and Sorcery convention. This blogging series has certainly tested the
memory cells, and I must confess that many of my con recollections from this
era are merging into one another. I am
thankful that HJ and SK are greatly assisting in attempts to keep these posts
as factual as possible. In any case, the
events described in the Transvestite Ball narrative did happen, but at a different
convention. Evidently, I sought solace
afterwards not in the arms of The Turd, but rather some other costumed
fan.
I continue through Kim Stanley Robinson's amazing 2312. Not only am I getting an incredibly
engrossing saga, enthralling characters, and a beautifully realized future, but
I am also getting an “experimental novel” par excellence: sections called
“Extracts” and “Lists” that are hugely pertinent to the story but big “detours”
from the linear flow mixed with occasional, almost Joycean segments. In my embrace of “mainstream” fiction, I had
forgotten that experimental narrative fiction has a long and impressive history
in sci-fi. I loved Alfred Bester’s The
Stars My Destination, and remember it as having some very twisted and amazing
textual format “deviations”. And
speaking of Harlan Ellison, I remember many authors in Dangerous Visions
attempting new approaches and styles.
(Of course, here we go with memory again!) There must be more in the many years since I "left" the genre? Perhaps this would be a worthwhile future series: the history of
“experimental” sci-fi?
To Be Continued
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