How I Lost My Con-Virginity (Unexpurgated)

by Laura Atkins

Rest assured, fellow fans, that this is only one article. I have no intention of writing the "Con-Virgin" series. But I did want to share with you the events of that fateful weekend when I lost my Con-Virginity.

As with everyone on their first time, I was somewhat apprehensive -- I mean taking two days to do it, and with so many. people, most of whom were not the sort I would invite back for a cup of coffee afterwards, Furthermore, I had to pay 530 for this dubious privilege. But Nichelle Nichols was to attend I-Con I, and my friends were there to give me immoral support, so off I went, elegantly clad in jeans, T-shirt, and matching belt and socks (a most demure shade of purple).

Upon arrival, I filled out a form (which I do quite nicely, thanks) and paid out $30, in exchange for which I received my registration number and an I-Con badge with my name on it, that I promptly pinned to my chest. Seemed like an awfully small prick to me, but then, being a Con-Virgin, I had no way to judge.

As I was leaving the registration table, a gentleman who claimed to have been christened Ogre (by loving but misguided parents) leaned over the table and said that he knew what colour my socks were, and if I didn't behave he'd have the security men down on top of me in a flash. Monica very kindly explained that I would enjoy that, but then dragged me away before I had a chance to ask how many.

We wandered into the dealer's room, an area which reminded me of the bar in Star Wars. Monica assured me that most of the people in the room were in fact humanoid, but seeing them grunting and scratching, and excavating in various orifices as they haggled over the shimmering goods on the tables left me doubtful as to their true origins. However, throughout my time at the con, I only encountered English-speaking aliens, which made them almost as good as Terrans in my case. I found the spherical aliens to be particularly intriguing; I never got a chance to watch one negotiating its way through a door, but as they were present at the various panels and the dance, I assumed that they had collapsible girdles, or perhaps they lost form and oozed through door-openings, reforming on the other side with a grand, alienesque flourish.

I attended TWO panels at which Nichelle Nichols presided. She has a very good sense of humour. In fact, she was better at making jokes than telling a story smoothly, but she did give us the inside scoop on anything allowed by her agent, -including the tale of how she met Whoopi Goldberg, and told us some stories about winning or losing parts and how the filthy pieces of distended rectum at the studio didn't allow her to sing during her fan-dance in Star Trek V. She also sang for us at the end of each panel, and charmed us all with her wit and vulnerability. I concede that she appeared to be less than gruntled at the autograph session, but after the sort of day she must have had, I would have been feeling somewhat less than angelic myself.

Afterwards, me and Nichelle went for a beer in the bar. She told me she could get me a starring role in Star Trek VI with her if I felt like coming out to Hollywood. I thanked her very much, but told her I had to be at work on Tuesday to clean the telephones. (Does that cover the name-dropping clause of the "Loss of Con-Virginity contract"? I wasn't sure.)

'During the first day of the Con, I saw one gentleman whose costume I found to be particularly effective, and I almost went up and congratulated him on mimicking Tolkien so effectively. I'm sure glad I didn't, though — imagine my chagrin when my friends told that he always 'smoked a pipe and wasjust naturally masterful! Still, I am quite sure he was someone important, because every time he told a joke his audience listened in round-eyed, awestruck silence.

Later on, Ogre came up to me, looked me in the eyes and said earnestly, "I love you. Will you run away with me?" It was awfully sweet of him, but I thought I should finish losing my Con-Virginity first, so I told him to ask me on Sunday. He was crushed, but bore his sorrow most bravely.

After supper came the Costume Contest. It was fun despite the entertainment, and there was very little spandex abuse. But I guess they've had to tighten up the rules on this sort of thing since the SPCS (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Spandex) created an uproar and threatened to close the Cons down entirely if they didn't shape up. (AR AR AR!)

After the contest was the dance. The aliens seemed particularly fond of such garments as gold stretch lace and fur loincloths, but then, I guess that's what makes them unlike humans. They all seemed to enjoy dancing to "Rasputin," too. I must say that having alien armpit sweat smeared all over my shoulder was a never-to-be-forgotten experience, and I got to do it twice because they played it later on in the evening for those aliens who missed it the first time.

I worried about the bodily integrity of some of the aliens, though. I don't know what their melting point is, but whenever there was a slow dance, they seemed to sort of osmose into each other, and to have great difficulty extricating themselves from each others embrace afterwards. I think the people who put the Con on should find a hotel with better air-conditioning next time, to prevent further tragedies like this from occurring.

I met one most interesting alien whose name I shall change to Willie and who came from the planet Saltspring Island. His friend Peter was also a Con-Virgin, and gratefully accepted his ritual hickey from an American alien called Tracey. Willie wasn't a Con-Virgin, but took a hickey anyhow, as these sorts of shared rituals help to cement the bonds between interplanetary species. She offered to give me one but 1 declined on the grounds that she wasn't my type.

I had fun dancing with 'Willie, and we engaged in ritual conversation. I feel that I made a most sympathetic listener, and held up my end of the conversation by asking such leading questions as "So why is your brother a prick?" He was actually just

like a human, except drunk, and we got along swimmingly. At the end of the dance, we danced a slow dance. I became alarmed for his bodily integrity, but he became quite firm at the end, so I breathed a sigh of relief.

I said I was going home, whereupon Peter and Willie informed me that I couldn't really be said to have lost my Con-Virginity unless I stayed up all night watching B-movies, presumably on the theory that losing one's Con-Cherry should be a painful process. I appreciated their concern, but felt that I really should go, as I had been drinking ice water all night and was in no shape to keep partying. Before I left, Willie gave me a warm fuzzy in traditional fashion, but I was still apprehensive about his bodily integrity so didn't allow tradition to overtake common sense and immoral integrity.

Next day, I woke up feeling like exhilarated excrement, and made my way back to I-Con in time to miss any events of importance, except for the second panel with Nichelle Nichols. I thought this was extremely clever timing on my part, as I noted that many of the aliens were suffering from the heat and looked rather pale and tired. Obviously, I would best serve the Con's needs by remaining out in the cool lobby, where I could assist with

any alien medical emergencies. So 1 went up to the Hospitality suite and had coffee and a cigarette. Ogre asked me where I'd found a blue cow to kill to make today's belt. I didn't tell him, as blue cows are an endangered species, but did add that it was a small cow and didn't supply more than a belt's worth of hide anyhow.

All good things must come to an end, much like Cons, and so four o'clock found me in a denuded dealer's room, which had only humans and one elf left in it (a well-dressed one, named Ebon Lupus, who according to the Con scuttlebutt was planning to return the following year as Burgundy Coyote). The aliens were gone, and the entire stock of U.S.S. Resolution fudge maggots had been sold. A young man had given Nichelle Nichols the shirt off his back (he offered his pants and socks too, but she regretfully refused, saying she had to wash her hair), and Veronica had kept many of the panels running smoothly. Plus many poor suckers...ah, noble volunteers...had presided over the Resolution's table. I commended the of all these people most highly, but felt that I should leave the specialized positions until next time.

And that's how I lost my Con-Virginity!

Election Watch 2006

by John W. Herbert

November 28, 2005: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like an Election
You’ll pardon me if I start talking politics now, but the federal government has fallen today and an election will be called tomorrow. So there won’t be just one turkey at your house over Christmas, whole flocks of turkeys will be knocking on your door and begging for your votes.
For once, I have to agree with Ralph Klein. I don’t see any outcome other than a Liberal minority. I think the Bloc will do very well in Québec, and that will pretty much put the kibosh on the chances of any party forming a majority.
And Klein’s point that Conservative leader Stephen Harper is seen by voters as too right wing to form a government is dead on. Ontario will never vote for a Western right-wing rump party, and that’s exactly what the Tories became when they joined forces with Reform, or the Alliance or whatever the hell they were calling themselves.
And if Harper can’t win running in a second election against Paul Martin’s Liberal Bozo Brigade, that will spell the end of Harper’s leadership. The long knives will be out. And a minority won’t do: Harper has to win a majority or he’s badly burnt toast. A Tory minority will not last long as Harper has no other party willing to team up with him. The Bloc might, and Harper might be dumb enough and power-hungry enough to accept a Tory-Bloc alliance, but that will backfire as much as Mulroney’s courting of Québec sovereignists did in the 1980s. Remember how well that turned out? No, if Harper’s Tories don’t get a majority, he’ll become this year’s Stockwell Day, an embarrassing reminder of how this country’s right-wing consistently shoots itself in the foot.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

December 1, 2005: Harper and the GST
Conservative leader Stephen Harper has announced the first big promise of the campaign, an immediate rollback of the GST to 6%, followed by a further 1% decrease sometime within the next 5 years.
At least Harper hasn’t said what many from the right will tell you, that tax cuts such as these will pay for themselves. (BC Premier and noted convicted drunk driver Gordon Campbell said that very thing when, as his first action upon being sworn-in, was to enact a massive tax cut for high-income earners. This was followed by the largest deficit in provincial history and massive service cutbacks. But I digress. And if tax cuts really pay for themselves, Mr. Campbell, why not cut all taxes? It’s a win-win! I don’t pay any tax and the province somehow magically raises revenue to pay for services! But I digress again.) But making your first big pledge a cut in the hated GST seems like nothing more than a popularity grab.
And that couldback firee. Let’s remember which party brought in the GST in the first place. Why, golly, it was those darn Conservatives!
Not that the Liberals are all solid ground here suddenly defending the GST. After all, they were elected in 1993 by saying they were going to repeal the GST outright. Last time I checked, I was still paying it.

December 14, 2005: The Phony Election
I’d love to comment more about the election campaign so far, but there really isn’t much to say. All the major parties are trying to bribe us again with our own money.
Yes, Harper is scoring some points with his daily policy announcements, and that has the Liberals on the defensive. But he loses points for those awful TV ads.
The NDP isn’t saying much, but they have the best ads.
The Bloc has been running their usual quiet and competent campaign, but they clearly need some help with their goaltender rankings. Have they even feard of Curtis Joseph — hello?
The Liberals are losing the initiative to the constant Tory policy announcements, going into a reactive instead a proactive mode. But I suspect none of this really matters. The Liberals are smart enough to know when the campaigning really begins.
We’re in a period I’m dubbing "the phony campaign." The parties, and the voters, are in cruise mode, not getting into the real grim and gritty electioneering until after New Years. The real campaign will start on January 2. Three weeks of hardcore vote buying. Be prepared for the mud to fly.

December 16, 2005: War of the Words
Paul Martin is scoring points in the time-honored tradition of bashing US Presidents during an election campaign.
Even Stephen Harper had to admit that the US Ambassador’s comments on our election were ill-advised.
But are Martin’s tough words mere electioneering? Remember that he couldn’t wait to have his picture taken with Bush. And Harper would have had us fighting in Iraq if he had been PM.
It’s all games and posturing.
Speaking of which, how ironic it is that the US seems to have no aversion to telling other countries how to behave, up to and including invasion to make their point, yet get very agitated should anyone dare to criticize them.

December 17, 2005: Debate #1
Caught a bit of last night’s debate.
Gilles Duceppe, as usual, was the most polished and made the most sense.
And if he didn’t have this totally bizarre fixation for breaking up a perfectly good country, he’d probably make a great Prime Minister.

December 19, 2005: A Modest Tax Proposal
There’s been a lot of talk in this campaign about cutting the GST and/or cutting Income Tax. Which is fairer? Which helps out low and middle income Canadians the most?
Let me offer my own modest tax proposal — let’s scrap income tax and raise the GST.
Now before anyone calls the looney tuner on me, consider these numbers:
Canadian Government Fiscal 2004 Revenue
GST $28,200,000,000
Income Tax $84,800,000,000
Corporate Tax $27,400,000,000
Note that the GST revenue is almost exactly one third the amount of income tax revenue. So scrapping income tax and raising the GST from 7% to 28% would be revenue neutral.
Yes, 28% is a whopping tax to spend on purchases, but on the other hand there would no income tax deductions off my paycheque. For me personally, that’s a savings of around $350 a month. Suddenly, my idea doesn’t seem so wacky now, does it?
The GST is strictly a voluntary tax. It automatically taxes an individual based on the taxpayer’s ability to pay. For instance:
- a rich person might spend $4000 on a wide-screen HD TV. That’s $1120 in tax.
- a middle-class person might spend $1500 on an LCD TV. $420 in tax.
- a lower-income person might spend $500 on the last of the tube TVs. $140 in tax.
Clearly, there are some problems with my idea. Low-income Canadians who pay little or no income tax are not going to benefit from this scheme, so some sort of equalizing payment would have to be developed.
And rich people, some of whom will do anything to avoid paying taxes, will undoubtedly try to import goods from other countries to avoid the new GST.
But in fact, higher income earners should love the new GST. The higher the income bracket, the bigger the income tax savings.
And imagine the other savings. Imagine a vastly downsized CCRA, not spending money to track, compile and check tax returns.
No more income tax audits, and no more income tax forms. No more loopholes for smart accountants to exploit.
I think there’s something here. Paul, Stephen, Jack... any comments?

January 09, 2006: Playing Your Cards Right (or Left)
Somehow I’ve gotten myself on the NDP’s emailing list. While normally I instantly delete any political email I get, I opened this latest one and lo and behold found this little gem below just in time for tonight’s debate.

(I should note for the record that no political party has tried to contact me personally, apart from a pre-recorded phone call from Dr. Keith Martin, my Liberal MP. And with the NSA probably listening in, I hung up in a hurry.)

January 12, 2006: Candidate Dump
The Tories became the first party to dump a candidate after it was revealed that a BC candidate was facing smuggling charges after allegedly smuggling a car and 112 bottles of booze across the border in 2004. Derek Zeisman will have to sit as independent should he be elected. This could be a sign of things to come as Harper and the Tories edge towards a majority in the polls. The last Tory government under Brian Mulroney was rife with corruption and resignations.
On the other hand, this is the first real glitch in the well-run Tory campaign. The Liberals are panicking; anytime a Prime Minister announces a major campaign plank like eliminating the constitutional Notwithstanding clause (and does it so suddenly that it doesn’t even make it into the party’s election platform), you know that he thinks he’s spending his last days at 24 Sussex. Clearly, Martin is trying to insinuate that Harper has a secret agenda against same-sex marriage, abortion, gay rights and other progressive issues. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Harper did, but Harper, from his perspective, has had the good sense to keep his mouth shut and the good luck that his candidates have done the same thing.
And in a bit of surprise, Mario Dumont (head of the provincial Action démocratique du Québec party) advised voters not to vote for the federal Bloc Québécois). Dumont will not recommend a federal party to vote for, but did say he will vote Conservative. The real surprise will be when Harper gives Dumont a cabinet post. Golly, yes, what a surprise that will be.
I’m sure Jack Layton said or did something this week, too. But no one’s listening.

January 17, 2006: Highly Illogical
Not that I have any burning desire to continue to poke fun at Stephen Harper, but what the heck.
A canada.com story points out that apparently Harper is a huge Trekkie.
"Like, huge," says a source. "And it has to be the classic series, from the 1960s - none of that Next Generation, Deep Space Nine crap." Okay, I’ll give Harper a point for being a fan of "real" Trek.
How true this really is I don’t know, but it readily sets up the tried and true "let’s compare the candidates to Star Trek characters" joke.
Paul Martin is Scotty. Clearly, he’s always whining about needing more power, but he’s also trying his damnedest to keep his wee bairns flying. Unfortunately for him, it seems that the good ship Liberalprise is on it’s last legs, no thanks to the evil Klingon, Commander K’Gomery.
Jack Layton is McCoy. He has a cure for everything that ails you, and most of them are just good old fashioned horse sense. He’s always muttering that the rest of the crew don’t follow his advice. He is always speaking the truth from the heart, and as always, no one listens.
Gilles Duceppe is Captain Kirk. Which makes sense in a way as Duceppe wants to fly his ship his way, damn Starfleet and its blasted regulations. He’s not going to listen to some blasted bureaucrats from across the galaxy tell him what to do. He’s going to take his ship and fly on a seperate course.
Finally, Harper is unemotional, his smile is forced, and he speaks in a monotone. His logic often fails him at critical plot points. Obviously, he is Spock. He even has the same haircut.

Election Watch ’06: John’s Guide To Electoral Reform
After watching all the Tweedledums and Tweedledumbers lo these last few weeks, I’ve concluded that Canada clearly needs some electoral reforms. To wit, I humbly offer these suggestions:
1. Whoever Wants to Be Prime Minister Should Be Automatically Barred From Seeking the Office
Clearly, the power associated with the office of a national leader attracts the wrong kind of people. One has to only look at our southerly neighbor to see the ultimate example.
Anyone who actually desires the office of Prime Minister is clearly not the sort of person we want running the country. As the famous philosopher Herman once noted: "The people capable of running the country are too smart to get into politics."
(And this goes along with the mood of most voters in the country. Very few actually want any of the current party leaders to be Prime Minister; either they feel they are left with little choice and must choose the lesser of four evils, or they are not voting for one party as they are voting against another one. I think we have to go back to the heady days of Trudeaumania to find the last time the Canadian populace was genuinely moved to vote for someone.)
2. MPs Should Be Chosen at Random from the General Population
To carry things one step further, anyone wants to be an MP should be barred from office. But then how would we choose our MPs? Via lottery. One citizen would be chosen at random from each riding.
This has the immediate benefit of a House of Commons that more closely represents and reflects the views of the national population.
For example: if 85% of Canadians are against the war in Iraq, it should work out that roughly 85% of our randomly-chosen MPs would be against the war.
If 52% of our population is female, then 52% of our MPs would be female.
If 4% of Canadians are lawyers, then the new House would only have 4% lawyers (as opposed to the 80% it seems we have now).
Parliament would resemble more of a municipal council or Territorial legislature, where various groups may form alliances for specific issues and votes, and a different set of alliances for a different set of issues. All votes would be free votes; there would no parties so no reason to vote along party lines.
Much like how the position of Speaker of the House is voted on by MPs, they would now also select MPs for Cabinet positions, including Prime Minister. (A single mother with two kids would be an excellent choice for finance minister. She would know how to balance the budget, as opposed to a millionaire business man who’s so removed from real life that he’s never in his life had to account for every cent. But I digress.)

January 23, 2006: Rep by Pop vs First Past the Post
If Canada had a 100% Rep by Pop electoral system, tonight’s election results would have looked something like this:
Conservative:
124 seats (actual results) vs 111 seats (rep by pop)
Liberals:
103 seats (actual results) vs 92 seats (rep by pop)
Bloc Québécois:
51 seats (actual results) vs 32 seats (rep by pop)
NDP:
29 seats (actual results) vs 59 seats (rep by pop)
Green:
0 seats (actual results) vs 14 seats (rep by pop)

January 24, 2006: Swing to the Right
Stephen Harper should enjoy his moment in the sun. For a guy who’s the next Prime Minister, his government is not in a good spot.
His minority is more tenuous than the previous Liberal government. Consider that Harper’s Conservatives won fewer seats than Martin’s Liberals won in the previous election. Clearly, Harper was hoping for a majority and major breakthroughs in Ontario and Quebec. Heck, he did worse than even I thought he would. While there was some progress for them in Quebec, the Liberals held a lot of their ground in Ontario, winning the popular vote there and denying Harper his majority.
In fact the Conservatives won no seats in the country’s three biggest urban centers, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. There’s a decidedly urban/rural split to the Conservative vote. Could this be the start of a deep American-style polarization?
The Liberals showed surprising strength considering they ran a bad campaign and were plagued by scandals. While they suffered in Quebec, they fared better than expected. And thanks to Martin’s resignation, the Liberals will have a new leader facing Harper, possibly making Harper look like yesterday’s news.
The Bloc suffered the most. Expecting to do well, they lost seats and votes. Worse for them, the Tories established themselves as a federalist alternative in Quebec, and with the defeat of the Liberals, the Bloc’s biggest campaign issues, the Liberal party scandals in Quebec, are now off the table.
Even the NDP had some bad news to go with their good showing. Despite gaining a number of seats, they fell two seats short of holding the balance of power.
Where can Harper hope to gain support in the inevitable 2007 election? He won the West; the only place he can gain support is in Ontario and Quebec, and when he starts sucking up to Central Canada, he’ll lose the West. It’s a time-honoured Tory tradition. As Hugh Segal noted on the CBC last night, "When the Liberals are in power, the West votes Conservative. When the Conservatives are in power, the West forms a new party." Both the Reform and the Bloc Québécois were born out of the self-destruction of the last Conservative government. (And let’s also remember that the last Conservative government, possibly the most corrupt government in Canadian history, ran, like Harper, on being fiscally responsible and promptly had a decade’s worth of the largest deficits in this country has ever seen. But I digress.)
Stephen Harper could be the 21st century version of Joe Clark, a brief Tory minority while the Liberals re-invent themselves. In order to win central Canada, he will have to stick to Ontario-friendly progressive issues (whatever few the Tories have) and abandon (or postpone) the more contentious right wing nut case items of his agenda. Even if Harper wins a majority next time, his days are numbered. He will continue to pander to central Canada as he must to maintain power, the West will feel alienated and the Conservative coalition will implode like it always does, setting the stage for another generation of Liberal rule. For good or ill, it is the natural order of things.
And Harper isn’t helping himself by saying things like he "will start rebuilding this country." Memo to the PM: the country isn’t broken.
If Harper thinks he has a mandate for massive social change, he is woefully mistaken. He barely has a mandate to change the stationary.
Obviously, Canadians were weary of giving Harper a full mandate. They remember that if Harper had been PM three years ago, we’d be trapped in a dumb and awful war.
Canadians wanted to spank the Liberals. And they did. They also did not want to give Harper and his neo-con cronies free reign to run the country. And they didn’t.
There’s not a lot of good news to go around after last night’s election. Perhaps the worst news of all is that Stockwell Day might actually be prime material for a cabinet post.

February 06, 2006: Denouement: Meet The New Boss, Same as The Old Boss
With his first act as Prime Minister, Stephen Harper demonstrated that he can play the political game as well as anyone, and his high-minded campaign of integrity, honest government and accountably were as worthless as Chretien’s promise to remove the GST.
In other words, he said anything to be elected, and now that’s he won, the real Harper agenda will now be revealed.
First, MP David Emerson, re-elected a scant two weeks ago as a Liberal, crossed the floor to join the Conservative cabinet as the Minister of International Trade, with responsibilities for the Vancouver Olympics. Emerson, who had vowed on election night to become the new prime minister’s "worst nightmare", does not understand what the fuss is about. His Conservative opponent finished a distant third in his riding; clearly his constituents what wanted a Liberal representing them.
And after all the Tory’s boo-hooing when Belinda Stronach crossed the floor, and the cries of anger and outrage when the Liberals were apparently caught trolling for other Tory MPs in the last house, one would have thought Harper would heeded the calls from his party and enacted legislation requiring members that cross the floor to win their seats back in a by-election, rather than trolling for Liberals who value bigger pay cheques over serving their constituents. And he want after a Liberal! You remember them, those corrupt and decadent crooks that Harper just spent the last eight weeks telling us we couldn’t trust.
Harper also appointed Michael Fortier to the position of Minister of Public Works and government Services. Fortier was the Conservative campaign co-chair in 2004 and 2006, and co-chair of Harper’s leadership campaign in 2006. He lost a bid for the Conservative leadership in the 1990s, and lost a bid to win a seat in the 2000 federal election. While the PM has the right to name anyone he wants to cabinet, traditionally it has been a sitting MP, and if the person chosen is not an MP (as in Fortier’s case), the new cabinet member usually runs in a by-election at the earliest opportunity. This will not happen this time; Fortier is being appointed to the Senate, where he will sit until the next election, when he will run.
In other words, Harper’s first political appointee is a Conservative party hack who will sit in the Senate and Cabinet. Patronage lives! Worse, Fortier won’t have to take questions in The House because he’s not a member — so much for accountability!
And finally, Stockwell Day was given the Public Safety portfolio. While giving Day any form of responsibility is a disaster waiting to happen, surely Day would have preferred some sort of Recreation portfolio. He’s clearly a man who loves water sports.

The Trials and Tribulations of Fanzine Publishing

A transcription of a panel from V-Con 30, held in Vancouver, October 2005.
Your panelists (l. - r.):

Andrew C. Murdoch: nominated for an Aurora Award for his zine ZX, also editor of Covert Communications from Zeta Corbi;

John W. Herbert: winner of four Aurora Awards (with co-editor Karl Johanson) for editing Under the Ozone Hole;

Steve Forty: Long-time editor of BCSFAZine and twice nominated for an Aurora Award.

Garth Spencer: Winner of a Casper award for editing The Maple Leaf Rag, current editor of BCFSAZine and this year's winner of the Best Fanzine Aurora for The Royal Swiss Navy Gazette.

S40: We have quite a crowd.

The Audience: I feel awful. Come on, there’s got to be more people than this!

JWH: And when you leave to go to the Harry Potter panel…

S40: Well, it’s 10:00 AM. Most fanzine-type fans are not really 10:00 AM fans.

ACM: This is true.

S40: Including me, I almost got lost.

GS: I have opinions about some of the scheduling. I thought it was just my imagination but at this convention, they did it again. They put a “How to Survive Your First Convention” panel on Friday at 5:00 PM before most everyone, especially neos, have arrived.

S40: In my opinion something like that is fine on Friday, but you should repeat it sometime on Saturday.

ACM: I have to accept some of the blame for the scheduling, because when I was asked to be on the panel, I said if it was sometime in the morning because I work that afternoon.

S40: You! It was originally 1:00! I was so happy!

ACM: Sorry!

JWH: Damn you to hell.

S40: Anyway, do we want to start now? I’m supposedly moderator, I think.

ACM (to new audience member who just arrived): You are staying here, right? You’re not going to the Harry Potter panel?

JWH: You can be up here if you want.

ACM: Feel free to move forward!

S40: I’m a former editor of BCSFAzine and these are some issues that I edited. Gestetner ink does hold up. This is many years old.
JWH: That’s sweet.

GS: Nobody denies that.

S40: That’s a three-colour Gestetner cover… how many people did those? I had the infamous BCSFAzine Gestetners and actually they were mine, mostly. And the electric stencil cutters.
Okay, we’re going to start. This is the Trials and Tribulations of Fanzine Publishing. This is Andrew Murdoch, John Herbert and Garth Spencer. And I’m Steve Forty. We’ve all put out fanzines and so on. And I’ll give everyone a minute or two to introduce themselves.

ACM: I’m Andrew Murdoch. I publish Covert Communications from Zeta Corbi. Although not recently since I’ve had a child. I first got into fanzine publishing on my own because of this schmuck and his partner in crime {{Editor’s Note: Andrew is referring to Karl Johanson, now editor of Neo-opsis magazine.}} who published Under the Ozone Hole, and I said to myself, “Hey, that’s kind of cool!” My first fanzine was nominated for an Aurora Award and lost to John and his partner in crime. A proud tradition which I have upheld.

JWH: I’m John Herbert. I’ve published fanzines, did some Star Trek club zines and some other zines, and then me and my partner in crime Karl Johanson published Under the Ozone Hole in the 1990s and we were nominated for five Auroras in row, and won four, beating Andrew once. I haven’t done much lately, except that this year, I restarted Under the Ozone Hole.

GS: I’m Garth Spencer. I used to be famous for a newszine that tried to cover Canadian fandom for Canadian fans. Maple Leaf Rag, as it was then called, followed a number of such attempts and was succeeded by a few aborted attempts that petered out. Now I’ve been editing BCSFAzine in a format not unlike Steve’s. I produce this on a monthly basis. I try to provide a variety of things outside of just stuff to do with the club – regional news, national news, fan news, writers’ market news – anything that might interest or amuse people or might even be useful. And late at night when the darkness falls and the moon rises, I try to get out the latest issue of my personal zine, which is now titled The Royal Swiss Navy Gazette. It has in the past had other silly titles, like The World According to Garth or Sercon Popcult Litcrit Fanmag. This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands. As we’ll get into later, it’s been harder and harder to get these out with the increase in copying costs mailing costs. Interestingly, this happened about the same time as the Internet became available.

S40: My name is Steve Forty. I did BCSFAzine for a number of years. It was nominated for a couple of Auroras – actually, the first time when I edited it, and the second time it was half with me and half with R. Graeme Cameron editing. {{Editor’s Note: Graeme Cameron was to be a panelist on the panel but was unable to attend due to a bizarre gardening accident.}} We lost. It’s very hard to do a fanzine like BCSFAzine every month and compete with someone who does one or two a year. And we tended to lose to those! I’m also an Elron award winner. We put out, with Jim Welch and Mark Olberg, Not the BCSFAzine 100, and Still Not the BCSFAzine 100. And it’s not named after L. Ron Hubbard, and it has nothing to do with –

GS: It’s a V-Con institution, award for worst contribution –

S40: Disservice, the word is. Disservice to science fiction. I guess now we should get into the trials and tribulations of publishing. Now the Internet is one form of it –

GS: Is it a trial and tribulation, or is it a solution?

S40: I think you’ll find there are two forms of fanzine fans. The biggest thing is the fanzine fans of old want the hard copy. They want something like that, and just printing it off in your printer is just not the same thing.

ACM: I think with regards to that, The Internet has taken over a niche that fanzines used to fill in that they used to serve as public forums through the letter columns and that sort of thing. So the Internet being so much more immediate, there’s no more community within a fanzine to the extent that that was the grapevine through which news passed. Now, the main trial is to come up with an article or solicit articles that are that much more interesting to put in your fanzine.

JWH: Exactly. When we were doing Under the Ozone Hole in the 90s, we had a few pages of news, and Garth’s Maple Leaf Rag was a news fanzine, but with the Internet, the function of being a news source has really gone from fanzines. Obviously, a club zine would have club news in it, but in terms of more generalized science fiction news or national fan news, that’s probably best served by the Internet these days.

S40: I used to have a couple of columns. One was called About the Authors by The Authors. I’d phone an author and ask him to do something on another author. And I actually had things lifted from BCSFAzine by things like SF Chronicle because I would phone all the local authors and put the news in there.

The Audience: One thing the Internet doesn’t have a corner on, if you want to phone another author, or review a movie –

S40: But even the old hardcopy fanzine you have today, you use the Internet to get the articles, so there’s really not that much difference. And if you have a fabulous set-up with a fabulous computer, you can have a fancy wonderful multi-colour cover which you really can’t do very easily on the printed copy unless you have lots of bucks.

GS: I think that the Internet has not entirely replaced the functions that used to be performed by fanzines in the mimeograph era, and the reason is that for some reasons a lot of the participatory functions and fandom-oriented functions that you see in a lot of one-man entirely voluntary publications simply haven’t been picked up. Maybe I’m not subscribing to the right newsgroups or listservs, but when I look for web pages, I find things ones that expressly professional, like SF Canada, for SF writers in Canada, or Made in Canada, whose web master is focused on films and media and writers and anything except fandom. It does make a concession by listing conventions and that’s it. The concept that there is news by, for and about science fiction fans, or there’s a community out there that might have an interest in connecting, that seems to have gone by the board. Or it’s served in different ways and I’m not seeing where it’s being served.

S40: I’d kind of like to get off that, we’re going beyond the topic. The topic is more the trial and tribulations of publishing, which would be getting your articles, troubles you’ve had actually producing the thing.

GS: We have a different take on this, Steve and I. We’ve had a different take on what needs and interests people have, just in BCSFA, and how to meet them. I’ve been flailing around trying to find the things that people would be interested in participating in, or the things they’d be interested in seeing. And I still don’t know after five or six years. Steve has been very good during his term had soliciting participation.

S40: I found that if you get a little bit of cider, if you knew what you were doing at conventions, I never had any trouble getting artwork.

ACM: I had to solicit by buying a beer for fanzine artists at Torcon.

S40: You get to know these people. Part of the thing for me was that I was always lucky that way. If you look through old BCSFAzines, this was in the days before we had much in the way of computers – when I first started doing it, I finally got my Atari Amiga 2 halfway through my editorship of about 35 issues. My biggest problem is that I am a terrible typist. The last thing I need to do is to take someone’s stuff and re-type, because there’d be ten times as many typos. So I’d just take it, photo-reduce it at your local Kinko’s or whatever, and all the pages inside the zine – you could tell I was younger then, because I was able to read them without glasses – and I’d photo-reduce it, so you have an 8 ½ by 11 sheet folded over, so you’d have lots of pages and lots of information. But it was very hard for me to re-type it, so rather than do that you’d find all different typefaces, all different styles because I just trusted my people that contributed. And I was very lucky that way, with people like Al Betz, who won an Aurora for his Ask Mr. Science column. And I’d get a letter from Harry Warner, Jr., and every fanzine editor knows you got to have a Harry Warner, Jr. letter in the olden days. And I got them, and I thought I could re-type them, or I could put in and you could see all the letters wandering and so on.. He had certain keys where the words would go like [a curvy line]. It was part of the charm, so instead of re-typing all this stuff, I would just run it as is. There was a lot of stuff in there with very few illustrations in the middle. It was just article after article.

ACM: Especially for CCFZC, I’ve been using my computer solely so layout contributions have not been too much of a problem. I’ve been quite blessed with quite a bit or artwork from Brad Foster and I forget who it was sent me a huge amount of fillos by a fan artist who passed away recently. Rostler, William Rotsler. So artwork I haven’t had a problem with fortunately, it’s been articles and getting actually writing done. I’ve been told I can write, but it takes me a long time to do it between writer’s block and 1 17 month-old running around the house.

{{Editor’s Note: At this point, a person entered asking where Boardroom A was. There followed a long discussion concerning the location of Boardroom A. With a 3-to-1 vote (Andrew dissenting), it was eventually decided that Boardroom A must be next to Boardroom B. }}

ACM: So I’ve been very lucky in the artwork department, but most of the verbiage I’ve had to create myself. That’s pretty tough when you’re trying to fill an entire zine which is why mine comes out so infrequently.

JWH: That’s the tough part, filling up the pages with words. Fortunately I have a government job so I have plenty of time to type. It also depends on what kind of zine you’re doing. With a perzine, your own personal zine, you realize that the ultimate responsibility to fill those pages lies with you. If you’re doing a club zine, you’re somewhat at the whim of what the club decides to put in, and if they put out a lot of effort and get you a lot of stuff, then that’s terrific. It cuts down your work immensely. But sometimes you have to harass people to contribute things.

ACM: I remember you were a master at harassing us.

JWH: A master harasser.

S40: I was lucky when I was doing BCSFAzine because we had FRED, which is the weekly drinking thing. And I did cover that was infamous, we didn’t know if it would go across the border. You see a naked Leela on top the Time Lord lying on the floor and his scarf wrapped around the TARDIS. And it says, “Again, Doctor! Again!”

GS: Let’s do the time warp again!

S40: Fosfax wrote to me and asked if they could trade with me. I’d never heard of them before, but they’re quite a famous fanzine with all these famous authors, and they wrote to me to ask me if they could get this issue. Someone had seen it.

GS: Then Timothy Lane took over as editor.

S40: I took the time that if someone commented on something in the zine, I made sure that the person who wrote it saw it. I brought the fanzine to them, I opened the page and I said, “Look at this.” That’s how I got people like Sidney Trim and so to keep contributing, you keep working the people. It sounds cruel, but it works. You take the time and effort, and you get a lot more out of it. I never had trouble getting articles, except one or two in the early days. As far as a clubzine, it sort of was and sort of wasn’t because it was what I could find. The club really didn’t contribute except for upcoming events, which was one of my columns anyway.

GS: I found over and over again that a minority of people will continually get into something participatory for publication on paper. And a majority of people will accept it. Whether they appreciate or whether they have a problem with it, only a minority will tell you. And that’s just the deal. Since the mimeograph era, I’ve found that costs have risen. It’s been a lot easier to do things purely on the Internet. I’m aware of at least one web site, efanzines.com, which is where fanzines are archived in electronic format. I could have produced a long list of what are current zines that I don’t have in paper format. Fanzines are always changing; they change address or title. They’ll always sound goofy. I have in the past produced fanzines with titles like Scuttlebutt, The Maple Leaf Rag, The Perfect Paper, The Filthy Rag, Black Marxist Lesbian Quarterly, Sercon Popcult Litcrit Fanmag, The World According to Garth, and most recently The Royal Swiss Navy Gazette. That’s typical. When I first got into fandom, I heard of a club called The Elves’, Gnomes’ and Little Mens’ Science Fiction Chowder and Marching Society. It’s hard to catalogue things like that. At the Worldcon in Glasgow, some people got together and whipped up a one-shot – a fanzine that’s only going to exist for one issue – on the spur of the moment, very quickly and spontaneously, and it was called The Pork Authority. And I realized that different people have different funny bones, different live nerves. It’s really hard to predict where you’re going to hit them, what’s going to arouse their enthusiasm. And I think that no matter what media you’ve got, what the price structures are, that’s the major quandary.

S40: I think all of us here have been involved in paper fanzines. Part of the Trials and Tribulations of fanzine editing is actually printing it. Now something like {{holds up an old BCSFAZine}} would take about four hours to actually print, because I had the gestenter, the electo-stencil cutter, time seven sheets which would be 14 electro-stencils, plus if you did the colour cover, you had extra ones. And you had ink everywhere. And you’d have a group upstairs. Because it was a clubzine I got get a group of people to do collation and have a big party. And we had a treasurer for a while who wouldn’t give the address labels. So later at FRED, we’d put the stamps on and the labels, because you can’t put the stamps on without the labels.
Audience: How big a run did you do?

S40: Between 100 and 200. This was when we used to have 100 members, a little over 100 members, And the you’d have trades. It added up to a fair bit of time. It was a lot of work to do that, but it was a work of joy for me for the longest time, then it go to be onerous in the end when you’ve got 28 pages every month. ‘Cause that what that is, 28 pages. But I enjoyed it and I’m proud of it.

ACM: For my current zine, I use computer layout which makes life tremendously easy. You can have a fairly polished looking page. That helps quite a bit. In the early days, I did my zine on an Apple Iic because that was the only computer I had at the time. I used software that could not make a margin along the side so I stapled my zine at the top. Which I got plenty of comments on, having an 8 ½ by 11 fanzine stapled at the top.

JWH: It was unique.

ACM: It was. If nothing else, I got known for that. How it was stapled! No one remembers anything I wrote, but it was staple really cool!

JWH: Never read it, but I liked the staples!

ACM: So these days layout is not so much of a problem for me personally. The main problem is afterwards and that’s the expense of printing it. Photocopying has gotten ridiculously expensive lately. And postage has gone up in Canada every year for the past three.

S40: Can I recommend going to some place like Staples Superstore for printing?

ACM: That’s where I do go, but even there the prices have gone up a cent a page in the last year. Layout has gotten easier but everyone has their own fleet of gestentners in the basement anymore. Reproduction is getting costly.
{{Editor’s Note: Transcribing this a year later, the Editor can only shake his head in wonder at how he let that straight line get away unscathed.}}

S40: I did have them but they all went to CascadiaCon. They were given to Seattle people. They came up in a big van, and these people in white coats came and instead of kidnapping me, they took all the gestentners and electro-stencil cutters.

ACM: What happened to them?

S40: They wanted to show all the new fans how the old fans used to print. So I started to get them running and a whole pile of people took pictures of me and a gestentner at CascadiaCon.

JWH: The first zine I was involved was a one-shot we did called The Electric Gang Bang Pork Chop. So there must be something about pork and spontaneous one-shots. {{Editor’s Note: The Editor would like to point out that no pork products were harmed in the creation of The Electric Gang Bang Pork Chop.}}

GS: There was a creative character in Edmonton who came up with something with no pork in it called You Can’t Get to Heaven on Roller Skates Infrequently.

JWH: We should just do a panel on zine names.

GS: Yeah!

S40: There you go!

GS: The problem I have is: a) finding out where all the members are because I’ve had this continual struggle over the last year just establishing who is a current BCSFA member, who’s expired, who’s moved and where did they move to, and it took an extremely long time simply to meet up same time same place with the treasurer and the vice-president—

S40: They have electricity today!

GS: The other problem I have is getting people to understand what I was saying quite clearly in plain English on paper where the words stayed still and you could re-read them. It’s amazing how English is broken down semantically so that you can read the same sentence four ways depending on the state of mind someone is in at that time of the month {{Editor’s Note: I’m sure Garth is referring to “rent day.”}}, or what country they’re in, or what language or speech community they originally come from. It’s very amazing. Within one club.

S40: When I had to do it, originally most people would rejoin at a certain time, so I’d get 13 sheets and type all the names on all the labels, and I’d run 13 sheets, of labels. But then they decided that they don’t all want to renew in May and that made it a lot harder. Most people did renew in May for the longest time at V-Con.

JWH: I was going to say that when I started I did some gestetner work, too. Bernie Klassen had one so we were doing a lot of work with that, but I came in just as that was fading out and computers were coming in The latest issue was done using Pagemaker 7.

S40: You cheated!

JWH: It’s the only way to go! The only way to go! Printing costs are horrible, but what I do is use Pagemaker which very easily exports to pdf and email a lot of copies out to people.

GS: I have a problem. When I was first editing BCSFAZine and using pdf, when I exported to pdf strange things would happen to illustrations, especially on the cover. First, for several issues one half on one side of the cover illustration, just the illustration, would disappear. Just blank white space. And then it was ¾ of the cover illustration would disappear and you would get to see one quarter of it in the upper left hand quadrant. That was when I gave up on Pagemaker. I still to this day do not know what the glitch was. Now over the past year or so, I’ve been struggling with machines, different programs, different conversion strategies. I finally gave up. I’ve been doing this in Word.

S40: You notice what you guys are missing? What’s different about BCSFAZine that’s different from all the rest? No colour. You guys are in black and white. I used to like the fact that you could get blues and reds and browns. Yeah, you can get it on the email version—

ACM: My last issue did have a colour cover—

S40: It’s very rare. It’s sad to see that sometimes— well, you can’t afford to print it in colour. I was going to keep one gestetner with colour ink in case I ever print something I can throw a little colour on it just for fun, but it was too easy to put them on the fun and see them go.

JWH: We did a couple of colour covers for Ozone Hole in the ’90s and —

S40: Oh, I remember that!

JWH: —they looked great but the cost was, oh god, it instantly doubled the cost.

GS: One of the things that we represent, some of us with graying hair, is that we’ve seen several changes in media and that means we’ve learnt crafts several times over. I’ve used spirit duplicators, ditto machines. I’ve seen hectograph. You’ve used mimeograph.

S40: Yeah. I’ve also used inkjet printers and all that. Did you ever do anything like I did? I had collectors that liked BCSFAZine and wanted “The” BCFSAZine so every now and then just to get even with them, I’d throw in different sheets of coloured paper. You’d have a random colour so you couldn’t get all the BCFSAZines identical, I even did one with two different covers once.

ACM: I remember an Under the Ozone Hole that had every issue customized—

JWH: No, it only had eight different covers.

GS: That’s been done several times. In the earliest years—

ACM: I remember the personalized letter columns—

JWH: Go away!

S40: The worst thing I ever did was –and next time I will think very carefully if I ever get involved with that— we did a hoax ad for BCSFAZine. I got together around V-Con 8 with a lady from Edmonton and a person from Calgary and we came with addresses that were not viable. In Calgary it was like “Something SW” and there was no such place. In Edmonton, it was a burnt-down sports arena, and in Vancouver it was the Hotel Devonshire’s parking lot. After they had ripped the hotel down. And so I came up with a title called Jape’s Books, a new chain of bookstore. And I announced this new chain of bookstores and it came out in these other fanzines, and I, not carefully thinking this out, I ran this ad for Jape’s and a number of people went down to this fancy, early opening of Jape’s Books and I forgot that the BCSFA meeting was at my house the next day. Ooooo, they were not happy. They fell for it hook, line and sinker. But I thought they would pick up on the word “Jape.”

GS: You never know what joke people will notice. Or get. Or where the comprehension fails. That’s the problem with any hoax, any satire, and it’s not specific to fanzines.

S40: How many people went to that? Ken, do you remember?

Ken Wong (who had wandered into the wrong room): No, not me!

S40: You were one of the ones complaining and so was David George and a number of other people. You went by at another time and noticed where it was. Every now and then people will do a hoax like the Not the BCSFAZine 100 and Still Not the BCSFAZine 100. Gerald Boyko was supposed to do the 100th issue of BCSFAZine. By the time issue 104 came out, we did Not the BCSFAZine 100 and sent it out to all the BCSFA members, and just after we did Still Not the BCSFAZine 100, just after BCSFAZine 108 came out, then the real BCSFAZine 100 came out.

ACM: Better late than never.

S40: How about you guys and deadlines?

ACM: Well, I’m pretty much wide-open. Always have been. I knew pretty much right from the outset that setting a regular schedule would almost would either kill me or result in a terrible zine since I was providing most of the writing. Since it’s inception there have been gaps of months and in the most recent case, two years between issues simply out of necessity. It’s pretty much a hobby. Some people have been wonderful at keeping deadlines,

S40: BCSFAZine’s been excellent.

ACM: BCSFAZine’s been excellent, but it’s a clubzine though, so that helps.

S40: No, not really. I was still up at 2:00 in the morning wondering “where the hell’s that article”and I had to print that morning because that was the final deadline.

ACM: My zine is officially listed with the National Library of Canada as being “irregular.”

JWH: Well, I try to keep a roughly quarterly schedule with Ozone Hole and I’ve done pretty well except for that nine year gap. But going back to deadlines and clubs, that was the one thing that was a problem when I was doing the club zine. When I’m doing Ozone Hole, it’s just me. I all can do is get mad at myself and I’m not going to do that. With a club zine, it’s good in one sense because you’ve got a lot of people contributing things, but it’s bad in another sense because that deadline’s coming and your on the phone and pulling your hair and screaming at people “You promised me an article! I need it! I have three blank pages waiting for it!”

S40: I must admit that I was lucky there. I always had too much stuff.

GS: I very hard-nosed about deadlines. I can afford to be because a) I produce BCSFAZine on somebody else’s dime, and thereby hangs a few tales I won’t tell, and b) I get somebody else to the actual production of the physical zine. Having a computer to work with solves a lot of my problems enormously. I find it really easy to use boilerplate. I also get other people to do significant chunks of the zine. Sometimes it’s embarrassingly obvious how I slap the thing together.

S40: Here’s another thought. Have any of you gotten anyone really mad at you, almost enemies? I was asking for artwork. And this one person submitted a whole pile of artwork. I said that I disliked dragons intensely and that I would very rarely run them. She sent me pages of dragons. And I ran one of hers, and then I think I ran a second one. But they were all very similar and I didn’t want to run a bunch of them. And she got really really mad at me!

GS: You could have done a one-shot called What a Drag.

S40: You’d get artwork that really wasn’t what you wanted and they would get really mad if you didn’t run it.

ACM: Not so much from what I didn’t run, but I’m very surprised that John didn’t deck me in Winnipeg. I ran an editorial in defense of one friend at the expense of another, and I realize now that I realize now in older wiser times that that was pretty much a mistake. At the time I thought I was doing the right thing and I got the nastiest letter from him as the result.

JWH: But you’ve learned well, Grasshopper.

ACM: So that’s the only instance in my case where I’ve really ticked someone off.

JWH: Yeah, I’ve ticked a few people off.

S40: I don’t want names!

JWH: I’m not giving any! When you’re doing a clubzine like Garth is doing now, especially when it’s on someone else’s dime, there is that struggle between what you want to do as the editor and what the club wants done and perhaps what certain people in the club want done, and that gets into the whole club politics thing spilling over into the zine. That’s why I just gave up on clubzines. I like making a zine and I’m just going to do my own zine.

S40: You mean the club actually interfered? My club never said anything to me.
JWH: Well, it was a rare thing, it didn’t happen all the time. But it happened enough times—

ACM: It got political—

S40: I just realized that the artist that I had rouble with was a club officer—

JWH: Exactly.

GS: Have you noticed that the level of interference with people’s behavior or their rational thinking from not looking at their assumptions? If people want to do their own thing their own way and they enjoy their own hobby activity, that’s one thing. But everyone wants somebody else to something their own way, that’s when you get politics.

S40: Yeah.

ACM: Yeah.

JWH: Yep.

GS: And it took me a long time to realize how much of this bullshit is going on. The other thing that I’m facing most of the time now is people not communicating in terms that I can recognize. I don’t know and I’ve never known what people would want to enjoy in a clubzine. So I’ve pretty much been left to my own devices doing my own thing at other people’s expense. I’m saying that now “on record.”

S40: Another thing to consider. Have you put things in that you thought were totally in bad taste? I already mentioned the Doctor Who cover that I didn’t think would cross the border. The other thing was when they had a meeting at my place and David Stewart didn’t lock the bathroom door and someone burst in the door and took a picture of him sitting on the toilet. I ran that as a cover on BCSFAZine.

ACM: (almost dies laughing)

JWH: I would’ve run that!

S40: But I’m trying to get you guys to say did you ever put out something that you thought was well, maybe that wasn’t such a smart idea? Come on, you must have!

JWH: Only you, Steve.

GS: I can be fairly snide in my editorial columns sometimes. I think that I am self-critical and people can see it but in the editorial and letter columns I can have a very sardonic and somewhat stuffy tone that I think is going to grate with some people. Maybe I’m putting people off and not realizing it.

S40: Maybe what you need is more of a light-hearted tone.

GS: I am being light-hearted. People just don’t quite get my rather Victorian default mode.

S40: What I would try and do is get a couple of people like “Ask Mr. Science.” I’m not particularly funny, but these people are, so I tries to get them to do the funny bits. And that’s another trial and tribulation – what do you want to put into a fanzine?

ACM: When I started my second fanzine, I thought of something that Dale Speirs said which is “have a focus for your zine.” And looking back, my first zine didn’t really have much of one except that I was a fan. So I decided that I wanted to write about science fiction and fandom. So that gives you something you can go for, something you can strive for, and at the same time if you’ve got thoughts percolating in your head that have nothing to do with science fiction and fandom, there’s been a long tradition of that in science fiction fanzines – you’re always going to be wrestling with yourself, does this fit in? What are people going to think about this? I ran an article in my zine following September 11 and it had not terribly much to do with science fiction or fandom except that it referenced myself and my life it’s been the single most commented-on article that I’ve ever written. So it’s where do you draw the line? How much do you put in what form?

JWH: That’s a good approach, to have a focus for your zine. I should try that sometime. I don’t want to limit myself to what I put in the zine. So I don’t have a focused approach to what the zine is going to be about. I try to make sure that everything is well-written and of quality. Let’s put it that way. So I prefer more the quality of a piece as opposed to the specifics of the subject matter. So it goes all over the place. In the latest one I’ve got an article about kayaking I wrote, and an article about The Who, and someone submitted an article about the woman up in the Interior who on Valentine’s Day her car went in the river and she saved herself by eating chocolates until the rescue crew came. She was strapped in her car under water.

GS: The key to underwater survival: bring chocolates.

S40: For me focus – what I tried to do was, being a clubzine, was to think about what fans wanted. Well, they like to eat, so there was a fan food column I’d try to get. They liked humour so I tried to get Mr. Science. I tired to get someone to do movie reviews, I tried to get someone to do book reviews. And then I had an artist do the front cover and the back cover.

GS: Advertising. I’d forgotten that we had advertising. Was that paid advertising?

S40: We got 10% discounts.

GS: When I inherited BCSFAZine, I inherited a bunch of regular ads, I started adding advertisements for writer’s workshops or for my Royal Swiss Navy or The Western Fandom Illuminati. I try to be as general and unfocused in the zine as possible. I try to include things like market news or recently published works by Canadian writers or the evil influence of Danish cultural imperialism on Canadian fandom. I think that I’m going to get some letters of comment eventually.

S40: What about letters of comment?

ACM: Letters of comment are essential.

S40: No, I mean do you get lots?

ACM: I got quite a few from The Usual Bunch of People. By that I mean Lloyd Penney, and Harry Warner Jr., and a lot of people that I traded fanzines with down in the States.

GS: I always though that Lloyd was the Canadian love child of Harry Warner and –

S40: We’ve got about five minutes left, so we should start wrapping this up, unless someone wants to ask a question. Does anyone want to ask a question?

The Audience:

S40: I guess we should wrap up. Thanks for coming!


originally published in Under the Ozone Hole #18

In The Drink

by John W. Herbert

A recent Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny. Not particularly warm, the temperature managed to crawl just a few degrees above zero. Still this was a far cry from the below zero temps and even nastier wind chills we had suffered from for much of the previous week. So it was a good time for a kayak trip at Cadboro Bay! (Note that I am wearing a red sweater... there will be a quiz later.)

Here's our gear lined up and ready to go. Paula had borrowed Alison's kayak. (Alison is kayaking in New Zealand for three weeks.) Normally, Bernie and Paula switch off with their kayak, but with Alison's kayak all of us could get in the water at the same time.

And away we go! Here's Dennis in his inflatable kayak...

...and Paula enjoying Alison's boat.

We paddled out of the bay and turned north along the coastline. That's Mt. Baker, an active volcano, ahead of us.

Three of us decided to cross over to Discovery Island. The womenfolk declined.
I had never been there myself, but both Bernie and Dennis had. There's some strong currents to watch out for, and the crossing of about 20-25 mins can be a little rough. You can see the bumpy water around Dennis in the picture below.

Discovery Island itself was beautiful. A series of small archipelagoes, it makes for a perfect place to explore inlets and rocky shores.

We found a little channel with a bit of a current in it. We decided to try our hand at running it. It wasn't a strong current, but this was our first try at something like this.

The first time I went through, there was no problem. The current was strong but not rough. I paddled against it, until it spun me around and sent me back from where I came.
No problem.
But my paddle was in the water and the current caught it, and dragged it under my boat. And over I went. Potential energy and gravity worked their magic. I was upside down in the water.
Problem.
As you can see, I survived. I made my wet exit, and grabbed onto the back of my kayak. Bernie was nearby and beside me almost instantly. As we organized ourselves to begin the process of getting me back in my boat, my feet suddenly touched ground, and I decided to walk my boat ashore at a small beach.



Out of the water but totally drenched, I took off my sweater. I was wearing my Farmer John wetsuit and that kept most of me warm, but my arms under my sweater were freezing. It was fortunate that I was wearing my wetsuit -- "goner" might be too drastic a term, but I would have been in a lot worse condition. Fortunately, Bernie had overdressed and had taken off his fleece jacket, and he lent it to me. (Quiz time - Question 1: What colour sweater was John wearing at the start of the paddle? Here's a hint: It's not the same colour as in the picture below.)
It was, in retrospect, a good thing. We were reminded that we are dealing with nature, and nature abhors cockiness. We had an emergency, and we all survived. There was no panic or hysteria. We kept our heads and did what we had to do. My kayak flipped and everything stayed attached and dry, including my digital camera.
Much to Bernie's chagrin, my glasses stayed on my head.
We re-assessed the safety equipment that we had with us. A dry bag with a towel and/or some dry clothes suddenly seemed like a much smarter idea then it did a few minutes earlier.



Bernie found the incident much too amusing (as you can see below.) However, as we left he decided to shoot the rapids again! (Okay it was only one rapid. "Whitewater" it was not.) He got caught, too, and damn near flipped. He filled up his kayak with water and he had to beach to drain it.
Bernie didn't have his skirt on. Bad Bernie.
(He didn't have any pants on either, but that's a whole other story.)

And so we headed back. We vowed never to publicly speak of the incident. ("What happens on Brokeback Island, stays on Brokeback Island," I said.)
However, it was impossible to keep secret, not when I arrived back wearing different clothes what I had started with. The womenfolk cast us some wary glances.

But we survived and adjourned for some warm drinks at a nearby coffee shop. Dennis took this picture to annoy his friends back in Toronto. Blizzard, anyone?

Now that's a hot chocolate! Sure helped get the taste of salt out of my mouth.

And remember kids, don't try this at home!

Sometimes the Candy Machine Wins

by John W. Herbert
I had yet another run-in with the dreaded lunch room candy machine. Occasionally, I have been known to deposit money in this machine and in return have been rewarded with sweet, sweet candy.
Yesterday at lunch, I decided to need a Twix bar. It cost $1.00.
I deposited my coinage, four quarters. But the fourth quarter was returned; our candy machine is known for its random rejection of coins of recent vintage. I was 75 cents in, but I still needed another 25 cents to complete the purchase and receive my sweet, sweet candy.
All was not lost, as I also had a twoonie, more than enough for my chocolate-craving induced purchase. (For our non-Canadian viewers, a twoonie is a $2 coin). However, before depositing the twoonie, I felt I had better retrieve my three quarters. I pressed the coin return button and the machine promptly spat out three dimes. 30 cents.
"What the [expletive deleted]?" I shouted. Somehow my three quarters had been transmogrified into 3 dimes. The machine just ate 40 of my cents!
"[Expletive describing a physical act deleted] machine!"
But still the Twix bar called. Yes, I was out 40 cents, but I still had the twoonie, so I still could buy my bar and satisfy my caramel and chocolate covered cookie lust.
Against my better judgment, I dropped my twoonie in the slot. I pressed the button. The Twix bar fell from the rack into the retrieval slot at the bottom of the machine. And my change... my change... where's my $1.00 change?!?
"[Expletive describing a bodily function deleted]! Where's my [expletive describing the physical act of love deleted] change??!?"
The machine kept my change. Why? I don't know. It certainly wasn't out of change because a moment ago it had just eaten three of my quarters!!!
"[Expletive describing anatomical parts deleted]!!"
I had paid $2.40 for a Twix bar! This wasn't the first time the candy machine had eaten my money and short-changed me. I vowed to never ever buy another piece of sweet, oh so sweet candy from this mechanical hell spawn again.
Never!
"Never again! I'd sooner starve! Or crash from a sugar low than to risk my precious money on your unpredictable mechanical folly! Curse you, you mechanical [expletive describing the physical act of a love with a small domestic farm animal deleted]!"

Today, I dutifully deposited $1.00 and quietly ate my blessed Twix bar.
I am so weak.


originally published in UTOH #18, October 2006

Learning How Not to Drown

by John W. Herbert

Elk Lake, just north of Victoria, at most times, is a glass-like flat calm, a giant azure puddle surrounded by green old-growth trees.
But in late afternoon, the sun can disappear as the clouds roll in, and the wind can whip the calm surface into a frothy chop. And it was in these conditions that a friend who wished to remain anonymous (for reasons that will become clear) and I found ourselves as we arrived for our first kayak lesson.
We have some previous experience kayaking. We had bought some small roto-molded kayaks earlier in the summer and we, along with our significant others, had made splashing about a regular event. We’d gone to many of the local lakes, and had gone out on the ocean a few times, always being careful not to go on stormy days, and trying not to over-estimate our abilities. Kayaking on a lake is like playing in a bathtub, but on the ocean, it’s a whole different feeling. The ocean is constantly moving and shifting underneath you, wakes bounce you, and currents pull at you.
The sights you can see! Eagles, otters, seals, sea lions, fish, crabs, sea stars… even an old paddle wheeler! (or a new faux paddle wheeler, since the wheel, although it spun, didn’t seem to actually touch the water).



It’s fun, but dangerous even you don’t know what you’re doing and that described my friend who will remain unnamed (his initials are Bernie Klassen) and myself , so we decided we’d better take some lessons and learn what we’ve been doing wrong all this time.
We arrived at Elk Lake and immediately noticed how rough the water was. (Indeed, the wind was to plague us for the entire session, as it kept blowing us ashore). A local kayak store was offering lessons, and they supplied the instructor, boats and accessories. We had our own wetsuits on; we figured we were going to get wet. But life jackets were another matter, as the tour company didn’t bring enough large ones, and after much swapping around, I ended up with an ill-fitting medium jacket that I only did up when we did our wet exits.
There were only three of us in our course: my anonymous friend (Bernie), an 85 year-old woman named Marion, and myself. We selected our boats: I ended up with a 12 ½ foot Necky, and my nameless friend (that’s Bernie in case you forgot) took a 14 ½ foot Carolina. Our instructor Brian was outfitted in top gear. In fact, he was trying his brand new $1,000 dry suit for the first time. Bernie and I had seen it in a store only a few days earlier. It was still covered with our drool stains.
Once we were outfitted and in the water, Brian demonstrated a few strokes for us. Marion was off like a rocket and poor Brian had to keep catching her and bringing her back close to shore.
The boat I was in was longer but narrower than my own boat and took a little getting used to. For a while it felt like I was always going to go over, but I eventually got used to the boat and the feeling passed.
Bernie had been in a Carolina previously and quickly adapted. Soon he was trying more sophisticated stroking techniques such as bracing and edging. Marion was doing well, too, but struggling against the choppy waves.
After covering the material in the lesson, which was the basic kayak strokes, Brian decided to give Bernie and I some bonus lessons and have us practice some wet exits. Marion declined to participate in this portion – she wasn’t dressed to be dunked.
Brian beached of his boat and walked out to Bernie and I in the lake. And we got dunked.
Basically, a wet exit is getting out of your kayak when you capsize. When you tip, the key is not to panic and remember, that it’s okay, you’re just in water. Keep your head, don’t panic. Getting out of the kayak is really fairly simple. You grab the handle on the front of your skirt (your skirt is the neoprene cover that seals you into the cockpit and makes it watertight). You pull the handle and the skirt comes off easily. Air rushes out of the cockpit and pushes you out, and your personal floatation device brings you up to the surface.
It really is pretty easy, once you get over the fear of being stuck in the tight-fitting cockpit of a kayak that’s turned upside down and there’s water going up your nose. After a couple of tries, though, it becomes doable. Bernie took his glasses off and prepared for his own dunking.
Next, Brian decided to offer more bonus instruction and show us how to do a two-person rescue. Let’s say you’re paddling with a buddy (as you should be at all times) and buddy ends up in the drink. How do you get him out of the cold water and into his boat? (And in the ocean, you’ve got to be quick. The cold water will quickly rob you of your body heat. And if you don’t have proper gear on, like a wet suit or dry suit, you’re in real trouble if you stay in the water for long.)
In our first practice scenario, I played the rescuer while Mr. Anonymous (that’s Bernie) was the hapless victim. So Bernie dunked himself.
One thing to remember when getting dunked is to try to keep track of your paddle. It’s all fine and dandy to get yourself back in your boat, but if you lose your paddle, you’re not going anywhere. We have paddle leashes on our personal boats for just such an emergency, but we were out of luck with these boats, so it was important to keep a hand on our paddles.
Bernie (our victim) capsized, exited his boat, and surfaced still clutching his oar. So far so, good. Next the hero (that would be me) maneuvered his kayak across the bow of the victim’s boat, in effect crossing the “T” while Bernie hung on at the stern of his boat. At this point, we righted his boat. Now both boats were upright, with his perpendicular to mine at about my cockpit. Before we get Bernie into his boat, we needed to get the water out, so we lifted/pulled/pushed Bernie’s boat onto mine. (This is why the first thing we did was right Bernie’s boat. With the kayak upright, it’s much easier to raise his boat onto mine because of the shape of the hull.)
With his kayak sitting on mine, we tipped his over, drained it of water, then righted it again, and lowered it back into the water. Next we maneuvered the kayaks until they were beside each other, but bow to stern. I leaned over and grabbed hold of his boat around the cockpit, and Bernie climbed onto his stomach on the back of his boat. He swiveled so his feet were in the cockpit, and he scooched down the deck of his kayak on his stomach into the cockpit, turning around so that ended up facing the correct way.
It’s not easy. You’re fighting the wave action, and the boats are slippery. As the rescuer you have to grip tight all the way through the process. Your weight is shifting constantly as the victim struggles to get in and the waves lap at both kayaks.
But, like a wet exit, it’s doable. And if you’re going to be on the water you need to be able to do this. You never know when it may come in handy.
We traded places and I dunked myself, and now with Bernie being the rescuer, I was able to return whole but wet into my boat. Brian our instructor congratulated us and said he was walking back to shore and that we should go for a little paddle to warm up after our dunkings, then return to shore ourselves. Our lesson was done.
Bernie put his glasses back on and he and I headed out for our quick paddle. The water was still choppy, and now it was about 6:30 in the evening and the light was going. We shouldn’t stay out on the lake much longer.
Then behind me, I heard Bernie shout, “Oh shit, oh shit!” Then there was a splash.
Bernie was under water.
I turned around and saw an overturned kayak and no Bernie. He broke the surface, shouting something. I called, “Are you alright?” He seemed to be fine, but he was still shouting something that I couldn’t make out.
Then I realized, “Oh yeah, I have to rescue him!”
I turned my kayak around and quickly paddled over. When I arrived, crossing the “T”, he was laughing. “I can’t believe it! Forty hours in the boat this summer and I tip while I’m having my first lesson!”
We struggled to lift Bernie’s kayak onto mine. I realized later that we had forgotten to right his boat before trying to raise it. Still, we got it up and emptied of water. Then we flipped it over and I moved my kayak beside his.
Bernie was still laughing. Something was putting him in a great mood, apart from the obvious irony of capsizing two minutes after learning how to rescue from such a predicament.


Bernie in the drink

Finally, after a few moments of struggling, he was back in his kayak and he was still laughing.
“My glasses,” he said. “I was underwater and I saw my glasses floating away from me. I reached out and was just able to grab them. That’s what I was shouting about when I surfaced. I couldn’t believe I still had my glasses!”
That’s what I heard when he went over! A couple of cries of “Oh shit,” a splash followed by a couple of blub blubs, then Bernie breaking the surface with his glasses in his fist, shouting, “Woo hoo!”
We couldn’t stop laughing. Adrenaline and near-death experiences can do that to you. We calmed down and slowly paddled back to the beach. Brian shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I guess you passed!”

originally published in Under the Ozone Hole, October 2005

Geek of the Week

Name: Reed T. Paulson
Age: 22 (in Vulcan years)
Blue pill or red pill? Blue pill
Pet Peeve: Still can’t get over the fact that they cancelled Star Trek: The Animated Series (the glommer was so cool!)
Career: Works part-time as a soccer goal post on Saltspring Island
Fannish Claim to Fame: Creator of Odo/Neelix fiction
Favorite Book: Star by Pamela Anderson
Favorite TV Show: Baywatch (but only the Pamela Anderson years)
Favorite movie: Barb Wire
Best Pick-Up Line: You’re almost as hot as T’Pol!
Worst Pick-Up Line: You’re almost as hot as T’Pol!
Secret No One Knows: Still lives in his parents’ basement (didn’t have the heart to move upstairs after they died)

text by John W. Herbert
Photoshopped by Karl Johanson

Your Tax Dollars at Work

by John W. Herbert

Normally, the doors in the government office building that I work in look like the doors in any other office building.
One door, one doorknob. It’s a simple but efficient system that has worked well through the ages and easy adaptable to both coming and going. This system really needs no upgrading (not until the technology behind those wooshing Star Trek doors is cheaply available).
Clearly, the inventers of the door had not counted on the facilities management personnel of the British Columbia government.
One morning in June we discovered that our normal doorknobs had been doubled up. A second doorknob had been added just below the first knob. Holes had been drilled throught the steel doors and a second door knob installed on everydoor on the starirwell. To enter the stairwell, now one had to turn both handles. To enter the building from the stairwell, one had to turn both handles and wave your entry card in front of the sensor. No announcement was given as to why an extra doorknob on every floor was deemed necessary; they simply appeared over night.
This change was made on our designated emergency stairwell. In the event of a fire or some such calamity, this is the escape route that most of the 140 or so people in our four-story building will use. Also, all the washrooms in the building are on the landings in this stairwell, so it receives a lot of use, presumably at least once a work day by each employee. It is a secure stairwell; you to have one of those new-fangled electronic keys the size of a credit card to access the building from the stairwell. However, you need nothing to enter the stairwell from the building. All you used to have to do is turn the handle and open the door so that you would not be fumbling for a key card while the building is burning or collapsing around you in an earthquake.
Events later in the day were to put the issue of the suddenly appearing extra doorknobs on the back burner as Legionella was discovered in our air conditioning system, forcing the evacuation and temporary abandonment of our building for three weeks (and that’s another article for another time).
When the Legionella threat was over and we returned, we re-discovered the double-knobber doorways. We further discovered that the security passes were not working – you could not re-enter the building from the stairwell no matter how many doorknobs you turned. Since the washrooms are accessible only from this stairwell, any employee who used a washroom was effectively locked out of the building. They could only return by going out through the basement and walking around the building and re-entering through the front door.
The work-around to this was simple – a carefully placed phone book would prevent the door from closing and access to and from the stairwell would be maintained. However, the security of the building was compromised and anyone who gained access to the basement car park (not a terribly hard thing to do if you really wanted to) would have access to every floor in the building. And the stairwell was now useless as a fireblock in case of a fire.
Fortunately, this state only lasted for a day, and the security system was fixed and functioning properly.
A couple of days later, the original doorknobs were removed were replaced by a steel plate, and below these we were left with our new, lower doorknobs and that seemed to be the end of the matter.
Or would have been, except that when the original doorknobs were removed, they tinkered with the security system. Running a few minutes late one day, I discovered that the security system now locked the stairwell doors after hours. In other words, if you were in the building after hours (as many people who work late are), you could not enter the stairwell. The doors were now electronically locked and nothing was going to get them open. The stairwell is the emergency exit, but now, stuck in the building after hours, I was confronted by a door handle that won’t open anything, and a useless security pass because the only sensor is on the other side of the door. The only exit was through the building’s front entrance. Anyone prevented from reaching the front door by a fire or other disaster would have been a goner.
I reported this malfunction the next day and the security system was reprogrammed to work correctly.
Now, the latest chapter. Quietly and overnight, the doorknobs have been moved from their new lower position back to their original higher position. Two months after this mysterious game of musical doorknobs began, we are left with our doorknobs right back where they started and ugly metal plates where the doors were cut to install the other doorknobs.

To date, no explanation has ever been provided to the employees for this apparently complete waste of somebody’s time and taxpayers’ money. There is probably a moral here. Maybe something like this: “There’s already too many knobs in government.”

originally published in Under the Ozone Hole Number 17, October 2005