The hypothetical observer is bored. He stifles a yawn. He gazes at the sky and wishes he was back in his hypothetical bed. For years now he has been posted outside Oblique House and nothing has ever happened. He is beginning to think nothing ever will. No Zap guns, no outbursts of fannish hooliganism -- nothing but quiet respectability and adult good sense.
Suddenly he senses something out of the ordinary. He opens the gate, crosses the 'lawn' and sneaks up to the corner of the house. Cautiously he peers round the side. He gasps. His eyes dilate with horror. Frantically he tried to draw back, but he is too late -- a thin jet of water plays over his hypothetical face. Willis and White dash out cackling with laughter and brandishing water pistols. "I got him! I got him!"
Like any sensible person the hypothetical person turns and runs.
Yes, it's quite true! Willis and White, the sobersides, the starched collars of fandom, have acquired water pistols! It would be bad enough if they were ordinary water pistols, but these are powerful brutes of things capable of a hundred deadly shots on one reloading. My concentration on my fannish activities is constantly interrupted by furtive figures prowling about muttering such sayings as, "Bah! Wind deflection again" and "It is fitting that a Gunner should serve."
All afternoon they sit at the back room window and drench inoffensive cats and other small animals. Soon, however, they will get tired of such easy game and start looking for something that will give more excitement, show more signs of horror, scream louder. Something like me for instance.
Luckily by that time I will have completed my weapon. A really powerful water pistol constructed from a bicycle pump and a pair of chest expanders. We'll see who drowns who. Heh. Heh. Heh.
*****
That will leave me short of a pump for my bike, but I'm sure we will manage -- my bike and I. It isn't much to look at but it gets me around. I like my bike. The mudguards are tied on with string and the saddle is so loose that when I go round a sharp bend I remain facing in the original direction. But in spite of all its faults we have come through a lot together and a bond has sprung up between us, and in view of this it is with great sorrow that I announce that They are plotting against us.
Everybody has at one time or another complained of how the wind always seems to blow in their faces when they take a bicycle out. In my case it doesn't just seem to. It does! It blows on my face on the way to work in the morning. It changes before lunch and blows in my face all the way back. Not content with this it repeats the same performance in the afternoon. Going round corners has no effect. It cleverly blows against various walls and deflects itself down the new street. It always outsmarts me but I haven't got the breeze up: I'm going to expose it! I'm going to do what Eric Frank Russell did with the Vitons. I will write a story about myself and sell it to Astounding. So that nobody will pierce my disguise too readily I will spell my name backwards. The hero of this yarn, this fellow called boB, will have the same trouble as me. No matter what he does the wind will be too smart for him. He tries pretending to go up the road and swiftly turning round and going back down it at full speed.. He tries sitting backwards in the saddle and tricking the wind into thinking he is going the other way, but all to no avail. He becomes neurotic, he wears away to a shadow. Then one day as he is setting off to work he is infuriated beyond all reason by the sight of a few normal carefree riders going in the opposite direction with the wind in their backs. It is too much for him.
"To hell with work," he shouts and turns his bike round and flies up the road, pedalling like mad. The next day there is a report of his passing through a small village about ten miles beyond the Castlereagh Hills screaming with hysterical laughter and uttering loud cries of "Fooled them! I fooled them!" .... and that is the last that is ever heard of him.
*****
It is a far cry from the days of yore when fan humorists used to represent the outbursts of laughter which they hoped to inspire in, or direct at somebody else by the use of such devices as: (Hearty laughter) or (loud guffaw).
The modern writer has a whole battery of individual chuckles ample enough to electrify his readers be they at ohm or in a cell. The head man at chuckles here is James White, which must be why his friends call him chucklehead. For an example just look at this extract from a letter of James' to Vince Clarke, who was quite likely to publish it. The letter was full of nasty cracks at Chuck Harris and he ended it up by saying, "Of course I don't want Harris to see this. Heh. Heh. Heh."
This is a brilliant example of the use of the vindictive chuckle. As well as that there is the oafish chuckle which is best ascribed to somebody else, preferably after a rather stupid remark of theirs, e.g. "The man in the shop tried to charge me the full cover price for an old 1932 Astounding, but I was too smart -- I made him sell me a brand new magazine! Hyuck! Hyuck! Hyuck!"
The other two main forms are used for rounding off a joke with which one is rather pleased. Naturally I can't throw away one of my carefully stored, memorised and rehearsed spontaneous witticisms on a lecture, so I'll just content myself by noting that they are "Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck." and "Erf! Erf! Erf!" The latter to be uttered slowly and with gusto, or some other willing helper.
*****
Is anybody keen on the policy some of the newer sf mags have adopted of not having any interior illos? Personally I hate to plough through page after uniform page of the dry as dust stuff that these look-at-me-as-I-read-Poe type of mags dish up, with never a touch of brush and pencil to brighten things up. I think that a good illo makes a story.
Who can illustrate Sprague de Camp like Cartier? Or Van Vogt like Rogers? The reason for these affinities is not that Ls de C writes about queer creatures and Cartier is good at drawing them, and ditto for vV and Rogers. It is that the essential mood of the members of each pair is the same. That is what a good illo does -- it sets the mood of the yarn. I quote almost any book on art: 'The aim of the artist is not to depict, but to capture the mood.' The significance of this is put in its proper perspective by the following quote. Bob Tucker in Quandry: 'As compared to other forms of literature the sf yarn is lacking in mood.' (!)
TELEKINESIS AND MUTTERED OATHS
To move from a serious topic to a really grim one. I am the victim of a horrible mental disorder! Every time I read a really convincing yarn about telekinesis I find myself glaring at various small and innocuous objects and gritting through clenched teeth, "Move, you b......, MOVE!" If anybody else has this complaint, let him write to me and we may be able to start up a movement between us. That, in case you missed it, was a pun.
(data entered by Judy Bemis)
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