Red and gold spoon with blued steel pike triangle.
Having led off my column with a fish-hook to hold your attention, I now plunge into the grim business of having a good time while Willis is in the States. It doesn't seem fair that he should be gallivanting about while I'm slaving over a hot desk, getting red hands and ulsters. Well, I'm not going to kick up a row about it, but I hope everybody noticed the way I boycotted the Chicon this year.
This is the first actual writing that I have done since I arrived here. -- being a stranger in London I have naturally spent most of my time telling travellers how to reach various places. I spent my first few nights in Vince Clarke's house, and those few nights nearly spent me. Actually, Vince's place isn't much different from any other house - it has four roofs and a wall overhead. However, I feel bound to say that the little work I have done is due to the powerful, almost soporific influence of Vince.
By the power invested in me by Walter A. Willis, Apex of the Belfast Triangle, and the base James White, and by the powers of my own office as holder of the Triangle's Elongated Point, I hereby announce Belfast as being from this date the centre of British Fandom. Glory to Ghu.
After many months of secret endeavour, Proxyboo Ltd. labouring in an entirely strange field (the non-fan cosmos), managed to create a set of circumstances which made my arrival in London seem quite unplanned. For eight weeks I have been collecting, analysing and correlating evidence and now have definite proof of a theory held by the /B\ for many years.
THERE ARE NO FANS AT THE WHITE HORSE!
Heinlein's "They" and Sturgeon's "scene shifters" themselves could not have done a better job of disguise. Oh, they're clever, there is no doubt about that.
You go in. All around you see prozines, fanzines, smiling fannish faces and the air is suffused with fannish good cheer. "Buy him a drink," somebody shouts, you are hustled up to the bar, you are shown copies of aSF, Galaxy, and Nirvana. An entity in the guise of a bar man presses drinks on you, you wiggle out from below the glass and drink, you keep on drinking .....
Several hours later you emerge with glazed eyes, a fixed smile and a voice inside you (hypothetically impressed) which whispers over and over "What a bunch of people! Real fans!" You believe it.
It's the drink that does it, of course, and it was there that they slipped up in my case. The stuff they gave me was Guinness, lots of it - but I have made the pilgrimage to Dhublin and there in the Mecca of all imbibers of Black Champagne have partaken of GHUINNESS.
After two weeks my stomach was acclimatized, which was a good job for me, because I was unable to think of any way to appear to be drinking the stuff without actually swallowing it. I had toyed with the idea of concealing a small barrel in my mouth but I couldn't completely cover it with my lips. It would have been useless going with a hogshead sticking out of my mouth unless I could have disguised myself as an apple.
However, on the third night my mind retained its usual crystal-like clarity. I was appalled at what I saw.
Nothing but filthy hucksters and vile pros!
They offered to sell me fanzines, prozines, anthologies, indexes, SFN, handbooks. If I bought anything somebody else would bind it for me, and somebody else would design a bookplate, and somebody else would make a dustjacket.
Fighting down my repugnance, I managed to act as though nothing had happened. When I got back I reported to WAW. We were delighted at the way I had pierced the camouflage. But later, some small points began to bother us.
1. Obviously there was a tremendous organisation behind this scheme, and yet nobody had covered the possibility of my immunity to Guinness.
2. In spite of all the filthy huckster activity, nobody had ever sold me anything. Nor had I ever seen money or copies of the vile pro's books! Hastily I reported my suspicions to WAW, only to find that he had been cleverly tricked into going to America.
3. To my mind, this was the final fact that hinted an even greater fact than the mere financial finangling of hucksters and pros.
ARE THERE ANY PEOPLE AT THE WHITE HORSE?
Perhaps they are all pseudobods! Who has ever seen the inside of the White Horse during the rest of the week? Why do the 'fans' often come thru' the door bone dry, in spite of the fact that it is raining outside? And above all - who is Bickerstaff?
Who knows what nameless unspeakable horrors drip and writhe in the darkness of the WH saloon after closing time>
They would have been discovered long ago, you say? Followers of Charles Fort know only too well the blind obstinacy with which the man-in-the street refuses to believe the obvious. Isn't it quite possible that even on the coldest, draughtiest day the casual passer-by would think nothing of hearing a voice issue from the darkness of the WH on a Thursday evening, saying, "Turn on the fans ......"?
A PLEA IN YOUR EAR It has long been a source of wonder to me that in a field of interest such as s-f and fandom the possibilities of the cartoon have been so sadly neglected. Surely within the scope of a literature-cum-philosophy that dreams up more things than are in heaven and earth, we can produce a better attempt at illustrated humor, than this:-
One BEM is pointing to a second BEM amid Lunar landscape and saying to a third, "Poor chap - he's an Earthitic."
Actually, this sort of thing does make me laugh. It makes me laugh to think that anybody would expect me to laugh at that.
Here is an offer to those of you who long to have your share of egoboo. Here is a way you can increase your acreage of fanzine credits. If you have an idea for a good joke, send it to me c/o Hyphen, and we'll credit you with the joke's conception, which is, after all, the most important part. If you can't draw or haven't the time, it doesn't matter. The idea is what we want. If you do send in a drawing, you will be credited with that too. Send in that one good joke - these Isles are big enough for us all to roll in.
Just to show that I'm not bluffing about credits; the first joke in this column was suggested by that leader of the few remaining True Fans - Chuck Harris. The second was conceived by WAW and the third by myself. The fact that the third is the best is just chance. Any one of us could have done it - it was just a coincidence that the one with the most talent hit on it.
A really good effort will go on the cover, so send them in, even if it does mean denuding the lavatory wall.
That, in case you didn't recognise it, was a pun.
BOB SHAW
(data entered by Judy Bemis)