CHICON III

Hyphen 34 September 1963
Published by Walt & Madeleine
Willis, 170 Upper N'Ards Road
Belfast 4, N. Ireland. Art Editor
Arthur Thomson

PRINTED MATTER

(REDUCED RATE)

OUTSIDE COVERAGE . . . . . . . WALT WILLIS

They say that everyone reads the back cover first
so this is the place to reassure you that
you have not suddenly shrunk. You have noth
ing to fear from giant spiders, it's just
that Hyphen has gone large size. Partly of
course to attract advertising from the Re-
public Aviation Corporation and get our-
selves confused with the Scientific Amer-
ican (as if we weren't confused enough on
our own) but mainly because I had 22 Amer-
ican size stencils on my hands. I cut them
for Axe last spring, and when that fmz un-
happily folded we decided to publish them
ourselves so as not to lose any more time.
Strange, the last thing I published on this
size paper was The Harp Stateside, when a
previous publisher got married and went
gafia. He got divorced ten years later,
which just proves it's safer to stay in
fandom.

We're thinking of staying Statesize if
you don't object too strongly, but next
issue the contents will be back to normal
(I use the expression loosely of course)
with lots of brilliant readers' letters
such as only you can write, Bob Shaw and
baquotes. In fact the last two are such a
part of Hyphen I think I'll squeeze in a
BoSh baquote just for tradition.

"He squeezed me so hard he left marks of
every one of his fingers," she said ten-
dentiously.

By the way in case you're wondering, I
wrote about 25000 words of that book ment-
ioned on p.15, and it was accepted so enthus-
iastically we practically moved house on the
strength of the $2000.00. And then it turned
out to be another casulty of the Trouble At
Regency. So if any of you can think of a US
market for an unusual kind of travel book
(nonfannish though you've seen parts of it
in The Harp Stateside, Axe, Warhoon & here)
I'd be grateful. It seems a pity to waste
all that work and besides it would be nice
to get a bit of my own back on Greyhound.
They found one of our suitcases in May, you
know, wrote that they were sending it to
us: and promptly lost it again. I just
can't think of any comment on that I could
put on an outside cover.

waw

An x here.........means your subscription has,
nominally at least, expired. Fifteen cents
or one shilling per copy. Seven for $1.00

(data entered by Judy Bemis)

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