Why "THE BLACK CHALICE?"

The reason is rather obvious.  When was the last time you read four different
stories in the same fanzine? with the title of all of them the same?

Actually, the Chalice started out to be a round robin.  (For the benefit of you
who do not know what a round robin is, it is a story written by two or more
authors.  One writes the first part, another writes the second and so on. -JM)

Norm suggested it last year, while still in college.  I liked the idea and Tom,
Norman's brother, agreed to write a part, too.  It never got out of the
planning stages.

Next, we decided to write two stories with the same title and the same
character, Adual.  I wrote mine and buried it in my piles of stories.  It
wasn't very good.

Then my beloved Bi-editor said that you, the readers might not like it.  I
still have not seen his Chalice.  Anyways, we finally decided to write a story
called "The Black Chalice," get someone else to write one, and feature it in
the NEM UX?.

                                                                   --John Merkel

                                     [pg. 3,  THE UNKNOWN (UX?) #1, Spring 1965]

{John was a senior in high school, not quite graduated, at this time. -- norman
7.April.2001}

Updated May 12, 2001. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.