[...continuing the letter column]
Lloyd Penney
The lovely lady who runs the con suite at our local con wanted some ideas about how to improve the various activities that happen there. I suggested the Erotic Fruit Eating Contest, and her eyes opened so wide, and she smiled so widely, her nose disappeared.
How's Poddington? (Those bloody Poddington Peas cartoons run all the time on the local so-called educational channel, I'm surprised you didn't think of that name...) The bud must be giving Mummy a pseudo-beergut.
[Nothing pseudo about Mummy's beergut!]
John Dallman doesn't know what he's on about. The staples should go in the top, and the fanzine printed so you can read it like a flip chart. (Yes, I do have fanzines like that).
If I'm the only one who can save Mankind, I hope the plastic container for it is big enough... or should I use Baggies? Maybe Mankind has a Best Before date. Probably past it by now.
[From out of our time machine pops a late LoC from Harry Warner Jr. on Plokta issue 1]
Harry Warner, Jr.
Just about the time you were putting this fine first issue together, I was writing for an apa something about Archbishop Ussher's dating of the Creation six millennia ago. However, in my case I emphasized the fact that this autumn would represent the six thousandth birthday of Adam, if he hadn't been hungry that day and had lived as originally scheduled. I also pointed out in my article that there is only one monument to Adam, as far as I've been able to determine. It was erected in Baltimore almost a century ago. But I'm not even sure if that one has survived the changes in the city, and I'm certainly not going to go down there and look for it, now that Baltimore has surpassed the iniquity of Sodom and is within sinning distance of Sodom's only rival in the old days.
Incidentally, there is one oddity about the adventures of the leap year over the planet that you failed to note. In Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic, the hero, was born on February 29. This causes him to have difficulties when he wants to get out of his indenture as an apprentice pirate. The operetta, which had its premiere in 1879, causes Frederic to realise that he will not become of age until 1940. Nitpickers eventually complained that Gilbert had miscalculated and the date should be 1944 because 1900 was not a leap year. However, if Frederic had moved to Russia to wait for freedom from piracy, 1940 would have been correct after all, because unlike the rest of the western world, Russia made 1900 a leap year.
Pinball machines are much more complicated and exciting today than they were in my boyhood. When someone jostled the machine so hard that the progress of the ball was markedly changed, a TILT sign flashed on and that frequently was more spectacular in appearance than any other phenomenon in the mechanism.
I wear a tie practically all the time, one of the few fans who can make such a boast. Moreover, my ties include both recent specimens and others that go back almost to the founding of the Republic. It takes considerable watchfulness for me to keep track of what is the current vogue in width of ties for persons who are young enough to wear them, and to remember only to wear my narrow ties when wide ties are de rigeur and vice versa.
[Another loc from Harry Warner, Jr. This time on issue 3...]
You must admit that there is in all of us a possibility of self-improvement. The third issue of Plokta is dated August, arrived in September, and by an admittedly narrow margin, is being locced in November.
It looks splendid from the typographical standpoint. My old eyes have trouble finding their way through the small photographs but I would have similar difficulties reading the text if it were there instead of the pictures, so you can't win. At least I have a vague idea of what some of you look like. Just last night I mentioned in a loc that fans seem less hairy than they did a decade ago, and your pictures seem to confirm this puzzling tendency.
[Steven is certainly a lot less hairy than he was a decade ago -- Ed.]
I believe this is the second time this year I've seen a fanzine photograph of a potential second generation fan while he or she was sort of skinnydipping in privacy. Little Pod seems from this photograph to have forgotten to grow several ribs [whilst growing spines, a tail and a strong dislike of Mothra] but I trust she will remember that small detail before joining the rest of us in the great outside world.
Was the loc from Carol Willis written by the daughter of Walter and Madeleine? I seem to remember that that was their daughter's given name, but I'd never heard of her engaging in fanac previously.
[No, this is somebody completely different]
Terry Jeeves
May I open by announcing that allowing snafus I'm more or less healthy again. Ankle fully recovered although it aches a little now and then. Likewise the back is still painful and I have trouble bending. I have to lay down on the bed to put my socks on and can't trim my toenails, so have to visit the chiropodist. She only makes appointments at about ten week intervals, so in between I have to hope I don't snag my Chinese type toenails. So now you know.
Once again I enjoyed the zaniness of Plokta, but being very innocent and naïve, I must admit to occasionally being in doubt as to what is true and what is spoof. Take the LoC by Julian Headlong. The address seems OK, but then I wonder about that surname. My puzzlement rises as the ending is clear spoof. Is there a Mt. Headlong?
I
loved the Plokta cards at the rear and wish I'd thought of the idea --
no doubt I'll be stealing it when opportunity permits. Also like the illos but
Grrr! The æPolly Put The Kettle On' gag is one I've been saving for ages.
My idea was to take a photo of Val with one on her head to include in my
æfunny' album with the caption, "Whenever friends came, Val always put
the kettle on".
Fighting wasps remind me of an experience I had in India way back in 1942. A swarm of hornets settled on the ladder leading to the roof of our transmitting station. We had to go up this at sunrise and again at sunset, when changing aerials from Day to Night frequency and vice versa. Only a dozen rungs, but how do you pass a football-sized helping of hornets? The Signals Officer took one look at the buzzing swarm, turned to the Sergeant and said, "Throw a bucket of acid over 'em". Having thus demonstrated quick thinking and the powers of delegation, he then walked away. Rather quickly I thought.
The Sergeant also knew how to delegate. He caught my eye and instructed me to mix a bucket full of water and battery acid. This I did. "Now throw it over the hornets", said the sergeant as he too disappeared down the road in search of sanctuary. I looked around, but even the Indian bearers had vanished. Delegation had reached its lower limit. It was up to me to do the great deed.
Several deep breaths, a couple of timing swings and then I heaved the lot, including the bucket, and took off down the road at top speed. I was almost fast enough, only two hornets caught me, but they were the high-velocity, supercharged variety with red-hot needles on their rear ends. I waited for half an hour before going back. By this time, the rest of the swarm was definitely kaput ... so if you're ever troubled by hornets, now you know what to do. Delegate!
Happy (bragging-type) news. On the morning of October 22nd, a bulky package arrived from the USA. It contained several Complimentary Copies of the September issue of Tomorrow with my Einstein Instant as the first yarn therein. Nicely illustrated too. Also enclosed were five crisp $20.00 bills, $30.00 more than expected. My thanks to Algis Budrys for the kind increase. What staggered me was the fact that also enclosed was an invitation to join the Science Fiction Writers of America. A great honour, but sadly, one which I had to decline -- I can't afford $45.00 a year dues. Once my 100 dollars ran out, it would be $50.00 or more a year with bank rip-offs. I don't write and sell that many stories to warrant joining. Still it gave me a great ego-boost.
The solution! Pod Looks OK To Alison! (Well, will look OK, but let's not quarrel about staples).
Glad to hear that Steve Davies
enjoyed the Mapplethorpe exhibition. A few
years ago there was a huge fuss from our Tory prospective parliamentary
candidate because in one of the photos on display at the Arts Centre in an
exhibition (which he hadn't seen because it was so disgusting) there was... a
willy. My daughter and visiting niece could hardly wait to go. 'Found it,
Watson!' cried Jane after a long investigative while. In the mean time we'd
lost count of the number of female bums, tits, pubes, etc., on display in an
exhibition called, quite fairly -- it was no wanker's paradise -- something
like The Poetry of the Human Body. Funny things, double standards.
Walt Willis wonders if anyone will remember Backslash and Emdash. I do not remember either Slant or Hyphen, having never seen a copy of either. They are to me as are the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal; reportedly fabulous constructs, but only apparent to me via being universally described as two of the Wonders of the Fannish World.
Britain in 2003? I'm sorry. Someone goofed in proofreading that line. It's Toronto in 2003.
"Superfluous Technology"? I don't see much (if any) of that in Plokta. Certainly the amount of superfluity is trifling in comparison with what I've been finding on Web Pages. [September 1997: Umm. Ahh.] That's where one most frequently encounters the use of an excessive number of typefaces, mostly difficult-to-read in themselves, presented against a highly-textured background that renders the text nearly-illegible, all done with a combination of colours that makes the resultant blinding headache last for two whole days.
And that's a Web Page produced by a long-time fan who used to publish attractive & legible "real" fanzines. (The content of his Web Pages is still excellent -- so good that one/I can't resist reading them, despite the price they exact -- but I can't help heaving a sigh of relief when I chance across one of Garth Spencer's crisp-font-on-white-background Web Pages re Canadian Fan History, "worthy" though these may be.)
I must confess to not yet having accessed the Plokta Web Page (if there is one (and there ought to be, so that we could at least download the text in ASCII for Archival & ReSearch purposes). [there was a reference to our previous site here]
Another thing about Plokta that I find particularly striking is the names of contributors (including LoCers & MoCers). Even though I regularly get more than half a dozen UK fanzines, more than half the names in yours are totally unfamiliar -- yet, from their writing, all appear to be indubitably fannish people, mostly rather talented ones, at that. Whether this presages a Flowering of UK Fandom that will eclipse anything in the history of US Fandom, or will be submerged in an even-greater flood of (non-verbal) Media Fans is... a topic for one of those "worthy" (aka "Serious") fanzines.
[Of course, all the ones you haven't heard of could be pseudonyms of various members of the Plokta cabal]
PLOTKA! We know it means Press Lots Of Keys To Abort. You are the mystery Plotka and I claim my ten thousand pound prize.
[Still can't spell it right, though...]
Is this an appropriate title for a fanzine with a pregnant co-editor???
Karen as club president extends an official invitation to Steve and Giulia to come along to the Melbourne SF Club any Friday you're in Melbourne.
Here are some voyages of discovery made by me recently amongst my
collection of dictionaries.
plucta, Irish -- crammed, stuffed,
full; also plocta, plucta, Irish -- smothered, pressed,
squeezed (plocta i glabar, smothered in mire; plocta i
chocolate, be careless in visiting Mike Abbott), from the verb
plucad, plucaim, I press, smother, squeeze, choke. po4
lao3 ta1 -- (dodgy Mandarin) press an old person. plwc da -- pull
goods or cattle, middle Welsh. I feel a pattern is emerging here: is there
something you aren't telling us?
I get up one morning, go to check the mail, and there staring up at me from the doormat is a picture of Simo. The urge to wipe my feet was indescribable, but I picked up issue 4 of Plokta and began to read it.
I am however sadly disappointed that despite all this 'superfluous technology' stuff you didn't doctor the picture of Simo to have him reading Plokta. Given Simo's attitude to fanzines the facial expression would still work... Who needs Kai's Power Goo when you have Simo?
I was also disappointed that your tick boxes no longer accused me of having done something scandalous. You see I had been doing something scandalous -- so there!
[And finally a comment on Dr Plokta's Novacon report on the Web]
And to think I nearly broke my fannish silence and isolation by attending, missed all the desparate fun. Gosh don't everyone look much older! (and fatter) This generalisation includes myself. Nice one, I will visit again... this is a Good Idea, the virtual Con.
We Also Heard From:
Jan van't Ent (No quibbling about who's the better half
of the Plokta editorship), Teddy Harvia (I have great
reverence for irreverence), Bridget Hardcastle, (I
particularly enjoyed the word "wambling"), Harry Cameron
Andruschak (I am impressed by the quality and breadth of your letter
column), Karen Pender-Gunn and Ian Gunn (Has anyone told
Alison that it's like shitting a watermelon? (Gosh, these Australians are
coarse)) Tommy Ferguson (Been reading some -- not nice --
things about Plokta) [Where? What?], Chaz
Baden (I am insanely jealous of your technology), Evelyn C
Leeper (I'm not even sure where Leeds is) and David B.
Wake (Superfluous Technology means that it doesn't line up in a
proportionally spaced font).
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