By F. M. Busby
Back in a simpler era, a time when Bill Gates still counts on his fingers and is lucky to get the same answer twice, I am working on a fanzine. Maybe an apazine, maybe a CRYcolumn, perhaps the editorial Page Three.
In any case I am proud and happy to be punching keys on my new IBM Selectric, the first electric typer I can use without rocking back off the space bar and starting every other word with a semicolon. I have recently retired my manual Olivetti Studio 44, which has worn out its second platen. And no longer will it cut a capital-w to stencil. Repeating the capital-v with only a half-space between works reasonably well, but the result still reads a lot like MENE MENE....
And besides, the Selectric does such neat things. I can simply swap out the little golfball and print italics, for instance, or even change typeface completely! And in point of fact, we Selectric Few do go a bit overboard on such stunts until the novelty wears off.
But to business. I think a Page Three is due next, which means that Wally Weber and Burnett Toskey have cranked up the Gestetner out in the FenDen (remodeled garage): CRYPublication under way. I need to identify the zine and its editorial staff, explain our policies and sub rates, then list all the titles and by-lines and page numbers intelligibly. And it would be nice to get a few laughs en route. So think....
We are lazy, we CRYgang. Lazy, but neat. We do not slipsheet; neither are our pages smeared with offset. Beneath my stencil rests a plastic backing sheet; the stencil itself lies naked to the typeball. Yes, I have to brush wax out of the typefaces regularly, but this sandwich gives the thinnest possible cut; emerging from the Gestetner, each page lands on
another that is practically dry. If we used Twilltone we'd have more leeway, but we like white paper.
Composing on stencil requires alert concentration; a fan in a hurry can't afford too many pauses for the application of Corflu. (Actually, with the thin cut I'm using, most typos can be fixed by rubbing a rounded object over the error to smooth out the wax, then retyping.)
There are, of course, alternatives: one may pause and think of a way to incorporate the typo into the narrative thrust --the Wrai Ballard Method. Or the USS John Trimble System: "out to dibber or even dinner," par example. Either way, a classic victory of mind over natter.
Unlike some faneds, we of CRY abominate "cont'd on page (whatever)"; items must not slop two or three lines past the bottom of a page, to be found in some obscure nook or cranny
farther along. In achieving this end, a kind of primal
instinct develops; aided by the lack of any filmsheet
obscuring the stencil's line numbers, my subconscious
edits what I write, to bring the punchline off at the
bottom line. And no sooner --for neither shall the
dreaded White Space prevail.
(illo: "I LIKE THAT.")
Of course this practice requires nothing like the discipline exercised by people like Walt Willis and Bill Danner who have actually filled pages with Hand Set Type. Still and all it's head and glottis above fiddling with a typed dummy and simply copying the result. We onstencil freaks have our pride.
Back to CRY: others, more skilled than I, have traced illos onto stencils; the process involves a box with a ground glass screen and a light behind it. CRY will never be cited for outstanding layout; we simply don't think that way. But it's not all solid print, either; our Art Credits proudly list such stars as Atom and Rotsler among a host of talented contributors.
And it is a proud though not terribly lonely thing to hold one's very own CRY Letterhack Card, issued by Donald Franson.
At the hands of Wally or Burnett the crank makes its final turn, the stacks are arrayed, assembled, stapled. The ish is pubbed. As Burnett leaves, he intones the ritual closing: "Today we have perpetrated a Thing upon the face of the earth."
And although the Post Awful is now charging a horrendous six cents per ounce, the zine goes out. I mean, we know fandom is supposed to be a good respectable money-losing hobby, but do the Postals have to be quite so helpful in keeping it that way?
Then the letters come in, and the contributions; columns are written, articles, possibly even faaanfiction. Here we go again.
* * *
McLuhan notwithstanding, the medium may not be the message --but it surely influences the result. Xerox rendered many stencil cutting skills obsolete; with cut and paste, who needs tracing? Or even a good eye for where the page will end? And while a cut stencil is sacred, a little retyping on paper is no big deal.
We're talking interim changes here, for then came the Computer. And with it a total revolution: now, until we print out, anything in the way of writing or layout can be changed with hardly any effort. There is absolutely no excuse or sluffing the last two lines of an article off onto page 37, because there is always a way to fudge, just enough to get it
all on this page.
Goodbye, laborious rewrites. After a time, farewell to the eyeball torture of nine-pin dot matrix (personally I began with a daisy wheel and went straight on to DeskJet). Certainly we are spared the truly ghastly repro that formerly dared us to decipher its content, and anyone who uses strikeovers to correct a typo has to really work at it.
But is the writing any better? Some is, some ain't; the medium can change the requirements imposed on its users, but not the height of their aspirations or breadth of their talents. As always, shortcuts tempt; artwork these days is apt to come from an Image program rather than the pen of an Atom. All in all, though, any change that makes fannish expression easier can't be all bad.
Or, for that matter, all good. The Internet, we're told, is the future of fandom. I hope not. For there we see the ultimate result of freedom from drudgery: any person may with only the slightest effort rattle off pages and pages of blather, log onto whatever target area he or she selects, press a couple of keys and --for better or worse --go down in history.
I suspect the painstaking users of hand set type felt much the same about mimeo.
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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