Few people today realize that a decade ago, this vital question was explored in depth in an obscure journal entitled, "Quandry". And, as this problem is with us today, even more than ever, and so close to all our hearts, we are reprinting herein two items from that publication, written by Robert Bloch himself, which we trust will throw some light, however dim, on this age-old mystery.

(We had hoped to bring you the first publication of the translation of inscriptions from the pyramid of Cheops, bearing on this subject, but unfortunately that work is still in progress, the translator, a Mr. Gilbert Nash, having been delayed in completion of this project by the San Francisco earthquake.)

BLOCH DENIES ALL

"wherein Bloch blasts off, deftly denies all, fatally
falls into self-tripped trap ..."

Reprinted from Quandry #29
May or June or so, 1953, issue

... I shall use the remainder of this space to issue a categorical denial of certain slurs and slanders which appear in Q#26. I would even make a blanket denial, but the laundry hasn't come back. Anyhow, let's get these facts straight:

(1) I am NOT Mickey Spillaine.
(2) I am NOT a fakefan.
(3) I am NOT Tucker's father.
(4) I did NOT saw Courtney's boat. I didn't even see it, let alone saw.

It stands to reason, Lee, that I've been unjustly accused all down the line here. Fun is fun, but there's a limit, you know. Just stop and think about it a moment and you'll see that these charges are absurd.

Being Mickey Spillaine is in itself a full time occupation; I could never manage to do that and still have time left to go around sawing boats, acting like a fakefan -- which I take it, means carrying a water-pistol but not using it on anyone -- or disciplining a son like Tucker. What a job that would be!

Nope, I'm afraid these rash accusers are wrong. You know me better than that. I'm just a sensitive, wistful dreamer inspired by Calliope, the Muse of Eloquence and Heroic Poetry.

zoe muse zas agapo!

[Robert Bloch]

BLOCH

CONFESSES
ALL

Reprinted from Quandry #30
November 1953

All right. I might as well confess. You caught me with my pants down. Redhanded.

So I'm ready to tell all. Everything. Everything, do you hear? Just turn those lights off and give me a drink of water. There, you see the state you've got me in? I'll even drink water!

Let's put the cards on the table. All of them, including the ten of clubs. I might as well talk now. Sixth fandom is dead anyway. (Seventh Fandom is dead, too, but it's afraid to lie down.) There's no use trying to conceal the truth any longer...

I was born in 1809, the son of an actor named Poe. The facts of my life are readily available up to the year 1849, at which time I disappeared into a voting booth in Baltimore, Maryland.

A man resembling me emerged from the booth, in a state of intoxication, and was taken to the hospital where he died several days later and was buried under my name -- Edgar Allen Poe.

But I lived.

You see, it wasn't a voting booth at all. As you must already suspect, it was really a time-machine.

I emerged in 1865, not really knowing where I'd been in the interim. Time machines are like that: All I can tell you is that I found myself in Ford's Theatre in Washington, with a gun in my hand. They were playing AN AMERICAN COUSIN, as lousy a production as ever disgraced a convention program, and I took a shot at the actress on the stage, but missed and hit a prominent Republican. Fleeing, I broke my leg and headed for Maryland, where I hoped to take refuge on a terrapin farm. But I was cornered in a barn (apparently my new identity was that of a barn-storming actor) and the barn burned. A body was dragged out and identified as John Wilkes Booth (a distant ancestor of Bob Tucker, strangely enough: His uncle was named Projection W. Booth) and once more I was supposedly dead. But -- here it comes again -- the barn was also a time-machine and I emerged in 1889, somewhere in London. Armed only with a surgeon's knife, I carved out a brief career for myself on the bodies of 9 women, and then fled to America, leaving behind the legend of Jack, the Ripper. In America I settled down, sans knife, to a different occupation.

This occupation too, bore fruit. In the shape of mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers for such and sundry people as Bob Tucker, Walt Willis, Shelby Vick, David Kyle, Max Keasler, yourself, and others too numerous to mention.

Then somebody named Grego Banshuk, or something like that, went to work and invented science-fiction and my downfall began.

Instead of sticking to alcohol, murder, assassination, rape and other amusements, I took the fatal and degrading plunge and entered science-fiction. From there, it was only a step to THE SCARF (A partial autobiography, as you surmise) and from thence I went all the way and became a fakefan.

But that's a rough life indeed. I've never solved the reason why Fate kept sending me into time-machines and bringing me back again at later dates in new incarnations. All I knew was that each reincarnation seemed worse. And this fan business was worst of all.

I began to yearn for the opportunity to step into another time-machine and escape from Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Fandom or whatever was inundating me at the time. Trouble was, I never knew HOW the time-machine might be disguised. Voting booths, barns, what next?

I spent years investigating strange privies, but no luck. I was still a fan.

Then, finally, some lucky day in 1939, I fell into an open manhole and broke my neck. Somebody (not me) was hauled out dead. But it was another time machine deal, and I escaped fandom. Lucky, lucky me!

I thought. Until I emerged from a sewer as a writer of comic books and detective fiction named -- I cannot even bring myself to put the hideous cognomen on paper!

So now you know. I am HE, and Poe, and the Ripper, and your ancestor, and a fakefan and a boat-sawyer from way back. But it's not my fault. Somebody keeps putting me into time-machines and each time I emerge in a lower, viler role.

This last one is, of course, the worst. I can't stand it much longer. I keep hanging around the fans and pros trying to find another time-machine so I can disappear and emerge in a higher incarnation, such as an anteater.

But it had better be soon. I can't take much more of this.

Apparently, there's no other way out except to find the machine, because I'm immortal. I found that out last week.

I shot myself in the belly.

It was easy.

But I kept right on living, if you can call it that. So there's only one way. Keep on looking for the machine. It might very easily turn out to be a steam calliope or a bird-bath. All I can do is look.

Anyhow, confession is good for the soul and I feel much better now. And someday I'll succeed on my quest. I'll find the machine and emerge as at least an aardvark.

Hoping you are the same,

[Robert Bloch]

Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan

Data entry by Judy Bemis

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