DAVID ENGLISH, 203 Robin St., Dunkirk, New York.
Dear Art:
Since I just had an onion sandwich for supper and no one will come near enough for me to talk to them, this letter will be a little longer than the others. I gotta do something. # After reading "The Corpse" in the last issue I expected something better than "Trouble With Teddy" from Hames. "Moon Shades" was pretty good poetry. You know I write poetry too, such as:
The rocket ship stopped on a dime / at 4000 miles per hour, / That's why the captain's on the wall / Like a pressed flower.
Boggs' stuff on ads was interesting but I'm surprised he didn't mention the Calvert ads in good ol' FN. # Well, I guess the effects of the onion sandwich have worn off by now. # Your strooly (sig David English)
K. MARTIN CARLSON, 1028 Third Ave. So., Moorhead, Minnesota.
Dear Art:
The January SPACEWARP was very good. Especially "File 13" and "Trouble With Teddy." I notice that "Quien Sabe" is increasing each issue also. Best all-around letter was by Les Fried, and he has some information that I have been looking for concerning N3F and the Cinvention. I sometimes wonder if there shouldn't be a percentage listing to be followed each year. Fantasy Foundation and NFFF have in the past rated 20 to 25% of the total income of a Convention. By setting a fixed percentage there will be no more squabbles about the money and who gets it. I was glad to see "Timber" set some fans straight about the N3F election. There really is no excuse for a member, who wants to run for office. Why only one candidate for President? No one else wanted to devote his spare time to the work of directing activities of N3F, that's all. Dale Tarr will have enough work editing the new TNFF! Who wants to organize a PARTY to campaign against "Activity Party" for 1951? (heh! heh!) # I'd like to compliment Redd Boggs and Don Wilson on the excellent FANTASY ANNUAL FOR 1948. Get that dollar off to F. J. Ackerman Bx 6151 Metro Station, Los Angeles 55, California, for a copy. It's a review of all mags, happenings in Fandom during 1948. Redd Boggs (in JoKe's traditional style) brings out the news for each month of the year. All fans who have JoKe's 2 Annuals should get this one also. It is sincerely hoped that someone will carry on the Annual job each year. Who will be the editor for 1949? # H-m-m-m-m, I glance thru the SW Index and find my name as a letter contributor only once. Tsk! Tsk! I'll have to do better in 1950, that's for sure. You know, SW reminds me of Elsner's Stfnist (letterzine) with Coswal doing the Redd Boggs section (File 13), and many "top" fans arguing about this and that. I remember tangling with Laney on the book-versus-magazine angle. I still maintain that I would rather have 4 magazines than one book. Why pay $1.00 or more for one story when you can get it in magazine form for 25¢ or so? # The main reason for this letter is to say: Swell fanzine! Swell job you're doing! And congrats on the new job as Chairman of Board of Directors of NFFF!! It's a job that Rick Sneary handled so well last year. He steps up to the Presidency this year. So-o-o, there's hope for you, Art. # Kaor-dially (Ackermanese!) (sig Kaymar)
RALPH FLUETTE, 510 S. Washington, Saginaw, Michigan.
Dear Art:
O-O-O-O-h! What a sneaky way to sell ads. Pat a fellow on the back vigorously with one hand while the other (equally vigorous, mind you) reaches for that happy cabbage. # Just to show you I appreciate that free plug, here's a check for a full page. Happy? Careful, you're drooling all over the check! # Fandom is not a way of life -- rather, it's a way to quick, painless poverty. First: local club dues; second: NFFF; third: SAPS; fourth: a new Olds Convertible because the Ford couldn't be depended upon to take us to MSFS (ugh) meetings; fifth: Subscription to SPACEWARP -AND- this last is utter foolishness in view of the fact that I could come over and read it for nuttin', and mebbe mooch a cup of coffee, too. See what I mean? # Attention Ray Nelson: # Saginaw fandom - namely, Rapp, Groover, and Fluette, are going to come a'bustin' in on youse guys one of these Sundays -- weather permitting, that is. # So, forewarned is forearmed. # To Fandom in general: I'd like to more or less echo Rapp's statement in regard to the MSFS. The more stable element have taken it upon themselves to organize a completely new society. Its going to be a tough job, all considered, and they deserve a lot of credit for trying. This new organization should in no way be confused with the MSFS. That outfit is completely defunct -- thank Roscoe! # So much for this writing -- (sig Ralph)
HENRY ACKERMAN, 5200 Maple Ave., Baltimore 15, Maryland.
EDITOR, Sir:
HAVE THE VENUSIANS LANDED? Maybe not but YOU sure did with this factual. This was NO. 1 in the JanWarp. I'm telling friends so they may order your Janwarp direct from you. # THE HOMUNCULUS, A Review, was really literary and that's no hot air, believe me. # File 13 had the pro column touch of a big daily. WILL SPACERS OUTRACE LIGHT? More of this stimulating type, please. Baldwin, Conner and Kennedy, Esquires, will send you and the Warp, too. # Don't care for the politics in TIMBER but the writing is timely, lively. More on Stf. pleez, less on stf. politicos. # The smells of the ish was, of course, that golden bantam bit called TROUBLE WITH TEDDY. I hope the author can improve with aging. I will give him a 2nd chance by reading more of his output later. (sig Henry)
BILL VENABLE, 32 Park Place, R.D. #4, Pittsburgh 9, Pennsylvania.
Dear ART:
re SPACEWARP: The cover was well drawn ... but the shading contrast was not so hot. I see, by my knowledge and perception of mimeo work, that you used the wood-grain shading plate for the inside of the spaceship, the splatter for the view thru the port, and the herringbone-weave for the man's suit. I have the same trouble with shading contrasts myself ... almost all kinds of shading in mimeo look the same. It would have gone better had you used hekto-color ... [That was what Trev drew it for; but I was lazy.] Oh well, the idea and conception of the drawing was exceedingly good. All cheers for Trev Nelson. # You are entirely right concerning OTHER WORLDS -- I have already clasped it to my bosom. Y'know, RAP does a bang-up job as ed. of it. But where is the No. 2 of the Mag of Fantasy? And has anybody noticed how good AMAZING has gotten? From one of the cruddiest it has risen to high place, in my estimation. # So the MSFS has disbanded? And just 2 months after I sent in my buck ... Will it go to my Ass'c'te membership in the Detroit SFS? [Yes, if it hasn't been refunded, far as I can find out from the Detroiters.] Or was I rooked? I would you had much rather put that buck on a WARP sub, instead that it shall go for nought. # Was "HAVE THE VENUSIANS LANDED?" just an elaborate hoax? If so, please, please, Wilkie, leave that field to Shaver and go back to LONGHAMMER. Because every time I read that kind of thing I want to believe it, and it irritates me to read a hoax disguised as truth. # MOON SHADES ... My God, another Ackerman in fandom. At any rate, it ranks with all the best in stf poetry. Grind another one out of Hank. # WILL SPACESHIPS OUTRACE LIGHT? Extremely thought-provoking. Therefore, I shall discourse upon it for a while, and hope that Rapp does not cut out all my beautiful equations. Your theory doesn't jibe with Einstein's, who discards the idea of an "ether dust", and assumes that space itself has the property of conducting light. On the question of anything going faster than light, you can use his equations first, in regard to bodies moving at speeds approaching that of light, you must have heard of the Fitzgerald effect, that as a body's speed approaches that of electromagnetic vibrations, time, the time of the body, slows down ... i.e., contracts from months to days, for illustration; the idea of regarding the velocity of light as a theoretical limit is this: as subjective time contracts -- so that in a trip from Earth to ... say Centauri (4.3 light years), though at a speed .9999 that of light the trip would take 4.4 years earth time ... i.e., 8.8 years would pass on Earth during the round trip, to the people on the spaceship the trip would take 4 hours ... actually! The clocks, chronometers, etc., on the ship would register only that time passed ... the people could leave earth in the morning, arrive at Centauri at what would be to them lunchtime, and get back to earth for supper ... but when they got back they would find that almost 9 years had elapsed on earth!! Now, when you reach the speed of light (says Einstein), for you, time would stand still. A fraction of a second on the ship would cover centuries on earth. And exceeding the speed of light, the velocity would go into the negative. Since there is (presumably) no negative scalar distance in space, this involves travelling backwards in time ... which is supposed to be impossible! So that, theoretically, travel at velocities greater than that are impossible. # One can get up some neat little paradoxes from this ... for instance: suppose you took off from earth and travelled at speeds greater than light to Sirius. You would arrive at Sirius before you had taken off on Earth! And if further you immediately returned to Earth at the same speed, you would arrive there before you had taken off! There would then be 2 of you ... the one yet to take off in the future, and the one which had just returned. Furthermore, you could tell whenever you were going to take a spacetrip by being on the lookout for any double of yourself around! Gad. But come again, boys. Suppose you had taken off & returned, and there were two of you, and both of them took off again, the original and the one who had just returned. When those 2 returned, combined with the two yet to take off there would be 4 of you ... and if those 4 took off with the original, when they came back there would be 8 of you! And if those 8 took off ... !!!!! In the end there would be infinity squared number of you!!! AN INFINITE NUMBER OF YOURSELF IN EXISTENCE EVEN BEFORE THE FIRST TOOK OFF TO CREATE THEM! And that same infinite number would have to take off with you, or ... and all these in existence even before you created them!! I'M GOING MAD!!! Heh heh heh heh haaa heeehaahooo ... !!! Before I die I bequeath this theory to Arthur Rapp to write a Bottstory about. # TROUBLE WITH TEDDY was catchy. I liked it. # FILE THIRTEEN is always good. By the way, r-t, you should have had it begin on page 13, not 12. Look to't, friend. I don't quite agree with Redd on the order of the best 13 stories of the year ... I would put FLIGHT INTO YESTERDAY first, THE WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER second, GULF third, THE ... but let it go. This letter is too long already. And Oh Redd, you are so right on the quality of stf being book-published. Like a damned fool, I went and bought FROM OFF THIS WORLD ... and ugh how juvenile --- # Maybe I will see wot Fried's zine is like. # T. E. Watkins (wots his fust name?) doesn't know his shaggy dog stories. The original was: A British lady put an ad in the paper that she had lost a 'shaggy dog'. The next day a man came to her door with a huge, wooly canine that looks like an overgrown cotton ball. The lady looks and says, "What is that?" "Well, madam, didn't you say you lost a shaggy dog?" said the man. "Oh, Heavens," she says, closing the door, "Not that shaggy!!"
unquote (sig Bill)
JOE KENNEDY, 84 Baker Ave., Dover, New Jersey:
Dear Art:
Thankee for printing the Kellarbook review. # The 34th WARP read with a good deal of enjoyment. Your editorial ramblings are rapidly developing into one of the readable-est columns in fandom. Clod Degler back in NY? Shucks, that's no revelation -- a couple months ago I received a batch of sloppily mimeographed postcards advertising something called The Futurian Book Exchange. When one of the cards offered, for $3 a tome entitled Maid or Monster: The Collected Works of Claude Degler, I was almost tempted to send the three bucks just to see what I'd get in return! # Jeez, where'd you get the poem by Henry Andrew Ackerman? Wonder where he swiped this one from. # "File Thirteen" topnotch as always. My thesis that advertising was pretty important to the early stfmags isn't a vital enough problem, I guess, to be worth defending; but I didn't mean to imply that the fantasy pulps would shrivel up and die if it weren't for good old Chas Atlas and the Rosicrucians. # Red's mention of T. O'Connor Sloane reminds me that recently I came across some scientific articles signed by that worthy gentleman in -- of all places -- The Catholic Encyclopedia. # Minor gripe: why you so stingy with the mimeo ink on some pages? [Using a take-off-the-damn-stencil-every-time-you-wanna-reink mimeo, at full one-inking capacity, and if I had to reink 25 times extra every month, SW would never get out.] # The last-page jingle is delightful. # Regards,
(sig JoKe)
ED COX, 4 Spring Street, Lubec, Maine:
Dear Art:
Belated thanx for the invaluable SWIndex. Very interesting, and so far as I can see, about as useful as can be as far as a thing like that goes. Next time, mebbe I'll have some more, and better, stuff in it. # Well, I was surprised and pleased to find that I even had a piece in this super-Decish. I liked most of the fiction, and contrary to the HPL haters element, didn't mind the overflowing adverb and adjective style tedious. This Lynn DeCour has quite a vocabulary and I'm quite sure the piece wasn't wholly "straight". Am I right? And "who" is the author anyway. Noticed the mention of "... the fair city of Lubec ..." Hmmmm, Who is this Art? # Wilkie's article [Janish] very interesting, intriguing and so on. I think I'll drop him that stamped-self-addressed. # Top items this time of course (of course there are top items) were Redd's and the letter column. Notice Charles Hames is hitting a lot of the fanzines with his fiction. He's an ORB man, you know. New feller. # Bye,
(sig Ed Cox)
Text versions and page scans Judy Bemis
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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