All Sinking, No Power 01.pdf

Vol. 1, No. 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

From the editor

A semi-irregular zine by:

Jason K. Burnett

BritHistorian@aol.com

3204 Cypress St.

Metairie LA 70001

Jason K. Burnett

Consider the Alternative

Jason K. Burnett

Lettercol

Distributed in FAPA, or

At eFanzines.com.

You, the readers

Art, articles, LOCs, etc., gladly

accepted.

Art credits: Cover: oldtimeclipart.com

Pages 3, 5: Mats Ohrman

Pages 4, 6, 7: Alan White

Also see my LiveJournal at:

www.livejournal.com/~brithistorian

Jason K. Burnett

Book reviews

FROM THE EDITOR

By Jason K. Burnett

Welcome to the first issue of “All Sinking, No

Power,” which is both my FAPA zine as well as

my first general fanzine. Years of APAhacking

and daydreaming have led me up to this moment,

and now I’m panicking – What do I say? Why

would anyone want to read what I have to say?

What if I pub one ish and can never do another?

What if it’s crud? This all ties in with the title,

which comes from one of the more memorable

quotes from Representative J. Binks (Naboo)

“Monsters out there, leakin’ in here! All sinking

and no power! When yousa thinkin’ it’s time to

panic?” But since I don’t have two Jedi here to

knock me unconscious and then take care of things,

I’ll just have to do the best I can myself.

So how did I come to be publishing a zine? How did I even come to be a fan? I suppose I’m

about as close to a lifelong fan as it’s possible to be. Some of my earliest memories are of going with my

grandfather to gas up his car, at which times he would always buy me a comic book from the rack at the gas

station. This would have been in the mid-1970s – comic books were 35 cents, and my favorites were

Spiderman, Superman, and The Hulk. I suppose I still could have turned away, but when I was seven,

parents bought me a stack of books for Christmas – Alice in Wonderland , The Wizard of Oz , Tom Sawyer ,

Treasure Island , and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . After reading those, I was hooked on reading. The

next summer, my mother let me read her copy of The Hobbit and I was specifically hooked on science

fiction and fantasy.

Fast-forward a couple of years. It’s October 15, 1983. I’ve just turned 10, and my mother finally

allows me to buy the Dungeons & Dragons basic set (she had held fast to the age printed on the box,

possibly hoping I’d lose interest in it). This further reinforced my reading habits (as if they needed it) –

now I had an arena in which to act out all those fantastic stories I’d been reading.

Fast forward again, to Christmas 1986. I’m now 13 (the “Golden Age of Science Fiction”), and

among my presents is a copy of Richard Purtill’s Murdercon . This was my first exposure to organized

fandom, and I was enthralled. There was even a passing mention of fanzine fandom, which struck me as a

terribly interesting thing.

Fast forward yet again. It’s the summer of 1995. I’m now married, midway through my

bachelor’s in history, the father of an infant son, and I’ve just gotten a copy of New Moon Directory .

Having been unable to find fanzine fandom in the decade since I’d first heard of it (admittedly not

searching too hard during some of that time), I came to the erroneous conclusion that it was no more, and

all the fanzine fans had migrated to APAs. I threw myself wholeheartedly into APAhacking, joining

Elanor , Butterbur’s Woodshed , Sord and Sworcery , and Mutations , as well as joining several fannish

organizations. I was having a ball. Then, in 1998 I graduated, leading to an extensive period of gafiation

(see “Consider the Alternative,” below.)

Fast forward one final time, to January of 2004. Somehow (I wish I could remember how) I

discover eFanzines.com. I am elated to discover that fanzine fandom is not dead after all. I eagerly devour

every zine I can find. I start communicating with other fans, LOCcing their zines, joining listservs, even

getting a LiveJournal account. Then I’m bitten by the bug – I want to pub my ish. I arrange to joint FAPA

so that I have a means for distribution. I contact some people who might be willing to write or draw

something for me (even if they don’t get it to me in time for the first issue, I can still use it on down the

road). I start writing things. I scan the web for clip art I can use. Then one night I finally take the plunge

and sit down and put it all together. And the result is the zine that you now have in your hands (or on your

screen, as the case may be).

BOOK REVIEWS

By Jason K. Burnett

If you’re looking for any sort of systematized, literary book reviews, you

need to put this down and go buy a copy of the Times Literary Supplement ,

because you’re obviously reading the wrong magazine. My book reviews

start with strictly subjective assessment of the book – did I like it or not – and

then explore my thoughts on the book, how it relates to other thinks I’ve read,

how it could have been improved, etc., provided either with or without such

niceties as a plot summary or any sort of critical apparatus. That being said,

let’s get to the reviews.

Pierre Berton, The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage & the North Pole,

1818-1909 . I didn’t really know much about arctic exploration before I picked up this book – I knew that

Admiral Peary had been the first to reach the North Pole, and that was about it. As it turns out, the little

that I knew about arctic exploration was wrong (more on this below) and there was far more to the subject

than I had ever imagined. It turns out that the Arctic was to the 19 th century what space was to the 20 th –

the final frontier. Returning Arctic explorers were greeted with parades, packed lecture halls on speaking

tours, and had newspaper battling for the exclusive rights to their stories. But whereas the exploration of

space was a series of successes interspersed with the occasional tragedy, the exploration of the arctic was a

seizure of failures interspersed with the occasional worse failures. The arctic explorers clung to

unsuccessful methods (a diet consisting largely of salt pork, overly heavy man-drawn sledges, wool clothes

that froze stiff and failed to protect from frostbite) even in the face of evidence that there were other

methods that did work – apparently they never thought to wonder how Eskimos could live their whole life

in a region where a European or American crew was hard-pressed to survive three winters. The stock

response to each failed mission (barring a few eccentrics who, though they had more successful

expeditions, were promptly ignored because they came from the Hudson Bay Company instead of the

Royal Navy) was to send more men with more salt pork, more woolen clothing, and heavier sledges.

Which brings up back to Admiral Peary. The complete case against him having reached the pole is to

longer to be recounted here, but it boils down to the fact that his whole case rests on measurements that he

made, which were unable to be verified by any member of his party (as he made the final dash for the Pole

accompanied only by his black manservant and his Eskimo assistants), and which, if accurate, would have

necessitated him traveling at triple the best speed achieved by any previous expedition through ground

worse than that covered by any previous expedition. Only the force of his personality and the respect he

was accorded as a result of his earlier missions allowed him to pull this off, and once his records were able

to be examined objectively, the whole thing collapsed like a house of cards.

The Executioner #28: Armageddon Exit . The Executioner books are

intellectual junk food of the worst sort – fun, but with absolutely no nutritional

value. I read them the same way I read Star Trek books – when I want to read

something, but don’t want to have to think about it. If you’ve never read one

of the Executioner books, let me sum them all up for you: Mack Bolan (the

Executioner) is made aware of a group of Bad People by Hal Brognola, his

minder/contact in the federal government. He then either goes undercover and infiltrates

their group or just charges in and starts shooting them, either with or without the help of other

agents of Stony Man, the ultra-secret federal agency he nominally works for. After several gunfights

throughout the course of the book, the finale is an even bigger gunfight during which the Executioner

personally kills the Chief Bad Guy. Along the way, he may or may not get laid, at author’s discretion, and

he will be kind to women and children (unless they are Evil Women, in which case he kills them). Nothing

whatsoever to think about, but great stress release when you just want a ripping adventure tale where all the

bad guys get blown up.

Sharon Kay Penman, The Reckoning and The Sunne in Splendour . I am very conflicted in

my feelings about these books (and books of this sort). On the one hand, the aspiring writer in me feels like

writing a novel of this sort is cheating, because one doesn’t have to come up with a plot, just to record what

has already happened. On the other hand, the historian in me feels like writing a book like this is cheating

because one is basically writing a history but has the safety net of being able to explain away any

inaccuracies as novelist’s license. On the other hand, I really liked these books. My mental reservations

above notwithstanding, I’ve always felt that historical fiction, done properly, could do more to generate

interest in a historical period and to educate people about that period than any number of properly footnoted

scholarly works on the subject. Look at the amount of interest in the Napoleonic wars on land and sea

generated by the works of Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O’Brian. With a very few exceptions (Stephen

Ambrose, for example), historians will not be as widely read as novelists, and so it is from historical

novelists that most people learn what little they know of history. That is why I

think it is so important that historical novelists do their research and make sure

they’re getting things right. And Ms. Penman has definitely done that, going back

to original medieval chronicles to gather materials for these books, then combining

this research with excellent writing skills to produce books that are a joy to read,

grabbing the reader’s attention in the first pages and holding onto it throughout

their (considerable) length. The Reckoning covers Edward I’s conquest of Wales

in the 13 th century, while The Sunne in Splendour covers the Wars of the Roses,

being particularly dedicated to the case of Richard III and the theory that he was

not the hunchbacked devil portrayed in Shakespeare’s play. In both cases enough

background material is provided that no previous knowledge of the periods in

question is required for the reader to thoroughly enjoy the book, and I think both

books will amply repay the investment of time a reader makes in them.

Walter Laquer, Europe Since Hitler: The Rebirth of Europe . I picked this one up for a quarter

at the UNO Asian Studies Center book sale when I was working there as a grad student. It turned out to be

one of those history books that is of value for exposing the values and attitudes of the time in which it was

written almost as much as for the information about the time it is written about. In this case, you have a

book that discusses the years 1945 to 1970, published in 1970, so that, especially by the end of the book,

you’re getting current events viewed through the lens of the historian. It wasn’t a fun book to read, being

rather dry in spots, but it was important. As everything in this book happened before I was born, it was

interesting to go back and see how the world as I have experienced it came into being.

James J. Wilhelm (ed.), The Romance of Arthur: An Anthology of Medieval Texts in

Translation . I had had this lying around since my last semester as an undergraduate, when, in need of

one more literature course I had signed up for Arthurian Literature and Victorian Literature, with the plan

of being able to drop one (in the event that I didn’t like it) without jeopardizing my graduation. It turned

out that I enjoyed them both, but I needed to drop one anyway to keep my workload manageable. So, as

Arthurian lit was earlier in the morning, and as at the time I was aiming at a career in Victorian British

history, I dropped Arthurian, but held on to the books to read later when time presented itself. I have been

fascinated with the Arthurian legends since one year for my birthday my aunt and uncle bought me a copy

of James Riordan’s Arthurian tales. And as much as I enjoyed Riordan’s Arthur (it’s still one of my

favorites and one I would recommend to someone just starting out), reading this anthology made me realize

how much of the Arthurian corpus has been effectively lost to modern times. Some of the stories in this

volume, such as “Culhwch and Olwen,” have been completely forgotten by the general public, and present

an Arthur that most people would find unrecognizable, for in these earlier Welsh tales, Arthur appears as a

Celtic warlord, far removed from the chivalric king of the later tales. Other stories here, such as “The

Marriage of Sir Gawaine and Dame Ragnelle,” were familiar to me, but I enjoyed the chance to read the

original version. While it would definitely not be a good first Arthurian book, it would be an excellent

book for someone looking to dig deeper into the stories.

Isaac Asimov, the Foundation trilogy . My parents bought me these for Christmas about 15 years

ago, and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve reread them. The stories hold up remarkably well to this

sort of rereading, as each time I bring something new to them, and so am able to take away something new.

This was my first time rereading them since finishing my degrees in history, and also the first time since

reading I. Asimov , the third volume of Asimov’s memoirs. The first thing that struck on this rereading was

that, even with all I have learned since the first time I read the books, I still believe in psychohistory. I

think I have a better idea of the problems that would be inherent in turning history into a quantitative,

predictive science of this nature, but I still

believe that it would be possible. The

second thing that struck me was that, despite

the fact that Asimov was a lifelong

nonsmoker and, indeed, an active anti-

smoker, a great many characters in the

books smoked. Looking at it with a

historian’s eye, I would have to say that this

is a case where a historical document tells as

much about the time in which it was written

as it does about the time which it is

covering. Since smoking was almost as

common as breathing at the time that

Asimov was writing the Foundation stories, he carried this behavior that he was seeing every day over into

the future. The third thing that struck me this time through was that I was bothered by the way in which the

Second Foundationers had developed psychic powers. At first it seemed rather out of place, introduced as

sort of a deus ex machina at the end of Foundation and Empire in order to provide a way to stop the Mule.

But as I reread Second Foundation , I started thinking more about how little we know about the brain and its

function and it seemed more plausible – this was just another of these sufficiently advanced technologies

that is indistinguishable from magic.

CONSIDER THE ALTERNATIVE

By Jason K. Burnett

Have you ever wondered where you’d be if you weren’t in fandom? I have seen firsthand some possible

answer to that question, and let me tell you it is not a pretty sight.

Here is my story: The mid-90s were the height of my fanac to date – I was a member of four

APAs (Elanor, Mutations, Butterbur’s Woodshed, and Sord & Sorcery) as well as belonging to N3F, Ista

Weyr, and Queen’s Own. At the time I was working as a weekend unit clerk in the neonatal ICU of a local

hospital while going to college (majoring in history), when in 1998 I suffered the worst fate that can befall

any undergraduate fan – I graduated. After an abortive attempt to join the Coast Guard, and having no

means available to repay my student loans, I was left with no other choice but to go to graduate school.

Naturally, the massive amount of reading this entailed (I don’t know anyone who read everything they were

supposed to have read during grad school) left absolutely no time for recreational reading. So I gafiated – I

resigned from the APAs, let my memberships lapse, buckled down, and got to work.

Two years later, having survived my coursework and have become, as one of my professors put it,

“the leading authority on a subject no one else cares anything about,” I was awarded my master’s degree.

As I was neither crazy enough nor wealthy enough to go on for my Ph.D. at that point, I found myself with

free time again. Not being the sort to just veg out in front of the TV, I had to have a hobby to fill my time.

For some reason that I still don’t quite understand, it didn’t just pop into my head to re-enter fandom.

Instead, I tried a variety of other things, only to give up each for one reason or another.

Historical Miniature Wargaming: I probably enjoyed this the most of any of the other things I

tried, and if the gaming group I was in hadn’t collapsed I’d probably still be doing this. Wargamers are,

with the exception of the few freaks you’ll find in any crowd, generally nice people. They are, on the

whole, rather conservative politically (occasionally some particularly broad-minded individual would go so

far to the left as to consider voting for a conservative democrat), and I would quite commonly find myself

to be the only person in the room who had not served in the military, but we still got along fine. The chief

drawbacks of wargaming, as I saw them were: First, painting figures is very time consuming, especially if,

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