The Drink Tank 233 (2009).pdf

The Drink Tank 233

Briana SpaceKat Wu provides us with a cover

this issue! I love her Animesque girls! She should have

more art in The Drink Tank! I will make it so! you can

ind more at http://www.briannaspacekat.com

So, this issue has some good stuff goin gon.

Randy Smith, one of my favorite fan writers who has

appeared in BayCon Fanzine Lounge zines, has a piece

in here, which is nice. Frank Wu sent in a piece, and

I’ve got a Taral Wayne article on Susan Wood, a legend

in fandom, and more and more. Ever more...

Of course, it wouldn’t be a TAFF race without

something going dreadfully wrong on my side. I did

a bunch of ballots by hand last month, which took

forever, left me with hand cramps and was slow as all

get-out. I then was told by a friend at work that she

could do it very quickly using the Excel spreadsheet

that was sent by Leigh Ann, who printed the labels last

time and which I had lost in the most recent com-

puter crash. Thankfully, she held on to it and sent it to

me so I could rework it. I sent off the ones I’d done

by hand and indicated which they were so as not to

waste materials. It took her a few days, mostly be-

cause of Thanksgiving, but she got me the labels and I

sent them off.

If you’ll recall a fellow named Charles Babbage

who was looking at books full of numbers that were

used as math aides. Basically, for any function you had,

sine, cosine, tide tables, what have you, they’d create

a huge table and print them as a book. The problem

that Babbage found, and what got him thinking about

building a giant computer to put together these tables,

was that if you made a mistake in your addition at one

point, that mistake continues, and likely grows worse,

all the way down the list.

This is what happened with the labels.

Somehow, the address lines didn’t match up,

and so one column was printed off by one. It could

have worked had it not been the address column.

So, we ran a second test batch and the same

thing happened. This was highly disappointing. I inally

gave up and am now, with a little help, doing them by

hand again. I’m going to get them out by the end of

the week, but you could make things easier by voting

with an on-line ballot or using the paypal option!

And so, with one failure under my wing, we are

now off to The Drink Tank, issue 233!

art from Genevieve

The Biggest Name Fan

By Randy Smith

“Okay, ma’am, you can go on through.”

She passed between two other well-dressed

men with earpieces standing in front of the door to

the Dealer’s Room.

“Mr. President,” she said with surprise.

“You can call me Barak,” he said, “After all,

we’re all fans together. I see you’ve got your con

badge. Good. You can go on in.”

* *

Or, how about this as the lead news story on

CNN on an otherwise slow news day:

“Earlier this evening, President Barak Obama

accepted the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer on

behalf of Chris Garcia. The awards were presented

at the World Science Fiction Convention being held

I recently heard Barak Obama referred to as a

“fanboy President.”

He reads Spider-Man. He makes guest

appearances in comics. He seems to understand light

sabres and holodecks.

But, what if the President of the United States

were a Fan. Yes, a Fan with a capital “F.” How would

that change his presidency? What would be the

implications for fandom? What kind of fanac would he

commit?

Imagine if you will, the following scenario:

“Excuse me, ma’am, but we need you to step

through the metal detectors.”

“Metal

detectors?”

“Yes, ma’am, and

we’ll also need to see

the contents of your

bag.”

“It just has my

pocket program, a few

books I brought for

signing, and my TAFF

ballot.”

“That’s all

right, ma’am. It’s just

regulations.”

“This is pretty

heavy security just to

get into the dealer’s

room.”

“Dealer’s Room?

No, Ma’am. This

isn’t security for the

convention, just for the

man at the door.”

Speaking into

his earpiece, the well-

dressed man continued,

“Foxtrot One to

Romeo Charlie, we’ve

got another one to let

past Big Jedi.”

“Send the

package through,

this weekend in Reno,

Nevada. In accepting

the award, the President

thanked the Hugo voters

on behalf of Mr. Garcia

and encouraged them

to keep reading fanzines.

After the ceremony

the President described

Garcia as ‘one of the

premier fan writers of

our time who expresses

himself with great

erudition and wit.’”

Or, imagine a

fan fund auction of the

future:

“Our next

item is a copy of Cry

of Casablanca number

5, edited by that great

Fan, Barak Obama.

It contains some

wonderful articles by

Lloyd Penney, Cheryl

Morgan, and John Hertz.

There are also letters of

comment by Dave Kyle

and Randy Smith. Who’ll

Foxtrot One,” the earpiece replied, “Romeo Charlie

out.”

bid ive dollars for this

old-time fanzine?”

“Five Dollars!”

“Okay, who’ll bid

What

else might we

see in a Fannish

presidency?

The

Senate Finance

Committee

invited to the

White House

for an evening

of Magic: The

Gathering .

The

Cabinet ilking

in the Capitol

rotunda.

A State

Dinner honoring

Emperor

Akihito of Japan

that includes

a masquerade

limited to Master

Costumers.

Connie

Willis receiving

the Presidential

Medal of

Freedom.

There

are surely more

possibilities.

While some of

this sounds really

ten?”

“Ten.”

“Do I hear

ifteen?”

“I’ll go twenty?”

“Twenty dollars

it is. Do I hear twenty-

ive?”

“I’ll give ifty.”

“Fifty dollars,

clear in the back.

We appreciate your

generosity, sir. Will

anyone give ifty-ive? I

see another hand in the

back. Do you bid ifty-

ive, ma’am?”

“I’m willing to

cut to the quick. Five

hundred dollars.”

“Okay, ive

hundred going once. Five

hundred going twice.

Five hundred going. . .”

“Six hundred.”

“Seven hundred.”

“Seven Fifty.”

“Okay, there’s

some spirited bidding

from the back of the

room. Is anyone willing to bid eight hundred dollars?”

“Yes!”

“Eight hundred dollars. Do I hear more?”

“Nine hundred.”

“A Thousand.”

“Two thousand.”

“Two thousand going once. Two thousand

going twice. Two thousand going three times. Sold, to

the woman in the back of the room! This is almost

certainly the most ever paid for a fanzine. DUFF is

grateful for your generosity.”

“Duff? Who’s Duff? Say, does anybody know

where I have to go to get my taster membership

refunded?”

* *

cool (yes, I would like to see Connie Willis receive a

presidential medal) it’s probably just as well that we

don’t, and probably never will have a truly Fannish

President.

Oh, well.

all this talk of auctions

and fan funds reminds me

that frank wu and anne kg

murphy raised more than

2 grand for taff with the

ebay auctions!

A Room of Her Own

The Best of Susan Wood, edited by

Jerry Kaufman

Aspidistra & Amor de Cosmos,

edited by Susan Wood

sympathizers, or “femsymps.” I don’t think it was,

as you might think, a put-down, but rather a self-

caricature.

By mid-decade, Susan was a professional

academic who had moved to Saskatchewan to take

a job teaching with the University of Saskatchewan

in Regina. Later, almost as though she were trying to

put still more distance between herself and her old

life, she moved from Regina to Vancouver, and held a

position there with the University of British Columbia.

She had moved some distance from fandom as well.

Her oldest friends were collected around her, but

academia and her feminist pursuits formed the core of

her life on the West Coast.

Amor appeared almost immediately after

Susan arrived to take up her new job in Regina. It

was preceded by a letter substitute , but the oficial

issue-number-one is dated October 1973, and its full

title is The Amor de Cosmos People’s Memorial Quiet-

Revolutionary Susanzine: A Personalzine . Most loccers

preferred Amor de Cosmos , or just Amor . It was

produced in small numbers for a select circle, and

wasn’t available for trade. The last issue is numbered

Foreword by Taral Wayne

photo by Jeff Frane

Everyone has their favourite fanwriters, and

no one can be blamed for who those favourites are.

One of my mine was Susan Wood. When I irst began

reading fanzines in the early ‘70s, Susan was at her

peak of creative writing, and I saw a lot of it. One

piece in particular inspired me to begin collecting an

obscure popular writer of the 30’s, and that in its turn

had an inluence on more than one thing I wrote and

drew in the next few years.

But over time, I found other favourite writers,

18, but it says right on the irst

page that there were 20 issues.

It wasn’t a typo. The answer

seems to be that Susan counted

two letter subs between regular

issues. Perhaps Amor should be

the subject of another it of

scanning, since Robert Lichtman

has recently provided me with

an adequate PDF ile of the one

issue missing from my collection.

Professionally, Susan was

blossoming. She became editor

for Canadian book reviews for

The Paciic Northwest Review of

Books , and in 1979 edited a book

of Ursula K. Le Guin’s non-iction

writing, The Language of the Night ,

published originally by Putnam.

and Susan slipped unnoticed

from the list. From the

beginning, Susan had a serious

side as well as a lighter side.

From the charming, humorous

little pieces she once wrote for

Energumen and other zines such

as Kratophany and Outworlds ,

Susan’s interests led her to more

earnest and sercon writing of a

sort that held less appeal for me.

The ive issues of

Aspidistra that she published

in 1971 and 1973 (while co-

editor of Energumen with Mike

Glicksohn), were the political

children of their times. Ecology

was forefront, along with

counter-culturish items such as

As a special distinction, Susan edited the science

iction and fantasy issue of the Canadian feminist

literary journal, Room of One’s Own .

healthy recipes, free verse poetry and pop art illos.

Unlike ‘Nerg, Asp was printed on suitably green paper.

Susan’s feminist advocacy was also heard early

in her fannish career. Susan may not have actually

founded A Woman’s Apa (it is perhaps forgotten that

Janet Small and Victoria Vayne did), but Susan inspired

it. She was an honorary member from the start.

Most of her fannish energy in this period seems to

gone into AWA and a personalzine called Amor de

Cosmos .

The word “femsymp” loats up from some

murky well of memory. There were actual feminists

in fandom in the 70’s – Susan was one of the

foremost. As well, there were guys who were feminist

Quite unexpectedly, Susan Wood died in

November 1980.

There is no need to go into the details of

Susan’s death. What matters is that the news spread

fast, and much of fandom was plunged into mourning.

Even fans who had entered fandom after Susan’s move

into academia, and had never known her, mourned her

passing as well. I knew Susan rather poorly myself,

despite living in the same city and belonging to the

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