Milt Stevens, Simi Valley, CA
Your article "A Symphony of Books" brought back memories of my own days as a mad dog completist collector. When I first visited Forry Ackerman in 1959 I actually intended to one day have a collection as large as his. Aside from that, I showed relatively few signs of mental aberration. If they had only cooperated and stopped publishing SF in 1959, I might actually have managed it. As it was, I eventually crossed the collectorish divide. When you are first collecting space seems infinite and your desires are even bigger than that. One day, you wake up and realize you don’t have any more vacant walls in your house, and buying the house next door to further your collection isn’t a practical option. You’ve long known that much SF isn’t worth the powder to blow it to Hell, but that didn’t stop you from collecting it anyway. Now you have to accept that maybe you don’t need to own absolutely everything. Owning a whole bunch of stuff will actually do.
Speaking of owning a whole bunch of stuff, the title of Greg Benford’s proposed novel, Beyond Infinity, rang a bell. I prowled a couple of book shelves and located my copy of Beyond Infinity. It was a single author collection of four stories by Robert Spencer Carr and appeared as a Dell paperback in 1951. From what I recall of this volume, Greg’s novel will be far more in keeping with the title.
Jerry Page’s article on Jerry Burge brought back some different memories. Coven 13 was one of the few prozines ever published in Los Angeles, and it was being published when I got out of the Navy in 1969. I tried for a job. As a demo, I proofread their last issue to show I could improve their proofreading to a major degree. I don’t think they expected to be in business long, so they weren’t interested in proofreading. I hadn’t thought about Bill Crawford’s involvement in the change from Coven 13 to Witchcraft and Sorcery in many years. Crawford’s publishing efforts were always garage industry. When I first encountered issues of Fantasy Book and Spaceway I had no idea that SF publishing could operate on such a slender shoestring.
Having an Easter Bandicoot sounds like a totally silly idea. However, having an Easter Bunny is a totally silly idea too. What sort of a free thinker plot led to a bunny becoming the symbol of what started out as a major religious festival. Especially a bunny that may lay extremely peculiar eggs. If a chicken laid eggs that looked like that, it would be a very sick chicken.
Charlotte Proctor mentions her son once believed that his father lived in the basement. When I was a very young child my father didn’t live in the basement, but he did sleep there most of the time. He was a police officer and worked mostly at night. He had built himself a bedroom in the basement, so he wouldn’t be disturbed during the day. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I suppose I might have got some funny looks if I had told people that my father spent his days sleeping in the basement, but he usually got up around sunset.
Speaking of owning a whole bunch of stuff, the title of Greg Benford’s proposed novel, Beyond Infinity, rang a bell. I prowled a couple of book shelves and located my copy of Beyond Infinity. It was a single author collection of four stories by Robert Spencer Carr and appeared as a Dell paperback in 1951. From what I recall of this volume, Greg’s novel will be far more in keeping with the title.
Jerry Page’s article on Jerry Burge brought back some different memories. Coven 13 was one of the few prozines ever published in Los Angeles, and it was being published when I got out of the Navy in 1969. I tried for a job. As a demo, I proofread their last issue to show I could improve their proofreading to a major degree. I don’t think they expected to be in business long, so they weren’t interested in proofreading. I hadn’t thought about Bill Crawford’s involvement in the change from Coven 13 to Witchcraft and Sorcery in many years. Crawford’s publishing efforts were always garage industry. When I first encountered issues of Fantasy Book and Spaceway I had no idea that SF publishing could operate on such a slender shoestring.
Having an Easter Bandicoot sounds like a totally silly idea. However, having an Easter Bunny is a totally silly idea too. What sort of a free thinker plot led to a bunny becoming the symbol of what started out as a major religious festival. Especially a bunny that may lay extremely peculiar eggs. If a chicken laid eggs that looked like that, it would be a very sick chicken.
Charlotte Proctor mentions her son once believed that his father lived in the basement. When I was a very young child my father didn’t live in the basement, but he did sleep there most of the time. He was a police officer and worked mostly at night. He had built himself a bedroom in the basement, so he wouldn’t be disturbed during the day. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I suppose I might have got some funny looks if I had told people that my father spent his days sleeping in the basement, but he usually got up around sunset.
posted by ;-p at 12:27 AM
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