Monday, June 11, 2007

Mark Plummer, Croydon, Surrey, UK

Thanks for sending me that link to the new Challenger. I confess that of late – since you went electronic, essentially – I've not given your publication the attention it undoubtedly deserves. This is mainly because until relatively recently we've been existing on a dial-up internet connection which isn't exactly conducive to reading this kind of online fanzine.

Actually, I was mildly surprised to discover that you were able to tell us of
Challenger's existence before James Bacon did so, and then secretly rather pleased that I was able to tell James about it myself. This last year or so I've noticed that we've moved on from us telling James things to him telling us, popping round of an evening to brief us on the latest developments in Worldcon politics or future plans for the British Eastercon or whatever. I fear sometimes that we may be subsiding into eminence, consigned to the sidelines and reduced to shaking our heads at ''these young fans today'' while James storms on towards world fandom domination.

And to think that I remember him from that first UK convention he describes in his article. You will be unsurprised to hear that the cling-film is rather an enduring imagine...

But yes, it's a very ... Jamesian piece. It starts off going in one direction, then suddenly changes tack, shooting off at an angle, forking, looping, doubling back on itself. I get the impression that he's developing a style which will ultimately enable him to embrace all themes and subjects in a kind of unified theory of everything, the James Bacon article to end all James Bacon articles in which he will explain what fandom is and what it's for, and exactly who did saw Courtney's Boat, as well as setting out an agenda to end world poverty and provide free energy across the globe, and all wrapped up in an absolutely killer recipe for chicken chasseur. Oh, and cling-film, of course.

I was thinking about the bookshop thing at lunchtime today while I was poking about in the local-to-my-office branch of leading UK book chain Waterstone's. It's actually next to the London School of Economics and so the stock has more than a slight preponderance of books about, well, economics, but it also has an eclectic selection of remainders and I guess there's some entertainment value to be gained from looking at the fiction titles they expect to be able to sell to student economists. But for some reason it occurred to me that I'm probably one of the few people I know who's never bought a book from Amazon, and that's partly been because of the lack of a decent internet connection but more it's because I actually like the bookshop experience so much. And the Fantasy Centre shop that James describes is indeed one of the best.

It was not ever thus, mind. That gives a slightly false impression because it's always been a really good second-hand science fiction and fantasy bookshop – or at the very least so long as I've known about it – but it hasn't always been quite as welcoming as James describes. When I first encountered it, before present-day co-owner Erik came on board, I think they were altogether more cautious about their clientele. The traditional greeting, usually uttered within a couple of minutes of a customer entering the shop was, ''You do know it's all science fiction, don't you?'' There was some justification for this as to this day people wander in, scan the shelves for ten or fifteen minutes, and then ask whether there's a section for books on tree surgery or Uzbek detective stories in Urdu translation, but if you did know that it was a science fiction specialist store then this approach didn't exactly make you feel at home.

And then there was the collectors' section at the back of the shop – where the pulp magazines are on James's plan – and if you strayed into that there would be yet more questions. ''Umm, you do know this is the collectors' section, don't you?'' would come first and if you replied that, yes, you did, and you didn't immediately flee back to the cheap Fred Pohl paperbacks, you'd get as a follow-up, "Umm, some of these are quite expensive.'' I don't know, maybe it wasn't so bad if you looked as if you might be prepared to shell out two or three quid on a 1950s US Galaxy, and maybe I didn't and that was the problem, but somehow I rather got the impression that any purchase I actually managed to make was something of a victory.

It's not like that any more, and as James say, it's a friendly store where the proprietors will offer you a coffee and talk books and science fiction and, yes, sometimes fandom too. Erik has passed on several good items of fan material that come their way, items that they can't really sell but which they know have value to the right people and which they want to pass on to those people. It's still pretty quiet much of the time, it being the kind of shop that's almost certainly suffered with the rise of the internet, but other days I'll be in there and UK anthologist Steve Jones will drop in, and then Andy Porter, and then a long-term customer from France... and then that bloke that nobody knows who pokes about a bit for half an hour and then leaves with a dozen paperbacks or maybe asks if they have any books on sheet-metal working.

They used to have good parties too. Typically it'd be a Friday evening after the shop had technically shut. There would be beer and genial company and maybe the odd passing celebrity too. It was remarkably convivial atmosphere, not least because the conversation would inevitably turn to sf and if it did and you ever got into a disagreement you would almost certainly be able to find the text that you needed to settle the dispute. And then dark fantasy writer Gerald Suster would show up, and we would have the same conversation we had every time where he asked me who my favourite author was and I said I didn't know, 'cos I didn't really have a favourite, and then I'd make something up – a different person each time – and Gerald would try to light a cigarette rather ineptly and I would wonder again about the wisdom of allowing uncoordinated people to have matches around so much pulp paper, and then Claire and I and Pat McMurray and a few others would go and have dinner at the Korean restaurant up the road. Funs days.

You know, I don't think I've been to the Fantasy Centre for a while. Maybe I'll go tomorrow.

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