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Flicker3
March, 2004
Third Issue
S
ONGS
IN
THE
N
IGHT
...
Flicker Lives!
Were you to read the opening paragraphs
of this issue of
Flicker
, committed to Word file
in April, you might be struck by the misplaced
optimism and bravado. Had I left that brief
section intact, I’d have become the first fan-
zine writer to simultaneously write and eat his
words.
As I confidently started the third
Flicker
mere days after distributing #2, I had no idea
of the twin terrors awaiting me.
One was that my friend Robert Lichtman
volunteered Joyce and me to be co-chairmen
of the Bring Bayside Fund to convey Bruce
Gillespie from his native Australia to the Corflu
and Potlatch convention early in 2005.
The other biggie was Joyce’s April 19 fa ll
in which she broke both ankles, the right
one in three places.
I’ll say more about both later in this is-
sue, but suffice to say for now that they
both gulped huge hunks of my time that
might otherwise have caused
Flicker
to ap-
pear in May. Well, maybe June. Late June.
Not that I have neglected my fanwrit-
ing. Besides several articles for various
fanzines, I’ve written a big Corflu Blackjack
report (
Fanac Time in Glitter City
), a faan
fiction story (
The Science Fiction League
of Extraordinary Fuggheads
) and a pair of
analytical biographies that will be seen a
little later this year.
You can read both
Fanac Time
and
Ex-
traordinary Fuggheads
in free download-
Flicker #3, July, 2004,
is the latest effusion from Arnie Katz (330 S. Decatur Blvd.,
PMB 152, Las Vegas, NV 89107). It is as available as an aging streetwalker at the
end of a cold, “no sale” night. Letters (email: crossfire4@cox.net are very much de-
sired as are fanzines in trade. Member: fwa. Supporter: AFAL.
Don’t sing it… bring it. If you don’t like me… bite me.
— Rick Steiner
1
able editions at efanzine.com. Bill Burns free
fanzine newsstand also has all issues of the
Bring Bruce Bayside Bulletin
, 13 at this writ-
ing.
There’s also an issue of
Crazy from the
Heat
that’s less than two weeks from distri-
bution. We are starting to pick up a little mo-
mentum, so I hope you’ll watch efanzine.
com for it.
the ideal place to spend hours running off
fanzines. I have often mentioned to fan
friends that I have fond memories of several
publishing sessions from my past. The two
most prominent in my recollection were the
day Ted White ran off the issue of
Quip
he
basically rescued from the Forces of Evil and
the Saturday at the old Livingston Street
place in Brooklyn Heights when I ran off
three genzines for Brooklyn Insurgents on
the same 90-plus-degree day.
On the latter occasion, I will never forget
the rivulets of sweat that poured down my
fevered brow as I hunched over the Rex Ro-
tary in a marathon of obsessive-compulsive
fan activity.
With my current set up, I think I can
recreate at least the climatic environment. It
is
hot
, and close, out there. It’s also fairly
dark and there is no counter space to set out
the piles of finished pages.
Prior to her injury, Joyce had a grandiose
plan to change all that, but it involves getting
some combination of Ken Forman, Ben Wil-
son and Tom Springer to help us go through
every carton in the garage. And that, of
course, requires her to get
some or all of these strong
gentlemen to visit here from
their homes in California’s
Inland Empire.
Ben and Ken, who are
like brothers to me, sched-
uled such a trip — for two
weeks after Joyce’s acci-
dent. So instead of coming
to toil in the garage, they
and wives Aileen and Cathi
hosted Joyce for quite
awhile after she emerged
from the rehabilitation hos-
pital.
I can hardly express my
gratitude for the abundant
care they gave her, but it
did not actually improve the
copier/garage situation. I
might lose heart e ntirely if
Joyce hadn’t a lready begun
Epicenter of Fanac
Our biggest fear, when we left Toner
Hall, was that our new location would prove
too inconvenient for our co-conspirators. The
ever-sybaritic Vegrants are not easily in-
spired to make any but the easiest journeys.
Whereas New York fans will go to deepest
Brooklyn, the Grand Concourse in the Bronx
or even to quaint and exotic Staten Island in
search of fannish society. A lot of guys in
Vegas won’t even chase women from the
other side of this geographically compact
town, let alone travel that far to a fan meet-
ing.
Yet Corflu Blackjack generated enough
fannish energy to, however briefly, turn our
new home into a fan
center every bit as
busy as Toner Hall.
Not only did the phone
rung more regularly,
but we got a lot of
company before and
after the big event.
The copier, dor-
mant since our move,
returned to life after
some expert mainte-
nance and a new
drum. The machine
survived the move
pretty well overall, but
it was due for over-
haul when he trundled
it over to 909 Eugene
Cernan.
Even if it was
clean and in order, our
garage would not be
Joyce Katz
with the FAAn Awards Ballot box.
2
to spin her Byzantine web to
entice them here as soon as
the summer heat breaks
enough to make possible work
in the non-air conditioned ga-
rage. Alas, that’s December.
Visitors to Little House often
remark on how well we have
unpacked and settled into our
new residence. We deftly de-
flect all attempts to peek into
our garage so as not to shatter
their illusions.
What we need to do is un-
pack cartons filled with stuff
that should be inside, discard
the boxes of stuff we don’t
need, store a few cartons
against the wall and sell/give
away the contents of the rest.
There are a
lot
of cartons. If
Joyce can pull off this shanghai
scheme, it’ll reunite us with
quite a few favorite posses-
sions including elements of the
fanzine collection, our science
fiction ^ fantasy library, the
videotape collection and much
more.
It is only when this first Her-
culean task is done that Joyce’s real plan
gets underway. She wants to use the car-
tons we will retain in the garage to build a
semi-enclose for the copier and install an air
conditioner and a lamp to keep it cool and
well lit.
Meanwhile, I toil unendingly in the sty-
gian gloom of the sweltering garage and
think of Ted White running off that issue of
Quip
on a steamy Brooklyn Saturday.
placency. Fanzine fandom is sailing along
serenely — as serenely as the
RMS Titanic
,
about 100 yards from a big old iceberg.
I wish I could say the problem is simple
and easily cured, but it isn’t. And if we don’t
find a way to do something in fairly short or-
der, the few fanzine fans left will be drawing
straws to see who gets the dubious honor of
turning out the lights.
Part of the problem is that economic
forces outside the control of fandom now
make it impossible for all but the richest hob-
byists to produce a frequent fanzine of any
size.
The economics are frightening. Tradition-
ally, the backbone of the fanzine field was
the 30-page monthly and bimonthly fanzine.
Quarterlies and even less frequent titles are
also important, but it is the more frequent
Here Comes the Iceberg
It feels a little strange to be writing this
between trips to the copier to check on the
progress of the fanzine I’m printing, but fan-
zine fandom is at a crossroads. The increase
in the number of printed fanzines produced
in 2003, as chronicled by Robert Lichtman in
Trap Door
, should not lull anyone into com-
3
fanzines that provide the continuity and, of-
ten, the spark.
A 30-page fanzine with a circulation of
200, not outlandish these days and far from
“complete coverage,” requires 6,000 copies.
At 10 cents a copy, Kinko’s current price,
production takes the sweat equity out of fa n-
zine fanac. Back in the days of the mimeo-
graph and the spirit duplicator, a fanzine edi-
tor could buy cheap paper and ink in quantity
and repro a fanzine for a small fraction of to-
day’s cost to have the same fanzine copied.
Few current faneds have
the option of mimeograph, be-
cause those machine are
nearly impossible to maintain
and even harder to repair. Sup-
plies aren’t too widely avail-
able, either.
The answer is electronic
publishing. There’s a hitch,
though. Actually, there are a
couple. The less important one
involves attitudinal difference
between fa nzine fans and
those drawn to the subculture
by the Internet, but that’s an-
other rant for a nother time.
Let’s focus on the biggest
problem: lack of response.
Fanzine fandom’s classic
paradigm is a small, high qua l-
ity audience that responds
creatively and voluminously to fanzines.
Since few of us charge a subscription fee,
those letters of comment are the pay-off for
a lot of work. (Fun work, to be sure, but work
all the same.)
What happens when that pay-off never
comes? I got excellent response on
Jack-
pot!
, but that was a special situation. I pub-
lished
Jackpot!
to show doubters that I could
produce a completely different type of fa n-
zine from my usual offerings. It’s non-
fannish, general-interest material drew tons
of letters — but mostly from outside the
faanish circle I normally inhabit. Meeting
new, interest fans is always great, but you’ll
forgive for pining for a little feedback from
the people with whom I have traveled this
long and winding road for about 40 years.
(Robert Lichtman, trufan and tastemaker, is
the happy exception; a classic fanzine fan
who treats electronic fanzines with the same
respect as the ink -and-paper variety.)
that’s a hideous $600. There are places that
charge less, if you can find one that doesn’t
also skimp on quality, but most fans would
be hard pressed to get that 30-page fanzine
copied for less than $400.
And then there’s the trifling matter of
postage. I don’t have a chart here, but that
30-page fanzine is liable to cost close to
$1.20 to mail, over $2 each for copies head-
ing overseas. A fanzine editor could easily
spend $150 distributing an issue.
That’s $550 an issue! Hardly sounds like
something most people can afford to do six-
12 times a year, does it?
Some may claim that this is a worst-case
scenario and that a few little adjustments will
sweeten the situation. Well, a 24-page fa n-
zine would still cost $350-$480 to print and
at least $100 to mail if there’s any foreign cir-
culation. That still looks like a
lot
of money to
spend up to a dozen times a year.
The price is so high, because copy shop
4
Once I stopped
Jackpot!
, I learned first-
hand how little response most electronic fan-
zines get. Frustratingly, many of the people I
most wanted to hear from turned out to be
the least likely to participate. I’ll name no
names, because the list includes many of my
closest friends, but it breaks my heart every
time one of them airily dismisses a fanzine
that took me months to create with a com-
ment that they didn’t even look at it!
And a special place in Fan Hell should be
reserved for the haughty fans who boast that
they didn’t download my fanzine because “it
costs so much.”
I don’t remember any of them moaning
about the cost when I spent $3-plus each to
print and mail about a thousand fanzines to
each of them. Me spending the money on
top of the effort is fine, tho ugh. Some of
these people need to get over themselves.
I do see a glimmer at the end of the tun-
nel. So many fans have wailed about lack of
response to electronic fanzines that some of
our leading lights are making a special effort
to overcome years, even decades, of fanzine
habits. As you’ll see later in this issue,
Flicker #2
drew a decent number of LoCs.
That’s what it’s going to take, a special
effort by leading fans. Fanzine Fandom must
go electronic if it wants to end ure.
It’s gonna be a grand adventure. I sure
hope we’ve all going to share it together.
right there and taking heat, too. So before
you write that well-reasoned critical essay
about how
you
could do this oh-so-much-
better, remember that Joyce cries easily and
bears grudges forever.
One of the things I’m doing to help the
fund is publish a weekly newsletter called
The Bring Bruce Bayside Bulletin
(or
4B
for
short). You can get copies in .PDF format at
efanzines.com.
I also decided it would be a good idea to
distribute an email version through some of
the fannish listservs — Trufen, Nurofe n,
Fmzfen, Wegenheim and SouthernFandom-
Classic. (Volunteers are doing the same for
My Big Mouth Does It Again
Perhaps a wee bit tired of hearing me ex-
tol the virtues of the Special Fund (versus
continuing organized travel charities), Robert
Lichtman called my bluff and volunteered me
as Chairman of the Bring Bruce Bayside
Fund. The idea, which sprung up on the
Trufen listserv right after Corflu Blackjack,
aims to bring noted Australian fan Bruce Gil-
lespie to Corflu (and Potlatch) in San Fran-
cisco next February.
I accepted with thanks, because this is a
worthy idea. More importantly for the suc-
cess of the BBB Fund, I shanghaied Joyce
as Co-Chairman. If I’m gonna spend a year
on the griddle, her fannish fanny is gonna be
Timebinders, Pulpmag and other listservs to
which I don’t belong.)
Despite my best efforts, admittedly sabo-
taged by the flu, and support from Robert
Lichtman and Joyce, I still managed to make
two offensively dumb typos right at the top of
the second issue of
4B.
In my fevered delir-
ium, I not only forgot to change the issue
number, but I also somehow introduced an
error into the fanzine’s very title. Suddenly, it
was
The Bring Bruce
Pay
side Bulletin #1.
When three members of Trufen — I think
I caught the errors in time for the other list-
5
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