Chunga 15 (november 2008).pdf

CHUNGA is a hunted thing; its horse-wild eyes dart from one rain-slick cul-de-sac to another, lungs

aching, ragged breath staining the November air. But it remains forever one corner ahead of its

angry, unseen pursuers, as the sinister zither music swells, and shadows consume the entire world.

Available by editorial whim or wistfulness, or, grudgingly, for $3.50 for a single issue;

PDFs of every issue may be found at eFanzines.com.

Edited by Andy ( fanmailaph@aol.com ) , Randy ( fringefaan@yahoo.com ) , and carl ( heurihermilab@gmail.com ) .

Please address all postal correspondence to 1013 North 36th Street, Seattle WA 98103.

Editors: please send three copies of any zine for trade.

 Issue 15, November 2008 

Art Credits

in order of irst appearance

In this issue . . .

Alison Scott front cover

Tanglewood

An editorial.......................................... 1

At the Canyons of Corlu

A Desert Narrative by Andy Hooper.................... 2

Return of the Man of Steel: Breaking the Chains

by Stu Shiffman..................................... 10

John B. Speer, Democrat

by Randy Byers ..................................... 15

On the Face of It

by Taral Wayne ..................................... 16

Excerpts from the Fannish Protocols

by Teresa Nielsen Hayden & Lenny Bailes ............. 19

If You Meet a Trufan on the Road

by Randy Byers ..................................... 22

The Iron Pig

A letter column ..................................... 24

Dan Steffan 1 (Corlu Zed logo)

Carrie Root 2, 4, 6, 9 (photos)

Brad Foster 3, 7, 31

Alexis Gilliland 9

Stu Shiffman 12

William Rotsler 15, 18, 25, 28, 33

Terry Jeeves 20, 26

D West 21, 25, 30

Jay Kinney & Dan Steffan 23

Don Helley 29

Ian Gunn 32

carl juarez back cover

more about the front cover:

Thanks to Flickr users lonecellotheory

(subway tiling), minx2012 (Roald Dahl

plass), and tracy_olson (Seattle skyline) for

Creative Commons-licensed contributions.

This cover likewise is licensed under

Creative Commons (attribution non-

commercial sharealike).

Special Post-Election / Pre-Inauguration

Trauma Edition

☂ This fanzine supports Steve Green for TAFF ☂

Tanglewood

Is history thermoplastic?

elcome back to our cabinet of curi-

osities. Chunga #15 seems particularly

suffused with arcana, obscure personal

obsessions and their associated lore. But in contrast

to many issues, I believe virtually everything in

#15 is ostensibly “true.” No doubt some hokum has

crept in regardless, but all our writers and contribu-

tors claim to have presented us with factual mate-

rial. Fandom’s insatiable interest in everything the

universe has to offer remains a consistent wonder

to me, and one of the reasons why I’m still fannish

after all these years.

Fandom itself persists like a creature declared

extinct by science, but known to those who take

the time to ind it. We may appear to be an animat-

ed corpse to some, but in close-up, fandom is still

teeming with life, full of passionate conviction and

charging in 10 directions at once. But if perhaps

your sense of wonder may feel a trile mummiied,

think of Chunga as the brew of three Tana leaves,

enough to make you walk, and talk . . . and LoC.

— Andy

rare chance for many of us to meet the Fan from

Abingdon. I can hardly wait! We’re also putting

together a fanthology of material by the Cry Gang,

who put Seattle on the fannish map in the ’50s and

’60s, hosting a Worldcon here in 1961 and winning

a Hugo for Best Fanzine for Cry of the Nameless

in 1960. Just last week we heard rumors that the

Eaton Collection, which maintains a large archive

of fanzines, including the Bruce Pelz and Terry

Carr collections, will be coming to Corlu to do

some outreach. We are also looking at having vari-

ous groups host parties in the penthouse consuite,

and we’ll have more information about that in

future progress reports.

Corlu is an old-school convention that relies on

everyone getting involved to make things interest-

ing. Please send us your ideas and make plans to

come to Seattle next year with your latest fanzine

in hand. We’ll show you ours if you show us yours.

— Randy

h there’s so much to mention, I feel like

an Oompa-Loompa or two.

It is perhaps possible that by this time

you will have noticed a certain small difference in

texture this issue. Yes, we’ve gone to a 20-pound

stock (the better to see through you). Also, we’re

printing this issue on Randy’s nice new HP printer,

which does color, so do not adjust your set.

A lifelong dream for some, owning the means of

reproduction, but for others outsourcing of produc-

tion is the thing to conserve limited global resourc-

es, and to scratch that itch we will of course be

uploading a slightly more prefected version of what

you have before, upon, or over you to eFanzines, for

those who wish personally to become one with the

Grand Chain of Repro.

Speaking of Capitalized Nouns, our lives are the

inhalations and exhalations of some Great Force.

We’ve lost Thomas Disch and mystery/Zen writer

Janvillem van de Wetering (on the same day), Bar-

rington Bayley (underrated van Vogt of British SF),

and are threathened with the imminent loss of For-

rest J Ackerman, but there are also our friends who

are illing and recovering. God bless us every one,

and please to keep Bible Spice from our door.

Be sure to be with us next time, when Randy

sez, Oh noes! I haz convention!

e’re hosting Corflu Zed, the 26th

Corlu, in Seattle next year. I’m chair-

ing it, Andy’s handling the program,

and various of the usual suspects of Seattle fandom

are helping with all the other work that goes into

running a /p/a/r/t/y/ Corlu. We are going to try

to answer the call from one or two quarters (well,

okay, Mark Plummer) for a more organized, if not

coherent, program, but the thing that makes a Cor-

lu is the people who come to it. We hope you’ll join

us and make this Corlu something special. The

more, the merrier.

Corlu Zed will be held 13–15 March 2009 at the

Hotel Deca — a beautiful old art deco hotel in the

University District. You may well have received a

progress report by the time you’ve received this

fanzine. If not, ping me at fringefaan@yahoo.com,

and I’ll make sure you’re on the notiication list.

You can also ind more information about joining

and making reservations at the Corlu website at

www.corlu.org, which is maintained by the awe-

some Tracy Benton.

We’re still brainstorming ideas for the conven-

tion, but there have already been some exciting

developments. The Corlu Fifty has chosen Curt

Phillips to send to Corlu Zed, and this will be a

— carl

And, first of all, with our local robbers, they take the money and run. They’re in and out. They’re not stopping to do artwork.

In Memory Yet Chunga 1

At the Canyons

of Corflu

A Desert Narrative by Andy Hooper

Episode One: Corlu Silver Opening Ceremony,

April 25th, 2008

have bad dreams that take place in the program room of Cor-

flu Silver. The same low-ceilinged space in the Turf Club of the

Jackie Gaughn Plaza hotel was used for Corflu 21 and Corflu 12,

at least one Silvercon, and a notorious Channelspace Inc. editorial

meeting. In that room our CEO announced he had spent our remain-

ing capitol to acquire a rival internet business, with the assumption

that it would help achieve our ultimate goal — to be bought by an

even bigger dot-com that would leave everyone rich.

Honor. The names of all con members who have

not yet enjoyed the honor are placed in a hat. To

make the selection appear even more random, Las

Vegas fan Theresa Cochrane, who happens to be

completely blind, was to draw the name. Eventu-

ally, I mused, the pool of available candidates will

dwindle down so that the odds of being Guest of

Honor will rise to something like one in ten — and

Theresa, conferring with a sighted assistant, said,

“It’s Andy Hooper.”

I felt I might have dreamed it. I have dreams

about that room, and dreams about being Corlu

Guest of Honor. But people were applauding, and

there was no mistake. I would have to deliver a

speech on Sunday morning, and listen to questions

about it for the balance of the convention. It was

my turn; but that also meant that it would never be

my turn again, and all future opening ceremonies

will be free of peril.

Away in the convention suites, I warded off ques-

tions about my speech with fresh copies of Chunga

#14. The carousel of friends and correspondents

was full of familiar faces — some a bit balder, gray-

er, thinner, but all the more compelling for it. We

all had amazing discoveries to share and strange

new theories to expound.

The kernel of my oratory began to grow. It had

to do with the disparate interests of the fans at

Corlu, and would connect them like those elabo-

rate television histories that begin with Cyrus the

Great of Persia and end with the construction of

Instead, we drifted into inancial deep space,

slowly cannibalizing one another as life support

failed, until the last survivor froze solid with his

hands still at the keyboard, writing about the col-

lectability of Smurfs. Sitting down in that room

again was like returning to the clinic where I found

out I had diabetes. No question my attitude has

been better at the opening of Corlu than it was

that Friday.

My foul mood lifted as Vegas fan Bill Mills took

the podium to open the convention. Bill has a pow-

erful thespian instrument; his round tones remind

one of the late John Carradine, the late William

Conrad, or possibly the late Mel Blanc in the role

of Foghorn Leghorn. It struck me that he was the

living incarnation of John Barkenhorst, a character

in the play I’d written for the convention. He had to

play the part — and I was conident he would want

to play it. I daydreamed of other casting choices as

Joyce Katz took the stage. She thanked many, and

described a few of the events we would enjoy at

Corlu Silver.

Then came the selection of Corlu’s Guest of

2 In Memory Yet Chunga

Sometimes, you have to leave the frog alone. But sometimes,

the Golden Gate Bridge. Mine would wander from

the invention of writing in ancient Sumeria, to the

origins of the KTF review in scatological poetry of

ancient Rome, and conclude with the 19th century

psychic Madame Blavatsky and her alleged service

with Giuseppi Garibaldi. I planned to inish by pre-

dicting the 2063 election of Jophan Paul I, the irst

fannish Pope. It would be awesome!

high point nearby from which its interior can be

viewed, until you are literally at its edge. It’s easy

to see why it was geographically unknown into the

latter half of the 19th century. Oficially named the

Diablo Canyon Crater, it is also commonly known

as the Barringer Crater, after entrepreneur Daniel

Barringer who purchased it at the turn of the 20th

century. He and his partners in the Standard Iron

Company spent millions struggling to ind and

mine iron from the crater loor.

Normally, admission included a guided tour of a

half-mile trail along the crater’s rim, but the wind

forced them to close the trail. We tottered out onto

the observation decks, clutching irmly at the iron

railings as we went. The scale is impressive, but the

real wonder of the place is its relatively compact

geometry, so perfectly round and easily encom-

passed by even a compromised eye.

Fifty thousand years ago, a chunk of glowing

nickel-iron about the size of a college dormitory

impacted the Colorado plateau at a speed of 12.5

kilometers per second. The impact instantly vapor-

ized the great bulk of the meteor, which weighed

about 330,000 tons after its transit through the

atmosphere. The energy released instantly scorched

Episode Two: Meteor Crater, Arizona,

April 30th, 2008

The wind never stopped. It rose and fell in inten-

sity, but never subsided completely; and most of the

time it tore at us in gusts measuring 40 to 60 miles

per hour. Dust illed the air, penetrating every tight-

ly pursed oriice and limiting visibility to a milky,

stinging squint. Structures of all description shud-

dered and rocked under the pounding, invisible ist,

and the movie screen in the visitor center rippled

like a lag in the breeze.

The combination of the wind, dust and empty

landscape combined to create an other-worldly

impression singularly appropriate for a visit to

Meteor Crater. The lip of the crater rises rather

subtly from the surrounding plain, and there is no

you can make the frog funnier. It’s a matter of judgment.

In Memory Yet Chunga 3

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: