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Fred
Robinson. Hardly a name on the lips of those who
happily acknowledge the greatness of Willis and
Clarke. And Robinson's STRAIGHT UP is by
no stretch of the imagination in
the class of HYPHEN or even SCIENCE FICTION NEWS. In
fact
CAMBER,
the later Robinson project, is more known as a
product of its subsequent editor Alan Dodd (of
whom it has been said.)
But
let us remember Fred Robinson. Even if nothing
else he was (probably) the first Welsh science
fiction fan of any real substance, at least the
first to issue a substantial run of fanzines, and
was a character who can be clearly seen today as a
genuinely fannish sf enthusiast, who while not the
greatest writer in the world conveyed a deal of
charm and enthusiasm in his work. He even had an idea
of mobilising all Welsh sf fans as The Cymrades as a gesture against
the almost habitual sense of righteous dominance that emanated from
the London area. That was, alas, just the first time an attempt
to cohere Welsh fandom failed.
To
tell the truth we don't know a lot about Fred, or
the other few Welsh fans of the late
1940s - early 1950s. Arthur Hillman of Newport, for
example, who features in S.U., was clearly an
interesting guy, but we know little of him, except that
he was active in fandom during the 1940s and recieves a few scattered mentions in the fanzines
of the day. And that's almost as much can be said about
Fred Robinson; in the days before sf fans (and
almost everyone else...) detailed every tiny
element of their inner and outer lives for public
view the bulk of what Fred writes about is sf and
fandom, reflecting on his enthusiasms rather than
his own mundane activities or neuroses.
What
do we know for (reasonably) certain; He
was definately in contact with British and US
fandom by 1951, having been to the 1951
Festivention in London. he also shows up at the
1952 Loncon, and is again at the 1953 Mancon. He was
in some sense - amateur or professional is not clear - a book-binder,
and detailed advertisments for his work appear in the OPERATION
FANTAST HANDBOOK for the years 1951, '52 and '53, and apparently
his work was good. That makes it the more surprising, perhaps, that
STRAIGHT UP, his first fanzine, was so badly produced,
with stencils cut with a poor typewriter and duplicated on an ancient
and defective flatbed machine. None of that is helped by the fairly
obvious sense that Fred was writing everything he contributed to
his fanzines direct onto stencil, first draft. The idea are there,
there is insight and wit, but for the most part it is blurred by
hasty composition and frankly eccentric punctuation!
Having
started his paper fanactivity with the notionally
monthly news-zine STRAIGHT UP in early 1952 he gave
up on the idea by October of that year, but came
back with CAMBER, a more general-interest fanzine,
in Summer 1953. But although there was another
issue (with a long and interesting report of the
1953 Coroncon) in Autumn of that year he dropped
off the plot almost immediately thereafter. He had
always referred to a great interest in photography
in his writings, and in part that may have been
the cause of his change of course.
In
1954 CAMBER reappeared with a third issue,
with Alan Dodd of
Hoddesdon not Fred Robinson of Cardiff at the handle.
There was no detailed explanation of this
reappearance or change of editorship in the
fanzine itself, but an article by Dodd in Ron
Bennett's PLOY number 4 of September 1955 told the
tale, although there is some confusion over the
time elapsed and it all must have happened much
faster than Dodd seemed to remember –
".....there
had been a short interval since the last issue had
come out. About two years I think. Well, having
displayed a great interest in the former two
issues I wrote to editor Fred Robinson to find out
how things were getting on. In his usual and
amiably prompt manner Fred soon replied. Six
months later. ... He admitted finding it rather
hard going to get the zine out single-handed and
he suggested I become co-editor with him. So I
agreed. Months passed. ... he (Robinson) with all
due honesty mentioned that his other hobbies of
photography and women were drawing him away from
fandom so much that he could not bring himself
back to the task of putting out another issue. The
flame of interest that had kept him going through
fanzines like Straight Up and Camber had finally
died."
Robinson
suggested that Dodd should take over the fanzine
altogether and Dodd eventually received
"‘the
parcel that was Camber. I inherited a hundred or
so unused stencils which didn't fit the Roneo 500
I use, a few of Orma McCormick's poems, four typed
stencils (also a different size), a few oddments
of stories and a couple of old O.F. lists. I then
became the sole owner of Camber, complete with a
sub-list of gafia-riddled fans and characters who
had insisted on sending Fred subs up to issue 17,
which means I've got to get out at least 15 issues
before succumbing to gafia myself."
CAMBER
continued with an engaging if not illustrious run,
but for all its qualities it lacked the cheerfully enthusiastic
editorial
presence of Fred Robinson. In fact nothing at all more
is ever heard of Robinson after this point - he vanishes from the
sight of fandom altogether, almost as if he was never there at all.
But he was, and and while some might please themselves to find many
defects in his fanactivity I believe it well repays reading today,
long after Fred would have thought it forgotten.
Greg
Pickersgill - November 2009
(This
profile of Fred Robinson and his fanactivities will be improved
and expanded as soon as possible. I'm presenting it in this short
form now simply to get the webpage live.)
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