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This is SKYRACK 62, dated 29th January 1964 and published by Ron Bennett, 17 Newcastle Road, Wavertree, Liverpool 15, England. 6d per copy. 2/6d for six (35c in USA). Airmail rates: 6 issues for 70c or 5/-. Please make overseas money orders payable at Penny Lane Post Office, Liverpool. Skyrack needs a Stateside representative and applications for the post are invited. Heading and cartoon are by Liverpool's Eddie Jones and interior illustration is by Brixton's Arthur Thomson. Pen picture by Archie Mercer, nature's answer to GAFIA and news contributions are from: Archie Mercer, Ted Tubb, Colin Freeman, Ella Parker, Charles Platt, Ethel Lindsay, Sid Birchby and Ron Ellik's Starspinkle amongst others. |
WITH THE PETERBOROUGH CONVENTION just eight weeks away, Chairman Tony Walsh has announced that attendance fees will be reduced to conform with last Easter's rates. Several fans had written Tony to the effect that there be appeared to be little justification for raising the fees. Tony is to be congratulated on not letting himself be stampeded on this issue. After looking into the matter, from every angle, including that of possible convention losses, he has now decided to make this reduction. Not that this will make any difference to anyone actually attending the convention, for with the 100 marker chalked up on the membership some weeks ago, this looks like being the best attended British national convention of all time. If you require details regarding membership, newsletters etc. write Tony at 38 Saxon Road, Bridgwater, Somerset. CASTLE CON 64. The German Marquartstein Con over the weekend of 1/3 August, held in the thousand year old Bavarian castle, is attracting the attention of various British fans. Already over a dozen Liverpool Group members have forwarded bookings and London and Bristol fans (that's you, Archie) are showing keen interest. Details on holiday conventioning from Tom Schluck, Altonbekener Damm 10, Hannover 3. THE TAFF CAMPAIGN between Phil Rogers and Arthur Thomson is now in full swing, with four more months before the ballots are counted. Latest donations to the British treasury have been made by Archie Mercer 10/-, Bill Danner 5/-, Gary Deindorfer 2/-, Tony Glynn, Mike Moorcock, Ken Cheslin, Dick Schultz 10/- each, Peter Mabey £1, Keith Otter 15/-, Charles E Smith 11/-, Jim Linwood, Ted Ball, Jimmy Groves 5/-each, Anonymous and Ted Forsyth £1 each, Terry Jeeves has donated 10 copies of his Index to Astounding SF which has to date brought in an extra 13/6d. Forry Ackerman is understood to have to turned film actor ::: Charlie Drake's new London space show opened as planned. Bernard Levin of the Daily Mail described Mr Drake as running around in long red gatkis ::: Limmer & Trinidad trade paper Group News recently ran photo of Archie Mercer ::: Wearing a tie, yet! :::VOTE! WHO’S WHO IN BRITISH FANDOM. No.6. BYRON TERENCE JEEVES Terry Jeeves has probably been continuously active in fandom for longer than any other British fan, certainly for considerably longer than either your scribe or your editor. During those many years he has served fandom well in sundry official posts, including, last year, that of B.S.F.A. Chairman. From his wartime stint in the R.A.F. he retains a keen interest in the technicalities of both aero- and astronautics, and his tastes in sf run more to the heavy science-based stuff. This serious side of Terry is excellently counterbalanced by a strong sense of humour, expressed both in his fan writings and in his cartoons. Terry is one of fandom's better artists, whether in the cartoon field or for more serious an approach, and his work on stencil has few equals. His “Soggies”, characters originally created to be both distinctive in appearance and easy to draw, have gone pro and their antics appear regularly in a number of professional hobbyist magazines. As well as writing and drawing, Terry publishes fanzines. He was one of those responsible for the highly successful Triode, has edited the B.S.F.A's Vector and he is a member of long tenure in OMPA. His skill at producing a neatly gestetnered fanzine is an integral part of his general artistic talent. A schoolmaster by profession, Terry lives in his native Sheffield with his second wife, Valerie and three assorted Jeeveniles (one of each - a boy, a girl and a baby). There is also a small and friendly mongrel (female branch). Terry and Val never miss a con or similar occasion if they can possibly help it. You'll be pretty well bound to see them there in '65. - (AM) BEYOND 3 (Charles Platt, 8 Sollershott West, Letchworth, Herts) A neat ½ flscp zine, successor to Point of View. 36 pages for 9d. In the main the issue is made up of amateur fiction, about which Mr Platt makes a strong point in his editorial, particularly so as this particular fan fiction actually seems to be readable, extremely so in fact. Reviews and letters make up the issue which should definitely be tried. I'm in receipt of issues of three favourite American fanzines, STEFANTASY (Bill Danner, R.D.l, Kennerdell, Pa 16043), YANDRO (Rbt & Juanita Coulson, Route 3, Wabash, Indiana 46992. 25c or 1/3 from Alan Dodd, 77 Stanstead Rd., Hoddesdon, Herts) and SHANGRI L'AFFAIRES (Redd Boggs, 270 S.Bonnie Brae, Los Angeles, Calif 90057. 25c or 1/9 from Archie Mercer, 70 Worrall Road, Bristol 8). Unfortunately, space precludes my treating those wonderzines in the way they deserve. And wonderzines they are, each in its own individual manner. Yandro for example turns up every month with material better than most fanzines print once in a year. Shaggy has a new editor but still possesses a west coast flavour and Stefantasy's off beat "For the hell of it" humour comes through as strongly as ever, though in the latest issue it takes second place to some pointed editorial comments about America's new mail service for advertisers, from which system we are also suffering. If you don't take these zines and are interested in either some excellent and entertaining general opinions and reading or in widening your knowledge of fannish lore and viewpoints you could. hardly do better than get hold of any or all of these three. ELECTION YEAR. Great Britain and the United States go to the polls this year in General Elections, and whilst fandom isn't choosing a leader or anything of the sort, how about getting in a little practice on the enclosed flier ballot form for the fifth annual Skyrack poll? Once again, an attempt is being made to assess the worth of contributions made by home producers for the world sf market so why not create a little interest and spread a little egoboo along with the rest of us and vote! To help you, the following non-apa publications appeared from British fans during 1963: Roy Kay's Chaos, the BSFA’s Vector and Library List, Dave Hale's Les Spinge, Colin Freeman's Scribble, Mal Ashworth's Rot, Walt Willis' Hyphen, George Charters' The Scarr, Lang Jones' Tensor, Pat Kearney's Enfocado, John Berry’s Pot Pourri, Alan Burns' Northlight, Brian Allport and Dave Wood's Icarus, Charles Platt's Point of View, Terry Jeeves' Astounding Checklist, Phil Harbottle's Fearn Appreciation, George Locke's East Fanglian Times, the Peterborough Convention Programme Booklets, Bennett's Fan Directory and Skyrack, the Birmingham Group's Zenith and Tony Glynn's Squeak. Go ahead there, write and tell me any I’ve missed! But VOTE!!! LIVERPOOL MUNDAC has precluded the publication of. a Fan Directory this year, but after 8 years of continuous publication tradition cannot be broken completely and now ready is The Supplement to the, Directory of 1962 Science Fiction Fandom, four solid pages of additions and corrections to last year's listing, with over 70 new names listed and over 100 address changes. This supplement will be circulated to OMPA members as part of the 39th (March) Mailing. It is available to members of FAPA for 3 cents (2 1/2 d) and to other SF fans at the bargain price of 6d. Copies of the 1962 Directory are still available, at the reduced price of 1/- or 15c. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Paid Advert Section (6d per line. Address free. Circulation of 160 plus) JOHN RUSSELL FEARN - AN EVALUATION, A complete classified
sf story listing, plus comprehensive fanzine and general fiction
coverage. Includes, synopsis of nearly 300 novels and stories, illustrators'
names, diverse data and notations, a long bio/biblio/graphic essay,
letters and illustrations. 30 foolscap pages. 2/- post free. PHILIP
HARBOTTLE, 27 CHESHIRE GARDENS, WALLSEND, NORTHUMBERLAND. LES.SPINGE 12 (Jan 64 Dave Hale, 12 Belmont Rd. Wollescote, Stourbridge, Worcs. 1/6 per issue. 55pp) It may be that I'm growing old and am easily irked these days, but I get more and more annoyed by Dave's continued use of the capital I for the figure one and the continued practice of numbering right hand pages with even numbers. I make these points with conviction, for otherwise the unlimited praise deserved by the issue would make for a very unbalanced review here! The trend with LS has been constant improvement, from issue to issue. It will be interesting to read LS 13 if this improvement is to be maintained, for to improve on this issue is going to be difficult. The duplicating and layout are first rate, with an excellent and sensible (and effective) use of coloured paper and coloured duplicating. The same remarks apply also in the main to the artwork, and the written material, from book reviews, through story and columns to the letter column, is always varied and interesting, and in several cases excellent. The "focal" point of the issue is the John Berry Goon story, if, like me, you are a Goon fan. For readers who prefer something a little a little more serious there are Michael Moorcock and John Baxter, to say nothing of surprisingly mature piece of column-writing from Jhim Linwood (surprising because after ten years we thought this standard of writing was never coming after all). And also present are Ken Cheslin, Terry Jeeves, Alan Burns, Roy Kay and the man no good fanzine is ever without, Archie Mercer. A good start to the year in terms of fanzine publication. CHANGE OF ADDRESS DEPT: SNIPPETS: Such is fame Dept. T.H.White died at the age of 57 on Friday 17th Jan. The author of The Once & Future King, on which the musical Camelot is based, and of The Sword In The Stone recently filmed by Disney rated a six line notice in the Daily Mail and suffered a spelling mistake in his name into the bargain ::: Dave Hale, back at Birch Grove, Manchester, asks me to make clear that his permanent address is Stourbridge and that anyone in doubt should write to the latter ::: BBC TV Monday 6th Jan ran an Adventure programme featuring Mike Wilson searching for the Treasure of the Great Reef as described in Skyrack 58. Programme was written and narrated by Arthur C. Clarke ::: Now that the Defenders have been moved from a Monday viewing, the Liverpool Group hopes to have Stan and Marjorie Nuttall in attendance at a more reasonable hours ::: A toy balloon released from Bristol was picked up in San Francisco .Archie Mercer sent the cutting and asks "Any more for a Pacificon flight?”::: 1st Feb at Pasadena is the time and place for the wedding of LASFSans Bruce Pelz and Dian Girard ::: George Scithers, DisCon Committeeman now in Europe, has recently been in London and has had his brains picked by the London in 65 Committee. See? Nothing worthwhile escapes our net! ::: US Feb F&SF includes a poem by Harry Harrison and an article on fandom (The Fans - Myth And Reality) by Wilson Tucker, the first of a survey which will also include contributions by Bloch and Carr ::: Grania & Avram Davidson and Bjo and John Trimble expect family additions in August and are therefore in excellent company ::: Charles Platt (address in review of Beyond) is running a survey on the worth of the BSFA and invites letters outlining grudges against, support for and opinions on the BSFA, a most worthwhile project. Charles also is engaged in a project for putting British fans in contact with American fans. If anyone who reads this would like a fannish correspondent on the other side of the Pond, write to Charles, mentioning side interests. UK to USA airletters cost a mere 6d and take 3-4 days, and don't smirk Bill Danner. ::: One time-Liverpool SFS Secretary, TAFF nominee and 1957 LonCon PRO Dave Newman came out from the woodwork just before Xmas, visiting Teds Carnell and Tubb in London. Ted Tubb reports that Dave had a brand new wife with him. Well, it's the current trends ::: Ladies Anna Steul and Janice Samuels (and anyone else who is similarly bewildered), last August Skyrack took over the subscription list of the long-lamented Contact and from issue 57 has been working off the cash you paid for that worthy Belgian newsletter. If any issues have failed to reach you, please let me know. |