Inspired by the Dave Langford-led CHECKPOINT project some people became overenthusiastic and undertook a similar plan to web all of the late Ron Bennett's really quite legendary newszine SKYRACK. Yes, all 96 issues of it, from its start in April 1959 to the absolute end in July 1971. OK, not an enormous project, simply hours of scanning and OCR and some incredibly fast and accurate copy-typing from Ms Brialey.
Fandom's little Stakhanovites in this instance were Greg
Pickersgill, Jim Linwood and
Claire Brialey.
With invaluable proofreading by Bill Burns
and some original text courtesy of the Robert Lichtman Fanzine Collection,
and essential guidance with html and graphics by Catherine
Pickersgill.
Those who prefer printed paper or ebooks should go here, to the **free**Ansible editions version of the SKYRACK Archive, which is somewhat more complete than this webpage in that it includes various extras - hoax issues and so on - not published under the SRYRACK title - very well done and highly recommended, especially as it includes the Ron Bennett MIMOSA piece referred to in the following paragraph - a help as some people experience problems accessing the Jophan.org website.
If you haven't the slightest idea of what SKYRACK was, or why you should (most certainly!) be interested, see this article by Ron Bennett his own self, courtesy of the excellent fanzine MIMOSA.
You will also find much related information in THEN, Rob Hansen's extremely useful (indispensable, even!) history of British sf fandom. Chapters 2.3 - 3.2 cover the years of SKYRACK's highest activity. No longer online but available as a book or ebook
More very entertaining information can be got from Peter Weston's really superb autobiography of a science fiction fan, WITH STARS IN MY EYES , from NESFA Press , very much recommended, and see also this webbed supplement to the book, which includes some photographs of persons and events mentioned.
If you (yes you...) have any personal memories or anecdotes or retrospective observations that relate to SKYRACK, it's times, personalities and events, please contact me at skrac@gostak.cymru with a view to having material included on this site. I do know you're using this site, you know. A bit of feedback would make all the effort worthwhile.
Next to no feedback of any kind received as of February 2025, 20 years after this site was first webbed. Well, then.
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