Read Online The Way the Future Was: A Memoir by Frederik Pohl - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Frederik Pohl
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Donald's wrath that moved us all, and his decision, I think, to point up what was going on by naming the new construct the Independent League for Science Fiction. Lowndes showed up in the flesh at the ILSF and immediately joined the team. For the next five years or so we four stuck together, called ourselves "the Quadrumvirate," and made our presence known wherever we were. At the end of a year East New York had no further charms, and so we all moved on to Astoria, Queens, where William S. Sykora had a club in his basement. Having a house with a basement was a lot like owning a catcher's mitt; you could always start a game of your own.
Will Sykora was a medium-sized man with enormous sloping shoulders. He had immense self-confidence * and a bump of arrogance that comported ill with our own collective and individual bumps of arrogance. Nevertheless, he had a group that seemed to be doing things. He had called it the International Cosmos Science Club, but on reflection "cosmos" seemed to take in a bit more territory than was justified, and so he changed it to the International Scientific Association. (It wasn't international, either, but then it also wasn't scientific.)
* "There's nothing hard about being a pro science-fiction writer. I could sell Astounding a story if I wanted to. It would take maybe three weeks to figure out what they want."—I heard, and marveled greatly thereat.
Both the BSFL and the ILSF had published club journals, but they didn't amount to much. The ISA's magazine was something else. It was called The International Observer , and, at least when we spread ourselves on a special issue, it was something to see. I became its editor, and I recall the immense pride of holding in my hand one issue, forty or more pages long, cover silk-screened in color by Johnny Michel, inside with hand-lettered titles and justified margins and even a little bit of art; I think that may have been the biggest fanzine published at that time, and I was supremely certain it was the best.
An issue of a magazine is a kind of work of art. The IO was not just something that had come off a distant printing press, it was a personal part of my life; I had typed every stencil with my own hands, run them off with Johnny and the others on his mimeograph machine, folded the cover and punched in the staples. To me it was a creation. I think maybe there is some criticism that could be made of that auteur approach (what makes me suspect it is that although I clearly remember the scent of the mimeograph ink and the heft of that issue in my hand, I can barely remember a word of what it said inside). But publishing itself is a joy apart from the contents of what it is you publish, something like building ship models in a bottle.
Indeed, it turned out that we sf fanzine people were not alone in the world; there was a whole society of amateur journalists who weren't interested in science fiction but were addicted to the smell of printer's ink. Just as in science fiction, there were feuds and splits among them. The two leading clubs were called the National Amateur Press Association and the United Amateur Press Association of America, and Johnny and Donald and I quickly joined them to see what we could learn.
They were not, in the long run, exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I went to a few meetings. I even went with Donald on the long, thrilling train ride to Boston to attend a weekend amateur-journalist convention, a great excitement to me because I had almost never traveled without some member of my family. They were pretty good people, and I admired what they could do that I could not: most of them owned their own cold-type printing presses, real letterpress instead of the mimeos and hectographs of sf fandom. But most of what was in the magazines they published was about the magazines they published, and it seemed a little too incestuous for my blood. When my first year's membership dues expired, I dropped out. *
* There
Will Sykora was a medium-sized man with enormous sloping shoulders. He had immense self-confidence * and a bump of arrogance that comported ill with our own collective and individual bumps of arrogance. Nevertheless, he had a group that seemed to be doing things. He had called it the International Cosmos Science Club, but on reflection "cosmos" seemed to take in a bit more territory than was justified, and so he changed it to the International Scientific Association. (It wasn't international, either, but then it also wasn't scientific.)
* "There's nothing hard about being a pro science-fiction writer. I could sell Astounding a story if I wanted to. It would take maybe three weeks to figure out what they want."—I heard, and marveled greatly thereat.
Both the BSFL and the ILSF had published club journals, but they didn't amount to much. The ISA's magazine was something else. It was called The International Observer , and, at least when we spread ourselves on a special issue, it was something to see. I became its editor, and I recall the immense pride of holding in my hand one issue, forty or more pages long, cover silk-screened in color by Johnny Michel, inside with hand-lettered titles and justified margins and even a little bit of art; I think that may have been the biggest fanzine published at that time, and I was supremely certain it was the best.
An issue of a magazine is a kind of work of art. The IO was not just something that had come off a distant printing press, it was a personal part of my life; I had typed every stencil with my own hands, run them off with Johnny and the others on his mimeograph machine, folded the cover and punched in the staples. To me it was a creation. I think maybe there is some criticism that could be made of that auteur approach (what makes me suspect it is that although I clearly remember the scent of the mimeograph ink and the heft of that issue in my hand, I can barely remember a word of what it said inside). But publishing itself is a joy apart from the contents of what it is you publish, something like building ship models in a bottle.
Indeed, it turned out that we sf fanzine people were not alone in the world; there was a whole society of amateur journalists who weren't interested in science fiction but were addicted to the smell of printer's ink. Just as in science fiction, there were feuds and splits among them. The two leading clubs were called the National Amateur Press Association and the United Amateur Press Association of America, and Johnny and Donald and I quickly joined them to see what we could learn.
They were not, in the long run, exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I went to a few meetings. I even went with Donald on the long, thrilling train ride to Boston to attend a weekend amateur-journalist convention, a great excitement to me because I had almost never traveled without some member of my family. They were pretty good people, and I admired what they could do that I could not: most of them owned their own cold-type printing presses, real letterpress instead of the mimeos and hectographs of sf fandom. But most of what was in the magazines they published was about the magazines they published, and it seemed a little too incestuous for my blood. When my first year's membership dues expired, I dropped out. *
* There
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