Australian SF Fan Fiction and Conventions

The other day I was thinking about the SF encounters I had while visiting Australia last year, including a trip to the exhibition ‘'Synthesizers: Sound of the Future’, which I wrote about back in October.

The reason I went to Aus was to research digital heritage collections, but this project turned up some intriguing SF connections of its own. HuNI, a digital research and discovery platform developed in partnership with Deakin University, was one of several interesting efforts I learned of to foster new approaches to researching cultural collections.

It works by drawing together records from across different research, museum and archive collections and lets people make their own connections between them, based on their field of interest. If you go on the ‘Collections’ part of the site you can see a list of public collections created by researchers. This consists of a range of topics, from railways, to skateboarding, to Australian literary journals. While browsing through, two collections in particular caught my eye; one called ‘Australian Speculative Fiction Fan Groups and Conventions’, the other ‘Australian Speculative Fiction Small Presses and Publishing Houses’, created by Gene Melzack.

Here was an insight into a whole world of SF fandom and writing previously unknown to me; prolific fan editors such as Susan Smith-Clarke, or small fanzine clubs like the Futurian Society of Sydney, contemporary with the Leeds-based fanzines Futurian and New Futurian, which were featured on the blog previously. Or Australian SF publishers including Chimaera, Orb and Ticonderoga Publications that have been going since the 1990s, alongside more recent efforts like Twelfth Planet Press, established in 2006. What’s more, HuNI allows the connections between groups, fan conventions and publishing houses to be mapped visually (see image). In this way, I was able to learn that the fanzine editor Bruce Gillespie helped to found the small press Norstrilia (1975-1985), which published Greg Egan’s first novel.

To learn more about HuNI, you can read this Medium article by Deb Verhoeven and Toby Burrows.

Esperanto and SF: A Potted History

Esperanto was invented as an international secondary language by Ludwig Zamenhof, who published his first book on Esperanto in 1887. He believed that a common mode of communication between people would eliminate the problems and misunderstandings of translation and ultimately lead to a more harmonious world system.

Zamenhof was not the first to come up with the idea of an international language. Like many others, he was motivated by the utopian impulse to create a better world, a universal vision that could, through language, overcome the divisions created by humankind. Esperanto is, however, perhaps one of the most famous – or infamous – of such languages, partly because of its widespread uptake and partly because it has been the subject of various parodies and criticisms. For example, it is believed that Esperanto provided the inspiration for Newspeak in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the introduction of a simplified universal language operates as a form of social control to restrict thought.

This leads me on to the topic of this month’s post: Esperanto and SF. While Orwell was sceptical about the implications of a language like Esperanto, many other SF writers have been fascinated by the positive reconfiguration of the world it might bring about, or the kinds of societies that might be amenable to a shared secondary language.

Philip José Farmer's Riverworld novels are perhaps among the most famous works to make use of Esperanto – in the second volume it is the language of the peaceful religion of the Church of the Second Chance. Likewise, the stories of lesser known writers such as Mack Reynolds explore issues of universal basic income and universal religion and language. In his 1974 novel Looking Backward From the Year 2000, a re-writing of Edward Bellamy’s 1888 work, the protagonist finds himself in a future where the revolution in communications and transportation has led to the large-scale adoption of Esperanto as an interlingua.

Morojo with Ackerman in costume in 1939

SF fanzines also have their notable Esperantists. Myrtle Douglas, known by her Esperanto name ‘Morojo’, was a fanzine editor from Los Angeles, who was active between the years 1939 and 1958. From 1939 until 1947, Morojo co-edited the fanzine Voice of the Imagi-Nation with the SF writer, Forrest J Ackerman, who she met at an Esperanto gathering. With Ackerman, she also attended the first World Science Fiction Convention (1939), for which they wore matching futuristic costumes (see image). From 1941 until 1958, Morojo published the zine Guteto, which promoted Esperanto among science fiction fans. After her death, Ackerman wrote of her, ‘she was an expert Esperantist’ and ‘a real science fiction fan’.

These examples reflect the overlap between the imaginary communities explored in the works of SF writers and the radical aspirations for Esperanto as a means of achieving societal transformation. Such experiments in invented language have been sporadic and, at best, only partially successful. However, like language, SF works to both represent and translate cultures, echoing the hopes and fears of the societies from which it is produced.

More information about the inclusion of Esperanto in literary works can be found in the online book The Esperanto Book by Don Harlow.

Blake's 7 Fanzines

A long time ago (2012) in a library far, far away, this blog delved into the SF history of the University of Leeds architecture, debunking rumours that buildings such as the Roger Stevens had been used as locations for classic dystopian films like Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971). Another SF series sometimes associated with the Leeds campus is Blake's 7, although it was in fact Leeds Beckett University where part of the programme was filmed, featuring in the 'Children of Auron' episode from 1980.

Now, following on from last year's announcement about the University of Iowa Libraries' project to digitise 10,000 SF zines, Blake's 7 is back in our orbit with a recent post on the Hevelin Collection's tumblr revealing more about the fanzines and the fan wars connected to the British TV show. The Blake's 7 Wars were a series of disputes in the 1980s between fans and some of the creators and actors over for-profit US conventions, which, fans feared, would restrict and compete with fan-run events.

In keeping with this fanlore was the tone of the zines themselves. The inside cover of the first issue of The Forbidden Zone, seen here, testifies to the themes of resistance and struggle with which the character Blake was identified, reading: 'Forbidden Zone Issue One is dedicated to the liberation of fantasies and resistance to those who would suppress our dreams'. More details of the fan wars and the Hevelin collection can be found here.

Engineering Fiction: Literature and Science in Interwar Britain

‘Engineering Fiction: Literature and Science in Interwar Britain’ is the title of a talk that was given by Dr Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent) on 20 March 2015, as part of the University of Oxford’s Literature and Science Research Seminar Series (available to watch here and below). Her topic chimes with several previous SF Forward posts, including Futures Past, Part 2 and Part 4.

In the video, Sleigh describes the development of SF fandom between 1930 and 1950, covering the founding of fanzines such as Novae Terrae in 1936 (later to become New Worlds), the world’s first SF convention in Leeds and the founding of the London Branch of the Science Fiction Association with the involvement of writers such as Arthur C. Clarke.

 
Her particular area of interest is in the culture of the fans themselves, with an emphasis on the circulation of stories and reviews in their fanzines. Described unfavourably by C.S. Lewis as the fiction of engineers, Sleigh modifies this title for her talk (also the subject of a forthcoming book), to explore how the SF fan’s identity was created and performed on the page. She explains that many of these fans shared a fascination with science and engineering (although few worked professionally in scientific fields) but their identification with science was bolstered through writing. As Clarke himself once wrote in an early essay for Novae Terrae, ‘science-fiction authors have actually influenced future development to no small extent, and when space is eventually crossed […] science-fiction will have played an enormous part in the final accomplishment’. Sleigh’s theory is that by participating in the writing cultures of fanzines, fans believed they were participating in the work of science.

She ends with a reading of Star Begotten by H.G. Wells, which along with Sugar in the Air by E.C. Large and Star-Maker by Olaf Stapledon, was one of the most exciting books for SF fans in 1936-7. The story, she suggests, mirrors the way in which SF fans constructed themselves as a social group; the idea of martian rays altering human evolution is both a reflection and a fictional cause of why they felt like outsiders but also superior to those around them.

Thanks to Dominic Berry for drawing my attention to this talk.

New Project to Digitise 10,000 Sci-Fi Zines from University of Iowa Libraries

Back in 2012, the University of Iowa Libraries announced its acquisition of the James L. 'Rusty' Hevelin Collection of pulps, fanzines, and science fiction books. Hevelin died at the end of 2011 but he was well known, particularly in US science fiction circles, as an avid SF fan, collector and dealer. His founding of Iowa state's Icon and DemiCon SF conventions made the Univeristy's purchase of the collection a fitting one.

The items in the collection attest to Hevelin's years as a fan, during the evolution of SF fandom, and the announcement in October of plans to digitise 10,000 fanzines was motivated by a growing interest in the history of this movement. Fanzines to be digised include titles such as the The Phantagraph published in the 1930s-1940s in New York and the Leeds-produced Futurian War Digest (covered in previous posts Futures Past: SF History in Leeds, P.2 and P.4, an issue of which can also be seen in the SF montage that forms a background to the blog). These were DIY materials produced for a growing SF community and often distributed by hand. They also provided a chance for aspiring SF writers to publish their stories, some of whom, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke to name a few, would go on to become icons of the genre. The University's Curator of Science Fiction and Popular Culture Collections, Peter Balestrieri, explained, 'some of the earliest works by these writers can be found in Rusty’s collection of fanzines, along with important writing from all of the major fans who created this new form of popular culture'.

There are plans to record the progress of the project to digitise the fanzines at the Hevelin Collection Tumblr, where updates will be posted.

Futures Past: SF History in Leeds, P.4 Fan Fiction

As mentioned in an earlier post, a comprehensive history of science fiction fandom in the UK can be found at Rob Hansen’s excellent website. The subject of Leeds SF fandom has also been an ongoing topic in Peter Weston's Relapse. Added to which, I was recently in touch with Philip Turner about digitising copies of Leeds-based magazine The Futurian War Digest (FWD) illustrated by his Father, Harry Turner.

Futurian War Digest, Vol. 1, No. 9 (June 1941)

This correspondence prompted an interest in the fanzine itself and about the history of fan fiction in Leeds generally. FWD was published by J. Michael Rosenblum, one of Britain's earliest generation of science fiction fans. Active from the mid-1930s, he attended the the world's first SF convention in Leeds in 1937, and in June 1938 he launched his fanzine, The Futurian. In New York, a group of enthusiasts known as ‘the Michelists’ were looking for a new name, and they liked Rosenblum’s title to the extent of renaming themselves the Futurian Science Literary Society. Eventually abbreviated to ‘the Futurians’, the members included many who would go on to become prominent figures in the development of science fiction, such as Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Cyril Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl and Donald Wollheim. However, it was 1945 before they acknowledged their debt to Rosenblum’s fanzine. He continued to self-publish fanzines under various Futurian titles throughout the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, including FWD, which first appeared in October 1940. The zine ran for 39 issues, the last being released in March 1945, and is notable for coining the term 'fanzine' in an article from Vol 1, No 6 by Leslie Croutch. The fact that the publication ran throughout the entirety of the war heavily influenced the themes of the issues. Topics included 'Post-War Prospects As Seen by the President of the British Fantasy Society' and 'Post War Plans'. Of his Father's friendship with Rosenblum, Philip Turner said:

My father knew Mike Rosenblum [...] pretty well -- the Manchester and Leeds science fiction fans used to visit one another regularly, and go to London for events. So when M.R. wanted someone to put an illustration on the front page of issue 6 of FWD, after 5 text-only issues, my father was a logical choice of artist. He also did covers for 7, 9, 11, 13 and 14.

Other cover artists included R.L. Bradbury, D. Elder, Bob Gibson, Edwin MacDonald and Arthur Williams. Rosenblum's early efforts, along with the 1937 convention, made a significant contribution to the fan fiction movement in Leeds, and nationally. However, by the following year, the focus was already beginning to shift to London. The second SF Convention, which was far better attended, was held in Holborn on 10 April 1938, and it was decided at the Annual General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association (SFA) to transfer its headquarters from Leeds to London.

By way of an aside, in the course of reading through back issues of Relapse, I found this reference to the University's own exhibition, which I helped put together:

The 75th anniversary of the world’s first SF convention (in Leeds) [...] was due to fall on 2nd January 2012. This was something we simply couldn’t miss! Rob suggested we should visit Leeds and scout-out the location at the Theosophic Hall, which he’d discovered was still standing. And we need to do it soon, he said, because there was an exhibition at the University (‘Visions of the Future: The Art of Science Fiction’) which closed on 11th June. Rob had supplied material for this, and had put the curator in touch with Jill Godfrey, daughter of Harold Gottliffe (who took the historic photographs of the 1937 con) and he was anxious to see how the promised panels on fandom had turned out.

This passage reminded me of how exciting it was to see a resurgence of interest in SF at the time (largely due to Andy Sawyer's exhibition at the BL), and how much I learned about the University's collection through being involved. It was also great to have contributions from local experts and SF enthusiasts as part of the project, and to be able to put on an exhibition in Leeds, the place where it all began.  

Brontës Forerunners of SF Fan Fiction?

In honour of the Stanley & Audrey Burton's current Brontë exhibition, 'Visions of Angria' (7 January - 23 February 2013) and the recent conference, 'Re-Visioning the Brontës', I thought I'd attempt to explore the (admittedly tenuous) link between the Brontës and science fiction. The possibility first suggested itself to me after a visit to the British Library's 2011 exhibition, 'Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it'. The show featured Brontë juvenalia, including Emily's Gondal Poems, Charlotte's The Foundling and Branwell's map of Glass Town. Of the decision to include these items in the exhibition, curator Andy Sawyer wrote:

The Brontës are well known authors with no apparent association with science fiction but their tiny manuscript books, held at the British Library, are one of the first examples of fan fiction, using favourite characters and settings in the same way as science fiction and fantasy fans now play in the detailed imaginary 'universes' of Star Trek or Harry Potter [...] I hope the exhibition at the British Library will challenge what people think of as science fiction and show that it is not a narrow genre.

The idea that the Brontës' early writing could be viewed as a form of fan fiction is an interesting one. Many of the stories did feature their childhood heroes, including the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon (Bony), later reincarnated by Branwell as Rogue or Northangerland. The present of a box of toy soldiers to Branwell in 1826 is often cited as the initial source of inspiration for the Angrian sagas. Each sibling selected a soldier and named him after someone featured in Blackwood’s Magazine, an early literary influence on the children. The fact that these characters and environments featured so prominently in the imaginative worlds of the Brontës could be equated with a form of fandom, and perhaps also with a sort of escapism, usually more associated with fantasy than science fiction.

Autograph manuscript, 1835
by Patrick Branwell Brontë
Special Collections (Uni of Leeds) 

In the context of the exhibition, a strong connection was made between science fiction and other literary genres, indicative of a desire to make broader claims for a form that has historically fallen prey to marginalisation. Therefore, the decision to include well known literary figures such as the Brontës presents a challenge to common preconceptions about science fiction. The link to fan fiction is an acknowledgement that the genre has always had a symbiotic relationship with its readers, both shaping and being shaped by popular culture. Moreover, in the case of the Brontës, there is a cyclical aspect to the the fan fiction phenomenon, since the sisters' novels have gone on to influence many popular fan stories and re-writes, the most famous recent example being the Twilight trilogy.

However, questions remain about the potential dilution of the science fiction genre in an attempt to broaden its scope; there are unique characteristics in SF which, contrary to the escapist drive latent in some fantasy fictions, can bring societal and political issues into sharper focus. As Fredric Jameson writes: 'SF (thus) enacts and enables a structurally unique "method" for apprehending the present as history', offering us a glimpse of how our current situation arises from a particular set of cultural or historical circumstances.

The 'Visions of Angria' exhibition highlights rarely seen manuscript material written by Branwell Brontë from the Brotherton Library Special Collections. The rich and complex world of landscapes, characters and events written whilst Branwell was still a teenager, has been ‘brought to life’ by illustration students from Leeds College of Art’s Visual Communications course.