Art:

Front Cover and p. 11:Jay Kinney

Page 2:Sheryl Birkhead

Logo:Adapted by Stacy Scott

Sense of Wonder Stories 5 February 2011 (not late) edited by Rich Coad 2132 Berkeley Drive Santa Rosa, CA 95401

richcoad@gmail.com Available for trade, contributions, letters of comment, and whim. May appear online someday.

Wondertorial......................................... .......................................page 3Editorial natterings by Rich Coad

An Captaen Spéirling agus Réics Carló................................page 6James Bacon on the greatest writer of SF in Irish

B.E.M.S, Babes and Brushes: Ed Emshwiller..................................page 11Bruce Townley has a column about great SF artists

Once There Was an e-List...............................................................page 18Peter Weston compiles research about Frank Riley

The Readers Write...........................................................................page 29Some good letters

Henry Clifford - Cable Engineer.......................................................page 42Bill Burns on the engineer an artist

Great Science Fiction Editors........................................................back coverJohn W. Campbell: Astounding

...rooting around in the cobwebby corners of the genre...

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I think it is no secret that a lot of awfully good SF is coming out of the UK these days. The last few months have proved no exception and, in fact, may even have been a particularly good period.

First up I want to mention a book that is very appropriate given the cover Jay Kinney has provided for this issue of SoWS. Ian McDonald’s The Dervish

House is set in Istanbul of the near future. Turkey has joined the EU and is on the fast track towards Western European standards of wealth, education, and innovation. All very likely to be true in ten or twenty years.

The Dervish House opens with a suicide bombing on a tram, an event that only physically injures, well, kills, the bomber herself but which leads to one resident of a nearby dervish house, now converted to apartments, to begin seeing Djinns. The young man with this newly awakened ability is as far from a spiritual seeker as can be imagined - a slacker interested only in getting stoned and so lacking in empathy that a heinous act has driven him from his home to the dervish house where his cousin (who is a spiritual seeker and something of the

neighborhood enforcer of Muslim values) has taken him in.

The novel centers on these and a half dozen or so other residents of the house. A young boy of nine, trapped in the house due to a heart condition, uses his sophisticated nano technology toy robots to spy and surveil the neighborhood. He, through his robotic proxies, is the one who notices that other robots, military grade robots, are spying on the slacker neighbor immediately after the bombing.

Meanwhile, a dealer in antiquities is approached to find a mellified man for a customer while her husband schemes to defraud the natural gas exchange he works for of millions of Euros. Now if, like me, you do not know what a mellified man is, do not worry for it is all explained in the text and manages to be done in a manner avoiding expository lumps while being as informative as a Wikipedia article on the subject.

Two other major characters are a retired economist, a member of the fast dwindling Greek community of Istanbul, who is recruited by a secret government think tank; and a young

WONDERTORIAL

4

woman graduate in marketing who desperately wants to prove herself by getting funding for a cousin’s company which has, quite literally, an invention that could change the world as much as the PC or internet or television did.

McDonald’s brilliance is in juggling all of these disparate characters, keeping each of them fully drawn and believable, while entangling them in a plot of secret societies, hidden agendas, and plain old fashioned greed. Several of the plot lines intertwine and braid together to become one, while others play out on their own. A quote from Asimov’s Science Fiction (possibly Paul Di Fillippo - an author I must cover in these pages one day) compares McDonald to Thomas Pynchon, which I initially believed was an overstatement of the most effusive kind. Having finished The Dervish House I no longer think it is much of an overstatement at all. McDonald may not have the silly songs and drawn out word-play that Pynchon does, but he has the same ability to immerse the reader into an exotic world (Valletta from Pynchon’s V, for example) filled with references to location and secret history that turns out, upon a bit of delving, to be true.

McDonald probably first came to very widespread attention with River Of

Gods, a similarly ambitious and

complex novel which won the BSFA and Clarke awards. I hope that The Dervish House receives similar plaudits. It is without doubt my pick for the Hugo this year and is quite probably the best SF novel I’ve read in at least the past five years, since The

Algebraist, in fact.

Speaking of which, Iain M. Banks is back with a new Culture novel. Surface Detail is primarily concerned with the downside of the current techno wet-dream of immortality achieved via downloadable personalities stored in virtual worlds all created within powerful computers. Banks reasonably enough posits that if these virtual worlds can be used to enhance and entertain they could equally well be used to oppress and intimidate; after all, we are talking about human beings here, even if some of them look rather like elephants with two trunks.

In the usual Banks’ tradition, then, we have a number of apparently unrelated plots, involving characters of varying degrees of eccentricity (with the most eccentric, naturally enough, being reserved for the artificial intelligences known as Minds that control amazing super science spaceships) that gradually converge. In this book the unifying plot element is the use of virtual Hells to punish and intimidate. A war between the anti-Hell and pro-

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Hell factions that has agreed to use civilized means (that is, keep the war virtual too) is going poorly for the anti-Hell forces who at least have the wit to understand that keeping everything virtual is just, well, fake, and so determine to bring their war into the real world.

The 625 pages of the novel are full of hair-raising events, derring-do, and narrow escapes in the great space opera tradition. If Surface Detail is not one of Banks’ best Culture novels, it’s also far from the worst and not easy to put down once started.

Much more disappointing, to this reader at any rate, is Hannu Rajaniemi’s first novel, The Quantum Thief. There is quite a lot of buzz about this book, not least because John Jarrold was able to coax a three book contract out of Gollancz on the basis of 26 pages written by his client. Add to that the fact that Rajaniemi is from exotic Finland, although he writes in English, and the doctorate in mathematical physics to provide street-cred to the esoteric scientifical speculations in the novel, and you have a first novel that creates more of a stir than most.

I wish I could say the buzz was worthwhile but I had to give up on The Quantum Thief after getting through 60 or 70 pages of increasingly

confusing and episodic plot which included a mysterious mental disappearance being solved when the detective determined that the mind involved had been stolen and embedded in the hem of a chocolate dress. “That’s silly”, I thought, and my reading was never able to recover from that thought. Undoubtedly somewhere about page 230 it becomes clear that all of the events are occurring in some type of virtual post-human universe but I honestly didn’t care enough to find out.

Finally I have to mention Arslan by M.J.Engh. Although it’s origins are not British it is thanks to Malcolm Edwards’ SF Masterworks series that this remarkable novel from 1976 is back in print. Arslan follows the title character as he sweeps into a small midwestern town after conquering the world. Arslan is a dictator and not the benevolent type. He establishes his headquarters in Krafstville, Illinois, with a pair of brutal rapes of a teenage girl and boy. Much of the novel is from the point of view of the high school principal who attempts to keep the town running as Arslan puts into effect his Khmer Rouge style plan for every community to become self-sufficient. The raped boy, who becomes Arslan’s constant companion, is the other main character. A remarkable novel that is arguably not SF but still worth reading.

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When I consider Science Fiction fans, I think of collectors, readers who know more than just the pages they read, tenacious scholars and enthusiasts who like to know their genre. Yet, I expect that many SF fans who are asked about science fiction writers from Ireland (and happy to stand corrected here) will know James White, Bob Shaw, Micheal Scott and Ian McDonald, but will wonder who Cathal Ó Sándair is.

He happens to be the bestselling author of science fiction in Irish. In actual fact, he happens to be the greatest selling author in Irish, full stop. Selling over 500,000 books in Irish, he is the countries greatest Irish writer.

Born in Britain in the town of Weston Super Mare in July 1922, of an English father and Irish mother, his family moved to Ireland where

his father joined the Army of the Irish Free State. Charles Saunders was sent to Therese School, Donore Avenue and attended Synge St School in Dublin and Coláiste Chiaráin, Bray. He joined the civil service and worked in the Customs Service.

One of the things that stood out about this man was that he loved the Irish language. He adored it and mastered it, but he was no snob. Irish was at varying times seen by those who were experts in it, as an elitist movement. Writings in Irish were scholarly, of fine academic interest or of great literary value, Literature with a capital L. Of course anyone who bumps into this type of elitist approach, will know how wrong it is, it does not endear nor encourage. Young people get

When I consider Science Fiction his father joined the Army of the

An Captaen Spéirling

agus Réics Carlóby

James Bacon

7

bored by the requirement to do more than just enjoy a good story.

Cathal Ó Sándair not only loved Irish, but ended up creating the greatest motivator for young people of the day to enjoy the language, with adventure stories. Unfortunately he encountered the sharp end of the aloof element within the language movement, finding his wife, who did not speak Irish, being ignored at events. But this did not deter his amazing imagination or efforts at writing.

In the early 1940’s he began writing novels and his first book, was published in 1942, at the age of twenty. This book was the first in what would become a series of 50 novels, the adventures of Réics Carló. This thriller novel Na Marbh

a d’Fhill (The Dead Return) was ‘an attempt to create an Irish Sexton Blake’ it is reported that Ó Sándair said.

Cathal Ó Sándair was the ultimate in pulp fiction writers. His books were cheaply produced by the government publishers, An Gúm. He wrote over 160 books. These books would be around 80 pages long, were staple bound, and of many

genres: school stories, westerns, pirate stories, adventures of a boys own style, all areas of interest to the common reader, who was hungry, indeed starved, of just enjoyable reading in Irish. These were the forte of Ó Sándair.

Two character stand out for readers of Science Fiction. The first, without doubt his most popular creation, was the detective Réics Carló. Now detective fiction may seem to have little connection with SF, but Réics was involved in many adventures, and some of them definitely had the feel of the fantastic. For instance, one case see’s Réics trying to deal with science fictional machines from underneath the ground (RC XVI 1953), Ghost Ships, and even taking a trip to the moon. There were dozens of adventures, with Reics as far afield as the United States and China, while also at home. The title of the work would give an inkling to the adventure, whether it be a closed railway or trip to a given county.

The eight and ninth Réics Carló books were very much out of our world. Réics Carló ar an

nGealaigh (Réics Carló on the Moon) was the eighth and one of

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the two stories in the ninth book, Réics Carló ar Dhá Eachtra Eile ( Réics Carló on Two Other Cases) was Réics Carló ar Mhars (Réics Carló on Mars).

As well as appearing in books, the stories were also serialised in newspapers. Réics Carló ar Mhars was serialised as was Dúnmharú ar an nGealach (Murder on the Moon).

The stories of the space faring adventurer, An Captaen Spéirling, who first appeared in 1960 in An

Captaen Spéirling agus an

Phláinéad do Phléasc (Captaen Spéirling and the Planet that Exploded), are pure science fiction. Ó Sándair published four books about an Captaen;

1960 - An Captaen Spéirling Arís (Captaen Spéirling Again).

1961 An Captaen Spéirling go

Mars (pretty obvious).

1962 An Captaen Spéirling, Spás-

Phíolóta (Captaen Spéirling, Space-pilot)

A feel for the type of science fiction is given by this synopsis from the Cathal Ó Sándair website:

An Captaen Spéirling, Spás-

Phíolóta (Captaen Spéirling, Space-pilot) (Dublin, 1962). The story is set in 2000, when the earth's most precious resource, uranium, is running out and war for what remains is imminent. An Irish scientist has, however, determined that there is an abundant supply on the moon. The Irish government benevolently decides to fund a mission to prove his theory and then secure and distribute the uranium to all countries on earth in need of it. Ó Sándair's astronauts travel in a real rocket built and launched on the Curragh of Kildare. On the moon they discover a humanoid civilization whose members still bear the disfiguring scars of their own nuclear

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holocaust. The Irish manage to overcome their suspicions, win their trust, and acquire a huge supply of uranium on condition that it never be used to make weapons. More importantly, the moon people share with their new friends their own greatest technological advance, "so-ghaethe" (good rays), energy beams that immediately neutralize feelings of aggression and cause an overwhelming desire to cooperate. Needless to say, when the astronauts return to Ireland, their government arranges for these rays to be made available through the UN to every country on earth.’

Although not of a true science fiction background, there was also a Réics Carló comic serialisation, An

tEiteellán doFeichte.

More is yet to be unearthed, and learned about the work of Ó Sándair and at the moment I understand that Prof. Phil O Leary, of Boston College, is working on a book on Irish language Literature in the 1940’s which is due out this year from UCD Press.

One cannot under estimate the importance of Cathal Ó Sándair, his son Terry Saunders, who spoke with

PAdraig O’Mealoid at Wexwords about the works of his father, revealed how it was the Taoiseach – Prime Minister of the day, Eamon De Velera who at one stage asked Cathal to leave work so that he could focus all his efforts on his writing, something he subsequently did.

I am very grateful to Terry and his brother Joe Saunders, for their assistance with images, information and helping to spread the word of one of Irelands finest, yet least known science fiction writers. More information can be found  at http://www.cathalosandair.com/And I look forward to the day when I can report to Sense of Wonder Stories readers of a translation into English.

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The back plate of the skull is secured by Phillips-head screws, each topped with its own cross. The front interior bulkhead of the apparent brain-case is also fastened the same way. One can determine this because the back plate is transparent. Maybe it’s made from some kind of plastic; maybe some specially tempered glass – you can’t really tell. There’s no wetware visible within this supposed brain-case, no brain pulsing with blood and electro-chemical traffic. Instead it is occupied by what looks like a standard white lab rat. What is not so standard is that the rodent has all four paws connected to control devices and its eyes are covered by some kind of high tech looking goggles. The rest of the inside of the skull gleams bluely. Various gadgets, gauges and circuitry sprout from the metallic walls of what

would have been the cranial vault of an organic being. For the rat is driving a mannequin-like cyborg. The mannequin shows a gentle smile, if somewhat hesitantly.

Nearby, pausing in a warmly glowing interior doorway of their home, is a couple. The man is tall and quite handsome. The woman, rather shorter, but no less striking in appearance. They both have seemingly have just gotten out of bed, judging by their dress (or lack of it). They are awed by this automated apparition. They apparently haven’t yet glimpsed the ghost in the machine, the rodent rider in the thing’s skull-cockpit.

Next to the doorway, in the room that the in which rat-cyborg is standing, grinning at his human hosts, there is a tall bookcase. On the top shelf is a

Ed Emshwiller

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book with a green spine. On that binding one can read EMSH.

This is the cover painting for the December, 1958 issue of IF: WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION. It was painted by Ed Emshwiller and illustrates “The Rat in the Skull” by Rog Phillips.

The humans look rather like Carol and Ed Emshwiller.

Ed Emshwiller was born in 1925, in Lansing, Michigan. Emshwiller’s father, Errol, taught engineering and physics at a nearby small college. From an early age Ed had a strong interest in

art, which his parents supported. He also brought home good grades in his science classes, showing that he was well grounded in a practical approach. Ed no doubt picked up his interest in science fiction from his father, seeing the copies of various SF pulps, including Hugo Gernsback’s AMAZING STORIES, that his dad read. It was, certainly, the art on the covers of these magazines that first grabbed young Ed. During the Depression years people escaped their troubles by reading such pulps. For Ed they were also an inspiration.

After Ed’s father scored highly on a civil service test for patent examiner the family moved to Washington DC. There Ed was enrolled in classes at the Corcoran Art School. About this time Ed experimented with drawing on the clear leader stock of 16mm films, mating both the motorized technical and the handmade artistic.

The family then moved to Richmond, Virginia, because the patent office that Errol worked in was transferred there. Ed attended high school in that city and then enlisted in the Army in June of 1943. He became a Second Lieutenant, after completing officer candidate school and entering active service. In time Ed was shipped to

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Italy. His service there mostly was involved with the occupation force after Germany’s surrender. Ed was appointed to direct a shop in Trieste that made posters and other graphic aids for the Army Education Program.

In October 1946 Ed came home from the Army and Italy to attend the University of Michigan Art School, using his G.I. Bill benefits. While he was first attracted to working in film he decided that commercial art might be a more monetarily rewarding course.

Michigan’s art set of courses followed the modernistic Bauhaus mode. “Bauhaus” can be translated as “building school”. Its teachings built upon a hands-on, practical and craft-based construction of art. Just the thing for a technically inclined son of a patent examiner. Bauhaus also preferred its art to be abstract instead of classically represntational. It was, if anything, always looking towards the future.

Ed met the woman who was to become his wife, Carol Fries, at the university. They made an attractive couple, what with Ed’s movie star good looks and Carol’s delicate charm. Carol’s parents had managed to escape France on one of the last

civilian ships leaving Le Harve. Spending a good deal of her childhood in Europe she experienced a culturally broadened perspective. Carol and Ed married in August of 1949. Using Carol’s Fulbright scholarship and the remainder of Ed’s G.I. Bill benefits, they decided to go to Paris. They then toured France on a motorcycle, camping out, when their study schedules permitted.

The sky or background is bright yellow, more like margarine than butter. That is, it looks artificial. In the mid-range there’s an abstracted, finned, tail-sitting rocket-ship that is still something of a streamlined stiletto. Even closer is a small search party in space-suits. In the distance

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are jumbled ruins, skeletal struts piercing through. This middle-ground is made up of various reds and salmon pinks.

In the foreground up juts a figure, not in a space suit. In general outline it is human. On closer examination it is shown to be assembled of clockwork gears, metallic braces, and circuit diagram traceries. It is deep blue in color, maybe the hue of treated steel.

It’s the cover of the January 1958 issue of VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION and is based on “Falling Torch” by Algis Budrys.

For all of its cold otherworldliness the figure in the foreground looks a bit like Ed.

Ed’s first published work was the cover of the then still quite new GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION. It was a piece out of his portfolio of samples he’d been showing around to the editors and art directors of various SF magazines which had offices in New York. It appeared on the cover of the June 1951 issue. Ed called it “Relics of an Extinct Race”. In it some space-suited passengers of the now familiar slender V-2-esque spacecraft examine conveniently eroded strata. Fossils fantastically abound in these layers. The lower ones feature stone clubs. As the eye tracks upwards a sort of arms race is revealed, as swords and then guns are revealed. There appears to be no large life in the top layer even though there’s a fossil skeleton lower down.

It’s Earth that we’re visiting along with the occupants of the streamlined spaceship. Through the visitors’ transparent helmets we can see that they belong to a saurian race. Ed’s closeness with science fiction, even to the extent of wry humor, is revealed

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when one realizes that he’d painted the thing before he’d even been to GALAXY’s editorial offices. The image seems ready made for GALAXY, given its emphasis of social issues, rather than hard science like ASTOUNDING.

Barry Malzberg says this of the editor of GALAXY: “Horace Gold earnestly believed that GALAXY could eventually appeal to as many people as THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.” THE POST which published many apple-pie covers by Norman Rockwell over the years. Ed, however, found beauty in the freedom of expression

in science fiction’s supposed ghetto. He also did artwork for UNTAMED and other “adventure” magazines for men.

Ed also became involved with the fannish side of science fiction. He contributed to some fanzines and did the cover of at least one world science fiction convention program book. His innate humor must have suited him quite well with his enthusiast audience.

This time the sky is a more familiar cerulean shade. A series of determined looking figures are marching past in the middle-distance. Humanoid, but not human, their skin is a bright, chlorophyll green. They’re carrying spears, with grim intent.

Up front is a woman, concealed behind an igneous outcrop. She’s obviously human because she’s mostly naked from the waist up. She is either taking off or putting on a suit that would make her look like one of the green “men”. It’s a still picture and she’s interrupted in the act. It’s difficult to judge which way she is going.

This painting is for the cover of the February 1959 issue of SUPER-SCIENCE FICTION. The woman looks

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rather like Carol, aside from the blonde hair-color.

One of Emshwiller’s artistic strengths is his superb skill at rendering. He depicts some very surreal and alien scenes with verve and a crisp and close attention to detail. His spaceships are muscular, massive beasts but still as streamlined as a bullet. They look like they’re anxious to get back to plunging through space. His human figures betray nothing of the awkwardness of, say, Paul’s and his aliens are just as way out. His robots would seem to move, well, mechanically but are depicted in such a vivid way that they take on a life of their own. Ed’s work with a hand-held movie camera was probably given a good grounding in his innate feeling for human gestures, how bodies move and work. His strong drawing skills are backed up with an ingenious intelligence that seeks out the outré juxtaposition that’s just right.

Emshwiller’s vibrant color sense enlivens his scenes set on other worlds. Or tinges those closer to home with menace or whatever emotional force he needs to evoke. An examination of such artworks as his piece for VENTURE SICENCE FICTION cited above reveal a carefully

chosen range of tones. What might have been an eye-jarring mishmash in the hands of a lesser talent are optically exciting as Emshwiller uses them. It’s another way to breathe life into an alien point of view.

Many of Emshwiller’s SF works are shot through with symbology. The foreground figure in the VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION painting is built up from a network of electronic parts. Which, perhaps, represents the anxiety of men being taken over by their machines. Ed also liked putting people and things in unexpected places. An illustration he did for Murray Leinster’s FORGOTTEN PLANET shows a miniature man facing down a ferocious stag beetle. A mushroom looms over the this disarmingly juxtaposed scene. According to Luis Ortiz’ EMSHWILLER: INFINITY X TWO Gnome Press had to substitute a less disturbing cover illustration in some copies of this book that they distributed to libraries. Too bad.

Ed and Carol, in time, moved from New York City to Levittown out on Long Island. Even though it has since become something of a warning against the mass produced horrors of suburbia, Levittown began as something of an artists’ colony. Rather like hipster creative types tend

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to move into the more run down sections of cities Levittown was attractive, in the beginning, to authors and artists, attracted by the affordable housing. By 1 9 6 0 , h o w e v e r , Levittown had morphed into just another bedroom community for NYC.

Their choice of Levittown, however, is illuminating. The place was an indicator of America’s obsession with speed, a headlong rush into the future. Of the promise of an a flying car in every garage (even though only open air carports were rather grudgingly allowed). It also shows the danger of giving in to machines as every house appears to have been stamped from the same mold. Still, Carol and Ed made the place their own, Ed rebuilding a space in the attic into his studio.

Ed won five Hugo Awards for his artwork. He was also the recipient of grants from the Ford and Guggenheim Foundations as well as the National Endowment of the Arts. He taught at Yale, University of California at

Berkeley and the State University of New York at Buffalo. He got his start in science fiction, which has typically

been described as an enclave of “slans”, or special, highly evolved, hidden people. E m s h w i l l e r ’ s success in the SF field launched him into the avant garde and the world of art generally. You can’t ask much more from an early

fascination with those mind-expanding images from the early issues of AMAZING. It has always been a literature of big ideas and journeys to other, strange worlds over vast

distances. Emshwiller was able to bring them closer to home.

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…In which we actually talked about science fiction. It lasted for five-and-a-half years during which time we exchanged 22,500 messages – that’s an average of over ten per day, every day; at peak traffic there might be a hundred or more, and the beauty of it was that a posting could take you anywhere and back in just a few hours! Naturally it tended at first to be influenced heavily by the presence of Greg Pickersgill, who began a particularly interesting strand on 15th November, 2005, just after Novacon.

Greg: “Julian Headlong, in a cleverly conceived and extremely well-delivered program item at the con, casually and in passing mentioned a book entitled THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT, by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley. For those of you without an extra-brain I'll remind you that this novel is notable mainly for being generally accepted as the worst novel

to have ever won a Hugo award. Which is pretty far going for a list of ‘winners’ that contains some deeply questionable examples of the art.

“Anyway, enquiring minds being what they are, this soon sparked off a chain-reaction of baffled questioning about Why and How this now-obscure piece of work actually won a Hugo in the first place. Mark Clifton, we all agreed, did have a sort of cultish appeal (didn't Barry Malzberg carry a particular torch for him and contrive a collection of his short fiction in the 1980s?) but surely that was after the 1955 Event rather than at the time. And who the hell was Frank Riley anyway?

“However, much of the discussion revolved around what else could have been on the nominations ballot for that year – how could this

ONCE THERE WAS AN E-LIST….ONCE THERE WAS AN E-LIST….ONCE THERE WAS AN E-LIST….A symposium, of sorts.A symposium, of sorts.

compiled by

Peter WestonPeter Weston

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comparatively trivial work have prevailed against better novels?

“Well, amazingly it is all comparatively simple, but no less baffling at the end. It turns out that until the 1959 worldcon there were no nominations so effectively every member of the 1955 worldcon voted for whatever it was that they personally had enjoyed within the previous twelvemonth (or whatever the eligibility was at the time) and that was that. No filtering whatever.

“And moreover the 1955 worldcon (Clevention) was thought of as small even by the standards of the day – Fantasy Times (issue 232, October 1955) reports it as ‘one of the smallest, but also one of the most enjoyable, SF worldcons ever held’, and goes on to cite an attending membership of approximately 375, with a total membership of 600. Which last looks like a peculiarly round figure itself but we have to accept it. There's no indication in FT about the number of votes, and as far as I can tell there are no records and never were beyond the original count. So we'll never know what else might have been beaten by one (miscast?) vote.

“It should be a simple – but fiddly – matter to work out what else might have been voted on, but we might as well take it as read that almost

anything would be better than a book that is invariably described as at least Dull by anyone who had both read it and could remember anything about it at all.

“There may, it has to be said, have been a small tide of enthusiasm for Clifton at the time. It turns out that the milieu of TRBR (also known later as THE FOREVER MACHINE) had been used in a small number of shorts and novelettes in Astounding previous to the four-part serial published in late 1954, so obviously this was something with some degree of visibility.

“And, it has to be said, three out of four parts of the serial version placed first in the An Lab results in the following issues, against what we today might regard as worthwhile competition. The exception being the first section in the August 1954 issue which was beaten into second by ‘The Cold Equations’, a story of lasting interest if not necessarily great writing quality. The second part won out over ‘Martians Go Home’ by what I'd say might be a significant margin if I understood how the Anlab results were obtained. The third had an easy ride over a bunch of nondescript rubbish, and personally I'd say that the fourth was lucky to override Algis Budrys' ‘The End of Summer’. But then the serials always won, didn't they?

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“Actually, I may here contradict something I implied above. Maybe, horror of horrors, my initial feeling that some kind of outlandish split-vote let this weirdo mutant into the limelight, is wrong. A quick scan through the MIT index reveals no other novel of any obvious consequence serialised during 1954 (though I'd be prepared to argue that GLADIATOR AT LAW from Galaxy is a much better and more lasting work than THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT). I have no idea what was published as 'original' (i.e. not serialised) during the eligibility period (late 1953-late 1954?) but I have an intuition that not much was. Maybe this freak result is just the matter of a one-horse race scheduled during a particularly dull time for the SF novel. More information and opinions, please!”

Sandra Bond was first to reply, exactly 39 minutes later;

“I actually have a copy of TRBR. I haven't read it for ages – perhaps I should give it a shot in the spirit of research. My memory tells me that when I read it in my early twenties, it was neither outstandingly good nor direly bad. Like much of Clifton, really. And I don't know who the hell Riley was either.

“As for other candidates, the first candidate to leap out as being far

superior, to my eye, would be Edgar Pangborn's A MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS, a hardback original in 1954. Now that would have made a worthy Hugo winner.”

Dave Langford leapt in nine minutes later to tell us more about Mark Clifton; "“By Hugo voting time in 1955 Clifton was only a couple of stories into his ‘Ralph Kennedy’ series (which led up to the novel WHEN THEY COME FROM SPACE) but these dealt with psi powers a bit more interestingly and light-heartedly than was then usual in Astounding (‘What Thin Partitions’ & ‘Sense From Thought Divide’). Perhaps that was enough to make him the man of the moment.

“There were other stories, too, and for a fellow with such a small output he became a popular anthology choice -- e.g. "Star, Bright" (Galaxy 1952) was collected at least seven times and ‘What Have I Done?’ (Astounding 1952) at least eight.”

PW (that’s me!) jumped in with a distraction;

“I remember quite a good little psi story titled ‘Crazy Joey’ which Clifton co-wrote with another collaborator, Alex Apostolides (ASF, Aug 1953). Interestingly, it’s not listed by title or

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author in the MIT Index, only in the listing by magazine. That’s the only error I’ve ever found in that book!”

Greg again, after another half-an-hour:"“Amazingly, or astoundingly, whichever should be better used here – a hell of a lot of people actually HAVE read TRBR – usually in the FOREVER MACHINE Galaxy Novels incarnation, (though Lennart Uhlin astounded me by saying it had been re-published in the 1980s!). But all had the same low opinion of the book. Julian particularly saying that in his complete run of Hugo Winning novels it was the only one he actually didn't actually want to keep. Or buy in the first instance. I remember it was a book I only finished - way back in 1967 or thereabouts – because it was the only thing I had to read at the time. Tragic.

“Frank Riley – very minor author, probably a mate of Mark Clifton rather than SF fan or anything like that. Just a few shorts mostly in IF up to the mid-Fifties, whereupon he vanishes."“As for Sandra’s tip about MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS, now that's interesting. Even though I haven't read it I do know it is well thought-of by persons whose opinion I usually respect, and everything I have ever read about it makes it sound like a

good prospect. Maybe I ought to fish out my SFBC edition and get into it. It certainly has the air of a book that is better and more lasting in every sense than the Clifton/Riley.

“Perhaps the case is that, as Dave's mention of the psi-themed stories in his e-mail indicates, TRBR was in the spirit of the moment, and that it winning was more of a case that such as MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS or GLADIATOR AT LAW were simply not in tune with the popular trend, even though they are both actually better books. I mean, at least I remember G-A-L with actual pleasure, and still remember the plot and characters well after many years. And would even happily, I think, re-read it.

“Perhaps the fans of the day voted for TRBR more because they didn't like or appreciate the opposition, rather than it being a genuine positive choice. Wish we knew what the voting figures were! Maybe it all proves that gosh-wow Hugo award-winning novels are NOT the best of the year. There's a surprise.”

Sandra Bond needed forty minutes to add:

“And a couple more possibles for the novel award that seem to have been first published in 1954 are Tucker's

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WILD TALENT and Anderson's BRAIN WAVE.”

Jim Linwood took three minutes longer to point out:

“THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT was basically catering for Campbell's flirtation with Scientology and I'd always assumed that it won a Hugo by virtue of ballot stuffing by Scientologists. This is just my theory and I've never read anything to back it up.”

PW, a bit slow off the mark that day:

“Oh Sandra, I wish you hadn't reminded me! BRAIN WAVE and WILD TALENT were for a long time among my top favourites, and even now I regard them with great fondness (re-read the Anderson only last year and it still has some excellent moments). To think that TRBR beat those two... (I read it in the magazine version, and all I can remember is that the machine could 'process' one's memories and extract the bad bits, thus rejuvenating the old boiler into a lovely young girl again. Shades of Elron and his 'engrams'!)

“And among the shorts, 'Beep' and 'Golden Man' are real crackers. What was WRONG with those people in Cleveland in 1955?”

PW recovering fast, four minutes later:

“Just read your post after putting my comments on line about Elron, Jim. I was just kidding – but thinking about it a bit more, you might have a point there. The storyline DOES have a suspicious resemblance to the Scientology party-line and in those days it would probably have only needed a comparatively small number of votes to have swung the outcome.”

Greg spent the next thirty minutes on research:

“I have been into A WEALTH OF FABLE, and if it is to be believed the 1953 Worldcon did NOT make awards in several categories because the voting base was so low, there were NO Hugos awarded in 1954, one might presume because no-one was really bothered enough to organise it, and in 1956 (Nycon 2) following the award to TRBR, Harry Warner again intimates that ‘the Achievement Awards were presented, despite such problems as a scarcity of voters’. Warner also hints that the whole affair wasn't actually such a Big Deal even at Solacon in 1958.

“It was Detention in 1959 that instituted the nominations ballot, and one wonders if that in itself helped to summon up a bit more interest in the

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final vote by concentrating people's minds on a few eligible titles. Actually, reading the notes in Franson and Devore's ‘History of..’ (I‘m using the original F/D self-published edition of 1976, and the Advent edition may have an enhanced introduction) it isn't immediately obvious at what point voting was only open to convention members and not fans generally. And given the above I am certainly inclined to think that Jim L's idea regarding block-voting by Scientologist sympathisers may have been a factor.”

Ted White raised an immediate objection:"“Interesting theory, but Scientology came into existence right around the time of the 1955 Worldcon itself. So substitute ‘Dianetics’ for ‘Scientology’....”

Jim returned with:

“I knew that but wasn't sure what Hubbard's followers called themselves in 1953.  Dianeticians perhaps?”

Robert Lichtman handed down the Word on voting:

“On the first page of Franson's introduction in the Advent edition he states: ‘From the first the winners were decided by popular vote, unlike

some other awards which are picked by a panel of experts or are voted on by a select company. However, before 1959 there was only one set of ballots sent out before the convention. Thus, there were no nominations to list here until the Detention, in 1959’

“At the bottom of the second page of his intro, Franson further says about the nominating ballots sent out by the Detention committee: ‘This was an open nomination, with nominating ballots, and even final ballots, available to all of fandom, not just members of the convention. This is another of the rules which has undergone change through the years.’

“This would seem to clarify everything other than what followers of Dianetics/Scientology were called in 1953 and/or 1955.”

Bill Burns tried to answer Robert’s final point:

“The OED is of no help on what to call them, but does provide the interesting information that ‘dianetics’ was derived from a perfectly good Greek word, ‘dianoetic’, first cited in 1677: ‘Of or pertaining to thought; employing thought and reasoning; intellectual’.”

And Ted gave us some background:

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“The 1955 Clevention was my first convention (Worldcon or otherwise), and I for one was glad it was no larger. I was putting faces to names throughout the con. One of the faces was that of Jack Harness, an up-and-coming 7th Fandom fan-artist with whom I became quickly friends. He told me he was moving from his present home to Washington D.C. to ‘learn Dianetics’. I told him to get in touch with me once he was re-located, since I lived then (as I do now) about six miles from D.C.

“A month or so later he called me from D.C. I drove in and picked him up and brought him out to my house and along the way he told me that Dianetics was now out and Scientology was in. He'd joined the FoundingChurch of Scientology, located a block or two off Dupont Circle, and was living in a Scn-owned and operated boarding house, called the Elmwood. (We, of course, took to calling it the Wormwood.)

“I spent many hours there, hanging out with Jack and subsequently Phil Castora (from Pittsburgh) and Bob Burleson (local). We did a lot of fanac and also played a lot of cards. Jack, Phil and Bob were Scientologists, but Phil and Bob gradually weaned themselves of it. Jack never did. In 1958 Jack and Phil moved to Los Angeles. Bob stayed here, and he and

I recorded the ‘famous’ Burleson-White Piano Concerto, playing the insides of my mother's upright piano (later actually broadcast on WBAI in NYC).

“So I had a quasi-inside view of Scientology's Early Days. It seemed to me that Hubbard had copped to some techniques which actually worked, and surrounded them with ‘para-Scientological’ claptrap. But these were the early days, before the Heavy Paranoia had set in. Even then I regarded Hubbard as a glib huckster. *Everyone* regarded the ‘Church’ aspect to be a tax dodge. There was no religiosity to Scientology.”

That seemed to be about it, until two weeks later I wrote: PW:"“Last weekend I visited Julian Headlong in Swindon, and found something strange, about which others might be able to cast some light. Julian has a beautiful collection of American-edition Ifs, in perfect condition, and I faunched for all those early Ken Fagg wrap-around covers. While drooling, I pulled out the April 1956 issue, with a splendid Kelly Freas painting illustrating the story 'The Executioner' which some of you might remember. It's about a corrupt future world in which the judge – shown here with white, curly wig – has to carry out the death sentence personally, which is why he is holding a large pistol with which to despatch the offender – in

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this case a young and attractive woman who has been framed by the ruling Establishment."“‘Reminds me,’ I said to Julian, ‘there's a very similar story in Astounding of about the same time.’ And so we pulled out the issue in question (Julian had the BRE for June 1956, but actually the story appeared in the 'proper' US edition in January 56). Sure enough, there's a Budrys' lead novelette, 'The Executioner', not illustrated on the cover but with Freas interior illos showing the judge – with white, curly wig and a large pistol with which he is about to shoot the offender – in this case a young, attractive woman who has been framed by the Establishment."“Strange, what? I mean, there's absolutely no chance this is a coincidence. So what's going on, whose idea was it, why sell two such similar stories – with the same title, even – at the same time to two different mags? And the most intriguing bit I've left to the last, is that the If story is credited to our old friend ‘Frank Riley’. Did he and Budrys develop the idea at some late-night bull session and then go and write it up independently? Or is there more to it than that – could Riley even be a Budrys pseudonym, I wonder?”

Jim Linwood was in first this time:

“Riley was a pseudonym for Frank Rhylick (1915-1996) and there is an e-book collection of his short works at: Fictionwise eBooks: Project Hi-Psi & Other SF Classics by Frank Riley.”

Greg was intrigued: "“Well, that's amazing. As you can imagine I instantly scurried upstairs and into the attic and pulled out the two magazines and all is as you describe. The stories have the same title, certainly, and essentially the same basic plot element of the judge/executioner, but there the similarities end. For one thing the Riley is just incredibly badly written, and that alone makes me believe it isn't Budrys in a funny nose. AJB certainly wrote some quite dull material in his time, but nothing I have ever seen has been written at the low (we're talking Amazing in the early Fifties here) level of the Riley."“As Julian will probably point out in more detail the killing of the woman is effectively the whole point of the rather unpleasant Riley tale, where in the Budrys it is more a critical, and engineered, turning point in the leadcharacter's understanding of his world and the story as a whole has considerably more substance. But the similarities – in essential idea and even story background – are notable. Is it possible that Budrys and Riley had contact and this story stemmed from

26

shared discussion of plot and background? We will never know, I guess, though I will be pulling the few other Riley stories (mostly in If) to see whether they have any other similar features."“There's no doubt in my mind that the Freas artwork in both If and ASF is all of a piece – could it have come first and the stories later, one wonders? It's about that time that Riley, with Clifton, had produced TRBR for ASF, and maybe the cover work used on If was originally intended for ASF?”

Julian Headlong gave a definitive verdict:"“OK, I read them both (and some other pretty poor stories in both mags). They do not read at all like the work of the same person. I remember reading both of them before and the re-reading of the Riley story was not a pleasure. The Budrys held up a little better but was a minor piece. The two stories don't share the same situation, the Budrys describes a post-apocalypse semi-feudal society with a new religion at its core, and the ‘hero’ eventually rebels against the status quo. The Riley story has a more sketchy background with deliberately retro lords and ladies, typical 50's rocket planes, gratuitous nudity, the executee isn't innocent, and the executioner doesn't question

his society or his place in it – altogether a more pointless story, and poorly written."“It does seem to me the pictures came first. The Freas cover on If has the poorer story, the Budrys has the Freas interior line drawings of what appears to be the same character. Perhaps the line drawings were the workingsketches for the cover, and Freas sold them to Astounding, and then Budrys was commissioned to do a story based on them. Stranger things have happened.”

PW wondered:"“Good old Greg, made the effort, and came up with the same theory as did Julian – that maybe the artwork came first. Though if Campbell had ever had that Freas cover surely he would have used it (instead of the rather dull thing which actually graces the Jan 56 issue of ASF)? I suppose the only person who might know the answer to all this is AJ himself – if he remembered. As Earl says, pity he's not well enough to ask.”

Greg himself was by now hot on the trail;"“I thought I'd start checking on our man (Riley) again. You'd think, wouldn't you, that with almost ten foot of books about SF to go to

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there'd be more than somewhat about him. Not so likely. But we are picking up traces...."“For example, the Index to Foundation (issues 1-50 only, and when's that going to be improved on eh?) has two references – one to a Brian Stableford review of the JOHN W CAMPBELL

LETTERS VOL.1 (#36, 1986) in which Stableford intimates that within the book one will discover the extent to which John W. Campbell his own bad self was more the motivator of ‘that tub-thumping Hugo-winner’ THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT than the listed authors. Then there's a response from Hank Stine of the Donning Co in a letter in #25, 1982, to a Clute review of a Mark Clifton collection. Stine asserts he will be republishing TRBR (in what was to be the Starblaze edition) and continues, and this is fascinating:-"“‘In the process we managed to unearth Mr Riley; a hard man to find, it turned out, not because of the obscurity in which he lived, but because of the notoriety in which he lived. Mr Riley, whom even Mr Clifton's agent could not locate for two decades, lived only a few miles away and was the travel columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and the author of a highly successful line of mystery novels. However, he had never mentioned his connection with SF to

anyone and it never occurred to anyone that the two Riley's could be the same.’"“Well, that's amazing, its impact undiminished by the following assertion that the Starblaze edition of TRBR is the first unabridged edition, the better known Galaxy Novels version having had a lot cut out. Rush now to your ABEbooks portal... "“Actually that really IS amazing. So far I haven't found anything about Riley as a mystery or crime writer. Admittedly my resources here are mostly web, with only the 1991 edition of the St James 20TH CENTURY CRIME AND MYSTERY WRITERS on hand in physical form. In which he does not figure, under Riley or Rhylick. And one assumes from Stine's letter that Riley actually wrote as Riley."“Incidentally, there is of course an entry for Mark Clifton (but not Riley) in the 20TH CENTURY SF WRITERS, in which one George Kelley (who contributes a number of essays, including Jane Gaskell and T.L. Sherred, wow!) refers to TRBR as ‘This book has subtlety and rare sophistication’. Holy mackerel!”

Bill Burns rolled out the big guns:"“Searching on addall.com/used, which has a more sophisticated search

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engine than ABE and searches many additional sites, I find a couple of travel books by Frank Riley, DE

ANZA’S TRAIL TODAY and TRAVEL ADVENTURES IN CALIFORNIA, and two mysteries, JESUS II and THE KOCSKA FORMULA. One description for JESUS II gives some more info:"“‘Los Angeles Sherbourne Press 1972, First Edition. Inscribed and signed by the author, Frank Riley, to fellow writer, Wayne Warga. Inscribed: ‘To Wayne Warga, Thank you for your past kind words. Father Anton Dymek joins me in hoping you’ll enjoy this – as well as the forthcoming FIFTH GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BUCKLEY! Best, Frank Riley. Sept. 5, 1972.’ Riley was the Associate Editor and Travel Editor at Los Angeles Magazine and knew many of the journalists at The Los Angeles Times, including Wayne Warga.

“I find no listing or mentions anywhere else for THE FIFTH GOSPEL so perhaps this was never written, and the two mysteries noted above were his entire output in that genre.”

Jim Linwood finished off the job: "“Bookfinder comes up with a Frank Riley as the author of two Father Anton Dymek mysteries: JESUS II and THE KOCSKA FORMULA together with DEATH ROW

CHAPLAIN. These three were published in the States in the 60/70s. There's also a 50s London published book THE TREASURE OF SAN JACINTO that probably isn't by our man.”Dave Langford finally put us to rights:" “I took this oddity to the Fictionmags list, where John Boston proved to know all. The ‘above guess’ refers to my mention of the theory that the Freas artwork must have come first:" “This crossroads of history is addressed semi-definitively by Budrys in his memoir in WORLDS OF IF: A

RETROSPECTIVE ANTHOLOGY, edited by Pohl and the usual suspects and enablers, Greenberg and Olander. The above guess is right, with a wrinkle. The cover was done for If. Freas showed Budrys the sketch and the light bulb went on: ‘. . . [I]t was instantly clear to me that the absurd and ill-fitting wig was directly analogous to British judicial wigs, and from that it was no trouble to visualise a culture in which trial by combat had taken on butchy overtones.’ So Freas asked Quinn if he would like a story by Budrys to fit the cover, which he would, except that upon reading it he rejected it with references to ‘all that philosophy stuff’. So Budrys sent the story over to Campbell, where as noted it appeared with no cover illustration but with interiors by Freas.

Continued on page 51

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I didn't pay a great deal of attention when the post arrived

yesterday morning because I was looking for a book. This was a more than usually difficult task because of two impediments: I could remember neither what the book was called nor who it was by. My only hints were the feeling that it should be in 'music' or 'biography' and that it probably had a black spine. I was scanning the relevant sections of the bookshelves, where there are many black-spined books, and not getting anywhere. But then it came to me: Giles Smith, that's the name! And the title was... yes, Lost in Music. Although it still didn't help very much because I still couldn't find the book and when I checked our catalogue I discovered the third impediment: that we don't have a copy.

The arrival of the post was thus a distant memory when I went downstairs at lunchtime and found three whole fanzines sticking through

the letterbox. That hasn't happened since... well, I don't know but probably not this century anyway. (Technically, we had considerably more than three fanzines delivered yesterday but all bar three were copies of the new BW, which in turn led to an awkward phone conversation with our printers in Sheffield. I suspect we are in fact a net loss to them as this is now the third BW they've printed for us and the second time we've had to ask them to reprint because for some reason they just don't appreciate that when I send them a 52-page PDF to be printed as a half-size booklet -- the same size as SOWS#4 in fact, or at least our cranky British near-equivalent -- I do in fact expect it to be printed as a 52 page booklet and not a 56 page booklet with a few random blanks somewhere near the end. BW is now being recopied and will be delivered to us on Friday morning. On Friday afternoon we leave for Australia.)

But yes, it's not every day that's a Three Fanzine Day, I thought. It's not

Mark PlummerCroydon, UK

I didn't pay a the letterbox. That hasn't happened Mark Plummer

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any day in fact, or at least not any day other than this one. It calls for something special. So I went to the pub for lunch, taking my fanzines with me and *of course* it was SOWS that I read first. You will have to decide for yourself whether this is genuine or whether I'm telling the other guys exactly the same thing.

I have frequently explained -- usually to incredulity -- that it took me years to spot the linguistic connection between the name Novacon and the month in which the convention  invariably took place. I still contend that it's not as dense as it might seem because 'nova' is a perfectly good science-fictional term. Similarly I now get to confess without any commensurate justification that I hadn't previously appreciated that there was a link between Lemuria and lemurs. I'm now wondering about you and Coadjutor bishops...

I probably should say more about Randy's piece but I'm afraid I'm skipping ahead to the bit about the Zoromes. We keep using the internet for internal household communications here but I think this email is a new low: I write something down and send it to you in California in the hope that you will print it and send a copy back to Croydon in some months time so that Claire will see it. But I just wanted to

say that that there are so female Zoromes -- at least sort of.

Thanks to Google Books I am able to consult Greg's beloved Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years for a plot summary of 'Zora of the Zoromes' (Amazing Stories, March 1935, reprinted in the third Ace collection). Here Professor Jameson and the Zoromes return to the home world of Zor, where they meet the eponymous Zora. She has four legs, a vase-like body and six tentacles; but she is in fact a Zoromes in its organic form, before the brain is transplanted into the machine body. This contradicts the first story, The Jameson Satellite (Amazing, July 1931), which says that all the Zoromes have already been, as it were, mechanised.  When her lover Bext is killed -- and sorry if I'm spoiling the plot for you -- his brain is saved and transplanted. On learning of this too, Zora has herself transplanted too.

It's not clear from the story summary whether Zora remains in any sense female, and whether it's simply the case that all the Zoromes we've previously encountered have been a mixture of machine-men and -women. Or indeed whether the existence of female Zoromes, like the introduction of the pre-mechanised species on the homeworld, is an afterthought. I might

31

just have to buy and read a copy of Space War to find out.

But the highlight of SOWS#4 is Roy's 'rediscovery' of Pauline Ashwell, I think I did know that she was British, and that she'd had this kind-of dual career, although not that it went back as far as the 1940s. Mostly, though, she's a writer with a degree of personal significance.

A few days ago I wrote a rambling post on TimeGoggles about being a not-very-good sf magazine collector. In reply, Rob Hansen explained why he'd never become an enthusiast of the form: because there were plenty of cheap books available which seemed better value. Magazines were like poor, thin anthologies, and 'I didn't recognize half the names in them, anyway.'

I do have some sympathy with the latter point. The first magazine I ever bought off a news-stand -- and I realise this is probably at least a decade after the rest of the SOWS readership quit sf magazines as a bad job -- was the July 1988 Analog. I bought it because I had somehow become convinced that as a fan I *should* read Analog, but I couldn't claim to recognise even as many as half the contributors in that issue. In fact I think the only one I'd heard of was Poul Anderson. Elizabeth Moon?

W T Quick? Michael Flynn? Paula Robinson, Amy Bechtel and Jack Wodhams? I do at least have some familiarity with them now -- although in truth if I ever read anything else by Robinson and Bechtel I don't remember it -- but at the time they were all complete mysteries.

There was also a story by Pauline Ashwell, 'Thingummy Hall', the story that Roy tells us was inspired by Conspiracy. I'd never heard of her either, although at least she was far from alone. Still, I had the idea that magazines were the heart of sf, and recognising that at that point I wasn't all that well read in the genre -- unlike many other fans I'd encountered who had in fact read everything -- I deduced that these Analog writers were where it was at. And Pauline Ashwell's specific position in this heartland was reinforced when I bought the August issue which featured another piece by her, this time the cover story.

Sadly for the narrative momentum, in August 1988 I also decided to branch out into IASFM and F&F and pretty much decided that actually *they* were where the elusive it was to be found and mostly I didn't really like Analog all that much, although residual conditioning meant I kept buying and reading it for another year and half. I'm just not much of an Analog fan,

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but I still retain a lingering affection for Pauline Ashwell's stories because she was there when I discovered magazine science fiction (a mere) 22 years ago.

A small point of detail is that Roy says (p19) that she was born in 1926 but every other source I've seen that quotes a date of birth says 1928. I'm assuming Roy got his information from Pauline herself in which case it's perhaps a good example of how incorrect information gets out there and proliferates. I also see that the Feminist SF wiki has her listed as a programme participant for the 1995 Worldcon, and now that I see that I have a half-memory of noticing it at the time although I didn't see the item.

But really, great piece. I only wonder how you got to print it. Hasn't Peter got some kind of lock on this kind of thing?

Peter has a lock on rooting around in the cobwebby corners of British fandom. He’ll have to revive Speculation to get to those cobwebby corners of the genre.

I wonder if your understanding of the ‘Big Tent’ philosophy, and that of Odyssey

are totally at odds with my understanding, interpretationand application of the term and philosophy.

Science Fiction conventions, in my opinion, should be places thatwelcome all speculative fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Steampunk, AlternateHistory and so on, in its variant forms, but the honest truth is thatThe National Science Fiction convention, is a literary event, at itsheart.

Denial of that (if it exists), has nothing to do with the Big TentPhilosophy and everything to do with the vision of the people runningthe convention. If the programme designer veers too far towards themore non SF recreational activities, their team should keep them incheck. I will happily admit, that for me, Judith Proctor and her team,did veer too far away from what should have been the focus. That isjust my opinion.

That Eastercon is a literary event should be evidenced by the factthat the Lions share of the programming should be focussed on this. In the case of Odyssey, it felt like there was a lot of NON-sf relateditems. I genuinely thought SF related items were the majority this

James BaconCroydon, UK

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year, I know Niall Harrison and others analysed the situation moreclearly and Niall found it just slightly in the minority, which is notright. (I don’t think SF related items should be in the minority andthink there should be more literary focussed programme)

I agree that there were a few opportunities missed, given that Iain M. Banks and Al Reynolds were guests, and there were a host of programmeideas here that could of worked, but I failed just as much as theprogramme team. I never suggested them, did you?

Within SF activities there is a happy balance required, where othermedia, and fans of that media are catered for, and yet we don’t losethe main focus of the gathering. (in my case to learn and discuss moreabout various books and comics of a speculative nature, and genresthat intrigue me)

I think that the likes of Bondage workshops and religiousactivities(as opposed to discussions about Religion), really are notrequired as part of the programme, but that’s my tastes. I would notmock anyone with Religious beliefs, for religion is very important tomany people, and I hope they respect my belief equally, I am not

ANTI-religion, but feel that an SF convention is an inappropriateplace to officially schedule a mass or service, or schull or prayers.

I think one BDSM late night programme item, would be fine, as would many other fringe interests and I also cannot object if a religiousgroup request a free room for some non-programmed activities,therefore there is no reflection upon the committee, but I did feelthat on this occasion, although there were a good few comics and bookprogramme items, that there could have been more.

Although, I must admit, that as a consumer of conventions, as well asan objective experienced organiser of them, I had a great time. Metmany friends, enjoyed what I went to and as normal, forgot the faultsand made best the weekend.

I abhor the ignorant utterances regarding the concern of ‘media fans’‘taking over’ (accusation at a Novacon when I was on a panel) and haveshown I hope that there are people at ‘media events’ who are also bookreaders and who may interested in the type of gathering that the likesof Eastercon have to offer and I don’t see a battle raging, althoughthere are differing Visions between the odd and even Eastercons since

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2007 and will be for another 2 years.

I also think that intelligent and clever programming of other media,be it Film, TV, Music, Radio and other arts, does pique cross fandominterest and this is the Big Tent approach that I understand and like,getting directors to talk about their films, and viewing anddiscussion of good TV.

I would hope that any SF fan would not feel that there is ‘nothing’for them at an SF convention, but then this is not really the fault ofsome Big Tent approach as that the person or team designing theprogramme have not done a good job for you.

There is nothing stopping fans inputting ideas to a conventionprogramme team, in actual fact, having run many conventions, I wouldask for more, and if you or any of your readers have panels of yourdreams, please make mention of them, and I will remember them nexttime the opportunity arises.

That many people will have enjoyed Odyssey should not be missed, but Iam sure the committee of Olympus were aware of some of the discontent,especially when being voted in, the abstentions and votes against,must have been an eye opener.

I suppose some public admonishment would have made people feel better,but then I also respect that that team took these issues on the chinas a team.

I understand that Liz Batty is already involved with the 2012programme, and I am enriched and excited, for Liz and Liz alone has anability to totally transcend all the differing corners of fandom, notonly with ease, but with respect, unlike anyone else I know. Havingworked with her, I know she is a great programme designer and cleverand literate, andeven this move, made on the last day of Odyssey proves to me thatpeople do listen and learn and improve.

I have a massive respect for Liz, and know she is very considerate,and has a decent sense of propriety and am sure, with the rightsupport, we will see a very good SF programme in Heathrow.

Conventions have been known to grow too big (Minicon?) and want ordesire to return to smaller and more literary focussed events, andalso there have been conventions which were an antidote to the biggerconventions, from both wings, with Fun (Incons) and more literary (er

35

Mexicons, I wasn’t there) filling in gaps for fans.

I have to say, I would adore fanzine fans, maybe some of those Corfluguys, to go and run a science fiction literary convention, and I expect that somewhere, someone is planning to do something interesting. No chance of a Sense of Wonder Con is there?

I also have high expectations of Novacon, I have heard great things,about who is attending, and I expect that the Novacon committee willmake good use of their attendees of stature.

I would just prefer us not to confuse an effort to be inclusive, witha bad job of programme design. I know that some of the Odysseycommittee do believe in bringing in more fans of Media SF, as we knowit, but is this a bad thing?

Should I mention (invoke) that I was initially a comics fan, ClaireBrialey was a Hitch Hikers fan, and I wonder how many other people whoare active in our community, found fandom, but SF books were at thetime, not their main focus.

Oh dear, I have gotten over a thousand words out of your first twoparagraphs, I fear how much the rest of your excellent zine will later

propagate.

I believe Comicon is a good example of where the all-inclusive, bigger is better philosophy can lead. It has now become a major venue for film studios to promote their forthcoming films. To the extent that comic dealers and small publishers can no longer afford the con. And I do wonder what it was about SF conventions that you and Claire found that was different enough from comics and Hitchhikers affairs that you wanted to stick around. And would you have found that same difference in a multi-streamed three-ring event that had a full complement of programming on comics or Hitchhikers.

Well, Amigo,

SoWS #4 was a nice issue, indeed. I

uncharacteristically tore through it in one day, reading it in 1 and 2 minutes intervals while scanning the pages of a golden age comic (public domain, I assure you) for uploading to the public archives at Digital Comics Library. This might not seem the optimal way to read a fanzine, but it worked well enough, paragraph by paragraph, article by article.

Considering that my interest in SF these days is close to nil, why do I enjoy SoWS? Perhaps for the same reason I read the New York Review of

Jay KinneySan Francisco, CA

36

Books: so that I don't have to read the actual books. Hah. Let others read them and summarize them for me. Thanks, gang.

It was kind of you to lead off with Mr. R. Byers' article on Lemuria, as it validated my lifetime spent poking around in obscure esoteric corners. Blavatsky? Bulwer-Lytton? Richard Shaver? No reference was too obscure for me. On a serious note, this article could probably be submitted to Fortean Times for actual pay, with a wee bit of rewriting. Just a thought.

By contrast,  I probably missed half the inside jokes regarding Neil R. Jones in Claire and Mark's "conversations" regarding the Zoromes, BUT it was undoubtedly the drollest piece issuing from the Fishmongers that I can recall. Perhaps this is an example of the late decadent phase of sercon writing, I'm not sure, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Roy Kettle's saga of his literary detective work was curiously engrossing (in the Altoids sense), shedding light on an author I hadn't even been aware of, although I bet I once owned the issue of Analog pictured in the article. I will confess that I may have skipped one or two of the story summaries that stretched out the middle of the piece, but otherwise I thought it was another fine article. The scan of the Jay Kay Klein

Biolog at the end was too out of focus to be entirely satisfying, but I don't know whether to blame that on Mr. Porter or your color laser printing. (We here omit book-length discussions of the scanning resolution issues that plague fan publishing. Some day, if I am utterly bored and idle, I may write a detailed screed on the matter, but no one should hold their breath.)

'Twas swell to have columnist Bruce A. Townley (nice header, by the way) spotlight Frank R. Paul, just possibly the most stefnal of all the classic SF illustrators. Nice visual examples of his work which really made me appreciate the Full! Color! printing you spend your disposable income on for SoWS. I will be seeing Bruce in a mere two days from now down at the Elks Lodge No. 3, so I am sure I will discuss the article in more depth with the lad then. Direct egoboo saves trees.

Egad, is this turning into one of those perfunctory article by article LOCs instead of my usual "dash off some nonsense while failing to comment on much of anything" approach? I would just end now, but that would deny one Rich Coad his praise for rediscovering Barrington J. Bayley, yet another author I doubt I will ever read, but apparently as odd as they come. Sadly, I've been spending my spare time reading things like an issue of DISSENT from 1990 wherein the

37

writers wrestle with such imponderables as the future of Socialism and the Left. They didn't do too good a job of it in 1990 and this must be why the Teabaggers now seem to think that Obama is a Socialist. Unclear on the concept, folks, but the left intellectuals of 1990 didn't help much, either.

Woops, back to the slog. The letter column, next. Well, I'm not going to descend so low as to LOC about LOCs (at least not this time), so it is on to the grand finale: Ned Brooks and wind tunnels. All I can say is that "I had no idea!" While Paul Ash and Barrington J. Bayley were writing about the future and Frank R. Paul was drawing it, Ned Brooks was creating it!

OK, I'll try and get my act together and do you up a cover for next issue. If a cover by me and this LOC both appear in the same issue, I guess I came through.

Looks like you came through. Thanks, boss!

Overall, this is perhaps your finest effort yet of

SOWS. I am really kind of wondering one thing, though: back in Askance #

19 (March 2010) I reviewed (sort of) Planet of the Double Suns and The Sunless World by Neil R. Jones and interspersed some choice linos from the first book throughout that issue. Those conversations you reproduced in SOWS #4 between Claire Brialey, Mark Plummer, and Greg Pickersgill - otherwise known as 39CB-963, 46MP-852, and 58GP-888 in this article (?) - followed very shortly after my zine had hit the electronic newsstands. I am wondering if Claire, Mark and Greg were inspired by my foray into the Professor Jameson stories? It may have been simply coincidence, but doesn't it seem just a bit strange to you that two fanzines pubbed just a few months apart feature science fiction writing that is admittedly really dreadful? It does give one pause.

I also think that Randy Byers is also becoming one of our better fanwriters. His "When Life Hands you Lemurs, Make Lemuria" article was very good and entertaining. As much as I would love to believe in things like a hollow Earth or that there are long-lost civilizations just waiting for us to discover their remains somewhere on this planet, Lemuria lingers on in our consciousness as just one of Those Ideas that simply won't go away. Even the esteemed pulp writer Robert E. Howard  wrote tales that mentioned this fabled lost continent; L. Sprague

John PurcellCollege Station, TX

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de Camp's marvelous book Lost Continents covered this land. My favorite Lemurian fantasy is Frederick Spencer Oliver's 1894 book A Dweller on Two Planets, which links Lemuria to Mount Shasta (in California, of all places), under which is a vast network of tunnels and Lemurians were sometimes seen above ground in white robes. Right... Suspension of disbelief is essential in enjoying these fantasies, especially so when Raymond Palmer went completely off the deep end with the Shaver Mysteries. Still, they are fun to read nowadays for their "literary" and historical  - or, more appropriately, their hysterical - value as pure fantasy entertainment. Kudos to Randy for a fine, fun article.

Another wonderfully research article herein was Roy Kettle's piece on Pauline Ashwell. This was a name that I vaguely remembered from the 1980s when I was more actively reading Analog. Great work, Roy! The highest compliment I can pay to Roy and Pauline is that now I have titles of fiction to track down and read. This article definitely piqued my interest, and I thank you and Roy for bringing this writer to my attention.

However, Frank R. Paul in no way needs to be brought to my attention. Here is a science fiction artist whose work I have always admired. Somewhere in my stash of old pulps -

which aren't many - I have some issues of Amazing Stories and  Wonder Stories with his fantastic spaceships and such adorning their covers. I recall a crackerjack Dynamic Science Stories cover of this bright yellow, streamlined interplanetary craft under attack. Oh, it's all great stuff, and thank you, Bruce Townley, for writing this appreciation. May I offer a couple suggestions of other old-time stfnal artists for this series? Howard V. Brown and  S. R. Drigin would be good choices.  I am positive that Bruce is aware of way more stfnal pulp artists in order  to write more of  these appreciations. I am definitely looking forward to them.

As for Barrington J. Bayley, I once owned The Fall of Chronopolis and Empire of Two Worlds, but never read either one. Shame on me.  I do suspect that I am not alone in the habit of buying science fiction books that I have never read.  If anything, here is a writer worth revisiting. Hard to believe he died just a couple years ago (2008) at the age of 71. I always thought he was much younger than that, born around 1950. Boy, was I wrong there!

Finally, I come to the letters - no real commentary on these, except that I enjoyed them very much - and Ned Brooks' recollection of his days as a rocket scientist. And here for all these

39

years I thought Ned was an antique typewriter scientist. Silly me. I will never forget stopping by his home in Newport News, Virginia in 1980 with Leslie David - Ned wasn't home at the time - and actually saw the addition used to house his vast typewriter collection. Man, I sure wish he had been home that day; it would have been great fun to get the nickel tour through his book, pulp, and typewriter collections. Oh, well.

I’ve spent 30 years on convention committees, so I

may understand why conventions widen their focus to include other interests…once the con is established as a business or non-profit corporation, which is a legal necessity, they have to overcome rising prices of everything they use so that they still have enough money in the bank to get the guests people demand, and they have to increase their potential revenues, and money only comes from the convention’s attendees. We’ve certainly found that if you don’t care to widen your focus, those other fans who feel you’re failing to cater to their own interests will often start up their own cons, and you may fall by the wayside. Tight-focused cons have to stay small, and may not live long

unless their attendees keep coughing up more and more cash to keep the con going. All this is basic business, but do we every have the kind of con we want to see? I doubt it, but I’ve been on the operating end of the con, so I understand why this kind of thing happens.

39CB-963 and 46MP-852 should know that 51LP-334 does own a thesaurus, and also knows that any writer should not use said thesaurus to write fiction, or anything else, for that matter. Reading old SF from the 30s can be fun, but it may take more suspension of disbelief than we might need for more recent fiction, or more tolerance of florid prose and a thesaurus-type vocabulary. Just roll your eyes and enjoy, I suppose.

A great bit of research from Roy Kettle on an author who may have been forgotten, but it’s never too late to rediscover her. I hope this article can be the foundation of a detailed entry on Pauline Whitby/Ashwell in the next edition of The Encyclopedia of SF. I’m not sure how any writer can be nominated for a Hugo, and then be nearly forgotten, unless there’s enough time to obscure one’s vision and memory. (I see a Canadian connection with Ms. Whitby attending a convention in Montreal. I wonder which one…the annual event in Montreal, Con*cept, started up in the late 80s. If there was an earlier

Lloyd PenneyEtobicoke, ON

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convention in Montreal, this is a part of their own history I’m sure they’d like to know about.)

The last time I saw works by Frank R. Paul, there was a great display of old magazine cover art at the annual pulp show in Toronto some years ago, and Paul was but one of the great artists whose work was preserved. That was where I learned that only about 10% of all cover art from that era was saved; the rest was trashed nearly as soon as the magazine it illustrated was printed and distributed. We must enjoy that art through the magazines. We enjoy that great art in the center of this zine (Rich, thank you for the full colour artwork in thish), and wonder how anything like this could be simply thrown away.

No word of lie, when this zine arrived in my mailbox, I had just gone to a used book store and bought a bag full of excellent-condition used books, and had just started reading Barrington J. Bayley’s The Zen Gun. As I read it, many of the ideas within (enhanced animals with citizen status, a military starship whose main function seems to be serving up various pleasures for the inhabitants within) were starting to approach modern-day ideas in our own society. (If I recall, the name Volsted Gridban appears more than one in that novel.) During that same trip, though I also picked up Michael Moorcock’s The Land Leviathan and The Warlords of

the Air, and Moorcock and his great character Captain Oswald Bastable are getting the credit for starting up the steampunk genre of writing. Perhaps I could mention Bayley’s Star Winds, and see if this can be added to the list of early steampunk novels.

Roy Kettle is right, we never get the future we want. If we ever did, some artist or writer would be hailed as an sfnal prophet, and we’d never hear the end of it. The interest is Nikola Tesla is more than a steampunk fetish; Tesla was overshadowed by Edison in many respects, and I think we are so desperate for new discoveries, we’re scraping the past for anything we may have overlooked. And, the Erichsen that Sheryl Birkhead is talking about must be fan artist Kurt Erichsen.

The rest were read and enjoyed, and now it’s time to say goodbye…hands up all who thought of the end of the Mickey Mouse Club programme. Yeah, I thought so. Thanks again, Rich, and I am always looking forward to more in….the Future! Now that should have been at the end of a programme…

I can't match Randy's cleverness in titles. That's a

fine "lemur" gag he uses. The article itself is a nice job of tracing an idea from scientific speculation to

Jerry KaufmanSeattle, WA

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sceintifictional nonsense. I've got one disagreement and a few additional stories. Disagreement: scientists didn't move on to plate tectonics until well into the twentieth century. (I checked out my vague memory of the timeline in Wikipedia, so I hope I'm not too far off.)  The idea that the continents might have once been on supercontinent was tossed around in the nineteenth century, alright, but a guy named Wegener proposed continental drift in the early twentieth, and he didn't get taken seriously until someone else came up with a physical process to explain it, which was much later. As for other stories involving Lemuria, I remember one that was a nuclear war story - the narrator/survivor revealed at the end that he was an Atlantean, and that a number of other early civilizations, including Lemuria, had also ended in nuke oblivion. A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay, isn't about Lemuria, but I've always thought that its strange planet with many beings morphing into other forms (it's been decades since I read it, but I think the main character also morphs as he travels) probably owed a lot to Madame Blavatsky's numerous races that preceded us.

WAHF: Bill Burns who offered up the article which follows; Jim Linwood “I had an almost similar experience to Roy when someone on an e-group mentioned that they had picked up a secondhand copy of Mariners of Space by Erroll Collins for £1. Collins was one of my favourite childhood authors who also wrote such classics as The Black Dwarf of Mongolia, Submarine City, Galleons of the Air and had stories published in Boy’s Own Paper. I googled to find out more about him and I discovered that “Erroll Collins” was Ellen Edith Hannah Redknap who had lived most of her life a few minutes walk away at 56 Worton Way, Isleworth. Unfortunately she died in 1991 so I never had the chance of meeting her.”; Tim Marion who wrote about SoWS 3; Fred Lerner; Sheryl

Birkhead; William Breiding. I hope my haphazard filing did not miss anyone this time. Murray Moore squeaks in with a last minute e-mail.

Some of you who were at Corflu 28, the weekend before Valentine’s Day, received a copy of SoWS 5 there. Please treasure it as a rare collector’s item, or toss it as a preliminary attempt, for this final version is different and official.

OFFICIAL!

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Henry Clifford began his 36-year career in the cable industry in 1856, but our paths didn’t cross until ten years later.

I’d seen Clifford’s name in all the histories of the Atlantic Cable, as the mechanical engineer who designed the cable laying machinery for all the early attempts on the Atlantic route, improving it with each new voyage. What I didn’t realise is that he was also a talented artist.

Then in January 2008 I saw an auction listing in England for:

Lot 97. H. CLIFFORD. A cable laying ship with paddle wheels, six masts and four funnels. Grisaille. Signed.

There was no illustration in the catalogue, but the artist's name sounded familiar, and a cable ship with paddle wheels could only be the Great

Eastern. I requested an image of the lot from the auction house and started my research.

A search of my own Atlantic Cable website reminded me that Clifford was the assistant to Charles Bright on the early Atlantic cable expeditions, and to Samuel Canning on the later ones. He worked on the machinery for the Agamemnon and Niagara in 1857 and 1858, and on the Great Eastern’s cable gear for all her cable expeditions.

The arrival by email of a photograph of Lot 97 confirmed that the ship was the Great Eastern, and I had already found from my research that Clifford had sailed on the ship on the Atlantic cable expeditions of 1865, 1866, and 1869.

Henry Clifford –Cable Engineer

by

Bill Burnspresentation to the AWA, August 2010 Bill Burnspresentation to the AWA, August 2010

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I left a bid on the painting, and continued my research. At the National Maritime Museum's website, I found several oil paintings by Henry Clifford, including one titled "The Cable Ship,", which carried an engraved plate bearing the inscription:

The "Great Eastern" Laying theFirst Successful Atlantic Cablein 1866 Painted by Henry Clifford. The Second Engineer.

Checking the NMM on-line catalogue, I found that the museum has three further oil paintings by Clifford, and also a number of watercolours and

sketches, which would need further investigation.

From art reference books I found that Henry Clifford was a listed artist and had exhibited his work in London, and that his son Henry Charles was also a painter. It was his son who had given Henry’s paintings to the Maritime Museum in 1947.

The next project was to find more information on Henry Clifford's work on the Atlantic cable expeditions, and I searched my own library of cable histories.

In Willoughby Smith's book The Rise and Extension of Submarine Telegraphy I found a composite sketch by Henry O'Neil of the various personalities on board Great Eastern in 1865, first published in the shipboard newspaper.

One of O'Neil's sketches is of H. Clifford, and looking it at it again for the first time in many years, I made a connection with an unidentified photograph published in another book in my collection: 1865's The Atlantic Telegraph: Its History, from the Commencement of the Undertaking in 1854, to the Return of the "Great Eastern" in 1865.

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This book has four uncaptioned photographs. I had previously identified three of them as Cyrus Field, William Thomson and Samuel Canning, and by comparison with O'Neil's sketch it was immediately evident that the fourth photograph was of Henry Clifford.

Checking online birth, marriage, death and census records for England, I found that Clifford was born in the seaport of Hull, in the northeast of England, in 1821, and that in 1841 he was living in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he was an engineering apprentice. So how did an apprentice from the North of England end up in London working on the biggest project of the 19th century? This was not yet clear.

In a biography of Sir Charles Bright, I found a reference that Henry Clifford was a cousin of Bright’s wife, and that her family had a connection to Hull. So perhaps Clifford came to London through his family connections – Charles Bright was one of the leading figures in the early cable industry.

For the moment, I had exhausted the online resources. By now the painting had come to auction, and I was the successful bidder, although I didn’t yet have possession. Checking eBay, as I frequently do for cable-related material, I found a listing for a watercolour by H. Clifford, title only “Marabut”.

There was no obvious cable connection, but the artwork was signed H. Clifford and dated September 21st, 1861. With the help of a Spanish photographer, whose work I found on a geo-photography site, I was able to locate the scene as being on the coast of Morocco in the Straits of Gibraltar – and I knew from one of my books that Clifford had been on a cable expedition in the Mediterranean at that exact date.

I bought this painting – and two others of similar scenes from the same seller.

So what was a mechanical engineer doing making paintings of scenery and ships while at sea laying cables? The answer to this question had to wait for a few weeks.

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In preparation for a trip to England in March 2008, I did some further online searches, and in the files of a local London newspaper I found a report on an exhibition which had been held in 2002 at St Nicholas Church in Chiswick, a London suburb.

The cable connection was that Sir Charles Bright was buried there, and the location of his grave had been recently re-discovered in the overgrowth at the instigation of Bright’s great-great-grandson. But the interesting part was a comment from one of the members of the church’s archive group, Liz Crocker, that:

“Her late friend, Elizabeth Clifford, was the granddaughter of Henry Clifford, who had been on the ship which laid the first Atlantic cable and was a cousin of Sir Charles.

"Elizabeth was proud of her relics of the historic achievement - a piece of the original cable set in gold and a slice of a very thin cable made into a pendant. Her aunt also had an impressive model of the boat."

Here was a direct link to one of Henry Clifford's descendants, even though Elizabeth Clifford was reported as deceased. I could find no email address for the church, but a further search produced a street address for Liz Crocker, and I wrote her a letter

requesting more information and giving her my email address and UK contact information.

Sadly, it turned out that Mrs Crocker had died recently, but her husband had forwarded my letter to Elizabeth Clifford’s daughter, Jacy Wall – Henry Clifford’s great-granddaughter! Jacy emailed me just as we were leaving for England, and gave me some most interesting and useful information.

While she herself had only a few items from Henry Clifford, she told me that her late uncle Henry Dalton "Tony" Clifford (Henry Clifford's grandson) had written an unpublished history, based on the family archive of letters, documents, and artifacts in his possession. Upon his death in 1991 this material had gone to the National Maritime Museum and to the Maritime Museum in Hull, the city where Henry Clifford was born.

I immediately emailed the Hull Museum, and received a very helpful reply from the curator. As Hull is an easy day trip from my family home of Manchester, I arranged to visit the museum with my wife while we were in England.

We arrived in Hull on a rainy spring day and were welcomed by the curator, who had already retrieved the Henry

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Clifford material from the archives for us.

It was immediately obvious that this was a valuable resource. Tony Clifford's family history typescript was over 200 pages; in addition there was a family album with portraits of Henry Clifford and his family, and two of Clifford's engineering notebooks: one from 1858 when he was working on the paying-out machinery for the forthcoming Atlantic cable expedition, the other from 1859/1860. The family history was extensive, and included transcripts of Henry's letters to his parents from an early age on.

The curator very kindly made a full copy of the family history for me, and allowed me to photograph the album and other documents. When I had time to read the history, it had everything a researcher could want. Meanwhile, shortly after our visit to Hull, by an amazing coincidence another eBay search found a 19th century seal, used to emboss sealing wax on documents and letters, engraved H. CLIFFORD, ENGINEER, HULL.

Clifford’s family had long been associated with shipbuilding in Hull, and despite Henry’s early ambition to become an artist, his father had sent him to Aberdeen as an engineering apprentice, as I had found from the census records. On his return to Hull in 1844 he entered into a partnership with two other men, but the financial difficulties of one of the other partners soon led to the dissolution of the partnership. After that, Clifford ran the Cyclops Foundry for a short time, and this trade card was in the Hull museum’s archives.

This business also proved unsuccessful, and Clifford was at a

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loose end. In the early 1850s he moved to London, where he tried a number of ventures, and in 1856 he reconnected with Charles Bright, who he had met at family occasions over the years. Bright was rounding up all sorts of trades for the upcoming unprecedented attempt to lay the Atlantic cable – a 2000 mile run, which at the time it was proposed was twenty times longer than any cable yet laid.

In Bright’s biography, Clifford is described as “a mechanical engineer of considerable experience”, and getting the paying-out machinery to work reliably and safely would occupy him for many years. An early book on the preparations for laying the Atlantic cable, published by the Atlantic

Telegraph Company in July 1857, notes:

The actual manufacture of the paying-out machinery, arranged by Mr Bright, has been carried on under the superintendence of Mr Henry Clifford, whose experience and talent in mechanical engineering has proved of great service to the Company.

As we know, the 1857 cable expedition proved unsuccessful, and the 1858 cable, after working somewhat indifferently for a few weeks, eventually failed altogether. But while on these voyages, Henry (who had never abandoned his artistic leanings) was

busy drawing when he wasn’t laying cable. A number of his sketches of the dramatic incidents of the voyages were published in the Illustrated

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London News to go with stories of the cable laying, and Clifford also made finished paintings from some of them.

After the failure of the 1858 cable, Clifford joined the staff of Glass, Elliot and Company. Here he was responsible for cable laying, took out two patents on improvements in paying-out machinery, and sailed on a number of expeditions.

As I’ve already mentioned, he continued painting and drawing while on cable expeditions – this may seem a strange pursuit, but for the senior cable staff on board ship, the voyage would consist of periods of frantic activity interspersed with days when the routine of cable laying almost took care of itself. It would have been in these quiet periods that Henry returned to painting.

In 1864 Glass, Elliot merged with the Gutta Percha Company to form the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company Ltd. (Telcon).

This merger formed a company whose main purpose was to make an attempt to lay the Atlantic cable in 1865 using the Great Eastern.

Clifford was largely responsible for the design of the paying-out machinery for the Great Eastern, which was being converted from a passenger ship for the cable expedition. This drawing of Clifford’s machinery by Robert Dudley, the official artist for the 1865 expedition, was published in William Russell’s book about the voyage.

Clifford again sailed with the Atlantic expeditions of 1865 and 1866, making further improvements in the machinery for the 1866 voyage. This was the year in which the Atlantic cable was finally a success, thanks to the Great Eastern, and the ship was also one of Clifford’s favorite subjects for his paintings.

This brings us back to where we came in, with the painting of the Great Eastern that I bought at auction, which Clifford made in 1866. It also

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brings us once more to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, on the Thames in London, just a short distance from the site of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company Ltd., where Clifford became Chief Engineer after the Atlantic cable success.

As I mentioned, the museum has four oil paintings by Clifford, and a number of watercolours. While in London, I arranged to view them.

This is not a simple as you might think. Like most museums, the NMM has almost all of its material in storage, with only a small amount on display at any time, and to view the Clifford paintings I had to visit one of their offsite storage facilities. I asked for the location, and they told me that it couldn’t be revealed until I signed “the papers”. In these I had to agree that I would not publish the material without permission, and that while I could take photographs for reference, these must not reveal the actual location of any item within the building.

Considering that there must be millions of pounds worth of material in storage this didn’t seem too unreasonable, but I was still a little surprised to then be told to “find the tile warehouse about a mile from the museum, walk down the side of the

building, and knock at the unmarked door”. I walked right past it, and when I turned around I saw a security guard beckoning to me. He introduced me to the curator, and she took me into the paintings storage area, where she had already pulled out the racks holding Clifford’s paintings so that I could examine and photograph them.

I was also able to view and photograph more of Clifford’s watercolours, all in the style of the ones I had found on eBay, and showing scenes around Ireland and elsewhere during cable voyages.

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This led to a further mystery, though. If Clifford’s descendants had given all his material to the maritime museums in Hull and London, where had my paintings and Clifford’s engineering seal come from?

Later in 2008, I was able to visit Jacy Wall, Henry Clifford’s great-granddaughter in Devon, where she is a well-regarded textile and fine artist – the talent obviously running in the family, as her great-uncle was an artist, and her uncle (the family historian) an architect. Jacy has some material which came down in the family, including two more Great Eastern paintings, which she kindly allowed me to photograph, and she explained what had happened.

Jacy was at this time the last surviving descendant of Henry Clifford. Her uncle Tony, the family historian, had no children, and many years before, he had to decide what would happen to his archives when he died. The National Maritime Museum already had the oil paintings, which Tony’s

father had given them in 1947, but there were many documents, photographs, letters, watercolours, and artifacts. The only family member who could have taken everything was Jacy herself, and she did not feel able to accept the responsibility.

So Tony made what he thought would be a good arrangement to donate the material to the Hull Maritime Museum, particularly with the Clifford family’s long history in that part of the country.

But sadly, the museum let the matter slide and did not make a definite commitment. Subsequently, Tony gave much of the cable-related material to the National Maritime Museum, including Henry’s diaries, employment contracts, letters from every famous name in the cable business, and many documents and souvenirs from his voyages on the Great Eastern. When Tony died, the Hull museum somewhat belatedly took much of the family material, but many items were left over and were disposed of at auction by Tony Clifford’s second wife in the 1980s.

It is this material which now trickles back on to the market occasionally, and which I am attempting to round up.

Tony Clifford’s family history ends in the 1870s, but the remaining years of Henry Clifford’s life in the cable industry can be documented from his surviving documents and letters. The company of which he was chief engineer, the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company Ltd., was one of the most successful of the early cable businesses, and continued making and laying cable into the 1950s. Parts of the company remain in business today under other names.

Clifford worked at Telcon until his retirement in 1892 at the age of 71. He continued to live in London, not far from the cable works, until his death in 1905 at the age of 83. His estate was probated at a little over £89,000, about $8 million at today’s values, a

very respectable sum for an artist turned engineer. He continued to paint, and to take photographs, for most of his life.

Henry Clifford - Cable Engineer and Artist1821-1905

(Weston continued from p 28)

It also brought Budrys a bonus rate from Campbell.

“The If story by Frank Riley was also illustrated by Freas. Here Budrys becomes a bit ambiguous: ‘The dimensions of the resulting brouhaha can be imagined and are best not recounted in detail. I have to wonder what Riley felt, since we never had any contact then or at any other time, but I was in no doubt on the feelings of anyone else involved. Campbell spent most of his discussion time in nearly helpless laughter, but Quinn did not.’

“He then adds that the episode ‘never had a clear resolution and no lasting animosities anyone could put a finger on’ and Quinn continued to buy stories from Budrys. (Though why there would be any question of Quinn's being angry at Budrys for selling a rejected story to another market is puzzling.)”

I (PW) had the last word:“Well done, Dave. I have that book somewhere but never thought of looking in it. So all is revealed – except why Quinn should have rejected a perfectly good story by Algis Budrys in favour of a rubbish one by someone else. Shows how much he knew about editing!”

Great Science Fiction EditorsNumber 5 in a Series

John W. Campbell, Jr.• Editor of Astounding 1937 to 1971

• Editor of Unknown 1939 to 1943

• Born June 8,1910; Died July 11, 1971

• Arguably the most important figure in the development of modern science fiction since Gernsback began publishing magazines devoted to the genre.

• "the most powerful force in science fiction ever, and for the first ten years of his editorship he dominated the field completely." -- Isaac Asimov

• Summer of 1939 saw Campbell acquiring and publishing first stories by

• Van Vogt Black Destroyer July• Heinlein Life-Line August• Sturgeon Ether Breather September

• Campbell’s requirements for both scientific rigor and believable characters in his writers were somewhat undermined by his own acceptance of pseudo science and rejection of good science.

• Championed Dianetics• Believed in the Dean Drive• Demanded PSI based stories• Rejected link between smoking and

lung cancer

• Guest of Honor at three Worldcons:• Philcon (1947)• SFCon (1954)• LonCon (1957)

• Astounding was indisputably the prestige SF magazine throughout the 1940s. The rise of alternatives such as F&SF and Galaxy led to a diminishment of Campbell’s influence to which his own extreme conservatism and acerbic views contributed.