Checkpoint 55

Published by Darroll Pardoe, 24 Othello Close, Hartford, Huntingdon PE18 7SU, England. Available for news or trades, or 10/60p (France 10/6F; Belgium 10/60F; North America airmail 5/$1.00; Australia airmail 8/$1.00) Free sample on request. October 19th 1974.


NOVACON 4 will be held on October 25th to 27th at the Imperial Centre Hotel, Birmingham. Guest of Honour is Ken Slater; chairman is Jack Cohen. Novacon is normally a relaxed sort of convention, quite different from the Eastercons; see you there?

AUTHOR NEWS James Blish is going into hospital soon for a major operation. John Brunner came back from Discon with high blood pressure and has gone into hospital for tests. John Kippax (Dan Morgan's writing partner) was killed recently in a motor accident. Paul Tabori had a heart attack and is still on the danger list. Charles Eric Maine had a car crash last year and was seriously injured, but has since recovered.

(Chris Priest, Ron Holmes via Rob Jackson)

TUCKER FUND TOPS TARGET On 8th October the Fund stood at $1867.78, which exceeds its second target and ensures that Bob Tucker will be able to travel to the Aussiecon in 1975. The Fund will remain open until late November, but they suggest that further donations be sent to TAFF or DUFF, which both have campaigns coming up shortly.

(Jackie Franke)

VISITING FANS DEPT Gray Boak writes "A year ago I heard from Dov Lerer, a SF reader in the Israeli army who had seen CYNIC mentioned in AMAZING, and wanted to find out more about fandom and fanzines. (Recently) I received a letter from him. He is now staying in London, and wants to know more about fandom in the UK. I sent him a few addresses, and told him about the conventions; the address I have for him is: Poste Restante, Broadwick St Post Office, London W.1." I'm sure Dov would appreciate letters and fmz from British fans. How about it, folks?

SF TEACHING INFO Will Norris (1073 Shave Rd, Schenectady, NY 12303, USA) is in charge of the Teaching SF Bureau of the N3F, and would like to hear from anyone involved with teaching SF courses.

('Sirat')

CHANGE OF ADDRESS
Bill Sutton and Jane Breiding: 424 Central Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117, USA.
Roger Sween, 319 Elm Street, Kalamazoo, MI 49007, USA.

CONVENTIONS Current Worldcon bids are as follows:1977 (for voting at Aussiecon): Montreal; New York City; Orlando, Florida. 1978 (for voting at Kansas City): Los Angeles; San Francisco. 1979 (for voting in 1977): United Kingdom. 1980 (for voting in 1978): Boston; Grenoble. (John Millard)

MONTREAL 1977 Andy Porter sends details of this bid. The hotel is the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal. They expect attendance of 6000-9000 and have reserved space at the Place Bonaventure Exhibition halls close to the hotel (60,000 sq ft, seating 6000). The hotel itself has 1200 rooms. Pre-supporting memberships are 40p, which can be sent direct to Andy Porter at Box 4175, New York, NY 10017, USA in British currency.

LOS ANGELES 1978 Milton Stevens writes with some information on the LA bid. The committee is chaired by Len and June Moffatt; the committee includes Craig Miller, Bruce Pelz and Milton Stevens. The venue lined up is the Marriott Hotel.

UK 1979 The committee for this bid is Malcolm Edwards, Peter Roberts and Peter Weston. Pre-supporting membership is 40p to Malcolm (19 Ranmoor Gardens, Harrow, Middlesex HA1 1UQ, England). Their first progress report came out at the end of August. I don't think they've got to the stage of choosing a hotel yet.

GANNET NEWS Ian Williams' comments about Thom Penman's and Cath Gardner's forthcoming engagement (published in CP 53) were, he now realises, personal ones, largely brought on by a sense of surprise. He sends his apologies to those concerned and wishes Thom and Cath all the best. Gannetfandom is no longer amused and dubious, if it ever was. (To which may be added the apologies of your editor to anyone who may have felt offended).

Rob Jackson sent a xerox copy of a writeup in the 'Evening Chronicle' of Newcastle-upon-Tyne about the forthcoming North-East SF Group meetings. The paper was definitely favourable towards them, and should be useful publicity. There are apparently both formal and informal meetings planned: the first formal one in the Bridge Hotel at 7:30 on November 8th, and the second informal one in the 'Post Office' on November 15th.

NEBULA AWARDS Theodore Cogswell (in SFWA Forum) has proposed the alteration of the date of the Nebula Awards Banquet to the Labor Day weekend, to coincide with the Worldcon. Andy Porter writes to tell me of this, and suggests that anyone who wants to comment on the subject write to Theodore Cogswell, SFWA Forum, Box 227, Chinchilla, PA 18410, USA.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DEPT Keith Walker says that his projected index of British fanzines is making progress, and he hopes to have the main title index out by Christmas.

WORLDCON BIDS If anyone associated with bids I haven't given details of above would like to send me information on them, I'll gladly make space in CP for them.

FANZINES RECEIVED

ASH-WING 14 (Frank Denton, 14654 8th Avenue SW, Seattle, WA 95166, USA) (usual or $1.00) A fine genzine, with an excellent cover owl. Ross Bagby writes a Moorcock send-up; Douglas Barbour discourses on fanspeak. (7.10.74)

NOTES FROM THE CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT 5,6,7 (Denis Quane, Box CC, East Texas Station, Commerce, TX 75428, USA) (usual or 30¢) This fanzine has a serious-constructive bias. In 5 a review of 'The Legend of Hillbilly John'; in 7 a good discussion of invisibility by Donn Brazier. (7.10.74)

INSTANT MESSAGE 157 (NESFA, Box G, MIT Branch PO, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA) ($5.00/yr) Regular NESFA newszine. This time they explain their mailing label symbols, but fail to mention what the :0 on mine means. (8.10.74)

THE FRACTURED MONGOOSE 5 (Mike Kring, PSC 1, Box 3147, Kirtland AFB East, NM 87115, USA) (usual, no money) Personalzine, chatter on this and that; also an atrocious Feghoot. (11.10.74)

MIDDLE EARTHWORM 24 (Archie Mercer, 21 Trenethick Parc, Helston, Cornwall TR13 8LH) (participation) Tolkien letter-zine, which has some of the characteristics of a small APA. (11.10.74)

THE SIRAT 5 (Will Norris, 1073 Shave Road, Schenectady, NY 12303, USA) (usual) Small, includes a write-up on 'The Free Humanity Society' (dedicated 'to the most righteous cause of all: opposition!') (12.10.74)

THE DAILY DISCARD 1-4 This was the daily newsletter of DISCON. John Millard sent them to me: thanks, John. (14.10.74)

LOCUS 165 (Charlie and Dena Brown, Box 3938, San Francisco, CA 94119, USA) (18/$12.00) Book and other SF news, including a lengthy column on the New York publishing scene. (14.10.74)

MAYA 6 (This is Ian Maule's last; 13 Weardale Avenue, Forest Hall, Newcastle-on-Tyne NE12 0HX. Next issue by Rob Jackson, 21 Lyndhurst Rd, Benton, Newcastle-on-Tyne NE12 9NT) (usual). Well worth waiting for, and it was a long wait, as the creaking antiquity of the letter column shows. Beautifully mimeo'd faanzine. (14.10.74)

WARK 1 (Rosemary Pardoe, 24 Othello Close, Hartford, Huntingdon PE18 7SU) (usual or 20p). This is Rosemary's new fanzine about fanzines, with a bias towards fantasy fanzines but also including more general ones. (15.10.74)

+++ +++ +++

DISCON Several people have written in to defend andy offutt's toastmastering. John Millard says "I would like to offer your readers another point of view... some members of the audience were rather rude and this did not help matters. Contrary to Marsha's suggestion that he be not used in the future, Andy has already been given a very important invitation. On the Monday night, the Cincinnati Fantasy Group (of which I am an honorary member) gave Andy an invitation to be Guest of Honor at the Midwestcon at the end of June 1975. In the long history of Midwestcons (the first con was held in Bellefontaine, Ohio in 1950) there has never been a Guest of Honor. So this is the first. I am sure that Andy will redeem himself, as I know he was very much upset at the reaction to his Toastmastership."

The first Midwestcon was actually held in Beatley's Hotel at Russell's Point, Ohio (on Indian Lake) and only moved to Bellefontaine around 1954 (and later to Cincinnati, of course). Having set the record straight on this point, I can pass on to some comments from Jackie Franke:

"Her (Marsha's) comments sound remarkably like a few others I heard, and are equally mystifying. Transcripts of the remarks andy made will show many instances where he was interrupted by laughter, or perhaps everyone else was simply feeling malicious that night? Andy ribbed his friends, not insulted them, and he did so in the same vein virtually every toastmaster from Asimov on has followed. I'm quite certain he had nothing to do with the breakdown of the air conditioners (or does Marsha suspect masochistically inspired sabotage? He was just as uncomfortable as everyone else; commented on it, and sympathised with the audience as well). He did go on a bit long, but part of that was due to harassment from Harlan Ellison. I've yet to hear a toastmaster who couldn't stand some judicious editing. Andy was nervous, awed and flattered to be where he was, with the people he was. He was heckled, and bore up wondrously well (I should also add that Harlan did express apologies later). Chambanacon (at Champaign/Urbana, Illinois) this November has him as their toastmaster/MC. Is Marsha going to contact a 'hit' man? Andy wasn't the best, but he sure as hell wasn't the worst toastmaster the Worldcon has had. But he definitely was one of the warmest and most human."

John Millard also commented on the layout of the hotel "Perhaps to a mundane type the floor plan might be complicated, but surely not to a SF type? I thought it was very logically coded, and I didn't have any trouble. Perhaps some of your readers may not know that in the Washington DC area there is a building height restriction. No building can be as high as the Washington Monument. Therefore, for the hotel to have adequate space it must spread out or go underground. This hotel has done both to a certain degree."

MIDAMERICON The 34th Worldcon, will be held in the Hotel Muehlbach, Kansas City, on September 1st-6th, 1976. The chairman is Ken Keller, committee Jim Loehr, India Boone and Sarah Sue Wilde. Membership is $3.00 supporting, $5.00 attending (until December 31st 1974) to P0 Box 221, Kansas City, MO 64141, USA. The GOH will be ROBERT A. HEINLEIN; Fan GOH GEORGE BARR. The toastmaster will be Bob Tucker.

OMPA is down to nine members, and there has been talk of turning it into a combozine-type APA.