CHECKPOINT is published by Darroll Pardoe, 24 Othello Close, Hartford, Huntingdon PE18 7SU, England. Available for news or trades, or for the new sub rates detailed below. No foreign cheques please. Free sample on request. Our telephone number is 0480-56072. This issue is dated March 12th 1975. Heading in Tintoretto. Amduscias 94.
POSTAL RATES UP YET AGAIN on March 17th, which means I shall have to increase the subscription rates to CHECKPOINT. The PO have excelled themselves this time, with increases averaging 50% both in inland and overseas rates. So the new rates are: Britain, 12 for £1.00; Belgium, 12/90F; France, 12/9F; North America (airmail), 12/$3.00; Australia (airmail), 10/$2.00.
FANTASYCON was the name the British Fantasy Society gave to its one-day meeting held at the Imperial Centre Hotel, Birmingham (scene of many a Novacon) on Saturday February 22nd. The meeting may fairly be said to have been a success. Attendance was more than fifty people. The morning was devoted to the BFS Annual Meeting and the election of officers for the next year. After a break for lunch Richard Davis, Hugh Lamb and David Sutton discussed the merits of original versus reprint horror anthologies. This was followed by a panel on fantasy art, involving Jim Pitts, Steve Jones and George Locke. Ramsey Campbell gave an excellent talk on H.P.Lovecraft, and Keith Walker a rather confused one on fantasy and comic fanzines. The final item was a panel with John Martin, Adrian Cole and Dave McFerran, on sword and sorcery stories. The main fault of the day was that five items were crammed into the afternoon with only five minute breaks between them. This combined with the hard chairs in the room to cause some discomfort. I understand that five items were scheduled with the hope that one of them would be cancelled when the participants failed to turn up. Unfortunately, everyone did come!
I was told that the BFS intends that next year the meeting will be a whole weekend. This will certainly simplify the planning, in that the programme won't have to be crammed into one afternoon. It should allow for more socialising, too. The meeting shows that the BFS can organise its own fantasy meetings, and have a good turnout for them, without having to rely on the established SF conventions for an audience. Membership in the BFS is still rising, and is not far short of three hundred at present.
THE TOLKIEN SOCIETY also held its annual meeting on February 22nd, so we were unable to attend. Hartley Patterson writes that it was the most successful so far, with over forty attendees, and good food at the dinner. The speeches were hobbit style (short and not too serious). Membership of the TS is currently about 220.
INNMOOTS Hartley also mentioned that the London Innmoots are now monthly. Information from Hartley at phone number 01-946-4116, or from Vera Chapman at 01-387-2588.
THE BOAKVENTION Gray Boak has finalised arrangements for his proposed faan convention. The date is February 6th to 8th 1976, and the place a hotel in Blackpool. The idea is to have a small convention with no programme; the weekend will be devoted entirely to socialising amongst the attendees. To register, send £1.00 to Gray (2 Cecil Court, Cecil Street, Lytham, Lytham St Annes, Lancs. FY8 5NN). This idea of Gray's is an excellent one, and deserves the support of the real fans of Britain, especially as the Eastercon is beginning to suffer from elephantiasis. I visualise it as a small English version of Midwestcon.
SEACON 75 Closer at hand (only two weeks away) is this year's Easter frolic. In case anyone doesn't know yet, it's at the De Vere Hotel, Coventry, from March 28th to 31st 1975. Harry Harrison is Guest of Honour. Registration is £2.50 to 19 Ranmoor Gardens, Harrow, Middlesex HA1 1UQ. At present the programme looks disturbingly sercon, but this could change by the time Easter rolls around, I suppose.
MONTREAL IN 77 Andy Porter writes that the 1977 bid for the Worldcon at Montreal is cancelled, because of a number of problems including finance and travelling difficulties. I'm sorry to see Montreal pull out, they seemed to have a number of points in their favour. Bids left in the running include; Orlando (Fl.), Hew York, Washington DC, and Philadelphia.
While on the subject of Worldcons, may I commend to your attention Linda Bushyager's discussion on the size of Worldcons and what to do about it, which appeared recently in KARASS. This is a problem which concerns all of fandom, and also has a direct relevance to Britain in that our Eastercons are tending to do the same thing, on a smaller scale. MidAmericon (Kansas City, 1976) is discouraging walk-in attendance by charging $50.00 registration fee at the door!
WARK Rosemary asks me to say that some traders may not have received copies of Wark 2, because some copies were defective and the number of good ones was not enough to go around. Wark will henceforth, for financial reasons, be four-monthly instead of three-monthly. The next issue is due in May.
SF MONTHLY It's reported in Leigh Edmonds' FANEW SLETTER that NEL are putting out an Australian edition of this magazine for Aussiecon.
DUFF We're supporting Johnny Berry as DUFF candidate to go to the Aussiecon. Vote for him (or if you feel so inclined, for Jan Finder or Rusty Hevelin) but vote. The deadline is May 31st.
WARGAMES John Mansfield and Hartley Patterson are running a Games Convention in London on August 9th-10th. "Just to show Games people what real conventions are like", Hartley says.
I'm trying a different format this time: it's hard to devise a completely satisfactory way of presenting 'fanzines received' without being repetitive or descending to trivia.
Soon after the last CP was sent out, I received a copy of HITCH-HIKE 22 from Johnny Berry (1749 18th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009), one of the best fmz around at present. "Published for a small circle of friends, but you can join that circle by being an interesting person and reciprocating in some way. In lieu of anything else, 25¢ will do it" is how John describes the availability, and that gives you some idea what kind of a fanzine it is, too.
Two issues of KARASS have come in (Linda Bushyager, 1614 Evans Avenue, Prospect Park, PA 19076) and I can recommend this cross between a newszine and a personalzine for keeping up on US fandom with. Issue 11 goes into some detail on the merits of the 1977 Worldcon bids (Linda's supporting Orlando). (4 for $1.00, usual, 1:1 trades).
An unusual fanzine came our way: a Norwegian one. It 's DRIFTGLASS 1 (Jostein Saakvitne, Ekornrudv 27b, N 1410 Kolbotn, Norway. For the usual, I suppose). Small, and not much attention to layout, but quite informative about Norwegian fandom. It's worth writing to Jostein, even if only to foster UK-Norway fan contacts.
Not many British fanzines have appeared since the last CP. There was MAYA 7, the first issue from Rob Jackson (21 Lyndhurst Road, Benton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE12 9NT) and now an A5 offset magazine. Notable for a very gloomy editorial by Rob on the lethargic state of British fandom (but hasn't it always been?) and for a very humorous Tynecon report by Bob Shaw. There was also ZIMRI 7 from Lisa Conesa (54 Manley Road, Whalley Range, Manchester M16 8HP) which has very beautiful layout and artwork, and is also partly offset. It's good to see this issue of Z: it disproves the 'Zimri is dead' rumour that somehow got started last year. Rather sercon in content, and including some poetry, but a nice fmz nevertheless.
RANDOM 5 (Mike Gorra, 199 Great Neck Road, Waterford, CT 06385) (usual, old fmz, whim of the editor) bills itself as the "Aardvark's Adventure Monthly" and is a very readable faanzine, with columns by Bob Tucker, Johnny Berry and Terry Carr (the last being reprints from his 'Fandom Harvest' column in "Cry" which I remember with fondness from my days as a neofan). Incidentally, RANDOM and other fmz sent as third class surface mail seem to have crossed the Atlantic in six weeks or less lately, an amazing feat (at one time last year it was taking up to four months).
Leigh Edmonds' Aussie newszine FANEW SLETTER (22,23 on hand) is a must for keeping up with doings Down Under (PO Box 74, Balaclava, Vic. 3183, Australia: 10¢ an issue). Issue 23 includes as a supplement a summary of fanac in Australia during 1974, listing fanzines, conventions and so on.
Various newszines and clubzines have arrived in the last three weeks: LOCUS 169 (the best source of SF, as opposed to fan, news: Charlie and Dena Brown, Box 3938, San Francisco, CA 94119) (15/$6.00); DE PROFUNDIS 75 (the newsletter of the LASFS, 11360 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, CA 91604) contains LA news and is $3.00 a year; SELDON'S PLAN 36 is the clubzine of the Wayne Third Foundation (Box 102 SCB, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202), sercon and 75¢ or usual; SON OF THE WSFA JOURNAL 167/168 (Don Miller, 12315 Judson Road, Wheaton, MD 20906) is frequent and full of reviews of all kinds (12/£1 from Eric Bentcliffe, I think); AMON HEN 14 is the Tolkien Society bulletin (membership £1.50 from Janet Gibbs, 49 Beresford Road, London N.5) – it has some interesting news but lousy layout.
The DISCON programme book finally made its way to England. It continues the tradition of fine-looking convention books, with full colour covers by Harry Roland. An anthology of Roger Zelazny poems came with it. A limited edition of 1000 copies, it said: ours were nos. 1040 and 1041.
I only have room to list the remaining fanzines here. TABEBUIAN 17 (Mardee and Dave Jenrette, Box 330374, Miami, FL 33133 (Alan Dodd, 77 Stanstead Road, Hoddesdon, Herts. is UK agent); DEGLER 250 (Andy Porter, P0 Box 4175, New York, NY 10017) ('Fanoclasts and a few others'); DON-O-SAUR 39 (Don Thompson, 7498 Canosa Court, Westminster, CO 80030) (25¢ or usual); BREAKTHROUGH 5 (Henry Bitman, Box 968, Azusa, CA 91702) (usual, or 50¢). CHIMAERAN REVIEW 1 (Don Ayres, Dept. of Zoology, SIU, Carbondale, IL 62901) (usual or 60¢); WORDWORKS (not really a fanzine; printed and includes artwork by Dave Britton. £1.40/yr from Michael Butterworth, 10 Charter Rd., Altrincham, Cheshire). ASCELLA 2 (Terry Floyd, 506 Holman Lane, Canyon, TX 79015) (35¢ or usual). ARRAKIS 1 (Jim Kennedy, 1859 East Fairfield, Mesa, Arizona 85203) (45¢ or usual; clubzine). NO 16 (Ruth Berman, 5620 Edgewater Bvd., Minneapolis, MN 55417) usual or 3/$1.00). GODLESS 9 (Bruce Arthurs, now at 2401 West Southern Avenue, B-136, Tempe, AZ 85282) (75¢ or usual) – red ink, no less! THE WSFA JOURNAL 84 (Don Miller, address above) (subs in conjunction with SON OF... or for us UK types who might want only TWJ itself, 4/$6.00 and you get a lot of reading for your money.) ZYMURWORM 21h (Dick Patten, 2908 El Corto SW, Albuquerque, NM 87105) (35¢ or usual; lovely Harry Morris cover). GANNETSCRAPBOOK 2 (Harry Bell, 9 Lincoln Street, Low Fell, Gateshead, NE8 4EE) (usual) – a fanzine I never thought to see a second issue of. DIEHARD 6 (Tony Cvetko, 29415 Parkwood Drive, Wickliffe, OH 44092) (60¢ or usual). THE REVIEW 2 (Craig Hill, 220 Standish, Apt.1, Redwood, CA 94063) (60¢) very grey xerox. BOOK LIST 4 from Bruce Robbins, PO Box 396, Station B, Montreal H3B 3J7, Canada. INSTANT MESSAGE 164 (NESFA, Box G, MIT Branch P0, Cambridge, MA 02139) (membership is $5.00 a year).
That's 30 fanzines in less than three weeks. It's getting kind of hard to keep up, but I love it. Tom Collins sent us a 1975 Tolkien calendar with the Tim Kirk illustrations, and it's beautiful. Thank you, Tom. Dr. Who started a new Dalek story on TV last Saturday. Amazing bow popular the Daleks are. Elizabeth Sladen (from Dr Who) was interviewed on a Terry Wogan programme on BBC radio on Sunday. And we saw a marvellous film in Cambridge, a Spanish production called 'Spirit of the Beehive'. Next CP will probably be out just after Easter, with a Seacon report.