Checkpoint 62

CHECKPOINT is published by Darroll Pardoe, 24 Othello Close, Hartford, Huntingdon PE18 7SU, England. Available for trades or news, or for £1.00 for 12 (Belgium 12/90F; France 12/9F; North America airmail 12/ $3.00; Australia airmail 10/ $2.00; no foreign cheques, please). Free sample on request. Our phone number is 0480-56072. This issue dated April 25th 1975. Heading in Bottleneck. Amduscias 99.


BSFA SETS AGM DATE The Annual General Meeting of the British Science Fiction Association will be held on Friday June 27th 1975 at 7:30 pm, at the 'One Tun' in Saffron Hill, London E.C., 'in an upstairs room'. I understand that all persons who were paid-up members for 1974 will have their memberships carried forward to 1975 and will be able to attend and vote at this meeting. My own view, though, is that it's not worth bothering any more, and the sooner the BSFA is buried the better.

THE SF SOCIETY OF BRITAIN I've had two people write about this organization, though the information differs a bit. Dave Kyle said "The SF Society of Britain is a working name used by a few SF types who are working on a number of projects here in Britain. This Society is part of a larger group of individuals and organisations or clubs which is known as SF International. Here in Britain we have the SF and Fantasy Film Society of Britain (Stan Nuttall, 3 Melwood Drive, West Derby, Liverpool); the SF & Fantasy Film Festival (Harry Nadler, 80 Broughton Road, Salford, Manchester M6 6RN); the SF Digest (Keith Freeman, 128 Fairford Road, Tilehurst, Reading) and the Ted Carnell Society (Dave Kyle, 'Two Rivers', Hamm Court, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 8YB)". Richard McMahon, however, said "The SFS is a country-wide SF Club aimed at teenagers up to the 15-16 age group. It was formed after the mention on the news page of SF Monthly 1:10. It is a free society with county groups and soon (hopefully) a clubzine called 'SF Reflections"' Richard says that anyone interested should contact him (287, South Lane, New Malden, Surrey KT3 5RR).

Could there be two SF Society organizations? 'SF International' sounds too much like empire-building for my fanarchical tastes.

HUGO NOMINATIONS Carey Handfield sent the complete list, which is too long to reproduce here. The fanzine nominations are: Alien Critic, Locus, Algol, Outworlds, SF Commentary and Starling. The final ballot, will be sent out with the 4th Progress Report in May.

THE SF DISCUSSION GROUP for the Woking/Guildford Area got off to a good start (writes Sonya Porter) with ten people at the first meeting. They have decided to hold future meetings at the Robin Hood, in Robin Hood Road, Knaphill, on the first Wednesday of the month, at 8 pm. (Sonya's phone number is Woking 66232).

THE CHELTENHAM SF GROUP meets on the third Thursday of the month, 7.30 pm in the 'Hurdles Bar' of the Star Hotel, Cheltenham. Contact Graham Poole, 23 Russet Road, Cheltenham GL51 7LN for information.

MANCON 5 is the 1976 British Easter Convention. The registration fees are 75p (supporting) and £2.00 (attending) rising to £2.50 on 1st July 1975. The fees should be sent to Brian Robinson, 9 Linwood Grove, Manchester M12 4QH. I understand that registrations are now approaching 200. The Guest of Honour is announced as Robert Silverberg.

THE SAD GROUP (no, I'm afraid it's not a revival of the Stourbridge & District SF Circle of happy memory, my first contact with fandom but long, long gone) meets on the second Monday of the month at the 'White Lion', Lower Underbank, Stockport. It's run by Paul Skelton, whose idea is to pull in new SF readers and (if they can stand the pace) introduce them to fandom via the MAD Group. (Thanks to Pete Presford for this item).

BENELUXCON 3 (otherwise known as SFANcon 6) will be held in Bruges, Belgium, on July 18th-21st. The programme will be held in the Concertgebouw (Concert Hall), St Jacobsstraat, which has full facilities for talks, exhibitions, films, and a bar. Attending membership is 200BF (or £2.50, payable to Vernon Brown, Pharmacy Dept., Univ. of Aston, Gosta Green, Birmingham B4 7ET). Accommodation will be provided in the Home Spermalie, Snaggaardstraat 11, which is a Hotel School with a good restaurant and bar. This is about 10 minutes walk from the Concert Hall. James White is Guest of Honour. The programme will be multilingual as usual, and there should be a good UK presence. See you there?

EUROCON 3 is to be held in Poznan, Poland, on 19th-22nd August 1976, probably in the 'chic' Mercury Hotel. Attending membership is $10, and the cost for staying in the hotel will be around $30, including food. Registration will be closed on 31st December 1975. The UK representative is Vernon Brown (address above).

SFIR 75, the 5th Italian SF Convention, will be held at Ferrara, in Italy, on June 13-15 1975. Attending membership is £13. The GoH is probably Bob Shaw. For information write to 'SF Hobbit Club, Via Boccaleone 26, 1-Ferrara, Italy'. Simon Joukes (who sent most of the info on European cons given here) writes 'if you're on holiday in that sunny area at that particular time, don't hesitate to attend; you'll see how charming these Italians are, even when they don't understand a single word of English! And the food and vino will be delicious...'

SFCD-CON is at Laichingen-near-Ulm, Germany, on August 8th-10th, 1975. The 20th convention of the SF Club Deutschland. Information may be obtained from Nikolaus Kolleth, D-79 Ulm 10, Ravensburger Strasse 29, Germany.

SF ON MICROFICHE is available from Starlight Research Ltd., 38B Compton Road, London N21 3NX. They also do material on postcards and tape cassettes. Write to them for information (George Hay and Mollie Gillan).

THE CHECKPOINT POLL for 1975 is still being run by Peter Roberts. A voting form is enclosed with this issue for British and European readers. When the results are in, Peter will publish a special issue of CHECKPOINT (to be sent to voters) with the usual summaries. So vote.

THE FANZINE SCENE

First in after the last CP was (surprisingly) PROFANITY 8 from Bruce Pelz (15931 Kalisher St, Granada Hills, CA 91344; usual or 25¢). I say surprisingly, because the last issue was in 1960! This is the way Bruce has chosen to get back into the swing of genzine publishing. It's mostly informal, chatty stuff, about his fanzine collection, his trip to Discon and LASFS happenings. Recommended.

Tim Marion (614 72nd Street, Newport News, VA 23605) sent another big bundle of his fanzines; this time it was THE GREEN GOMRATH 14-18, his fanzine for APANAGE. I am always envious of the apparently effortless way in which Tim manages to fill his fanzines with interesting things. I'm mentioning GG here, because Tim said I could, but he does say it's not generally available outside of APANAGE.

MOTA 9 is a fine faanzine from Terry Hughes (866 N Frederick St, Arlington, VA 22205; usual). I think I'll mention RANDOM 7 (Mike Gorra, 199 Great Neck Road, Waterford, CT 06385; substantial usual) here as well; they're both all a faanzine should be. David Piper surfaces in MOTA; he seems to have largely dropped out of British fanzines, and it's always a bit strange to find him in an American one.

EGG 9 is from Peter Roberts (6 Westbourne Park Villas, London W2; usual, not money) and particularly notable for Greg Pickersgill's writeup of how he and some other fans were refused admittance to a Trekkie con. There's also a reprint of an old Cosmic Circle publication, and some fanzine reviews by Eric Bentcliffe which show an odd lack of relation to the fanzine fandom I am familiar with.

A couple of new British fmz. PARKER'S PATCH 1 (Brian Parker, Flat 2, 11 Fairfield Road, Bradford 8, Yorks.; usual or 15p) and AFTER THE FLOOD 1 (David Griffin, 83 Maple Road, Horfield, Bristol BS7 8RF; 25p). Neither are likely to win a Hugo with their first issues, but both have a good point in their favour. PP is rather rattish, always a good thing for a fanzine. ATF is well provided with Swedish fanzine reviews; if David keeps it up he could be a bridge between UK and Swedish fandom, and that would be a Good Thing.

XENIUM 2.4 (Mike Glicksohn, 141 High Park Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M6P 2S3, Canada) is Mike's personalzine (but with outside contributors) but outside FAPA availability depends on his whim alone. This issue contains Andy Offutt's talk at PgHlange 1973 (repeated with alterations at Discon), and also an account of Mike's visit to the UK last summer (but surely, Mike, you mean Hyde Park and Syon Park?).

INFO 4 (R.A.J.Zielschot and J.C.Raasveld; Boerhaavelnan 88, Utrecht, Netherlands; FB200 or NF1 14 p.a.) is a well produced fanzine (in Dutch) with some superb colour pages of artwork by Helmut Wenske, and a photopage of SFANcon 5. I also learnt from this issue that in the early sixties there was a French comic 'Dan Dair' – complete with Mekon, naturally.

ARAZIA is a litho fanzine from Mark Montchalin, 5825 SE 17th Ave., Portland, OR 97202 (23/) which seems to arise from comics fandom origins but nevertheless is attempting the difficult task of a synthesis of different fields of interest: fantasy, movies, progressive music. This is one to watch, I think; it could turn out rather interesting.

THE E-STARIAN EXPLORER 2 (Wayne W.Martin, 4623 E Inyo, Apt. E, Fresno, CA 93702; 'various and sundry reasons') is pleasant reading, but could use more attention to layout. FORERUNNER 35 (Susan Clarke, 32 Spurwood Road, Warrimoo, NSW 2775, Australia) is the fanzine of the Sydney SF Foundation (overseas membership $A2.50 year). POINT UP (Richard Doxtator, 2124 Ellis, Stevens Point, WS 54431) (25¢, usual or fate) a strange little fanzine which appears to be partly photoset. GEGENSCHEIN 20 (Eric Lindsay, 6 Hillcrest Avenue, Faulconbridge, NSW 2776, Australia) (usual or (in UK currency) 20p) is notable this time for Shayne McCormack's Discon report. Bruce D.Arthurs (2401 W Southern, B-136, Tempe, AZ 85282) sent a oneshot called DESPERATE DESOLATION mainly as a letter-substitute. Roy Tackett's DYNATRON 61 (915 Green Valley Road NW, Albuquerque, NM 87107; usual or 0.47 yuan) raises up a frightening possibility for censorship of worldcons. CONTACT 1 (Graham Poole, 23 Russet Road, Cheltenham, Glos. GL51 7LN (not generally available, I think) is about BSFA matters.

The usual newszines and clubzines came along. LOCUS 171 (Charlie and Dena Brown, Box 3938, San Francisco, CA 94119) (£4.80 for 15 from Peter Weston) the SF newspaper; this issue has the Nebula nominations and reports the death of M.A.DeFord. SON OF THE WSFA JOURNAL 175/176 (Don Miller, 12315 Judson Road, Wheaton, MD 20906) (12 for £1.00 from Eric Bentcliffe) is mostly book, fanzine and movie reviews this tine. INSTANT MESSAGE 167 and 168 (NESFA, Box G, MIT Branch PO, Cambridge, MA 02139) is the NESFA clubzine (membership is $5.00 a year). THE SFRA NEWSLETTER 37 (H.W.Hall, 3608 Meadow Oaks Lane, Bryan, TX 77001) is the bulletin of the SF Research Association, academically orientated. And FANEW SLETTER 25 and 26 is the Australian newszine (Leigh Edmonds, Box 74, Balaclava, Victoria 3183, Australia; 10/A, pref. in stamps).

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The final figures for SEACON were 565 registered and 476 attending, including 50-60 from continental Europe. Bar takings were, as usual, a record. (Malcolm Edwards provided these data; thanks Malcolm).

Pat Charnock points out that the band at Seacon was in fact 'The Burlingtons' and not 'Deep Fix'. I was probably woolgathering when I typed it out.

Walter Luc Haas (CH-4018 Basel, Postfach 229, Switzerland) sent a sheet about his fmz (mostly wargames). You might like to write to him for info if you're interested.

Bruce D.Arthurs has a CoA (and please correct the address I gave up above): 920 North 82nd Street, H-201, Scottsdale, AZ 85257.

The TOLKIEN SOCIETY has raised its subs to £2.50, steep even by modern standards. The BFS provides more services for a pound less.

A new series on BBC TV 'The Survivors' is by Terry Nation, the man who invented the Dalek. This series is a fairly standard after-the-plague setup, but worth watching. Wednesdays at 2010.