FFB/M: MIMOSA edited by Nicki and Rich Lynch

wrap-around cover of issue 19 by Debbie Hughes

Mimosa hasn't been the only fanzine published over the decades to be about the history of  science fiction and fantasy fandom, and the offshoots from that diverse grouping, or to take the long view of fannish matters, but it might be one of the most diverse. Most of the earlier fannish publications that have attempted to deal with the history of fandom itself have striven to be reference works (such as the Fancyclopediae) or have been collections of usually one or a few writers' work in the fannish press (such as the giant Walt Willis issue of Warhoon or the various collections of the likes of Terry Carr's or Lee Hoffman's or others' fannish writing, etc.) Even such ambitious efforts since Mimosa folded (and had nearly all its contents posted online as well as cherrypicked for "fanthologies"), such as Earl Kemp's eI, have both taken on other matters as well and haven't exceeded the scope of what the Lynches managed to put together...winning six Hugo Awards for best fanzine while doing so. The magazine emphasized first-person accounts of various sorts of behavior, famous incidents and notable people who have been in the social and often scholarly (if usually informally so) whirl that is the fannish subculture, which has managed to spin off crime-fiction fandom (and, among other things, the Bouchercons), comic-book/graphic storytelling fandom, media fandom and "slash" fiction (so is responsible, indirectly or not so much, for Comic-Con, Grey and other similar fiction, and, of course, Trekkers and their fellow-fans), folk-music and punk-rock fanzines to a great and very

cover for #11 by Steve Stiles

influential degree, and to cross-pollinate with the likes of mail artists and the zine culture and the blogs that are often the heirs to zine culture. Meanwhile, Mimosa wasn't afraid to range a bit beyond the obvious, either, as with Richard Brandt's fine exploration of how Manos, the Hands of Fate was made and why, a piece that would've fit comfortably in any film or sophisticated humor magazine (as was its sequel). But nearly any article one dips into might be an education, and a fun read, about the 60+ years of convention, fanzine and related history or some small or not so small part of it...one might skim the best-of collections online at the link at the top of the article, and it's a pity the earliest issues haven't all been posted, though articles from them are included in the best-ofs. You'll even find a few letters from me of comment in the full issues posted, but despite being graciously asked if I'd contribute an article at one point or another, I (reasonably) modestly declined as too fringy a fan to have too much to contribute beyond perhaps recounting the thwarted attempts to get a 1982 or 1983 HonCon (in Honolulu) up and running since we tried to go through such channels as a University of Hawaii student government liberally sprinkled with evangelical Christians of a certain stripe, and frat/sor folk, neither of which blocs were too much in favor of that attempt (that I ran and won election, as part of the Green Slate, to the Associated Students of UH Senate in 1983 in part to hamper some of the more reactionary activities of the former group didn't make my pet project any more popular--Honolulu conventions eventually happened without me at hand).  It was, however, being reminded of music critic Linda Solomon's minor involvement in an incident between  jazz critic/editor/lots more Ted White and jazz critic/writer/lots more Harlan Ellison, in writing up the June Underappreciated Music post yesterday, that put me in mind of Mimosa, which, of course, published White's account of a jazz-fan's bet between the two men.

For more traditional book selections, please see Patti Abbott's blog (and congratulations to her on her return from her first remote talk and signing of her new novel, in New York at the Mysterious Bookshop!)

FFM: P.S. #1, April 1966: contributions from Avram Davidson, Alfred Bester, Nat Hentoff, Gahan Wilson, Jean Shepherd, Ron Goulart, Charles Beaumont, Russell Baker, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, et al.; Edward Ferman, editor; Gahan Wilson, associate editor; Ron Salzberg, assistant editor

This is a magazine I've been looking for copies of (in a casual way) for about 35 years, maybe a little more. I've written about it a little previously in the blog (and received some interesting and helpful comments there), and here's the (slightly corrected) index from the FictionMags Index previously reprinted at that occasion: 

P.S. [v1 #1, April 1966] ed. Edward L. Ferman (Mercury Press, 60¢, 64pp, 8" x 11") Gahan Wilson, associate editor; Ron Salzberg, assistant editor

Details supplied by Cuyler Brooks (and augmented by me).

• 3 · Don Sturdy and the 30,000 Series Books · Avram Davidson · ar
• 12 · Would You Want Your Product to Marry a Negro · Alfred Bester · ar
• 16 · The Gentle Art of Brick Throwing · Ron Goulart · ar
• 24 · Freaks · Gahan Wilson · ar
• 32 · Child Things · Russell Baker · ar (The New York Times 1965)
• 34 · The Lost Lovely Landscapes of Luna · Isaac Asimov · ar
• 39 · Lugosi: The Compleat Bogeyman · Charles Beaumont · ar (F&SF 1956)
• 42 · When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed · Ray Bradbury · pm
• 44 · Joe Louis in Atlantic City · Jerry Tallmer · ar
• 49 · The Thirties Quiz · Robert Thomsen · qz
• 50 · Sweet and Lowdown: The Lost Jazz Years · Nat Hentoff · ar
• 58 · Captain Ahab Is Dead; Long Live Bob Dylan, Or, Are the Beatles Really the Andrews Sisters, In Drag? · Jean Shepherd · ar
• 62 · Now You See Them · Ron Salzberg · ar

As often the case with an example of this much delay in gratification, the contents of the issue don't quite live up to my expectations (I can see why Davidson's good, but not superb, essay hasn't been reprinted, for example), but nonetheless I'm not sorry I paid a reasonably high price (though not as exorbitant as prices often are on this title, when it can be found) to finally have it at hand. The Davidson essay deals with the series adventure books aimed at children from the first several decades of the 20th century, produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate (whose products have included Nancy Drew, Tom Swift and Hardy Boys novels)...several of the examples Davidson considers from a thrift-store scrounge were among such series as the Don Sturdy and Bomba the Jungle Boy books (durable creature in comics as well) that he'd read in his own childhood, and some attributed to the same "Roy Rockwood" house name that Rich Horton was treating with in his FFB last week. 

Bester's essay is telling about the delights of commercial (in at least two senses) practical censorship in the period when American apartheid, at least in certain areas, was still just beginning to come undone, and the pressures newly applied by the likes of the Congress of Racial Equality from their direction to further make things Interesting for those in the advertising and commercial radio/television industries in what we can now think of as the Mad Men era. (Bester also notes that the best actor who'd auditioned to play Charlie Chan in the radio series Bester was writing in the late '40s was spiked because the actor was black, and who'd dare have a black man play a Chinese-American detective...far safer to settle on eventual star Ed Begley, Sr.). And while there is a bit of mockery of what was already being tagged Political Correctness in certain quarters in both the Davidson and particularly the Bester essays, the Shepherd is an unsurprisingly unsubtle bleat about the then-new androgyny as seen by the radio and print satirist, with particular contumely expended toward Tom Wolfe and to a lesser extent Andy Warhol; mocking the claims to the brawling life by Bob Dylan seems a bit more grounded. 

Gahan Wilson's thoughtful essay about the history of the freak show (with special attention to the activities of P. T. Barnum and his associates), Isaac Asimov's survey of the end of Romantic Mars with new Mariner probe imagery and data, and particularly Charles Beaumont's memoir of his meeting with Bela Lugosi very near the end of the actor's life (and by the time of this reprint, presumably from Beaumont's film column in F&SF, Beaumont was already far gone in his fatal premature Alzheimer's), Ron Goulart's run through the history of George Harriman and Krazy Kat, and Nat Hentoff on the jazz legends of his youth are all fine, and some at least among the pioneering writing of the time about these matters. The magazine as a whole, in its first of only three issues, is more about nostalgic reflection than I expected, with the Shepherd blast (and to some extent the Bester) being the prime example(s) of the kind of pop-sociological consideration I expected to comprise more of the content, but it really is a pity on several counts that this magazine didn't flourish. It was a good start. 

For more actual books this week, please see Patti Abbott's blog. I'll be (rather more promptly) hosting the links over the next two Fridays at this one.

Newsstand Manfulness, for August 1964 (with a bit of womanity thrown in)

There was this new image of what young men, at least, might aspire to on US newsstands, on the date of my birth, but the following were more typical of the press aimed squarely at the male reader, with their issues dated on my birth-month (and most of them probably still on the stands till just before the beginning of August, at least)...(verges, at least, on NSFW by the end...)

And before we get to the manly titles, a brief look at what a few the more interesting women's magazines were up to in the same cover date:


For example, the fiction contents of this Redbook, officially tagging itself the "magazine for young adults" (courtesy the FictionMags Index):

Redbook [v123 #4, August 1964] [www.more-magazines.com] A Matter of Trust · John D. MacDonald · n. Happily Ever After · Camilla R. Bittle · n. Look Out for Sharks · Jean Todd Freeman · ss; illus. Tom Vincent The Great Outdoors · Will Stanton · ss; illus. Tomi Ungerer It Seems I Heard the Violins · Millie McWhirter · ss; illus. Bernie Fuchs Memory · Leo Damore · vi The Apple Tree · Eileen Alderton · vi Stop the Music! · Robert W. Wells · vi My Son · Katinka Loeser · vi Meanwhile, like Rogue below, The Ladies Home Journal was offering Saroyan fiction, and, like Mlle., young Bergen on the cover, along with a memoir of literary Paris from Katherine Anne Porter. Ladies’ Home Journal [v81 # 7, August 1964] (35¢) Pretty Polly · Noel Coward · ss; illus. N. M. Bodecker Forgiving · Shirley Hazzard · ss; illus. Austin Briggs Alive · William Saroyan · ss

Student cover model: Candice Bergen
One of the student editors for this issue: Betsey Johnson
This one usually good for fiction, too.

Thomas B. Dewey's  novel excerpted? "Condensed"?

John Le Carre's fiction more True than not..and concentrated!

An Arthur C. Clarke scuba memoir is the "book bonus"...

Most images courtesy of Galactic Central

Have you seen me? P. S. magazine, the nostalgia/pop culture/humor magazine from 1966...

I've been looking for reasonably priced copies for years...indices courtesy the FictionMags Index. If ever a magazine called out for a facsimile re-issue... P.S. [v1 #1, April 1966] ed. Edward L. Ferman (Mercury Press, 60¢, 64pp, 8" x 11") Details supplied by Cuyler Brooks. 3 · Don Sturdy and the 30,000 Series Books · Avram Davidson · ar 12 · Would You Want Your Product to Marry a Negro · Alfred Bester · ar 16 · The Gentle Art of Brick Throwing · Ron Goulart · ar 24 · Freaks · Gahan Wilson · ar 32 · Child Things · Russell Baker · ar 34 · The Lost Lovely Landscapes of Luna · Isaac Asimov · ar 39 · Lugosi: The Compleat Bogeyman · Charles Beaumont · ar 42 · When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed · Ray Bradbury · pm 44 · Joe Louis in Atlantic City · Jerry Tallmer · ar 49 · The Thirties Quiz · Robert Thomsen · qz 50 · Sweet and Lowdown: The Lost Jazz Years · Nat Hentoff · ar 58 · Captain Ahab Is Dead; Long Live Bob Dylan, Or, Are the Beatles Really the Andrews Sisters, In Drag? · Jean Shepherd · ar

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P.S. [v1 #2, June 1966] ed. Edward L. Ferman (Mercury Press, 60¢, 64pp, 8" x 11") Details supplied by Michael Ward. 5 · The Student Rebel: Then and Now · William Tenn · ar; 1930’s vs 1960’s. 8 · It Only Hurts When They Laugh · Gahan Wilson & Evan Phillips · ar; college pranksters. 12 · The Fabulous Freebie Fire Fighters · John Major Hurdy · ar; volunteer firefighter anecdotes. 20 · The Audience Is Dead · William Redfield · ar; wretched current state of drama and its audiences. 26 · The Guys in the Trick Suits · William F. Nolan · ar; superheroes. 34 · Tear Off a Box Top · Ron Goulart · ar; cereal premiums. 39 · Department of Yellowed Journalism · S. Harris · ar; old engravings with new “funny” captions. 42 · The Lion · Nicholas Breckenridge (Knox Burger) · ar; memoir of his father, Carl Burger, the commercial artist. 48 · The Papers — They Publish Her Face · Gerald Carson · ar; history of the society pages in newspapers, from The Polite Americans, Morrow 1966. 66 · The Forties Quiz · Robert Thomsen · qz; from Questions, Anyone?, Doubleday 1965.

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P.S. [v1 #3, August 1966] ed. Edward L. Ferman (Mercury Press, 60¢, 66pp, 8" x 11") Last issue. Details supplied by Cuyler Brooks. 5 · The Private Eye · Ron Goulart · ar 8 · I Dunit · Ed Lacy · ar 16 · The White Rabbit Caper · James Thurber · ss The New Yorker Nov 19 1949 20 · An Interview With Rex Stout · Anon. · iv [Rex Stout] 27 · Addendum, With Straw Hat · Avram Davidson · ar 28 · The Michelson-Morley Case · Lou Myers · ar 32 · My Mother Was a Witch · William Tenn · nf 36 · Main Currents in Applied Comedy · Carlton Brown · ar 44 · The Most Unforgettable Toys I’ve Ever Met · Harvey Aronson · ar 50 · Triviata Globus · Jean Shepherd · ar 52 · When Radio Rules the Waves · Mary Jane Higby · ar 57 · Here’s Looking at Bourbon · Gerald Carson · ar 66 · The Detective Quiz · Anon. · qz