This is SKYRACK Number 47, published 18th November 1962 by Ron Bennett, 13 West Cliffe grove, Harrogate, Yorkshire, England. 6d per copy. 2/6d for six issues. 35 cents for 6 issues in USA (airmailed for 65 cents) where subscriptions should be sent to Bob Pavlat, 6001-43rd Avenue, Hyattsville, Maryland. News of interest to sf fans always welcomed with open arms. Cartoon and heading by Arthur "Atom" Thomson.

LONDON HALLOWE'EN PARTY BEWITCHES ROAD TRAFFIC:::TAFF DISPLAY FOR PETERBOROUGH CONVENTION:::JHIM LINWOOD JOINS RISPIN & BURN:::AXE GOES MONTHLY:::ELLA SITS & WAITS:::CRISPIN DOES AN AMIS:::ETC:::

CRISPIN - CREATOR Of FEN - CON GOH

THE GUEST OF HONOUR AT THE PETERBOROUGH NATIONAL CONVENTION next Easter weekend will be BSFA Member Bruce Montgomery, better known to the world of literature by his pseudonym Edmund Crispin. Crispin is known to the sf world for his Faber published anthologies (Best SF) and for his thoughtful analytical essays on sf. He is the second Gentleman of Letters to turn to criticising sf and become a Convention Guest of Honour, following the invitation to Kingsley Amis two years ago. Crispin is also exceedingly well-known and well-read in the world of detective fiction. His popular hero, Gervase Fen, is an unusual character (to say the least...what else would you have with a name like that?) and his plots are liable to take unusually zany turns. In “The Moving Toyshop”, for example, Fen, in his antideluvian car, gives chase after some crooks. He loses them and is undecided whether to turn left or right at a cross road. He chooses left as “publisher Gollancz is sure to favour that direction.” And of course he finds his criminals! It will be readily seen that the GoH’s speech will be a convention highspot next Easter, and the Peterborough Committee are to be congratulated on an excellent choice.

Further on the Peterborough Convention is news of a TAFF display organised by Administrator Ethel Lindsay. Photographs of previous TAFF trip highlights, trip reports etc will be on show.

Even further on TAFF is that nominations are now open for the trip to the 1964 British EastCon. No definate nominations have so far been recieved but rumours show the possibility of both Bill Donaho and Rick Sneary standing which will make it a hard decision and close campaign. And further - still further - on the con is the posibility of writer Mack Reynolds attending.

THE SCIENCE FICTION CLUB OF LONDON held its annual Hallowe’en party (this was the first in the series) over the weekend 3/4 November when most other fans were celebrating a Yorkshireman’s attempted revision of parliamentary law. The party was held in the fashionable area of Chesea close to the Pensioners’ Home and actually in the stately Chelsea Bridge Road apartment of neo-professional George Locke, B.F.P.O. Ret. Guests ducked for apples, drank various punches provided by Frank Arnold and George, and danced the twist (which gets its first mention in Skyrack). About two in the morning a non-fan flashy sports car provided distraction by knocking over both traffic island bollards and ending up breaching the wall of the Chelsea Royal Hospital opposite the party venue. Nobody was hurt, but it’s hard to see why not, I'm told. party attendees viewed the resultant scene from the third floor windows and offered aid to the driver's girl-friend, going so far as sticking plasters on a slightly cut knee and generally asking if she would like the sprain massaged. Almost immediately the onlookers were treated to a deluge of earth poured on their heads by the aggrieved tenant of the flat above who blamed fandom for disturbing her middle-aged sleep. If all this wasn’t enough to make the party a truly memorable one, Brian Burgess distinguished himself, after a series of minor subsidiary accidents caused by broken glass, misdirection of traffic on the part of the authorities and the like, by sweeping the road with George’s broom.

From reports by George Locke, Ethel Lindsay and Archie Mercer, the entire list of attendees adds up as: Ethel Lindsay, Ella Parker, Jimmy Groves, Ted Forsyth, Alan Rispin, Diane “Nell” Goulding, Bruce Burn, Jim Linwood, Pete Mansfield, Pat Kearney, Brian Burgess, Frank Arnold, Ken and Irene Potter, Keith Otter, Tony Walsh, Simone Horley, Archie Mercer, Peter Mabey, Daphne and Ron Buckmaster, Arthur and Olive Thomson, and Max Jacowski, a goodly assortment of fabulous fannish names. Tony Walsh, incidentally, is to be congratulated on his engagement that day to Simone, who is described by all reporters as very good looking. (Many thanks, people)

PRO NEWS. Avalon have published de Camp’s The Search For Zei and will follow this with the sequel The Hand of Zei. De Camp is working on another historical novel, The Arrows of Herakles, but this will not appear for some time yet. Doubleday will publish a collection of de Camp, A Gun For A Dinosaur & Other Imaginative Tales in January, and his big opus, non s-f, The Ancient Engineers, in February.

Tolkien’s Adventures of Tom Bombadil is due for publication next week.  Harry Harrison has sold his Stainless Steel Rat in Italy, and the Italians are reported to be in the market for a Chroma-Vanadium Pussy Cat. (KFS)

The October issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction features A Kind of Artistry by Brian Aldiss and the first instalment of a two-part serial, The Journey of Joenes by Robert Sheckley, a shortened version of his forthcoming novel, Journey Beyond Tomorrow.

The November issue of F&SF appears to be a pretty fannish one, with a story by Terry Carr called Hop-Friend in which one character is called Mike Deckinger, and with a Karen Anderson story called Landscape With Sphinxes in which none of the characters is called Mike Deckinger. (CF)

With jokes like that he could stick to Scribble.....

OUT OF THIS WORLD, ITV’s SF series is due for a return early next year...The new Kingsley Amis book, My Brother’s Enemy, contains Something Else, an sf story originally printed in The Spectator and reprinted in F&SF (British Edition) November 1961...SFCoL Paris trip was called off - terms unfavourable.

DAFOE 6 (October 1962; John Koning 3188. Belle Vista, Youngstown 9, Ohio, USA 31pp; 3 for $1). Outstanding in this issue is the account by Rog Ebert of a visit to the household/office/home/fanshack of Bob Tucker, an article that oozes fandom from every word and one which cannot fail to be appreciated by faanish or book fandom alike. The Benford twins come out of their hiding place to contribute a realistic piece of faan fiction. Letters and the editorial make up a good issue. Koning (whose Down With Everything group some four years ago seemed to anticipate the current fannish trend) must be fandom’s most underrated humourist. Dafoe should be monthly. At least.

DYNATRON 13 (2nd Annish; Roy & Chrystal Tackett, 915 Green Valley Road NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA; 22pp; 8 for $1). Another back to the days type of fanzine with a fetching personal slant. A little more restrained than Dafoe but very readable. Dave Hulan analyses the de Camp-Pratt Shea stories. Harry Smith runs a story. Len Moffatt writes a column, and what a column. Letters and the editorials again make up an issue. The editorials are concerned with the post ChiCon Highway 66 TJs who visited Roy and Chrystal, particularly Ethel Lindsay whose treatment therein would make Ernie Pyle proud.

UCHUJIN (Takumi Shibano, 118, O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, Japan. 2/- per or  6 for 12/- from Ken Cheslin, 18 New Farm Road, Stourbridge, Worcs. 25cents from Roy Tackett in the States) Fandom’s first Japanese English language fanzine. I have to confess that when Ken Cheslin first wrote me about this zine, I had vague thoughts of a complicated hoax, but here comes Uchujin (pronounced. w-CHEW-gin) large as life. Its serious tone, which at times reads like a speech by Sakin, is a leaf out of the book of early Gerfanzines and it is to be hoped that this fan group develops along such lines (with the ultimate outcome of fans like Tom Schlueck). A convention report and an article presented. as “a conversation piece” are invaluable and interesting background pieces of historical data. Quite readable stories make up the issue, though one story, Timemit, has been better treated by Fredric Brown (“The End”). A very notable achievement, this zine. I’d like to see someone in Britain now produce a fanzine in Japanese. Down. Richard. I said “in Britain.”

THE LIVERPOOL GROUP’S HOME-GROWN ARTIST Eddie Jones recently branched out into the world of people who write to the editor. Not of Skyrack, but of the national weekly Today. Eddie pointed out that an article on an American nineteenth century wagon train (6 October) had been illustrated with a photograph showing African natives on the warpath The editorial reply was “Sorry, Mr. Jones. They have turned. left at Fork River!”

SPORTS NEWS. Neo-BSFA Member, Joe Lynn, ice skating champion of Yorkshire fandom is recuperating from a broken ankle sustained while indulging in the rink sport. Get well, schnell, Joe, and next time stick to liar’s poker.

AWARD MINDED FANS IN THE STATES have for some time been bombarding the mails (mainly to AXE) with views towards a definitive set of awards to deserving fans. The upshot of much to-and-fro commenting was quite a squelch of mud-slinging at would-be organisers, but now out of the chaos comes a scheme which has no connection, I’m urged to say, with the proposed Willick Awards. A group comprising such notables as Betty Kujawa, Charles Wells, Dick Lupoff, Richard Bergeron, John Baxter and Harry Warner is looking into the idea. (CW & RT)

DAILY EXPRESS  8/12 Oct ran five part condensation of the Burdick-Wheeler novel “Fail-Safe”, anti-nuclear fringe sf story which anticipated a situation which was pretty near reality with the Cuba crisis so soon to follow. ::: German weekly BUNTE 24 Oct ran 10 page spread on von Braun, American rockets, satellites and moon probe. Illustrated by “artists impressions” and several colour photos.

PANIC BUTTON 11 (Dec 62. 35 from Les Nirenberg, 1217 Weston Rd., Toronto, Canada. 42pp) Just in and mostly unread, but featuring the mixture as before with provocative, thoughtful and/or humorous material by Colin Freeman, Rolf Gindorf, Cal Demmon, Buz Busby, Dick Schultz et al.

MAZE, the first 1963 sf calendar, is available from Tom Schlueck, 3 Hannover, Altenbekener Damm 10, Western Germany at 1DM, 2/- or 30cents per. Looks good.

AXE, Stateside fandom’s leading newszine, comes out with the news that its publisher Larry Shaw is shortly moving to Evanston, Illinois where Larry will take up a job with Regency Books. Noreen and the children will follow him as soon as they’ve tied up their Staten Island home. This has led. to AXE going monthly and it is disturbing to note that the newszine is deploring the the current state of affairs in fandom where news just isn't coming in fast enough, a universal trend it appears. In the same issue AXE further disturbs the reader by announcing the separation of Ted and Sylvia White. Having been present during the whirlwind courtship four years ago this news is particularly well ech! to me.

MENTION OF AXE reminds me that another Stateside newsmagazine, SCIENCE FICTION TIMES put out by James Taurasi, 1836 129th St., College Point 56, NY, USA, and covering pronews in detail, is looking for a British Correspondent. Jimmy Groves? John Roles? Geoff Lindsay? Anyone?

The heck with you, Chrystal Tackett, Betty Kujawa should find some reason for coming here more often.

CoA section:
Jhim Linwood, 5 Kingdom Road, London NW 6.
Bill Donaho, 1526 Arlington Avenue, El Cerrito, Calif.,USA.

ELLA PARKER, British fandom’s leading light, asks me to mention that the reason her battery has needed recharging of late is because of her forthcoming enforced move. In the crazy mixed up world of tenancies and real-estate Ella has been told that she will shortly be moved. She packed up and sat ready. And waited. And waited. And waited.... She’s still waiting and her fanning equipment is still packed up. The move could be at any time. An unenviable position. To be on the safe side, the Friday evening BSFA meetings at the Pen. have been cancelled until further notice. Watch this space!