( I ) — from IF TODAY IS TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE KWANGCHOW to IZZARD

IF TODAY IS TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE KWANGCHOW

— Faned: Robert Runte. Travelzine recounting Runte’s experiences in China. At least 3 issues. (Details to be added.)

1978 – (#1 – Dec)

1979 – (#2 – Mar) (#3 – Aug)

IMAGIERS-INFOS

— Faned: Pierre D. Lacroix. Pubbed out of Hull, Quebec. “..devoted to fantasy & science fiction illustrations and interviews with artists and writers.”

In a loc to NEW CANADIAN FANDOM (#8) in 1985, Pierre wrote: “People think of their own work first and forget about the others…It’s a kind of ‘fanzine war’ in Quebec at the moment. Everyone of them thinks that they’re better than the others. It started with REQUIEM & IMAGINE of course, but by now it’s also PILONE, BLANC CITRON, CINETIK, ENERGIE PURE, ROSE NANAE, OH JAKE, & RESONANCE MAGNETIQUE: all Quebec fanzines. It seems that they don’t know what friendship between fan editors means. No one has the guts to say it, but Quebec fandom (and some people) are totally pretentious. Of course, I mention no names here… I generalize.”

Under the name INFOS BULLETIN’

1980 – (#1 – ? ) (#2 – ? ) (#3 – ? )

Under the name ‘IMAGIERS-INFOS’

1981 to 198? – (#4 – ? ) (#5 – ? ) (#6 – ? ) (#7 – ? ) (#8 – ? ) (#9 – ? ) (#10 – ? )

IMAGINE

— Faned: Jean-Marc Gouanvic. Founded in 1980, a French language SF zine out of Quebec. Gouanvic gave up editorship in 1983. Notorious for a long-lived editorial fanfeud with Norbert Spehner, first faned & founder of REQUIEM/SOLARIS. Gouanvic had been a contributor to Spehner’s zine before founding IMAGINE.

In 1985 six issues a year were being published, four of them devoted to fiction, and two to “etudes” or “studies”, the latter presumably essays examining various aspects of the French Canadian SF genre. At this time IMAGINE was said “to have abandoned experimentation for experimentation’s sake… while maintaining a policy of running a ‘different’ sort of fiction.” – (GS)

IMPRESSIONS OF THE DITTO MASTERS

— Faned: Mike Glicksohn. Progress Report #1 for DITTO ONE, “The Duplicate Fanzine Fan’s Convention With Lots Of Spirit … scheduled for July 29-31, 1988 in beautiful downtown Toronto” and distributed at Corflu #4 in April 1987. “Publication courtesy Ned McKeown, publisher of CANADIAN FANDOM’ from 1947 to 1951.”

The entire zine is (appropriately) Dittoed or spirit duplicated in purple text ( alas the WCSFA/BCSFA archive copy is much faded, hard to read.) Cover is by Taral, depicting – in purple, red & green — a robot repairing a larger, spherical machine. Sadly, though the colophon adds “Art by ATom”, there is none present in my source copy (perhaps it faded out of sight?).

The Ditto Masters are the four founders of Ditto, all of whom have an article in the progress report. They are Mike Glicksohn, Taral, Catherine Crockett, & Alan Rosenthal.

In ‘Purple Prologue’ Mike Glicksohn recounts the germination of the idea for Ditto: namely attending a Corflu — referred to as “a miraculous event in the strange land to the slightly South-East” – with the result that “they left, much troubled… they said to each other, “Too much of a good thing is not enough”… Ensconced in the gloomy dank squalor of their secret meeting place, surrounded by piles of arcane journals and the half-heard scrabblings of nameless horrors in the very walls themselves, they fought to overcome the eldritch dread that threatened to prevent them undertaking their perilous task… gradually there emerged a plan. Pamphlets would be produced, each by a different method, each furtively distributed against overwhelming odds, and then no matter what happened individually the public would know what terrifying forces had been set in motion!”

‘The Mouse Tale’ by Taral is based on the ‘true’ event of a mouse getting glued to something spilled inside Taral’s paint box during a Ditto planning session, as told from the mouse’s point of view:

“Normally, at that hour there were only distant noises from the hopping of the stick monsters that lived and moved in pairs out in the vast open spaces…But tonight, just when I was in so embarrassing a fix, there was noise enough for a herd of stick monsters… They stomped around, knocking furniture aside, then quieted down. That meant in a short while they’d begin hooting at each other in that peculiar way they had… To show you how it almost sounds like intelligent conversation, this is a portion I remember…”

“—if we need any more flyers, the one we already have is perfectly good, with a few minor changes,” the lowest voice seemed to say.

“Adding the date of the convention might be a good minor change to make,” a voice from somewhat further away seemed to reply.

“There’s one thing I want each of you to do before the con, though,” said ‘The Taral’. “What I’m mainly interested in doing is a fanthology of Toronto fanwriting. There’s been an awful lot of good material come out of here that ought to be brought to fandom’s attention again. Just off the top of my head, there’s Boyd Raeburn, Susan Wood, Rosemary Ullyot, Bob Wilson, Janet Wilson, you, me, and other’s I’m sure. I think we each ought to pick a favourite article by each author, and I’ll make the final selection from your suggestions.”

Thus was born the delightful oneshot TORONTO THE GHOOD!

‘NUTS, BOLTS’ by Catherine Crockett details the basic info, such as the con taking place at the Bond Place on 65 Dundas Street East, etc. She adds: “I’m aiming at something closer to a good room party than the usual hectic consuite, ankle-deep in flat coke, potato chips, and spiky sequins that fell off someone’s costume…”

“Go up the Street to North Bay, Turn Left, and Drive for Five days” – or – What to Expect in the Great White North’ is the title of yet more local info by Alan Rosenthal, beginning with an actual example of what I always thought was a Canadian urban myth:

“This is a true story. Two or three summers ago, while en route from the subway to Catherine’s house, I was hailed by a woman standing beside a car. She was staring at a road map with a puzzled expression on her face.”

“Excuse me, I wonder if you could show me the way to the ski resort?”

“Umm.. what ski resort are you thinking of? I don’t know of any around here that stay open in the summer.”

“Well, this is Canada, and my husband thought it would be a fine idea to take the kids skiing, and of course we know that it is winter all year in Canada. But it’s hotter here than it was in Little Rock the day we left…”

“With no small measure of disbelief, I pointed her in the general direction of the Rocky mountains and the Alaska Highway. She thanked me, and got back into the car, which then drove off…”

And finally, the ‘Emerald Epilogue’ by Mike Glicksohn comments:

“Carefully hidden in the last few pages is a more-or-less accurate history of DITTO, our proposed fanzine fan’s convention.  Taral’s earlier flyer – a timeless, and dateless, example of fanwriting – explained why we felt there was a need for DITTO and why we were the ones to fill it. And Taral assures me that the rodent eavesdropper which serves as his narrator does exist and was discovered (and rescued) shortly after I left the meeting…”

And concludes with the convention motto: “If you think fanzine oriented conventions are a great idea that goes DITTO for us!”

1987 – (#1 – Mar) subsequently followed by at least two more progress reports under different titles.

IMPULSE

— A quickie newsletter of MONSFA (Montreal Science Fiction Association) sometimes put out between issues of WARP (the more elaborate newsletter). (Details to be added.)

Includes:

1989 – (#? – Nov)

1990 – (#? – Jan) (#? – Feb) (#? – May) (#? – Oct)

1991 – (#? – Jan) (#? – Apr)

INFORUNNER

— Brief name change for the newsletter put out by the Ottawa SF Society. (Details to be added.)

[ See OTTAWA SF STATEMENT ]

INFOS BULLETIN

— [ See IMAGIERS-INFOS ]

INPUT/OUTPUT

— Faned: Taral Wayne. An incarnation of the newsletter of OSFIC, the Ontario SF Club (predated by LAST WHOLE LONDON SUNDAE THYMES & followed by ISHUE). Pubbed out of Toronto, Ontario, beginning with #1 in Oct 1977 and ending with #8 in May of 1978 (which was also the first issue of ISHUE).

Taral writes: “Meetings were down to about a half a dozen people, some months.  For the 2nd. time in its history, OSFiC seemed near the point of dissolution.  Jim Allan and I engineered a merger with a local Star Trek group, in a measure to infuse new blood in the club.  The president of the Trek club agreed to run for secretary, and publish the newsletter, provided I assisted him for the first few issues.  Though the new members were a needed shot in the arm, the arrangement for the newsletter didn’t work out as planned.”

1977 – (#1 – Oct) (#2 – Nov) (#3 – Dec)

1978 – (#4 – Jan) (#5 – Feb) (#6 – Mar) (#7 – Apr) (#8 – May)

[ See (in order of publication) OSFIC MAGAZINE, OSFIC SUPPLEMENT, OSFIComm, OSFIC QUARTERLY, NOR, OSFIC EVENTUALLY, SYNAPSE, NIT WIT, MIMEOGRAPHED LONDON SUNDAE THYMES, THE TORONTO STELLAGRAM, LAST WHOLE OSFiC LONDON SUNDAE THYMES, INPUT/OUTPUT, ISHUE, OSFIC NEWSLETTER FOR THIS MONTH, OSFIC MONTHLY, GOOGLE, OSFiC UNCONSTITUTIONAL NEWSLETTER, ANOTHER UNOFFICIAL OSFiC NEWSLETTER, UNNAMED OSFiC NEWSLETTER, DAZZELATIONS, A VERY SHORT OSFiC NEWSLETTER, CHRONIC, OSFiC ELECTION BULLETIN, GATEWAY, ALL AGOG, LUNA & BEYOND, LUNA AND…, DEAR OSFiC MEMBERS ]

ISHUE

— Faned: Taral Wayne. Another incarnation of the newsletter of OSFIC, the Ontario SF Club (predated by INPUT/OUTPUT and followed by OSFIC MONTHLY). Pubbed out of Toronto, Ontario from #1 May of 1978 (which was also #8 of INPUT/OUTPUT) to #13/14 in May of 1979. (Details to be added)

1978 – (#1 – May) (#2 – Jun) (#3 – Jul) (#4 – Aug) (#5 – Oct) (#6 – Nov) (#7 – Dec)

Taral notes: “While publishing Ish, I was also co-editor of DNQ with Victoria, and the pace was beginning to wear.  I made a proposal to OSFiC to produce a short club newssheet and circulate it with DNQ, at a reduced subscription fee.  They took me up on it, so the next few Ishues were back to basics.”

1979 – (#8 – Jan) (#9 – Feb) (#10 – Mar) (#11 – Apr) (#12/13 – May)

Taral adds: “It was still more than I could comfortably do every month, so I decided not to run in the next elections.  David Starr agreed to run as secretary, if assisted by Jim Allan.  Things began to get a little crazy again.”

[ See (in order of publication) OSFIC MAGAZINE, OSFIC SUPPLEMENT, OSFIComm, OSFIC QUARTERLY, NOR, OSFIC EVENTUALLY, SYNAPSE, NIT WIT, MIMEOGRAPHED LONDON SUNDAE THYMES, THE TORONTO STELLAGRAM, LAST WHOLE OSFiC LONDON SUNDAE THYMES, INPUT/OUTPUT, ISHUE, OSFIC NEWSLETTER FOR THIS MONTH, OSFIC MONTHLY, GOOGLE, OSFiC UNCONSTITUTIONAL NEWSLETTER, ANOTHER UNOFFICIAL OSFiC NEWSLETTER, UNNAMED OSFiC NEWSLETTER, DAZZELATIONS, A VERY SHORT OSFiC NEWSLETTER, CHRONIC, OSFiC ELECTION BULLETIN, GATEWAY, ALL AGOG, LUNA & BEYOND, LUNA AND…, DEAR OSFiC MEMBERS ]

IZZARD

– Faned: Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden. A perzine by Americans living in Seattle, but the 7th issue of which was published out of Toronto, Ontario, after they moved there in 1983.

1982 – (#1 – Sep) (#2 – Oct) (#3 – Nov) (#4 – Dec

1983 – (#5 – Jan) (#6 – Feb)

– (#7 – Sep)“In this issue, the Haydens journey to the East in search of wise men. I don’t suppose Teresa’s narcolepsy is a laughing matter, but neither is the nasty habit of medical men…. to balk at recognizing what your ailment is…Teresa manages to write entertainingly about both.”

“Terry Carr’s column, ‘The Infinite Beanie’, was highly amusing. It defines for me precisely the sort of humour & fun I’ve been looking for.” – (GS)