Fouler
Fouler was an early 1970s fanzine published in the UK by Greg Pickersgill with assistance from Leroy Kettle ('even though he was listed as "editor" he did little other than lettercolumn responses'").[1] It had a reputation for iconoclasm, the free use of vulgarity, and a general attitude of disrespect; these were met with dismay by some older fans, but it proved very popular with many fans of its editors' generation, a good number of whom went on to become leading fans of the 1970s (as indeed did Pickersgill and Kettle – see Ratfandom). Pickersgill's fanzine review column, 'Eyeball', earned him an immediate reputation as a savagely honest critic.
Fouler's first issue, numbered two ('we thought this was an enormously clever brilliant new idea that would shock and surprise the dullwitted fandom of the day'),[2]) was printed on foolscap paper with a single staple unconventionally and inconveniently in the bottom right-hand corner. Subsequent issues were printed on quarto and more conventionally stapled, using a not always strictly followed colour scheme of white paper for editorials; yellow for articles, fiction, and poetry; green for Pickersgill's fanzine reviews; and pink for 'Heap', the letters column. The covers from #3 onwards were intentionally blank[3] and there is no interior artwork.
The issue 3 a month later included (on PAGE EIGHT, see below) vitriolic review of Viridiana by Dave Womack, with the central bit often quoted later (though the whole half-page review was more nuanced and argued):
Jesus Christ I'm reading this bloody thing right now and I can't believe it. Its [sic] worthless. It gets Brit fandom a bad name it hardly deserves, bad as it is. Every copy ought to be sought out and burned, with Womack securely roped down in the middle of them. My fury knows no bounds.
It also featured an advertisement by "King Rat Kettle" at p. 21 for those who 'seek to uphold the true fannish traditions of boozing and lechery', coining the term 'Ratfan' (as opposed to "Aardvark" and "Wombat" fandoms; unnumbered p. 21).
Apart from the editors, contributors included John Brosnan, Bryn Fortey, John Nielsen Hall, Rob Holdstock, Ian Maule, Thom Penman, John Piggott, Charles Platt, Ritchie Smith and Ian Williams. Other contributions came from 'houses names' such as Anthony Dean, George Hammond and Brian Wegenheim, while #2 featured a number of pieces originally submitted to the school magazine that Pickersgill edited.
John D. Berry acquired copies at Eastercon 22 and described Fouler in Focal Point v3n1 (July 1971) as:
a sloppy, angry, whimsical fanzine that has drawn more response from its 50-person mlg list than almost any other fanzine. Fouler is the closest to a focal point that British fandom has, yet it's an adolescent focal point, filled with excesses for the sake of excess.
Dave Langford wrote in Pong (early 1980s):
I did have the chance to catch up on Fouler etc. (I missed ’em all too) a year or two back, and was less astonished than I’d hoped to be. The early Pickersgill writings were seminal, and like so many seminal things combined potency and potential with considerable messiness: Fouler in particular now seems to labour a bit in the titanic shadow of the Legend. London’s ‘Ratfandom’ sprang from it because Greg and coeditor Roy Kettle provided a rallying point – they showed it could be done and that fandom did not have to be the cloying, backpatting, pseudo-nice thing which emerges from British zines of the late '60s (say). Greg’s own considerable writing talents got their real polish later, a little in his own Ritblatt and a great deal more in his best fanzine ever, Stop Breaking Down… Joseph [Nicholas] is probably right in saying that early Greg doesn’t show up that well today, just as Lee DeForest’s triode might fail to win the unstinting praise of hi-fi freaks.”
Fouler entered suspension in summer 1971 when Pickersgill moved from Wales to London, with one final issue over a year later.
| Issue | Date | Pages | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | September 1970 | 14 | actually first issue, as noted above |
| 3 | October 1970 | 34 | Empty back cover of Pickergill's scan has "Special 'fanzine' issue!" written with blue pen. "This issue edited and produced by LEROY KETTLE with some small assistance from GREG PICKERSGILL". Cover empty, contents page on its recto, pages then numbered on a dotted line at bottom (clearly prepared first, before being filled in the final collation) unusually (also intentionally idiosyncrastivally?) from PAGE TWO on first inner verso to PAGE THIRTYONE on last recto; closing page on inside of empty back cover has "PAGE" left unfilled. |
| 4 | December 1970 | 34 | |
| 5 | March 1971 | 34 | |
| 6 | June 1971 | 34 | |
| 7 | September 1972 | 32 | Final issue, after a hiatus |
- ↑ 'Greg Pickersgill's Fanzinography' on his website. Contains bibliography, some memoirs and scans of cover pages (empty after #3, with something of the contents page on verso recognizable)
- ↑ Pickersgill, ibidem.
- ↑ Pickersgill's website credits the covers to 'Croxley', a well-known supplier of duplicator paper.
- Fouler online at fanac.org (added December 2024)
| Publication | 1970—1972 |
| This is a publication page. Please extend it by adding information about when and by whom it was published, how many issues it has had, (including adding a partial or complete checklist), its contents (including perhaps a ToC listing), its size and repro method, regular columnists, its impact on fandom, or by adding scans or links to scans. See Standards for Publications. |
