Ingvar Svensson
(January 24, 1931 -- June 18, 1985)
Ingvar Svensson was a Swedish fan, explosively active circa 1958--1965, who published voluminously, founded Club Megalax, the first fan club in Uppsala, and arranged the 1963 Uppsala sf convention. He also published two short stories in the Swedish edition of Galaxy Magazine in 1960. Svensson's fanzines combined a dry but hilarious academic sense of humor with a wide range of interests in linguistics (he developed his own artificial language, which he called "Martian" and described in three oneshots), in physics and chemistry, in sf literature and in academic spoof writing. His major contribution to fandom was the impressive publication Skandifandom, an encyclopedia of Scandinavian fan activities; the main volume, of 154 pages, was published in 1964 and a supplememt, with a further 86 pages, appeared in 1966. After the end of the 1960s, Svensson primarily worked on an enormous concordance to J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, the first (and only finished) part of which was published in 1977 as Tolkien's Midgård. His work on this project was interrupted by the cancer which ultimately killed him at 54.
Professionally, Svensson was a research professor of biochemistry at Uppsala University.
Fanzine titles (incomplete): • Forum Lingua Galaxa (5 issues, 1958--1959) • Forum Scientia Galaxa (1 issue, 1958) • Forum Scientia Fictiva (3 issues, 1959--1960) • Acta Scientia Intergalaxa Fictiva (2 issues, 1960--1961) • Alcyome (1 issue, 1960) • Super Megalax (1 issue, 1961) • Helicon (1 issue, 1961) • Club Megalax Journal (11 issues, 1961--1964) • Drafwel (1 issue, 1960) • Imperia (2 issues, 1963--1964) • Capelle (1 issue, 1965) • Uppsapa (2 issues, 1964) • Seria Marziana (3 oneshots with, respectively, a word book, grammar, and exercises in the artificial "Martian" language constructed by Svensson; 1961--1962) • Acta Kinetica Enzymatica Upsaliensis (1 issue, 1963) • Skandifandom (encyclopedia of Scandinavian fan activity, 1964) • Skandifandoms årsbok 1964-1965 (a comtinuation of the above, 1966)
