Wild Shaarkah

Wild Shaarkah (explanation and variants see below) was a perzine in English by Czech fan, writer and prozine editor Eva Hauser(ová) in the early 1990s. An important part were her drawings; some of the contents, especially travel/con reports, appeared also in Czech in the newszine/genzine Interkom (in somewhat different form; see https://interkom.vecnost.cz/$hau.htm).

There were 7 issues between October 1990 and December 1991 (almost regularly bi-monthly except the summer, spent travelling in USA), the seventh "special issue" serving as Eva's GUFF bidzine; on the strength of these, she indeed won the 1992 GUFF Race. In summer 1992 she published No. 8 with her trip report.

The publication ceased somewhat suddenly and without (previous) announcement, explained later by lack of time and waning enthusiasm. Eva still contributed to the Shards of Babel for several years.

In late 2018 Eva scanned (though not OCRed) Wild Shaarkah with a brief introduction/memoir to eFanzines.com and an equivalent Czech fanzine-historical site. However, these contained only the first 7 issues, creating a temporary fanhistoric mystery: when Eva's GUFF trip report "My Australian Diary" appeared in Paul Kincaid's Guffaw #4, May 2000, he wrote that "through some very good detective work, Irwin Hirsh discovered" it "came out in her perzine Wild Shaarkah". Eva did not remember any such details anymore [personal communication, spring 2022].

However, Irwin was able to identify the description of the trip report issue in Matrix 101, August–September 1992, so it certainly existed; but the print run was presumably just one or two dozen copies, so it does not appear in bibliographies, let alone archives. And after Eva's death, her partner Cyril Simsa kindly re-checked her papers and discovered not a final copy, but just the original mark-ups for Wild Shaarkah #8 (with no date given); he scanned and OCRed it, and the issue is now available with the others at eFanzines.

Wild Shaarkah's title was explained (in the masthead of the first 3 issues and again in the retrospective) as a reference to the wikipedia:Divoká Šárka valley in NW Prague near Eva's home; the name means Wild (as in wilderness; the less rocky downstream part is Tichá, Quiet) and the heroine of the ancient legend of wikipedia:The Maidens' War (i. e. anti-male revolt at the dawn of time, supposedly centered on the locale). This suited Eva's feminist and environmentalist activities, as well as sense of humour and puns.

Note that the pictorial masthead of the first 3 issues was spelled (in all-caps, and with a slight punning linebreak – after the maidens' defeat, Šárka threw herself down from a rocky outcrop rather than be captured) SHARKAAAH, but by #4 this changed to a computer-typographical Shaarkah (i. e. from 1 and 3 As, respectively, to 2 and 1 closer to the Czech pronunciation; already from #1 the masthead said 'the English transcription would be probably „Shaarkah“ … nature reserve … named „Wild Shaarkah“'). This latter is/was the form preferred and used within texts by Eva herself, but spelling confusion still abounds (so fanzine archives use "Sharkaah", i. e. 1+2).

#	Date	Pp	Notes
1	Oct 1990	2	Introductory issue.
2	Dec 1990	8	Biopunk issue: "Biopunk – A New Literary Movement Specific for Post-Totalitarian Regimes" essay; Eurocon 1990 report (Czech version); "A Biopunk Story": "By Ear" [Uchem] by Zdeněk Páv (1959–2011); a letter responding to an article on feminism in Eastern Europe in New Statesman
3	Feb. 1991	6	"An Essay about the Cult of Motherhood and my Own Experience with It" pp. 1–4 (in unusual graphic format esp. 2–3); "I Have Read" pp. 5-6, brief comments on feminist books with some digressions
4	April 1991	10	New header from a new computer. Trip report from London, UK and Speculation (Czech variant, without the sercon conrep itself which appeared in Ikarie monthly) pp. 1-8; brief Czechoslovak fandom news p. 10
5	June 1991	6	Pictorial front cover & bacover, two sheets of text, both paginated 1 and 2. "The Hard Life of a Feminist in Czechoslovakia" on the first, followed by "Czechoslovakia Today" ("part of a letter I wrote to Charlotte Proctor after reading a comment […] by a Czech fan in Charlotte's fanzine Anvil") and "A Very Confused Eurocon" report significantly cut and edited from the Czech version
6	October 1991	14	"This time dealing with only one topic: Our Great American Travel" incl. guest room and ice-cream party of Bruce Pelz, culminating in Chicon V. Czech part 1, part 2
7	Dec. 1991	4	distributed with Please Turn Over by Bridget Wilkinson (also 4 pages), 1992 GUFF Race bidzines
8	(summer? 1992)	12	"MY AUSTRALIAN DIARY. SYNCON '91 AND SOMETHING MORE". Significantly cut and rewritten from the Czech version part 1, part 2. Reprinted in Guffaw #4, May 2000; both have OCR but photo quality differs.

• https://efanzines.com/WildSharkaah/
• "Wild Sharkaah" online at fanac.org
• "Wild Sharkaah" at a Czech fanzine-historical site (just the first 7 issues; PDF without OCR, about 5 MB per issue; allows browsing by individual pages in JPG, although these often too small to read properly)

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Publication

1990—1992

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