Bob Foster

(May 25, 19?? – )

Bob Foster was a UK fan from Brighton active in the early 1950s. He produced three issues of the fanzine Sludge and attended the Festivention. He sent copies of Sludge to the NECON but doesn't appear to have attended himself.

In Sludge #1 he wrote:

So the day came when two shillings burning a hole in my pocket, I called on my newsagent and there ordered three Tarzan books. When these had been read from cover to cover a thousand times each copy, I knew it was time to go and visit my friend the newsagent, for wasn't he my friend, had he not got me those fine books years ago without which my life would have been empty?

Upon being asked if he had more books similar to the ones he sold me before, he replied "No more of that junk".

"JUNK!" I said to myself. By the GREAT APE! He was lucky that I did not thrust my spear into his foul heart, but after hearing the victory cry of a bull ape, he quickly sold me a copy of Astounding.

From then on I roamed from star to star with my space heroes. But alas! time was passing too quickly for me. Fate had decided I was to become a MAN and as such would have to put away childish things.

Now instead of buying Astounding only, I buy Amazing, Planet, New Worlds – in fact every one that comes my way.

Reviewing Sludge #1 in Quandry #10 (May 1951), Walt Willis said that Foster was a bricklayer and had entered fandom 'only a few months ago'. He didn't have a typewriter or mimeograph and he 'started with nothing but guts and enthusiasm'.

The third and last issue of Sludge appeared in late 1951 or early 1952. The London SF Con supplement to Science Fantasy News suggests it remained an active publication in mid-1952 but this may simply have been optimism on the part of SFN's editor. The Operation Fantast Handbook for 1953 carries an advertisement for FANsee, described as a 'printed fanzine' appearing irregularly but at least twice a year and giving Foster's address. It promised:

... good fiction, humorous and adult.
Columns., by Jane Russell and Dan Morgan.
Illustrations., by Shaw, Hunter, Jeeves, Price, Russell, Ridley and Foster.

There is no evidence that it ever appeared and it's the only evidence for fannish activity by Foster after early 1952.

He is presumably a different person to the later United States fan of the same name.

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