George Gordon Clark

(???? – ????)

G. G. Clark, an energetic Brooklyn fan, was member #1 of the Science Fiction League and founder of the first SFL chapter, the Brooklyn SFL.

For being among the first tensome to sign up after the club was announced in May 1934, George got his name in the July ’34 issue of Wonder Stories, and, having sent appropriate letters first to the prozine and then to Dr. David H. Keller, received an autographed letter and the original manuscript of “The Pent House” (Amazing Stories, February 1932) from the good doctor, as announced in the September 1934 issue.

Clark built up a large sf collection, bought a mimeo and published The Brooklyn Reporter. His time in fandom was not long, but it was busy!

Fred Pohl said that Clarke was “a grown-up adult human being, in his late twenties or thereabouts” in the mid-1930s. He added that Clarke:

not only had every copy of every science-fiction magazine ever published, but they had that fresh-from-the-mint look of having been bought new from the corner candy store, rather than being picked up second-hand. He even had a few variorum editions, such as a copy of Amazing Stories on which one plate of the three-color cover had failed to print, so that it was all ghostly blues and greens. He also had more sf books than I had ever seen in one place before, and he even had science-fiction fan magazines, of which I had never previously even heard.

Clarke had a letter published in Astounding (April 1935) in which he said:

I have been reading science fiction off and on for about ten years and have only done so as purely a diversion from reading ordinary stories of good type. Lately I seem to have been bitten by this "science fiction bug" and I have been collecting all types of science fiction.

In International Observer Vol 1 #12 (March 1936), Don Wollheim reported that:

George G. Clark, member No 1 of the Science Fiction League, has announced officially that he is quitting Stf. The fate of The Brooklyn Reporter, Clark's publication, is not definitely known.

At the bottom of the same page some appended 'Last Minute News':

It is also said that G G Clark has sold his shiny new mimeograph for the ridiculous price of twenty dollars, and is also selling his fine collection of stf material for the same price. Stf has lost another rabid fan!"

Fred Pohl described him as “as sort of belligerently defensive-looking most of the time.”

• Reminiscence of Clark by Frederik Pohl.
• Additional reminiscence of Clark by Pohl.

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