E. Frank Parker

Frank Parker (1943), from The Beyond v2#1, courtesy of First Fandom Experience Archive (firstfandomexperience.org).

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E. Frank Parker was a UK fan from Teddington in west London active in the 1930s and 1940s. He founded the Paint Research Station Science Fiction Library (PRSSFL) which later became the Cosmos Club, and edited their carbonzine, The Beyond. He was a member of the British Fantasy Society (BFS), editing the first issue of their fanzine, BFS Beyond.

He had been a reader of Novae Terrae since at least 1938 and was one of the thirteen fans – out of 200 subscribers – who responded to a questionnaire. Parker founded the PRSSFL in 1940 as a magazine chain for staff at the Paint Research Station, seeding it with his own collection. He reconnected with fandom more generally through the BSFWRS from whom he obtained copies of Voice of the Imagi-Nation and Futurian War Digest. He then wrote to the latter, his letter appearing in Futurian War Digest #23 in October 1942 and alerting wider UK fandom to the existence of a group which then had 16 members. The following year they renamed themselves the Cosmos Club and extended membership to fans outside the Station.

Starting in 1942, Parker produced the carbonzine The Beyond for the PRSSFL. There were 10 issues through to 1946 although at some point Parker had to retire into pseudonymity 'as a result of attacks of a particularly unaesthetic character by certain authorities at the Paint Research Station'. He also edited the first issue of BFS Beyond, a similar publication produced for the British Fantasy Society. His own fanzine was Lamppost, distributed with Futurian War Digest. A novelette, Girl in Trouble, previously published in The Beyond as The Stolen Spaceship, was released as a chapbook by Utopian Publications in 1944.

Parker was one of the organisers of the Eastercon in 1944, acting as the curator of the Convention Museum of curios and trivia. On the day he was 'chief custodian of the questions' for the brains trust and auctioneer.

He doesn't seem to have been in evidence after 1944. In Futurian War Digest #37 he said:

Frank Parker of Teddington wants to let people know that due to the very heavy demands his new job is making on him, he has had to make a temporary exit from the ranks of the actifans, and he hopes in God's good time to reply to all these patient fellows who are wondering whether he ever received their last letters.

He worked as an industrial research chemist.

• E. Frank Parker in Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Fanzines and Apazines:

• BFS Beyond (first issue)
• Cosmic Cuts (some issues; for the Cosmos Club)
• Lamppost (distributed with FWD)
• The Beyond (some issues, for the PRSSFL and the Cosmos Club)

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Person

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