Ted White

(Did you mean the early Canadian fan?)

Ted White (1957)

(February 4, 1938 –)

Theodore Edwin White, aka TEW, is a Hugo Award-winning fan, con-runner, fan historian, fan writer, and Worldcon chairman (NyCon3), who is also known as a pro sf writer and editor, as well as a music critic. Pseudonyms: Ron Archer, Jacob Edwards, Norman Edwards.

Fan

He was FGoH at Aussiecon Two. (He had been Fan GoH at St. Louiscon, but withdrew to dramatize the TAFF winner, Eddie Jones, who became the FGoH.)

He became an influential fan in the 1950s in the NY and Washington, DC, areas and co-chaired the 1967 Worldcon, NyCon 3, with Dave Van Arnam.

In the 1960s, he lived in an apartment in Manhattan and worked at a Greenwich Village mimeo shop that he called Towner Hall (after Francis Towner Laney but mundanely named "Metropolitan Mimeo"), the home of many fanzines and, for a time, the Fanoclasts. He can be as acerbic as its namesake. In 1960, Joy Clarke wrote of him, “You know TEW -- the biggest foot-in-mouth expert either side of the Pond.” To this day, he remains a stalwart of fannish fandom.

He raised fanzine production almost to an art form, in terms of effective use of illustrations, color mimeography, and ornate formatting usually found in slick newsstand magazines.

He was one of the founders of the Fanoclasts, a Balcony Insurgent at NyCon II (making his leadership of NyCon3 nicely ironic), and organized FanHistoriCon 9. He created a publishing house named QWERTYUIOPress; its ASDFGHJKLibrary “division” published The BNF of Iz.

He followed the old fannish custom of naming cars, with a series of vehicles named Weiss Rak.

He chaired Lunacon 11, Lunacon 12 and Lunacon 13. He has long been a mainstay of Corflu and was on the committee of Corflu 3, and Corflu 24. He has been a member of WSFA (including President), the late 1950s Futurians, and the Lunarians. He hosts the Falls Church Second Friday group.

He has been a columnist on Algol, Yandro and Psychotic'/SF Review.

He did two hoax issues of Fanac with Calvin Demmon. He was a member of The Cult (a charter member), IPSO, CRAP, APEX, APA-L, TAPS, and APA-F. Arnie Katz published The Ted White Sampler, a collection of his fan writing.

Pro

He was assistant editor at F&SF from 1963 to 1968, and then edited Amazing Stories and Fantastic until 1979. As editor of Amazing Stories, he reinstated the letter column and ran some fanzine reviews and other fan features. Under his editorship, Amazing and Fantastic received three Best Professional Magazine nominations in 1971 and 1972. His editorials and book reviews from both magazines were collected in the Ansible Editions paperbacks The Amazing Editorials (2023) and The Fantastic Editorials (2023).

In addition to books and stories written under his own name, he has also co-authored novels with Dave Van Arnam as Ron Archer, and with Terry Carr as Norman Edwards. He received a Nebula nomination for one of his stories. He was a member of the Guilford Gafia.

Personal Life

He was arrested in 1986 for selling pot and served three months in jail. See File 770 60, p. 23, File 770 63, p. 3 and File 770 63, p. 14.

He married Sylvia Dees in 1958. At some point they divorced, and he was in a relationship with Sandi Bethke. He married Robin Postal in 1966. They had a daughter together, and divorced about 1976. Ted had a son, Aaron (b. December 31, 1987), with his third wife, Lynda Magee, whom he married March 15, 1987, and also divorced; Aaron died by suicide December 5, 2016.

• Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

Fanzines and Apazines:

• Blat! (co-edited with Dan Steffan
• Crank (co-edited with Rob Hansen)
• Double Whammy (for OMPA with Larry Stark, John Hitchcock, and John Magnus)
• Egoboo
• egoscan
• F
• A Fanzine for Krazy Kat [1957] (for FAPA)
• Gafia Newssheet
• The Gafiate's Intelligencer
• Gambit
• Letters from Prison [1986]
• Minac (with Les Gerber)
• Mini (with Bhob Stewart as Jacob Edwards)
• Null-F
• Pong (with Dan Steffan)
• Spam
• Spung
• Stellar (co-edited with Larry Stark)
• Triple Whammy
• Void (co-editor)
• Zip

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 1966 -- Ozarkon I
• 1968 -- 1968 Best Fan Writer Hugo
• 1969 -- St. Louiscon, 1969 Best Fan Writer Hugo nomination (declined)
• 1972 -- Bubonicon 4
• 1973 -- 1973 Best Professional Editor Hugo
• 1974 -- 1974 Best Professional Editor Hugo
• 1975 -- 1975 Best Professional Editor Hugo
• 1976 -- Unicon 2B, 1976 Best Professional Editor Hugo
• 1977 -- 1977 Best Professional Editor Hugo
• 1980 -- DeepSouthCon 18, Past president of the FWA, V-Con 8 AutoClave 4
• 1985 -- Aussiecon Two
• 1994 -- FAAn Award for Best Fanzine
• 1999 -- FAAn Award for Best Fan Writer
• 2004 -- Corflu Blackjack
• 2010 -- Lifetime Achievement Award from Corflu Cobalt
• 2011 -- CGoH at Corflu 21
• 2016 -- Pulpcon, FanHistoriCon 13, RavenCon 11
• 2024 -- Corflu Fifty recipient

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Person

1938—

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