Les Gerber

(March 1, 1943 –)

Les Gerber, ca. 1957.

Leslie Gerber, a New York fan active in the 1950s and ’60s, was a member of the Fanoclasts, The Cult, N'APA, OMPA and the N3F. He was part of the later Cry Crowd and launched the Tenth Anniversary Willis Fund.

He inspired the (now obsolete) term Gerberize. In his early teens, in the pages of Cry of the Nameless in the mid-1950s, Les defended someone to such excess that "to Gerberize" became the fannish verb defining this practice while "to be Gerberized" meant having the practice performed on you. It has to be so overblown that even the person being defended would think so. The term was somewhat unfair to Gerber, who learned from the experience and never repeated it.

On November 27, 1964, he married Sandi Bethke, as Bruce Pelz announced in Ratatosk 3. (He had pursued her even while she was living with Ted White, according to a loc from Ted in Home Kookin' 11 (October 30–November 1, 2009). They eventually split up. Les gafiated before 1970 and founded a business publishing classical-music recordings and dealing records. He was a music critic and writer and radio DJ, as well. He also writes poetry.

• Website.
• Music reviews

Fanzines and Apazines:

• The Croaker
• Fap
• Metrofen
• Minac (with Ted White)
• Misc (with Andrew Joel Reiss)
• Romp (for OMPA)
• Sexy Detective Stories
• Umglick

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Person

1943—

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