Spacewarp

(For other twisty things, see Warp (Disambiguation).)

Spacewarp 9 featured a Steinpic cover by Bob Stein.

Spacewarp, edited by Art Rapp in Saginaw, Michigan, a focal point fanzine of the 1950s, had over 40 issues from April, 1947, to September, 1950. For some early issues, Bill Groover was co-editor. In 2001, it was nominated for the 1951 Best Fanzine Retro Hugo.

Redd Boggs' column, "File 13", was especially important. Other contributors included Forrest J Ackerman, Henry Ackerman, Michael De Angelis, Warren Baldwin, Wrai Ballard, Donn Bratton, Donn Brazier, Guerry C. Brown, W. E. Bullard, Charles Burbee, Lyon de Coeur, Wilkie Conner, Arthur Jean Cox, Ed Cox, Paul D. Cox, Jim Craig, Ralph Fluette, Vaughn Greene, Andy Gregg, John Grossman, Charles Hames, Jim Harmon, William James, David H. Keller, Joe Kennedy, F. Towner Laney, Carl Lawrence, Al F. Lopez, Don McConnell, C. Stewart Metchette, Ray Nelson, Robert Parris, Rog Phillips, Bill Rotsler, Hal Shapiro, Ben Singer, Rick Sneary, Genevieve K. Stephens, Bob Stein, Charles Stuart, Bob Tucker, Bill Venable, James A. Wade, T. E. Watkins, and Wally Weber.

A 10-part round-robin space-opera by Rapp and five others appeared in most of the 1949 issues and was reprinted in 1960 by Ed Cox as STF Broadcasts Again!.

Rapp then turned it over to F. Towner Laney and Charles Burbee to edit. They put out two issues in 1950, the last was called the "Insurgent Issue".

In 1983, Rapp resumed publishing Spacewarp as a member of SAPS.

See Redd Boggs' “The Purple Dawn” (below) for a lengthy review of Spacewarp.

From Fancyclopedia 2, ca. 1959

Something that when you go into it in a straight line you come out at a different place, and/or going in a different direction, than you should according to Newtonian physics. Fans are always wandering into such things in strange cities and getting losted. A slightly different affair was the turntable on which the Shirley-Savoy in Denver was mounted, so that the Denvention attendees could start near the hotel, walk for blocks and blocks, and still be near the hotel. Mention we must Art Rapp's fanzine of this name, keystone of Fifth Fandom, which introduced such things as Steinpix, the helicopter beanie, and R*O*S*C*O*E to fandom.

Issue	Date	Pages	Notes
1 V1.1	April 1947	8	Hecto, hand-lettered, half-legalsize. Fictitious staff: Albert Warren and Gerald Dorman.
2 V1.2	May 1947	20	Co-editor now Bill Groover. First Steinpix appear.
3 V1.3	June 1947	24	Typewritten.
4 V1.4	July 1947
5 V1.5	August 1947
6 V1.6	September 1947	19	Morgan Botts makes first Spacewarp appearance, after premiere in Bembook.
7 V2.1	October 1947	22	Now lettersized.
9 V2.3	December 1947	24
10 V2.4	January 1948	18
11 V2.5	February 1948
12 V2.6	March 1948		First annish.
13 V3.1	April 1948		Now mimeo, though still with hecto illos.
14 V3.2	May 1948	16
16 V3.4	July 1948	20	Includes Rapp’s Torcon conrep.
17 V3.5	August 1948	22
18 V3.6	September 1948	21
19 V4.1	October 1948	22	Includes Hal Shapiro’s Beercon report.
20 V4.2	November 1948	22
21 V4.3	December 1948	32
22 V6.4	January 1949	24
23 V6.5	February 1949	22
24 V6.4	March 1949	22
25 V5.1	April 1949	22
26 V5.2	May 1949	22
27 V5.3	June 1949	22
28 V5.4	July 1949	26
29 V5.5	August 1949	24
30 V5.6	September 1949	28	Includes Art Rapp’s Cinvention con report.
31 V6.1	October 1949	26
32 V6.2	November 1949	26
	December 1, 1949	22	Index to V1-5
33 V6.3	December 1949	40
34 V6.4	January 1950	22
34 V6.4	January 1950	22
35 V6.5	February 1950	24
35 V6.5	February 1950	24
36 V6.6	March 1950	26
36 V6.6	March 1950	26
37 V7.1	April 1950	32
38 V7.2	May 1950	26
38 V7.2	May 1950	26
39 V7.3	June 1950	28
40 V7.4	July 1950	24
41 V7.5	August 1950	16	first Insurgent issue; edited by Charles Burbee & F.T. Laney
42 V7.6	September 1950	82	edited by Charles Burbee & F.T. Laney
44	October 1951	6
45	February 1952	6
	Spring 1053	6
	June 1953	10
	Summer 1953	12
	December 1953	31
62 V10.9	March 1956	18
65 V11.6	January 1960	62
66 V11.6	April 1960	46
67 V12.1	July 1960	30
69 V12.3	January 1961	26
73 V13.1	January 1962	8
74 V13.2	April 1962	32
76 V13.4	April 1963	6
77 V13.5	October 1963	7
78	April 1964	8
79	October 1974	8
80 V13.1	January 1965	10
83	January 1967	21
85	July 1967	9
100	October 1972	104
101	January 1973	24
109	January 1975	20
122	October 1981
128	April 1983	12
129	July 1983	22
131			Includes Robert Lichtman's Here There Be Saps #1 (Second Series)
133	July 1984	16
164	April 1992	10
	2001

Spacewarp online at fanac.org

The Purple Dawn

by Redd Boggs

"Surprising, the things one finds in a spacewarp"! That was the observation printed in green ink on the cover of a fanzine that popped into various mailslots back in the spring of 1947. To illustrate this contention there was a jack-in-a-box BEM grinning from the three-color cover, but the truth of the statement became fully apparent when one thumbed through the fanzine and realized that, uniquely enough, the entire issue was painstakingly hand-lettered, rather than typed, and despite this handicap, was surprisingly interesting.

There have never been many hand-lettered fanzines; L. R. Chauvenet's Detours (circa 1940) was perhaps the most famous example. And like Detours this new fanzine had an air about it, in the kinder connotations of that phrase. From the very beginning there was an impression that here was a newcomer that eventually must be reckoned with in the fanzine field.

Spacewarp was of course the fanzine in question, and according to the ifc, it emanated from one Arthur H. Rapp of Saginaw, Mich., who was assisted by a staff consisting of Albert Warren and Gerald Dorman. Their offering consisted of eight half-legalsize pages, set up in semi-newspaper format, with three columns to a page and headlines and subheads at the top. "Any resemblance to other 'zines," remarked an item on page 3, headed FEN TRIO WARP SPACE, "is purely coincidental, since the staff has seen only two such objects in their collective life. Spacewarp is not published with any specific purpose, other than to promote interest in stf, and to widen our circle of acquaintances in the field ... Right now we're experimenting with various types of articles and features trying to determine what will make the most interesting publication."

The editorial decision on this point for issue #1 centered -- as one might anticipate from an editor who has just recently contacted fandom -- on the prozine side of the field. The first Avon Fantasy Reader was reviewed; the " jettisoning" of Sgt. Saturn was hailed; and Al Warren picked his ten favorite fantasies. In addition, the first issue contained "Pillar of Fire", an editorial reprinted, according to a credit-line, from the Thursday Evening News for 20 March 1947. (The full story of this unique, but non-fan, periodical has at last been told in Wanigas #4, SAPSzine published by Rapp.) "The Psycho Lab", an irregular feature of Spacewarp, made its debut with Rapp himself as the subject. In this articlette Art revealed that he was born in Chicago, 29 December 1924, discovered stf in 1942, served in the army 1943-47, and was planning to go to college after he caught up on his stf reading.

That this small, amateurish, though reasonably diverting, fanzine made much of an impression in fandom will be doubted by everyone who ever tried to launch a new fanzine. Still, the second issue (May '47) did not lack for reader comment or for contributors. Letters, or excerpts therefrom, from K. Martin Carlson, Rod Palmer, Tom Jewett, Ben Singer, and Wilkie Conner decorated the last page (typical comment: "get yourself a typewriter"), and articles by the two latter writers, as well as Marion Zimmer and Edwin Sigler, appeared in the issue. The trend of the articles was toward discussion of favorite stf stories, a result of the Al Warren article in the first Warp. However, Wilkie Conner, who was destined to become one of the magazine's most regular contributors, inaugurated a new subject with his "Fantasy vs. Science Fiction," and Rapp himself wrote an excellent article on "The Fine Art of Titling". This issue also presented the first of Bob Stein's famed hektopix, in which Bob merrily adopted the technique of splashing the ink on with a brush rather than the conventional pen. These rainbowish concoctions went well with the multicolored balance of Spacewarp and were a distinguishing feature of the magazine for many issues.

Issue #3 saw Rapp switching to a typewriter. Whether he hadn't used a typer before because he didn't own one or because he thought hand-lettering showed up better in hekto than typing is still a little unclear to this reviewer, but in any case the typer took over for good now, though freehand headings were still in vogue. By this time the magazine had grown to 24 pages (issue #2 had 20) and sported a number of controversial articles by Wilkie Conner and Ben Singer -- who had taken issue with the former's contention in Warp #2 that fantasy is superior to stf -- as well as poetry and fiction by Rapp and co-editor Bill Groover. (Parenthetically it should be noted that both Al Warren and Gerald Dorman, original members of the Warpstaff, had by now completely disappeared from the masthead, being replaced in issue #2 by Groover. Both Warren and Dorman were, needless to say, figments of the Rapp imagination.)

Conner slugged back at Ben Singer in "In Self Defense" in the July 1947 issue, an article printed, in part, around a Stein illustration which I submit is the best hektopic Bob ever did and one of the best I ever saw. Conner was actually the only Warp contributor of the day, and prolific article-writer that he was, he contributed several items to each issue. This time, his second article was "Why Wave Those Oldies?" Someone named Warren Lewis Blewett appeared with "Return, Spirit!" a prose poem, and in the Psycho Lab, Bob Stein revealed that "I am usually disappointed in my drawings. They're not outlandish looking enough."

Meanwhile, the newspaper format had almost disappeared, being reserved for editorial sections of the magazine. Virtually no trace of it remained in the 5th issue (August 1947), an issue which saw Jack Clements, stormy petrel of Spacewarp for a brief time, make his bow. In "Is Kuttner Overrated?" Clements concluded that HanK was, and is, but his controversy-stirring effort supreme was still in the future. Hugh McInnis, Guerry C. Brown, and Robert Parris also made first appearances, as well as this writer, who contributed a poem "The Aliens" under a pename, A learned air was assumed by Spacewarp that issue, and only temporarily, with the publication of "General Semantics and the Scientific Method" by Don Bratton -- though, through some misunderstanding the article was bylined Donn Brazier.

During that summer, the Rapp-Groover team, having nothing at all to do except issue Spacewarp once a month, issued a 20-page one-shot titled Bembook. Published only in an edition of 30 copies, this publication scarcely set fandom afire, but it was distinguished for two things (1) its lettersize format, as contrasted with the Warp's half-legalsize; and (2) its material, particularly two lively sketches featuring a character named Morgan Botts, a beer-guzzling bum who had at one time, back in the 1950's and 60's, been a famous fan and editor. "The Man Who Murdered Fandom" and "Whiffingham's Revenge" were the titles of the first two Bottstories and presumably they either won unexpected favor with Bembook readers or else captured their creator's fancy, for Botts forthwith moved to Spacewarp.

"Anniversary", Warp's first Botts tale, appeared in the September 1947 issue, the other main feature of which was Robert Parris' "The Dome in the Desert" and Groover's "Cosmic Invaders", though somewhere in the issue Groover urged "Let's Spread Some Propaganda!", echoing the ancient plaint of fans that stf didn't get a square deal from the people of the macrocosm.

With the October issue (Vol. 2, No. 1) Spacewarp made a major change: it went lettersize. It retained a hekto mag, however, and retained the large freehand headings that were a feature of the smaller edition, as well as the colorful hektopix. Stein, however, had taken a rest with this issue, and a thoroughly unstefnal cover fronted the issue: a depiction of a cornshock and pumpkins, with an inset of a horse's head!

That was the issue that featured a debate on the merits of Lovecraft by Wilkie Conner ("Lovecraft: Phooey!") and Boggs ("Lovecraft: Hooray!), which had originated in a trading of comments by the participants through Rapp. Conner and Boggs never did write more than about two or three letters to each other and did not consider the HPL question more than incidentally even then. Their collaboration, however, gained some fame by being reprinted some Issues later in Spacewarp and eventually winning a minor prize in the "Clubhouse" fanzine contest.

Jack Clements burst out with "Dames!" in the same issue. Among the pronouncements made in this "starting gun for the biggest fan-feud since Shaver", as it was blurbed, was this: "Let it never be said that Evolution has no sense of humor. When it created man, it played one of the most stupendous jokes that has ever been made since time began. For when it created man, it also created woman .... Instead of making woman a rational, intelligent, clear-thinking being, it created one of the most childish and stupid creatures imaginable ...." JaClem declared that he had retired to an early bachelorhood, "having discovered at a youthful age that dames are pretty unnecessary, no matter what your biology teacher will tell you."

Since Clements has long since disappeared from the fan scene, I can reveal here for the first time that JaClem admitted to this reviewer in correspondence that he was in actuality not at all "anti-femme", and his "Dames!" was merely the early reaction to an unhappy affair (presumably of the puppy-love type) of some weeks previously. Reader reaction to his article was mostly predictable, except for Bill Groover's satiric dig in the November issue, "Earth Patrol", a yarn blurbed on the contents page as about "nefarious events in Cincinnati."

Spacewarp went to bat for the budding author in that November issue, attacking the problem of how to crash the pros in two ways -- one being Conner's accurate and informative "So You Want to Write Science Fiction", and the other being a Morgan Botts yarn, "How to Write Stf".

The final issue of 1947 saw several new names in the magazine, among them Al F. Lopez, James A. Wade, and Forrest J Ackerman. This reviewer must modestly admit that he was responsible for placing all three of these manuscripts with Warp, though how and why I obtained the MSS originally is now obscure to me. The Lopez item, an extremely thoughtprovoking one titled "Experience With Telepathy", must have bounced around for quite a while, so long in fact that Lopez got tired of waiting for it to appear and decided to make another copy and send it elsewhere. At any rate, the same article appeared almost coincidentally in Necromancer. Ackerman's article was a facetious account of an evening he spent "contacting" HPL, Homer Eon Flint, and A. Merritt via Ouija board.

Vol. 2, No. 4 January 1948, saw several innovations, not the least of which was the retrenching that was visible. Most of the issue was set up in nonstopparagraphing, and the back page had become a combination contents page and mailing wrapper -- a move to save space in the magazine and thus reduce expenses. In contrast to previous issues of 22 and 24 pages, this number contained only 18 pages, including the back page. The ifc featured an editorial in which Spacewarp took cognizance of the bitter Ackerman-Graham feud then splitting fandom by stating that Warp would be sent to "The Club House" for review, but observing that "If RAP had deliberately set out to destroy fandom, he would have been hardpressed to find a more effective way of doing so than the current actions of the more impulsive fen."

The first installment of "The Great STF Broadcast" also appeared in that January issue. The first fan round-robin ran through eight hectic installments before ending with the October issue. The authors of this strange blend of superscience and fannish humor were Bill Groover, Wilkie Conner, Bill Warren, "Mario Stanza," Redd Boggs, Wally Weber, Paul D. Cox, Radell Nelson, and Jim Harmon.

Jack Clements contributed the second, and as it turned out, the last installment of a column, "The Jackpot", he had inaugurated in the December issue. As one of the chief supporters of Roger P. Graham in the feud, JaClem had seen an advance copy of the first "Clubhouse" column and in "The Jackpot" he waxed philosophical over the plight of the poor Amazing reader seeing RPG's column for the first time.

It would happen this way, said Clements: The Amz reader glances at the "Observatory" and sees a statement by Palmer "inferring that no one in fandom knows who his father is. A few pages later, Phillips contradicts this by saying , 'Everyone in fandom knows who his father is, or at least has a pretty strong suspicion.' [The reader] turns again to the editorial. 'All fans are crazy!' screams RAP. Looking again at Phillips' column he finds that 'very few fen are crazy except for the insane ones.' The young fan sits for some moments in profound thought, then pulls the flush lever and jots down the following notes: RAP: 'All fans are sons of bitches.' RPG: 'There are some feminine fans.' RAP: 'Fans are filthy, dishonest, money-grubbing, yellow and uneducated.' RPG: 'A lie! Some fans have extensive educations.'" Clements concluded that Graham was secretly in the employ of Ackerman.

In the February 1948 issue Roger P. Graham answered Clement's charges. Under the title "Graham Cracks!" he declared: "No kidding, fellows, I'm hurt. I thought he (JaClem) was my friend .... I can't understand why he would turn against me without warning, stab me in the back the way he did, hold me up to the derision of fandom, casting doubts on my integrity -- implying that maybe, just maybe, I might be an honest guy. And after all the lies I've told, too!" He squelched the rumor that he was secretly in Ackerman's employ: "That is the most dastardly, despicable, impossible, unseemly, unkind, absurd lie of all. Ackerman hasn't paid me a cent in the past six weeks, so I quit just before Christmas."

Also in the February issue was a Morgan Botts yarn -- the 12th, according to the blurb -- called "Vindication", Vaughan Greene's yarn, "Star Dust", and Wally Weber's revival of an old school newspaper standby, "Chemistry of a Kiss."

March 1948 saw Spacewarp winding up its first year. In an editorial titled "First Birthday" Rapp said: "There always have been, and probably always will be, better fanzines than Spacewarp. We're not trying to put out the best zine in fandom -- we are trying to put out the kind of zine that we like to read. If your tastes happen to coincide with ours, that probably makes you happy; if not, well, maybe you find something to interest you in the Warp now and then, at least". No doubt the same editorial criterion still applies.

"Truly in response to a popular demand" the Conner-Boggs debate on Lovecraft was reprinted that issue; Guerry C. Brown reviewed Tales of the Undead; and after 5 months' absence, the letter column, heretofore never an extremely strong feature, finally bowed in again, under the tentative title of "Mail and Femail".

Spacewarp began its second year by coming out in mimeographed form for the first time. "... paeans of praise," wrote Rapp in the first "Timber!" editorial, written for this April 1948 issue, "should be directed toward Ben Singer and the Detroit ex-Hyperboreans, who took pity on our deep purple woes and lent us their mimeo." Though the text was mimeographed, the cover was still hektoed and there was a request for more hektoed illustrations. In place of the colorful freehand headings were numerous rubber-stamped heads in bright red. A strange feature of Spacewarp in its new format was its use of hekto-paper, despite its discarding of that reproductive process. Though Art still defends this idea as a significant innovation, I incline to agree with Don Wilson who in the Fantasy Annual remarked that "mimeoing on hekto paper was not exactly as the ghods of publication would have intended it."

Despite the snitzy new format, the April Spacewarp was below par in contents, a Morgan Botts yarn, "Once in a Long Long Time", being almost the only item worthy of mention. May saw a slight improvement, mostly the result of Radell Nelson's contribution, "A Fan Views Bradbury", a too-brief commentary that nevertheless contained such acute observations as this: "His [Bradbury's] underlying theme, it seems, is the interpretations of beauty through emotion. He has observed that when a person feels fear, his senses sharpen; he sees, hears, and thinks with a new vividness. Another writer can say 'Green music' and everybody laughs, but when, in 'The Coffin', Bradbury says it, you can hear the funeral organ playing"

Two little "idea stories" featured the June 1948 issue: Nelson's "The Story Teller" and Donn Brazier's "Man of Imagination". The latter was a manuscript I rescued from the dusty files of John Gergen's one-time fanzine Tycho, where it had reposed unpublished during most of the war. In addition, Wrai Ballard presented "Perfection", which is a rather weird slant on the alien-life theme, and Vaughn Greene contributed "Secrets of Shaverism", an article distinguished by the fact that it was not "the usual partisan moaning, but a carefully documented research into the persons and source-books involved." Concluded Greene; after noting that RAP was well repaid for pulling the greatest hoax of modern times, "RAP is one fellow to watch -- anyone with his foresight and courage to take such a daring risk ... is to be commended, regardless of the moral issues" -- a more Machiavellian viewpoint than most fans have ever expressed on the subject.

The July 1948 issue was one of Spacewarp's very best. In it Rapp scooped even the fanewsies by presenting, less than a week after the event, an eight-page report on the Torcon. Despite its hasty composition, "Torcon Daze" was well enough written to rank among the best convention stories to appear. This was the report that told the whole story of Singer and the Birthday Suit; Singer and the Explosive Telephone; Singer and the International Incident; and Singer and the Alum; as well as other items hardly about Singer at all. Squeezing into the issue, too, was a Bottstory, "The Lost Chord."

In the August 1948 issue Rapp apologized to Shaver. Rapp had written Shaver, accusing him of having no sense of humor, but Shaver showed he did have one by putting Art on the mailing list of the Shaver Mystery Club. Otherwise, however, the issue was subpar. Singer and Conner continued to controverse about something or other, and Zeda P. Mishler, a great correspondent friend of Charles Burbee, kicked some Fortean data around in "Strange -- But True", but the spark wasn't there. Nor was the September 1948 issue much better, though Wilkie Conner's H. P. Longhammer (who was just Horace Longhammer at this time) made his bow, and Ed Cox contributed a lively little yarn, "Dark Night". Andy Gregg interviewed the "Wizard of the Weird", August Derleth, but missed a chance to write a distinctive article by merely rehashing everything already known about Sauk City's first citizen. But Andy was to redeem himself later.

An upswing in quality from its momentary slump was evident in Spacewarp's October 1948 issue, and it was not, I must reluctantly admit, entirely due to the debut in that issue of "File 13". For in that issue William James' "Eyes of Roger Akner" appeared, and for those who have read James' fanzine fiction, especially those yarns collected in Dark Wisdom and Other Tales, that is recommendation enough. Though owing much to such greats as A. Merritt and H. P. Lovecraft, James manages consistently to show himself a skilled craftsman even when working with much-used material.

Also in that issue was Hal Shapiro's "The Beercon: Burp by Burb" in which Hal chronicled the epic trip of the Michifen to Milwaukee over the Labor Day weekend, 1948, for Bob Stein's Beercon; and C. Stewart Metchette's "Forgotten Pros", in which were listed a number of prozines that even Ackerman or Coslet cannot claim for their files -- such titles as Cataclysmic Cosmic Classics, Gaaaaahhhhh Stories, and Frankly Incredible Tales of Science.

Rapp himself provided the headliner for the following issue, November 1948: "The Armchair Fortean Discusses Arson". This was an article on the then-current Fortean mystery at Macomb, Ill., where strange fires broke out in the home of Charles Wiley despite vigilance of a deputy fire marshal and an insurance investigator. Using Fort's theories, Rapp was able to predict the outcome of this singular affair, and though Fate was not interested in it when it was submitted there, this article was one of the best ever to appear in Spacewarp. Also featured in the issue was T. E. Watkins' "Flickering Future", the first Warp contribution, I believe, of this fan writer who usually manages to write about subjects nobody else ever thought of, or else finds distinctly new slants on old subjects.

The December 1948 issue had 32 pages into which were crammed such items as Marion Zimmer's "Outpost", a little yarn that won first prize in the Rog Phillips' "Clubhouse" fanzine contest; William James' "Dark Wisdom"; and two sterling articles, "Tastes and Phobias" by Norman Ashfield, and "The Romance of Alchemy" by Arthur Jean Cox -- this latter a two-parter, the second half of which appeared in the January 1949 issue.

December's "Timber!" editorial announced that, beginning with the first 1949 issue, Spacewarp would merge with Universe, a fanzine edited and published by Radell Nelson. Spacewarp in its mimeographed form had been duplicated on a borrowed machine which at year's end had to be returned to the owners, leaving Rapp without a duplicator. Under the new merger, Rapp was to cut stencils for Spacewarp-Universe, and Nelson was to run them off. Despite these plans however, the January 1949 did not appear on time -- the first issue in Warp history up to then not to pop into mailboxes in the month it was dated. For several months it seemed that Warp had gone the way of all good fanzines. Nelson had decided that he was unable to mimeograph the combined magazine.

In March plans were altered, and the stencils for the January issue were sent to George Young, who managed to run them off. But in the meantime the subscription list had been lost, and many a paid-up subscriber -- even at least one contributor, namely, this writer -- did not receive a copy. Since the stencils were destroyed after being run off, this issue has become one of Spacewarp’s rarest.

The "Timber!" editorial in that issue was followed by a page of explanation regarding the delay in publication, and it was announced that henceforth Spacewarp would be bi-monthly, and would return to its old monthly schedule only "when I have (1) a mimeo, (2) time". Among the manuscripts presented in that issue were Radell Nelson's puzzling but expert fantasy, "The Fall of the City", T. E. Watkins' "Fortune Tellers of Calcutta", and "The Great Stf Broadcast". Another round-robin serial, "SBA!" featured most of the same characters, except JaClem, but were more expertly plotted and better written. Except for a few lapses, it managed to retain interest throughout its ten installments. Writers of this interplanetary saga were Art Rapp, Art Rapp, Redd Boggs, William James, Bill Warren, Art Rapp (who assumed authorship of the installment after the real writer thereof complained at the editing done on it), Ed Cox, Art Rapp, Art Rapp, and Art Rapp.

Before the next Spacewarp appeared, new and significant developments occurred behind the scenes. Rapp "pawned his portable timewarper" and purchased the small Montgomery Ward mimeograph I had used for a year, publishing Tympani and the first three issues of Sky Hook, before purchasing a new Speedoprint and banishing it to the basement. With a machine of his own, Rapp decided to make Spacewarp a monthly again, and rather than skip any months -- though now it was mid-May -- he would get back on schedule by issuing Spacewarp at less than monthly intervals till he caught up. This he proceeded to do, much to the consternation of regular contributors who had to meet a new deadline every few weeks, but much to the gleeful satisfaction of regular readers.

The February 1949 issue was fronted by a distinct innovation in the art of fanzine illustrating: A combination mimeo-hekto picture. Though this first attempt moved one fan to comment that it resembled an outline picture a four-year-old had tried to col or with a box of water paints, the mimeo-hekto technique became perfected and resulted in such outstanding covers as those on the April and May 1949 issues, as well as Ray Nelson's two classics -- those on the August 1949 issue and the Third Ann-Ish.

Andy Gregg visited Providence, RI, and told of his trip in that February issue. In describing this Lovecraft locale, he wrote: "Providence hasn't been the same in the eleven years since H. P. Lovecraft died. Since 1937 there have been civic improvements, housing projects, and a general deterioration in those weird and mystic places that made him love the city. True, Poe Street, Benefit Street and the others are still there, but the older houses are going fast, and there is a movement to rip down the Portuguese section of Benefit Street for a new housing project ..."

"What Far World?" was another William James tale; this came in the March 1949 issue. In the same number was an "editorial" by Wilkie Conner, "The American Way", in which he called for tolerance in fandom: "Don't kick your neighbor out because his sex is different from yours, or because he is more intelligent than you. Argue with him, feud with him, but keep it clean! Keep it American!" The April 1949 issue was a bit sub-par, except for T. E. Watkins' "Decline of the Pulps", which was well done despite the fact that its conclusions do not agree with recent events that have found nearly 20 stf pulps reposing on sagging newsstands. In the April issue, Bill Warren's humorous verse, "Archie" should also be mentioned.

"Problem in Ornithology" by Andy Gregg was the important item in the May 1949 number. This must be read to be appreciated, and I still don't know just how much basis in fact this startling anecdote had, but it is undoubtedly one of the most a musing things ever to appear in Warp. The Best From Spacewarp (published 1960) will automatically include this article, or story.

Two other candidates for The Best From Spacewarp came along in the following issue (June 1949): Stewart Metchette's scholarly "The Weapon Shops of Isher: An Explanation" and Art Rapp's "Introduction to Roscoism", transcribed from a collection of birch bark scrolls found in a hollow tree by a punch drunk lumberjack named Bjornsen, or Cornwallis. These portions of the Sacred Writings dealt with "Roscoe, the Good Beaver, and with Oscar, the Evil Muskrat , who is constantly palming himself off on this gullible herd as a beaver." Ed Cox contributed "Symptoms", a yarn based on a rather old idea, but very amusingly presented.

H. P. Longhammer returned in July in another yarn by Wilkie Conner, and Dan Mulcahy, in "Vicious Circle", decided that fandom is becoming more decentralized and that Joe Phann is becoming isolationist. Dan forsees the day, he claims, when the NFFF "will have gone to wherever old fan clubs go to die, and the FAPA will be as much a memory as the SFL; a day when there will be no national convention, but merely an endless procession of Beercons and Whitcons; a day when the Insurgent Element will have rejoined the LASFS from sheer boredom, or moved across the border en masse to set up the Baja California SFS..."

Further revelations of Roscoe in the August 1949 issue contained such highly important pages as the following: "... when Roscoe thwacks the water with his tail on Judgment Morn, the fen who sneer at beavers will wish they had not been born, for such heathen will be punished then as promptly as can be: they'll float downstream to Oscar, who will CHEW ON THEM with glee ...." In the same issue was a review of Joe Kennedy's fan-collection, No Greater Dream, and Warren Baldwin's unusual excursion into philosophy, namely predestination, in "Pitiful Puppets." Not the least of this issue's attractions, though, was Ray Nelson's cover, the significance of which strikes one belatedly -- but strongly.

Spacewarp wound up its fifth volume (September 1949) with Cinvention coverage by Rapp, "Vas Ve Effer in Cincinnati?" Though not as good as "Torcon Daze" and not as prompt in appearing -- at least in these parts -- it was a solid and informative report on what went on, formally and informally, at Cincinnati over the 1949 Labor Day weekend. In the same issue was the first Morgan Botts story in a beaver's age, "Machiavelli" in which the fabulous Botts revealed that certain famous fans of the 1940s and '50's, namely Sneary, Boggs, Ackerman, Cox, Moskowitz, Rapp, and Kennedy, had been mere stooges for fan-dictator Botts, ... all but one of them, that is. This writer can reveal here that he is the only independent on that list.

The longest fictional item ever to appear in Spacewarp came in the October 1949 issue. It was L. T. George's "The Rumor", which occupied more than eight pages in the issue, -- eight pages which were not wasted, incidentally, for though some trimming here and there would have sharpened the yarn it was a good quality fan-story as it stood. "Quien Sabe?" was a warm place in that issue, and others of that period, with several controversies going on anent atheism in fandom and use of Anglo-Saxon terms in polite society. A character named the "Stf Weirdist" had also shown up to challenge some remarks made in "File 13". More of this person will be heard in future Spacewarp issues.

Charles Stuart discussed "The Road to Stellar Empire" in the November issue, and T. E. Watkins reviewed George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. To celebrate the holidays, the following issue was a 40-page affair, accompanied by a supplement, The Spacewarp Index, which itself ran 22 pages, or the equivalent, almost, of an ordinary issue of Spacewarp .

There were many unusual items in that December 49 issue, including Warren Baldwin's "One of Us Must Die", which was fan science fiction; Herman Stowell King's "Starvation", Hal Shapiro's "The Bloodless One" and Charles L. Hames' "The Corpse", all weird tales; and numberless other fictional items. Some of these were humorous -- Lyon de Coeur's "Lost In Lovecraft Land", "H. P. Longhammer and the Frivolous Witch", by Conner, and the last installment of "Stf Broadcasts Again!" -- or allegedly so.

Among the articles were Baldwin's "A return to the Old Ideas", Watkins' "Super What?", and Edco's slightly wacky "How to Write an Article".

Since most of you have seen the last three issues of Spacewarp , I will just mention that since the dawn of 1950 this magazine has published such worthy items as Conner's exclusive article, "Have the Venusians Landed?"; Joe Kennedy's review of The Homunculus, Ed Cox's "Is Science Catching Up With Science Fiction?" and Warren Baldwin's "Will Spaceships Outrace Light?" It has also introduced three new columns, T. E. Watkins' "Kan Kan Kabitzer", Wilkie Conner's "Konner's Korner", and of course F. Towner Laney's old Vampire feature, "Fanzine Scope".

So this has been a review of 36 issues of Spacewarp, now one of the oldest subscription fanzines extant, and certainly one of the most interesting. I hope it will be around long enough for me to write a review of its next 36 issues, in 1953.

Unfortunately, this review has not been able to deal with other manifestations of that man Rapp's fannish yearning for expression and/or egoboo -- Postwarp, various one-shots he has published, the leaflets and flyers he has from time to time issued, and the many SAPS and FAPA mags he shoves into every mailing of late. Since Rapp publishes all these magazines, and Spacewarp , in addition to various publications run off for other people, all on a dinky, one-sheet-at-a-time mimeograph, which cost $19.75 when new, Arthur H. Rapp must be reckoned one of the seven wonders of the fan world.

All this lends a point to a nightmare I had the other night. I dreamed that the Postmaster-General burst into the office of whoever chairmans whatever congressional committee is in charge of the postal department, and shrieked, "Senator, you've got to raise postal rates on mimeographed matter!"

"Why?" asked the committee chairman.

"You've got to save thousands of postmen all over the country from a fate worse than mad bulldogs! I've just got word from Saginaw, Michigan. Art Rapp has just bought an electric, automatic mimeograph!"

THE END

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Publication

1947—1950

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