T. Bruce Yerke

T. Bruce Yerke (1940s). Courtesy of Rob Hansen.

(April 17, 1923 – March 6, 1998)

Theodore Bruce Albrecht Yerke, nicknamed Tubby or, in Esperanto, Tobojo, found sf in April 1935. He had been born in Montana, but when his family moved and he discovered that he was four blocks from Forry Ackerman, he just walked over to see him. He joined the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in February 1937 as a teenager, and was for a while its "perennial secretary." He was considered to be part of the Moonrakers, a "bad boy" group within LASFS. He was also a member of the insurgent Knanves and published their fanzine, The Knanve.

Yerke as Dr. Fassbeinder by Ronald Clyne.
From Presenting Ronald Clyne (September 1943).

Yerke sometimes used the pen name of Carlton J. Fassbeinder and published the The Bedside Fassbeinder in 1944. He published poetry iunder the pseudonym Fywert Kinge (which some thought was Arthur Louis Joquel II.)

In September 1937, he published the one-shot Scientifooey Mag, and in 1938 decided to publish a regular fanzine. The result, Imagination!, edited with Forrest J Ackerman, became the voice of the LASFS. With Ackerman, he also published The Damn Thing. He published the Report to Science Fiction Fandom: The Cosmic Circle. He was considered to have been one of the best fan writers of the 1940s.

Yerke recruited Ray Bradbury for LASFS after hearing from Robert L. Cumnock (another Lasfan) of a teen-aged fan he'd run into. He wrote Bradbury and invited him to come to club meetings. At his first meeting, Bradbury walked up to the group and said, "Is Mr Yerke here?"

Yerke's unfinished autobiography, Memoirs of a Superfluous Fan (1944, reprinted in 1991), is one of the best pictures of those early days of SF fandom in LA. He served as the model for the victim, William Runcible, in Anthony Boucher's novel Rocket to the Morgue. He was an advocate of Technocracy.

• Early short biography in Who's Who in Fandom 1940, page 15.

Fanzines and Apazines:

• The Bedside Fassbeinder [1944] (as by Carlton J. Fassbeinder)
• Damn Thing [1941-42]
• Imagination! [1937] (some issues)
• The Knanve [1943-44]
• Memoirs of a Superfluous Fan [1944]
• Report to Science Fiction Fandom: The Cosmic Circle [1943]
• Scientifooey Mag [1937]

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 2014 — 1939 Best Fanzine Retro Hugo

From Fancyclopedia 1, ca. 1944

Tubby – Nickname of T. Bruce Yerke.

From Fancyclopedia 1, ca. 1944

Carlton J Fassbeinder – Pename of T Bruce Yerke.

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Person

1923—1998

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