Curtain Call
Curtain Call was a fanzine produced by Eric Bentcliffe, Terry Jeeves and Dale R. Smith. It was devoted to a hoax fan fund to send a British fan to Siberia. The second issue was included in the Cytricon II combozine (April 1956).
The British Fanzine Bibliography has no details of its first issue but its second explains that:
In Curtain Call number one information was given on the Russian fan scheme whereby a British fan was invited to attend the next Soviet science fiction convention in Siberia. The invitation came from Walter Alezandervitch, of the Smolensk Tractor Drivers, Caviar Growers, and S-F Readers Club. Walt is editor of the loading Russian zine Leaning. ... The candidates listed in our earlier bulletin were N. G. Wansborough, Brian Burgess, Peter Reaney, Stewart J. McKinsey[1], and Ron Bennett. At the request of Russian Fandom however, Brian Burgess has been withdrawn from this short list... it appears that Russia already has a Burgess[2].
It's unclear when this first issue appeared but Dave Cohen alludes to it in Cosmos Bulletin #3 (January 1956) so it was probably late 1955.
The second issue includes a letter from Reaney who seems to be nobly entering into the spirit of it. It also adds a nomination from Archie Mercer for Nigel Lindsay. Attendees at Cytricon were invited to vote for their preferred candidate and hand ballots to Bentcliffe or Jeeves. There are no references to a third or subsequent issue.
In a letter in KiwiFan #8 (April 1958), Ron Bennett said 'a couple of years ago Jeeves and Bentcliffe set up a mock-TAFF fund to send a fan to Siberia, and Peter Reaney "won" it.'
It was doubtless all considered a jolly jape at the time and 'a bit of fun'.
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- ↑ Presumably they meant J. Stuart MacKenzie.
- ↑ Presumably an allusion to Guy Burgess (Wikipedia), a double-agent who defected to the Soviet Union in 1951.
| Publication | 1955—1956 |
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