Tom Porter
(???? – )
Tomas Porter was a fan from Newcastle, UK active from the late 1950s. He was a member of the Newcastle SF Club and of the Young Science Fiction Reading Group in 1961, the latter suggesting his date-of-birth was no earlier than 1940. He gave his interests as 'sport' in the YSFRG Newsletter #2 (March 1961).
Alan Burns described Porter in Northlight #7 (November 1959) as 'the cartoonist's idea of a neofan but who works in an office by day'. That job was seemingly in the civil service at the Department of Health and Social Security and when Porter was transferred to London in 1965 he passed on his fanzine collection to local fans John Barfoot and Harry Bell, both of whom worked in the Department as well. In a letter to Relapse #14 (May 2009), Bell spoke of those early contacts with local Newcastle fandom:
Tom Porter was the most influential, in that although he disappeared off to live in London almost as soon as we'd met him, he handed over a box of old fanzines which proved instrumental, for me at least, in conveying what fandom was really about.
There is no sign that Porter contacted local fandom in London.
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