Helen Wesson

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(July 6, 1919 – Sept 7, 2006)

Helen Vivartlas Wesson, a New York fan, was active from the 1940s through ’60s. She belonged to FAPA since 1946. She published Pendragon and Helen's Fantasia. She also published The (Unspeakable) Thing with Burton Crane and with her husband, Sheldon Wesson, from 1946–52.

They were living in Yokohama, Japan, in 1950 and ’52, according to the colophons. The 1950 Fan Directory puts her in Rockaway, NY, while the 1961 Directory of Science Fiction Fandom lists her in Yokohama.

She was also heavily involved in Ajaymundane APAs — such as NAPA, beginning before World War II.

According to Les Croutch in Light 30 (January 1946), she was against advertising in fanzines:

In fact, after reading Helen V. Wesson’s neatly printed magazine in which she commented on selling advertising space, and costs, I am wondering more about doing this. Helen Wesson takes the logical viewpoint that an amateur does not do what he is doing in return for monetary recompense of even the mildest sort.

She believes that an amateur publication ceases to be an amateur publication the moment it sells an inch of space for advertising, or sells subscriptions. If this is the case, there aren’t many true amateur magazines in the field.... However, a point to bo considered which she does not and that is that there are many amateur publishers who are short of cash and who must try to make their magazine pay for itself to as great an extent as possible. Evidently Helen Wesson has no such fears. 

Joe Kennedy records her as attending the The First Post-war Eastern Science Fiction Convention in 1946:

Helen Wesson was wandering around with an armload of The ... Things, looking beautiful and bewildered as she tried to locate all the people that the copies were supposed to go to.

Note: Vegas Fandom Weekly #81 (ed. Arnie Katz) describes her shortly before her death as being "now nearly 100 years of age", which disagrees with the year of birth shown above (from genealogy pages). Her July 6 birthday is correct per the 1950 Fan Directory.

Fanzines and Apazines:



Person 19192006
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