Ben Abas
(1926 – July 15, 1990)
Benjamin "Ben" Abas was a Dutch fan and sf artist active in the late 1940s and early 1950s. His father published the Dutch sf magazine Fantasie en Wetenschap which saw four issues between December 1948 and March 1949 and Abas provided artwork. He was a member of the Fantasy Artisans. He attended Festivention in London in 1951 with his wife, Barbara Abas, and brother. Walt Willis reported seeing Abas meet Alan Hunter in The White Horse before the convention properly started:
On the outer fringes of [Hunter's] beard was Ben Abas from Holland. Both were strenuously praising each other's artwork, and though Ben was at somewhat of a disadvantage because Alan had only one sketch with him against his own 20, he did such a good job on that one sketch that it blushed visibly.
At the convention itself Abas:
... brought a sheaf of notes to the microphone and apologized for reading from them, but he couldn't speak English very well. He talked about a Dutch prozine.
Michael Corper who spoke Dutch talked with Abas at the convention as he reported in Fantasy Times 131. Abas told him that he and his wife
spent four long years, separated from each other, in Japanese POW camps in the Dutch East Indies. Abas told me how strange it was to hear a woman's voice again after all that time.
As the article at lambiek.net linked below says, this seems unlikely as Abas was only fourteen years old when the war started. It is known that one of Abas's brother also attended Festivention and the article suggests that the anecdote may be about Leo Abas (1917-1997)
He also attended the London SF Con of 1952 but he gafiated about 1956 after moving to Australia.
Links
- Ben Abas at lambiek.net
| Person | 1926—1990 |
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