Writers in Fandom the Fanzine Scene
Interview with Fern Marder Has a movie or possibly a television
series, ever made you feel so compelled to write about it? Or
further, to continue the story, take the characters to new places,
or completely different adventures? Have you ever walked away from
a movie with thoughts on what you could have done with the story,
or where it could lead next? Have you ever been a true fan of any
genre or film? Then welcome to fandom. It is in any given
fandom, that you're sure to find works of fan fiction
surrounding it. These works, in the form of fanzines, have
been widely distributed for a long time, most notably from the
early '70s, long before the Internet. It's this form of creative
expression that has inspired many people, and even launched many
careers. Anything born of such great inspiration is surely a great
way to start and learn the joys and possibilities, and grow in the
craft of writing. Fern Marder and Carol Walske became widely known
with their works of fan fiction. Although Carol was an accomplished
artist with a special joy in fractals, as seen in her Renderosity gallery. Fern is quick to point out
that Carol considered herself a writer first. Sadly, Carol passed
away last year [Carols memorial], yet her work will continue to inspire
others, whether in art or writing. That said, I owe a great deal of
thanks to Fern Marder for allowing me a deeper look into Carol and
her collaborative work in fan fiction, and to be able to share it
with you, through this interview. As an introduction, and
relevant to the release of Star Wars Episode III, here is a bit of
background concerning Fern and Carol's Star Wars based
writings, in Fern's own words: All of Carol's and my Star
Wars fiction was written during the time of the original
series, particularly between the second and third movies. Probably
the most well-known (or perhaps I should say infamous) is a novel
called Stormbrother, which was published in 1983 as a
special issue of Guardian (Issue No. 5). The Guardian was a
fanzine published by Mazeltough Press, which had the odd
distinction of being a fan novel that was paid-for publication
(publishers split the profits with us to get the novel).
Particularly relevant at this particular moment, although coming
out just before Return of the Jedi, its premise concerns the
true identity of the man who became Darth Vader, and why/how he
fell to the dark side. This presented a very different scenario for
the plot end of the first trilogy. Shorter Star
Wars related fiction appeared in several other fanzines at the
time, most notably the double-issue of Time Warp (Issue No.
7), which included several of our stories (both in collaboration,
and by each of us individually). Both of these and many other
Star Wars related fanzines had artwork by Carol Walske (she
was especially in demand to provide cover art a Walske
cover helped to sell a 'zine), whether or not we had writing in
them. She was particularly known for her photo-quality portraits
of the characters, which were published in fanzines and also sold
at auction at various fan conventions at the time. Carol and I
never published a Star Wars fanzine out of our own press, but
virtually co-produced the two items mentioned above.
When did you first start writing? What was your earliest
inspiration? I started writing poetry in the second grade, and
short stories in junior high. I got into non-fiction writing and
journalism in college. Im pretty sure that Carol also started to
write in elementary school. Carol started developing Nu
Ormenel, a science fiction universe, when she was in high
school. My earliest inspirations were things having to do with
nature and social problems. Carol was always into fantasy/science
fiction and history. How did you first get involved with
publishing? My work had been published in school literary
yearbooks, so I started thinking about getting the word out there
pretty early. I was an editor (sports!) of my college newspaper. I
discovered fan/small press publication while I was in college.
Carol had created artwork for competition, but I dont know if she
had any of her early writing published. She also found out about
fanzines while in college. We got into the publishing business
(running a small press company from our apartment), when a small
press publisher we knew was upgrading to a better mimeo press, and
we acquired her old one. Three fanzines came out of it (none of
these with our writing in them), which we helped to produce but did
not actually publish in terms of editing or marketing. At the same
time, we both were submitting our writing to fanzines for
publication. We were in NYC, it was the early 70s we knew a
half-dozen fanzine publishers as friends. We decided to get into
publishing zines ourselves when fans of our stories started writing
to us, complaining that a lot of the early stuff was out-of-print.
We started by publishing collections of reprinted Nu Ormenel
stories and branched out from there. What was your publishing
venture like, and what did you publish? As indicated
previously, we started ghost-publishing for friends who needed
assistance. Our own first edited and marketed publications were the
Nu Ormenel Collected Volumes, five in all, containing both
reprints and new material. Subsequently, we published zines in
Star Trek, Buckaroo Banzai, and Robin of
Sherwood fandoms. We also ghost-published or prepared
photo-ready copy and arranged for the printing for zines in Star
Wars and mixed media for several different people. A word on
the Buckaroo Banzai zine we published The Cavalier
in connection with the official 20th Century Fox fan club for the
movie the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, for whom we kind of
ran an east coast office. We were utterly startled to find a
mention of this, including our names, in an interview on the
Banzai DVD, that came out a few years ago. A while back, on
another fractal website, we found a post from a fractal fan trying
to find out if the Carol Walske who did fractals, was the Carol
Walske who did The Cavalier. The creative world is so
wonderfully small. What was the climate like at the time for fan
fiction writers? What was the fan-base like for you and Carol? I'm
assuming it must have gotten pretty crazy at times. We are
talking about the 70s and early 80s. It was a wild time for fan
writers. Media fandom was really taking off. Science fiction
fanzines/semi-pro zines go back a very long time, but I believe
that the first film/TV media-related SF zines were Trek
zines (which is probably why there has always been a huge schism
between "literary" SF fans and "media" SF fans). When Star
Wars arrived, there were suddenly Star Wars zines (and
rival Close Encounters zines). Then you got everything else
media fanzines for every genre/TV show you could imagine (SF media
zine people started doing zines for things like Starsky & Hutch,
Remington Steel, and so forth). Some of the larger media SF
conventions had special dealers rooms just for fanzines. There
were conventions just for fanzine readers/ writers/publishers. As
for us, our fan base grew very quickly, which is how/why we
published the reprint zines mentioned before. Also, Carol and I
were a full-service creative house. We not only wrote fiction, but
Carol also had a booming career in fan art (illustrations, zine
covers, convention art show pieces). I wrote poetry and also wrote
and performed music at fan gatherings/conventions and provided
music transcription services for other fan composers. So we had a
lot of fans on a lot of fronts. When and how did you and Carol
meet? What was your first collaboration? Carol and I met (of
course!) at a small Trek/media convention in NYC in 1973 when I
spotted her name tag and went over to compliment her on what was
one of the first published Nu Ormenel stories A Klingon
Heritage. About two years later, she contacted me when some
zine people we knew were planning a two-zine set, one fiction and
one non-fiction, with articles on how the universes for those
worlds had been built. I had been recommended to her as a good
person to help write a section on language, since her Nu
Ormenel universe had multiple languages, complete with grammar,
alphabets, etc. While we were working on the technical article,
Carol was telling me about a plot problem she was having with the
story to go in the fiction volume. I suggested a fix for the
problem and we were suddenly collaborating on the story, Broken
Sword, the first story to get our shared byline. We each
subsequently also wrote on our own, but the majority of our fiction
writing was co-authored after that. It should be noted here that
Carol and I never stopped writing, even though we stopped doing
zines. In fact, Carol continued to write throughout her illness. We
completed a new novel manuscript in August of 2004 SF,
non-media-related (having nothing to do with Trek!), based
on the original concepts of the Nu Ormenel universe. In the
hospital in December, Carol told me that I could go ahead and try
to get it published if I wanted to, but what really mattered to her
was that she had managed to see it finished to her satisfaction.
What do you consider to be the best, or most satisfying work you
and Carol have written? Obviously, I am very excited about A
Distant Shore, the novel that we finished the draft of last
summer. We actually have written a number of novel-length
manuscripts, but this one really feels right. I'm afraid that a lot
of our best work was only ever shared with close friends and
family. In the universe we called Luminous Times, the first
novel, A Sort of Homecoming, will always be one of my
favorite works. Do you still keep in touch with a lot of the
people who read your collective works? As with the Cavalier
story, we never knew when an old fan of ours would pop up. I
keep in touch with many more fellow publishers than those who were
just readers/fans of our writing but, all of these publishers
were fans of the writing, so I guess that counts. While we lived in
NY, we were much more in touch with other fans of the writing,
because we still occasionally went to fan gatherings or
conventions. However, it was a real kick to walk through the main
dealers room at the World Science Fiction Convention, in San Jose
in 2003 (a great distraction during Carols first chemo), and have
someone scream out our names! There was a table being run by a
couple of Nu Ormenel fans whom we hadnt seen in probably 25
years. Also, with the release of the new Star Wars movie, I
am still discovering new and old fans of our writing. You and
Carol sure kept yourselves quite busy for some time. When did you
stop doing zines? We mostly stopped doing zines because
"mundane" life got in the way. We had both worked our ways up in
our careers and you can't (or at least we chose not to) try to do
both zining is extremely time-consuming when you are both
creating the material and running the publishing/mail order
company. We stopped submitting our work to other zines, and stopped
publishing zines for sale in the '80s. When we did The
Cavalier (the Buckaroo Banzai zine), it wasn't because
we were interested in going back into publishing, but more that the
fan club really wanted a good fanzine to come out, and we were
uniquely in a position to help them. Likewise, we threw together
our Robin of Sherwood zine, Another Time Another
Place, when I was going to sing at a ROS convention. It would
have felt very strange to arrive at a convention without a zine to
sell (we also sold prints of some great portraits of ROS characters
that Carol had done). We also took an excursion into another
fannish activity - we got seriously into rock music. Oh
dear, here comes another set of adventures. Besides just listening
to music and going to concerts, we got deeply into collecting music
memorabilia to the point that when Rolling Stone magazine
did a feature on megafans (September 1989), Carol and I were the
ones chosen to represent U2 fandom. We also did a lot of traveling
in the US and Europe in connection with music activities, and
briefly got involved with the public relations offices of one of
our favorite Australian bands, Midnight Oil. However, never
stopping writing, the Luminous Times universe (as a
knowledgeable U2 fan will recognize by the name) is deeply based in
the music world of the '80s. Looking back, was there anything
you would have done differently? That is to say, do you have any
regrets? Also, do you have any words of wisdom for writers looking
to get published? Especially now, knowing that all the things
that Carol and I put off doing assuming that we could pursue them
later, are not going to happen because she isn't going to have a
later. I very much regret that we didn't take the time to get
some of our writing professionally published, and that Carol didn't
get her art work similarly recognized. I can't give advice on
getting published because we walked away from that route. If
anything, I would ask your readers for advice on how I can go about
getting this novel of ours (and any subsequent ones that I may
complete myself) published. I will say this - old style fanzine
writing taught us a lot. We had to write to a page limit, a
deadline, and answer to editor/publishers. The big problem with a
lot of Internet fan fiction is that the writers publish it
personally, without the help/oversight of an editor. Take your
writing to writers you respect and get some serious comments,
criticism and advice. And keep writing. Always. Have you ever
considered compiling earlier works for publishing? Absolutely
not! Carol and I always considered it a great gift that we were
allowed to dabble in the creative universes of Star Trek, Star
Wars, etc. However, what made writing exciting and our work
unique was that we always wrote the alternatives to the norm - we
didn't follow the script as written. We took a little piece of what
existed and took off from there into a totally original direction.
We never intended to go professional with anything that included
the slightest reference to someone else's universe and characters,
since what mattered most to us was creating our own universes and
characters.
 Nicks Notes is a regular featured column
with Renderosity Staff Writer Nick Sorbin [vclaszlo]. |
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