-
4. NYCon 1939
- University of Illinois Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
26 | | 5 4 NYCon 1939 In January 1938, while still a senior in high school, Bradbury and his close friend Eddie Berrara volunteered to take over the editorship of ’Madge beginning with the March issue. They knew that Forry’s library job at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was making it more and more difficult for him to find time to edit. But Forry had managed to keep the fanzine going well enough with very few resources, so the LASFL membership decided to stay the course for now. One factor militating against Bradbury may have been his overly exuberant personality and the evangelical commentary he constantly put forth on his passions in film, radio, reading, and politics. But it was also clear to everyone, except perhaps Bradbury himself, that he wasn’t ready to front a publication, even an amateur fanzine. Early in 1938 he wrote an editor’s introduction for his version of ’Madge. This document never reached print, but it provides a snapshot of his earliest serious attempt at editing and publishing. Bradbury gamely offered up two of his own unpublished stories, and his descriptions forthrightly but unintentionally previewed just how bad they were: “The first story, ‘Alba of Alnitak,’ has a few angles not approached in science-fiction (we hope) though the regular running of the story may not be as new as hundreds of others. We think we have created atmosphere anyway. The second tale, ‘The Road to Autumn’s House,’ has captured some horror and weirdness and possibly a slightly new slant on werewolfs and the like.” Both of these stories were recent high-school creative writing submissions. Bradbury also wanted to eliminate ’Madge’s policy of rejecting adventure stories, possibly because he had a few of these in progress as well. In spite of good intentions , his introduction rambled and his sole editorial promise revealed a student who had been forced to retake the introductory English core during his senior year: “And it will be done in first rate English. Our punctuation may be bad at times, butweguaranteethenearestthingto perfect English coming out of the LA League.” He was, of course, only seventeen at the time, but he was immersed in a fanzine culture created just a few years earlier by teenagers like Julius Schwartz, Charlie Hornig, and Mort Weisinger; by 1938, in their early twenties, these New YorkershadallbecomeprofessionalagentsoreditorsbackEast.Clearly,Bradbury i-xvi_1-328_Elle.indd 26 6/27/11 2:51 PM Chapter 4. NYCon 1939 | 27 was not yet up to the mark of his predecessors in terms of the ability to control his editorial prose or even judge the quality of amateur submissions. After high school, Bradbury let this urge to edit simmer for a year and focused on occasional contributions to various fanzines. Bradbury hadn’t forgotten his disaster with “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma,” and by the fall of 1938 he chose to revisit a situation that would have been better left undisturbed. “Hollerbochen Comes Back” was among the unpublished materials at hand when Forry Ackerman ’s work schedule finally made it impossible for him to keep up production of Imagination! in its original format. The remaining submissions were triaged into various one-off and recurring chapter publications, including five issues of theuntitledtwo-pagemini-fanzineinformallydubbed Mikros.Bradbury’ssecond fanzine story appeared in the November 1938 issue of Mikros, but it was really more of an epilogue than a sequel to the first Hollerbochen tale. In“HollerbochenComesback,”theexplodedtitlecharacterreconstitutesatthe author’srequestandreturnstorescueBradburyandhisreputation.Hollerbochen looks for him in places where dark forces are at work in the world, including Berlin, Moscow, Japan, and finally Alcatraz. He finds his author at his typewriter, imprisoned by the fanzine readers who had ridiculed the first story. Bradbury has Hollerbochen round them up through a series of puns and word games involving many of his fellow science-fiction fans. The tone was more humorous than hostile and offered a gentle reminder to fanzine readers and editors that what is intended as a humorous story should be taken with good humor. It was a point probably not worth making over a throwaway piece like “Hollerbochen ’s Dilemma,” but together the two Hollerbochen pieces offer a first glimpse of Bradbury’s lifelong defense mechanism against developing an overweening ego. Bradbury’s instinctive desire to make fun of writers (including himself) who might otherwise take themselves too seriously first surfaces here, although it is somewhat masked by his own genuine irritation over the harsh readerresponse.Butfromthisfirstsalvo,Bradburywoulddevelopanabidingand healthy sense that writers...