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En Garde, whole no. 17.5, 1946
Page 4
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page 4. BUT FOR THIS... By Donn Brazier (With due apologies to Lajos Zilahy for stealing his title, for stealing the basic idea and adapting it to Fandom, and for murdering his stile -- DPB) Steve Mallon had long been a silent member of that growing body of enthusiasts of imaginative literature known as Fandom. He became a soldier, a private in the Infantry. His parents having been dead since he was a boy, and he an only son, there was none to wave to him when the train pulled out to carry him to the transport waiting at San Francisco. Not even a friend. He was twenty-five years old. He had been a quiet, shyly aloof student at a small college, making few if any friends. In the short period before going into actual combat, Stave Mallon resolved to write a monumental paper for distribution to Fandom. It would be a piece to make his name ring throughout the inner circles. He wrote it on three sheets of paper. It was called "A Pervading Philosophy of Fandom". He cut a mimeograph stencil and ran off one hundred copies of his masterpiece which had once and for all viewed Fandom in the light of Galactic thought. He mailed one copy to the leading fan, and then it was time to move into the thick of the fight. No more were mailed. Forty-nine copies were burned as trash in the final police-up detail. The stencil, too, was destroyed. The original typed copy he carried with him, but it was burned to a crisp when Steve Mallon was crushed and burned to death beneath a blazing tank. His dog tags fused and melted. His outfit's headquarters suffered a direct bomb hit which destroyed his military records. Five years later the old man, whose furnace he tended while going to college, died. Steve was paid in cash, and had never received a check in his life.
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page 4. BUT FOR THIS... By Donn Brazier (With due apologies to Lajos Zilahy for stealing his title, for stealing the basic idea and adapting it to Fandom, and for murdering his stile -- DPB) Steve Mallon had long been a silent member of that growing body of enthusiasts of imaginative literature known as Fandom. He became a soldier, a private in the Infantry. His parents having been dead since he was a boy, and he an only son, there was none to wave to him when the train pulled out to carry him to the transport waiting at San Francisco. Not even a friend. He was twenty-five years old. He had been a quiet, shyly aloof student at a small college, making few if any friends. In the short period before going into actual combat, Stave Mallon resolved to write a monumental paper for distribution to Fandom. It would be a piece to make his name ring throughout the inner circles. He wrote it on three sheets of paper. It was called "A Pervading Philosophy of Fandom". He cut a mimeograph stencil and ran off one hundred copies of his masterpiece which had once and for all viewed Fandom in the light of Galactic thought. He mailed one copy to the leading fan, and then it was time to move into the thick of the fight. No more were mailed. Forty-nine copies were burned as trash in the final police-up detail. The stencil, too, was destroyed. The original typed copy he carried with him, but it was burned to a crisp when Steve Mallon was crushed and burned to death beneath a blazing tank. His dog tags fused and melted. His outfit's headquarters suffered a direct bomb hit which destroyed his military records. Five years later the old man, whose furnace he tended while going to college, died. Steve was paid in cash, and had never received a check in his life.
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