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Voice of the Imagination, whole no. 30, March 1944
Inside front recto
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THE ROC OF GIBRALTER (Voice of the Recapitulation) This is a meditorial about that legendary brodingnagian bird. Synonymously noen as the Roc of Ages. Vom is that Roc. And fans may come & fans may grow out of fandom but Vom goes on forever. However! Of late a spate of criticisms has come up. "What is VOM coming to?" "Does VOM really show a cross section of fan thought?" "You have let the mag become to stereotyped." "VOM is getting stale." "All too many fen are saying that VOM no longer interests them." These are all quotes from a letter from our good friend, nabor & critique, Jimmy 'Toward Tomorrow' Kepnet. Kepner's criticism calls for comment. Vom, to sum up his complaints, has reacht Roc bottom. The old bird aint what she used to be. And--we agree! The trouble? Deviation from first principles. Bcus yeds've been with the mag since its metamorphosis from Madge (IMAGINATION!) we've overlookt the fact that newcomers rnt familiar with the old numbers & the editorial explanations & mutations &c. In the Beginning, for instance, I, 4e, introduced the "sic" policy on the theory it would produce typograficly better letters. It was my idea that once a fan realized the letter was going to apear complete, replete with its msspellings et al, heesh would take more care about hiser's submission. This workt out diectly the opposite. Fans deliberately were difficult. Things had reacht such a stage by the time of the 7th number that the Roc clampt a talon down on the talon-ted trivia-makers who were taxing our ingenuity to reproduce letters sent in upsidedown, backward, in shorthand &c. The novelty was getting out of hand & we decided it'd better be banned bfore someone submitted a carving on a slate plate or challenged us to reproduce a message in invisible ink. Well, while running letters sic did not shame them into better apearance, it did materially mold Vom's policy, so that we nue definitely what we wanted to do was present a mirror of fandom. And we've only made one concession that that ideal: Originly we ran letters one ryt after another, in chronological order, just in the rotation rcvd. The objection we realized to this was: It was making a fetish of the time-element, as tho there were soething sort of supernatural about the order in which the letters were rcvd, a chain which should not be broken. Beside, 3 or 4 long, serious letters might be rcvd, unrelieved by any lafter or short notes; then a stack of postal piffle might come along & be buncht after the thotfuletters. It made bad balance that way. So we switch to the interlarding lengthy strate face stuff with the short retort or the sunny funnyyarn. YEARS pass. Today Kepner asks: "Why are there no comments on the prozines in VOM's pages?" Why indeed?--we're all for it. "After all, you offer a swell opportunity for the fan to compare the various pros." Exactly! We always thot so! "We can write to Campbella nd comment of Astounding, and we can write to Palmet to comment on Amazing and FA, so why doesn't VOM open its doors to general & comparative comment?" They have never been closed! But aparently we havent been making our readers sufficiently aware of that. "Also" he ads, "a bit of comment on some of the stfantasy books." This is quite all x with us! Other topix Jimmy suggests: Do we need a nat'l fan organization? PLans for a fan community--"Slan Center". Isnt Atheism just as narrow and dogmatic as the faith of a Hardshell Babtists? Or even the scientific or metaphysical discussions. Is time travel possible? Was there ever an Atlantis? Which theory of the Universe's formation is acceptable to most scientists today? What are some of the possible uses of radioactivity? Can science create life? Science disproves much of theology but can it ever disprove general religion? What was the civilization probly like in Ankor Vat? Is magic more than just hocus-pocus? What is mental telepathy? Do ants act thru pure instinct? Etc. "Why don't you appeal to the readers to try to have something particular to say when they write?" asks Kepner. OK--consider yourself apeald to, our fine featherd fans. Now about NUDES. "VOM has degenerates into a soapbox parleur for the discussion of the nude drawings publisht therein," accuses Kepner. Geo. Barr wants to noe why we waste space & offen the reader with a crude nude? Elsewhere it was publisht that anyone could look into the cesspool that was Ackerman's mind by buying Vom. Hum. Chums & cummesses, have some of U got the erroneous idea that Forry's personal stamp of approval is on evry nude used? Didja ever notice that byline on most mags, "Not responsible for opinions exprest in this publication unless editorially signd?" So we gotta waste space with that legend too, amending it to include "Publication of nuders does not necessarily indicate approval of their proportions.
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THE ROC OF GIBRALTER (Voice of the Recapitulation) This is a meditorial about that legendary brodingnagian bird. Synonymously noen as the Roc of Ages. Vom is that Roc. And fans may come & fans may grow out of fandom but Vom goes on forever. However! Of late a spate of criticisms has come up. "What is VOM coming to?" "Does VOM really show a cross section of fan thought?" "You have let the mag become to stereotyped." "VOM is getting stale." "All too many fen are saying that VOM no longer interests them." These are all quotes from a letter from our good friend, nabor & critique, Jimmy 'Toward Tomorrow' Kepnet. Kepner's criticism calls for comment. Vom, to sum up his complaints, has reacht Roc bottom. The old bird aint what she used to be. And--we agree! The trouble? Deviation from first principles. Bcus yeds've been with the mag since its metamorphosis from Madge (IMAGINATION!) we've overlookt the fact that newcomers rnt familiar with the old numbers & the editorial explanations & mutations &c. In the Beginning, for instance, I, 4e, introduced the "sic" policy on the theory it would produce typograficly better letters. It was my idea that once a fan realized the letter was going to apear complete, replete with its msspellings et al, heesh would take more care about hiser's submission. This workt out diectly the opposite. Fans deliberately were difficult. Things had reacht such a stage by the time of the 7th number that the Roc clampt a talon down on the talon-ted trivia-makers who were taxing our ingenuity to reproduce letters sent in upsidedown, backward, in shorthand &c. The novelty was getting out of hand & we decided it'd better be banned bfore someone submitted a carving on a slate plate or challenged us to reproduce a message in invisible ink. Well, while running letters sic did not shame them into better apearance, it did materially mold Vom's policy, so that we nue definitely what we wanted to do was present a mirror of fandom. And we've only made one concession that that ideal: Originly we ran letters one ryt after another, in chronological order, just in the rotation rcvd. The objection we realized to this was: It was making a fetish of the time-element, as tho there were soething sort of supernatural about the order in which the letters were rcvd, a chain which should not be broken. Beside, 3 or 4 long, serious letters might be rcvd, unrelieved by any lafter or short notes; then a stack of postal piffle might come along & be buncht after the thotfuletters. It made bad balance that way. So we switch to the interlarding lengthy strate face stuff with the short retort or the sunny funnyyarn. YEARS pass. Today Kepner asks: "Why are there no comments on the prozines in VOM's pages?" Why indeed?--we're all for it. "After all, you offer a swell opportunity for the fan to compare the various pros." Exactly! We always thot so! "We can write to Campbella nd comment of Astounding, and we can write to Palmet to comment on Amazing and FA, so why doesn't VOM open its doors to general & comparative comment?" They have never been closed! But aparently we havent been making our readers sufficiently aware of that. "Also" he ads, "a bit of comment on some of the stfantasy books." This is quite all x with us! Other topix Jimmy suggests: Do we need a nat'l fan organization? PLans for a fan community--"Slan Center". Isnt Atheism just as narrow and dogmatic as the faith of a Hardshell Babtists? Or even the scientific or metaphysical discussions. Is time travel possible? Was there ever an Atlantis? Which theory of the Universe's formation is acceptable to most scientists today? What are some of the possible uses of radioactivity? Can science create life? Science disproves much of theology but can it ever disprove general religion? What was the civilization probly like in Ankor Vat? Is magic more than just hocus-pocus? What is mental telepathy? Do ants act thru pure instinct? Etc. "Why don't you appeal to the readers to try to have something particular to say when they write?" asks Kepner. OK--consider yourself apeald to, our fine featherd fans. Now about NUDES. "VOM has degenerates into a soapbox parleur for the discussion of the nude drawings publisht therein," accuses Kepner. Geo. Barr wants to noe why we waste space & offen the reader with a crude nude? Elsewhere it was publisht that anyone could look into the cesspool that was Ackerman's mind by buying Vom. Hum. Chums & cummesses, have some of U got the erroneous idea that Forry's personal stamp of approval is on evry nude used? Didja ever notice that byline on most mags, "Not responsible for opinions exprest in this publication unless editorially signd?" So we gotta waste space with that legend too, amending it to include "Publication of nuders does not necessarily indicate approval of their proportions.
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