Chunga 17 (december 2010).pdf

When laid down in 1921, CHUNGA was the largest fanzine in the world, with innovations including the hexapodal

main mast and protective egoboo bulges. Torpedoed by USS Helvetica off the Andrushack islands, she broke into two

pieces, one populated by trufans and fan editors, the other by fuggheads and hucksters. Before a oneshot could be

completed, both halves sank, with a total loss of life.

Available by editorial whim or wistfulness, or, grudgingly, for $3.50 for a single issue;

PDFs of every issue may be found at eFanzines.com.

Edited by Andy ( fanmailaph@aol.com ) , Randy ( fringefaan@yahoo.com ) , and carl ( heurihermilab@gmail.com ) .

Please address all postal correspondence to 1013 North 36th Street, Seattle WA 98103.

Editors: please send three copies of any zine for trade.

 Issue 17, December 2010 

an editorial

2 The Future Fair

Art Credits

in order of irst appearance

a series of refractions on what may be to come

3 The Dream Ends in the Light-Time

D West

front and back covers,

7, 21, 23, 26, 32

6 I Used to Live in the Future

a forward-looking retrospective by Tom Becker

Randy Byers 1 (photo)

8 The Future of Futurism

Jeanne Gomoll 2

9 Our Old Future

Dan Steffan 3, 9, 16, 25

civilizations’ clash by Gregory Benford

Brad Foster 4

12 The Future Soon

four views by Claire Brialey

Sue Mason 5, 6

15 The Post-Nihilist Future

Dave Hicks 1 0 (×4)

18 Autoview: Richard Brandt

Ian Gunn 11, 12

William Rotsler 15

19 Spooner Strikes Again by Art Widner

Potshot 17, 31

21 Near-future Imperfect obscure TV reviewed by carl juarez

Steve Stiles 24, 30

22 Amateur Hour fanzines reviewed by Randy Byers

24 The Iron Pig

Alexis Gilliland 28

a letter column by divers hands

☞ two Vanamonde reprints from John Hertz 20, 37

Edd Cartier 35

carl juarez design

Contributors’ addresses: Claire Brialey 59 Shirley Rd., Croydon CR0 7ES United Kingdom • Tom Becker P. O. Box 724, Mountain View CA 94042–0724 • Greg Benford

84 Harvey Ct, Irvine CA 92612–4070 • Richard Brandt 835 Musket Dr #L-303, Colorado Springs CO 80906 • Randy Byers 1013 N. 36th St., Seattle, WA 98103 • Brad W. Foster

P.O. Box 165246 Irving, TX 75018 • Chris Garcia 1401 N Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View CA 94043 • Alexis Gilliland 4030 8th St. South Arlington, VA 22204 • Jeanne Gomoll

2825 Union St., Madison WI 53704–5136 • Dave Hicks 23 Barrow Rd, Sileby, LEICS, LE12 7LW, United Kingdom • John Hertz 236 S. Coronado St. #409, Los Angeles, CA

90057 • Andy Hooper 11032 30th Ave. NE Seattle, WA 98125 • Sue Mason 19 Boundary St., Lostock Gralam, Nortwich CW9 7NG United Kingdom • Joseph Nicholas 15 Jansons

Rd. Tottenham N15 4 JU United Kingdom • Potshot 5359 Nicole, White Lake, MI 48383 • Dan Steffan 2015 NE 50th Ave., Portland, OR 97213 • Steve Stiles 8631 Lucerne Rd.,

Randallstown, MD 21133 • D West 16 Rockville Dr. Embsay, Skipton BD23 6NX United Kingdom • Art Widner 35501 S. Hwy 1, Unit 122, Gualala CA 95445–5122

1 Tanglewood

an optimistic proposal by Joseph Nicholas

a cautious suggestion by Chris Garcia

why we ight, by Andy Hooper

Tanglewood

Ab initio

e seem to have become an annual fanzine

despite our best efforts to publish more frequent-

ly. The original goal was to publish this issue in

May. Oh well, at least we’re coming out more frequently than

Plokta . (Whatever happened to them?) Seventeen issues is noth-

ing compared to publishing jiants like the Fishlifters, let alone

chrIS garCIA, but it still seems like a prime accomplishment to

me. We’ve been at this for eight years now, which I guess means

we’re actually still averaging over two issues a year. How the hell

did we crank out so many issues in the beginning? I mean, we

were old fen and tired even then.

Speaking of which, I turned ifty in September, and while ifty

may be the new forty, it still seems like a good moment to take

stock of what I’ve accomplished in life and what I’d like to do in

my “waning years” (as one of the birthday cards I got so subtly

put it). Chunga certainly its into the future plan for me. The 40s

were good years for me, and Chunga is one of the several rea-

sons why. It’s hard to imagine life without the occasional edito-

rial meeting with Andy and carl, where the fanzine slowly takes

shape in a puff of smoke. Every fanzine creates its own universe

out of the materials provided by fandom, and I like living in this

universe. I suppose if slow glass is one of the materials we’ve

unintentionally made use of, it’s not the end of the world.

Meanwhile, Yvonne Rousseau wasn’t the only correspondent

to notice a stutter at the end of our last issue. That was a produc-

tion error by the printshop. We were unwilling to disassemble

and reassemble all 250 copies to remove the repeated inal page/

back cover. I blame squirrels.

James Bacon Memorial Young Person’s Costuming and Electronic

Publishing Centre in Swindon.

Now, after completing the irst edition of this editorial, I

received news that Chris Garcia has shared in the 2010 Best

Fanzine Nova Award, in his capacity as one of the co-editors

of Journey Planet , the exceedingly slick and sercon genzine he

e-publishes with James Bacon and Claire Brialey (and sometimes

Pete Young). Certainly this deserves congratulations, not least for

publishing an sf fanzine so “hard” it could poke holes through

several Larry Niven novels at once.

At the same time, I feel slightly rueful at the almost entirely

electronic nature of this year’s winner; indeed, Journey Planet

gives the impression that it could only have physically existed

during a few nanoseconds following the Big Bang, when curious

states of being were briely possible, and Father Tucker was only

29 years old. However, I am assured that some small number of

paper copies are generated for hand distribution. I had fantasized

that British fandom was still so much smaller than its American

cousin that it might be possible to put everyone in it — well,

everyone who cares — on a paper fanzine’s mailing list. But I

realize that is a fancy caused by our own compact list of British

correspondents. Their fandom is just as vast and Balkanized —

and international — as mine. Still, until this November, they

had always chosen a fanzine demonstrably published on paper

as the best of the year. And as titles like Banana Wings , Inca

and Prolapse appear regularly in print, Britain may still prove

to be a land of hope and glory for the paper fanzine. With other

fanzine awards now oficially open to podcasting sock puppets,

my ambitions are permanently ixed on putting Chunga in the

same Elysian company as Epsilon , Tappen and Saliromania . I’m

quite willing to work with Chris Garcia, if that will help in some

regard.

I await further instruction from the bürgermeister.

— R a n d y

mean no insult to my current co-editors, but I feel we

need to recruit a fourth staff member. This future partner

must be a resident of the United Kingdom (or the Republic

of Ireland), and therefore eligible to win the Nova Award. This

individual will be responsible for distributing the fanzine to UK

and Belgian correspondents, and, when applicable, showing up to

lose the Best Fanzine Nova.

I think it must have been reading an issue of Steve Green’s

efanzine The Fortnightly Fix that put the idea back into my head.

He proudly pointed to his success in opening the Nova awards

to Irish publishers, which made me wonder: Whom else might

the Novas eventually embrace? Residents of Shetland, Faeroe and

Channel Isles were already included, but what about Falklanders?

Bermudans? Staten Islanders? As long as Steve is spreading his

mantle of Sun Kingly muniicence, perhaps he can open the

Novas to mere Anglophiles as well. It’s a shame that Steve lost

his bid to win local ofice this past spring; but surely he is still

one of fandom’s beaming bürgermeisters, chest proudly outthrust

and wrapped in a green satin sash as he oficially opens the

— A n d y

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is unbearable.

The Thief of Chunga ⇪ 1

The Future Fair

wanted to publish in Chunga #17. We do not typically

assign a “theme” to our issues, or solicit material on spe-

ciic subjects. When we ask a fan to write for Chunga , we give

them the freedom to consider any subject that they ind inspir-

ing. But as we approached the composition of #17, I found

myself thinking fondly of old sercon fanzines with a dozen or

more contributors, pondering weighty topics like space coloni-

zation and sexual equality. Could I get today’s graying, distract-

ed fandom to consider any topic together, even in the pages of

our old-fashioned fanzine? And what would be a it point to

inspire such a serious and constructive conversation?

I phrased my answer in the form of a question: What is

the Future of Futurism? As fandom grows older, it is natural

that we have different attitudes toward the future than we

did as callow young fen. We’re not as likely to see the future

ourselves, for one thing — an interest in the future becomes

more speculative and altruistic as one comes ever closer to

one’s own inal issue. We’ve also seen society leave behind the

technocentric optimism of the 20th century, and enter a more

uncertain age, unsure of what it wants or what it is likely to

get. One might argue that we need futurists now more than

ever — especially as we have seen the inspirational, if not caus-

ative effects that rumination on the future can possess. But as

science iction grows more and more old-fashioned in popular

culture, replaced by fantasies as timeless as they are talent-

less, where do we look for the cellular phones and radioactive

medicines of tomorrow? Are we really so satisied as a culture

that we have lost the imperative to imagine what we might

still achieve? Or are we suficiently addicted to change that the

idea of stability sounds more like stagnation, and the perils

of relentless intervention and innovation are preferable to an

enervating continuity?

With that extra-chunky solicitation — taken nearly verba-

tim from the email I sent to more than 20 fans in March of

2010 — I opened the conversation that follows. I know that

we will continue to imagine outlandish futures — movies

derived from vampire and wizard novels contend for box ofice

supremacy with fantasies of alien conlict, on Earth and in

space. But it’s possible that the special convergence between

fantastic literature and scientiic and social progress that char-

acterized the 20th century may have inally passed us by, and

may not occur again in any of our lifetimes. But the fact that

the future is always stranger than we can imagine makes it a

rewarding subject for speculation, and the naivete of our pre-

dictions is one of the pleasures of a long life.

The articles which follow take very different attitudes

toward the future, but each conveys a passion for the subject

that I ind very reassuring. Fandom’s vision may require more

correction than it once did, but we continue to squint at things

to come.

—Andy Hooper

2 ⇪ The Thief of Chunga

If you have a feeling of reduced havingness during any one of these

E arly this year, we began thinking about what we

Hooper in his e-mail of 3 March. If we take the ques-

tion literally, the answer is surely “none whatever” — Futur-

ism as an artistic phenomenon largely came to an end with

the outbreak of the First World War, which suited its found-

er’s violent and misogynist principles down to the ground

(“We will glorify war — the world’s only hygiene — militarism,

patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beau-

tiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman”, to quote

its founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti), and its revival as

a political movement in the 1920s is linked so indissolubly

with the rise of Mussolini that it is now almost impossible to

treat Futurism as other than a ready-made cultural manifesto

for Italian Fascism.

On the other hand, the Wikipedia entry for Futurism does

have this rather intriguing coda:

as Stelarc and Mariko Mori, produce work which comments

on futurist ideals.

Unpack that lot in ive thousand words or less, why don’t

w e . . . .

But that would only be necessary for those who lack an

instinctive grasp of the issues which that (slightly edited)

paragraph summarises. Instead, let’s focus on the rather bald

claim that “science iction has been overtaken by the future”,

and drop it down alongside the statement in Andy’s e-mail

that “science iction grows more and more old-fashioned in

popular culture”. Is there, despite their different origins, any

overlap between them?

There might be. In the 1990s, John Clute was raising, in

reviews in Interzone and elsewhere, what he called “the cri-

sis of agenda SF” — that is, an SF which since the 1950s had

looked forward to an era in which the locus of human endeav-

our slowly shifted from the planet’s surface into space, and

which had perceived the Apollo lunar landings as the irst

step along that road . . . . only to see that road suddenly coned

off with signs saying “Too Expensive” and crewed explora-

tion brought to an abrupt halt which it has never resumed.

Not that you’d have noticed if all you’d been reading was

science iction; as late as the mid-1990s, stories about guys

ighting over the last oxygen cylinder on Mars and whatnot

still predominated. Paradoxically, however, it was around this

time — as it became obvious that crewed spacelight meant

the Shuttle and nothing else — that the “new space opera” of

Iain M Banks et al began to emerge: an imagined far future

in which all our existing problems had been leapfrogged and

space travel on the gigantic scale was a given — almost as

Futurism was, like science iction, in part overtaken by

‘the future’ . . . Nonetheless the ideals of futurism remain

as signiicant components of modern Western culture; the

emphasis on youth, speed, power and technology ind-

ing expression in much of modern commercial cine-

ma . . . Echoes of Marinetti’s thought, especially his “dreamt-

of metallisation of the human body” . . . surface in manga/

anime and the works of artists such as Shinya Tsuka-

moto, director of the “Tetsuo” ilms; Marinetti’s legacy is

also obvious in philosophical ingredients of transhuman-

ism . . . Futurism has produced several reactions, including

the literary genre of cyberpunk — in which technology was

often treated with a critical eye — whilst artists who came

to prominence during the irst lush of the Internet, such

processes, mock up eight anchor points and push them into your body.

The Thief of Chunga ⇪ 3

“W hat is the Future of Futurism?” asks Andy

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