The Zine Dump

Joe & Lisa Major, Louisville KY / jtmajor-@iglou.com / $2@ / To begin with, an announcement … Joe will be hosting another Fan Editors’ Lunch or Dinner at the Denver worldcon. Who in the Mile-High area knows of a good place for fanzine nuts to chow down? Okay – back to Alexiad, a zine rich with great book reviews of tomes of almost every subject known to man. Major is one of the sharpest wits, and his reviews cut cleanly to the kernel of the works he reads. The piece on Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, dealing with the effects on liberalism of the JFK assassination, is particularly compelling – perhaps because I just scanned a website dealing with the murder. Joe also touches on film – his review of 300 is a riot – before Lisa expounds on horseflesh and Johnny Carruthers takes on various types of candy. All is grist for fandom’s mill. The issue closes with con reports – none attended by us, alas – and a potent lettercol, spiced with Joe’s frequent responses and informed by the grand span of knowledge and experience enjoyed by SFers. It makes my day to see discussion of the Hardy Boys by a guy who’s actually studied his Stratemeyer. Highlight of the following issue is Lisa’s piece on the USS Utah, destroyed but not defeated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s vivid stuff, reprinting many survivor stories – as ever when I read first-hand accounts of such horrors, I wonder how I would have behaved had I been there. Not this well, I’m sure. Best among Joe’s many reviews is that of a book concerning the Duke lacrosse team rape case; like the recent Jena 6 matter, that scandal was painted with racial hysteria but actually fomented by prosecutorial greed: if either DA had conducted his case rationally there would have been no brouhaha. Johnny Carruthers’ piece on the “Best All-Time Series” Hugo is entertaining, as is his review of The Man from Krypton, a book of essays on Superman. The WAHF paragraph following the lettercol lists the welcome name of Lloyd Daub; it’s been far too long, Lloyd.