The Drink Tank 156 (2007).pdf

The Drink Tank Issue 156

THe Last of 2007

Cover by Ditmar

Well, it’s done. 2007 is gen-

tly slipping away into the sea of

years gone by. I’m sad to see it go.

It was a damn good year for me. I

attended more cons than any other

year I’ve been in fandom (FurCon,

QuireFlu, WonderCon, BayCon,

Westercon, Con-X-Treme, Silicon,

NASFiC, LosCon,Construction (that

might be worthy of debate as a con),

and VintaCon) and I had a wonder-

ful time at almost all of them. I met

the Lovely and Talented Linda, who

is a wonderful woman and one of

the best things to happen to me in

a long, long time. I watched Eve-

lyn start her Karate stuff, which is

both fun to watch and has helped

her get less ADD and more likely

to chop a man in half, and I man-

aged to win TAFF against odds that

I never thought I’d manage to beat.

In short, a good year.

But hardly perfect. A few trou-

bles with helping Gen and Evelyn

came up and they were painful to

help them through and now I have

to move rather soon without much

money to make it happen. I’ll igure

something out, but it’s coming up

on three weeks before I gotta have

my new place and people won’t even

call me back after I’ve put in my

application. It’s very frustrating. I

don’t know what’s gonna happen

after I move. Money’s pretty damn

tight already and I’m probably go-

ing to have a doubling of my rent so

that’s gonna suck.

And there’s always TAFF,

which is going to be the big thing

for next year. I still can’t buy the

tickets because the card for the

TAFF account I opened hasn’t ar-

rived. That’s a bit stressing, though

it doesn’t appear that it was stolen

because there have been no actions

taken on the account. That’s a good

thing. I’m working on getting a new

one sent.

And there’s so much more. I

gotta thank everybody who’s sent

in stuff for me to run. I’ve got Chris’

Little Thing and the Third Annual

Giant Sized Annual coming up, so

send stuff through if’n you can! I’ve

already got stuff from Eric Mayer,

Brad Foster, James Bacon and My-

self for the Annual.

So, things ended kinda harsh,

but I’ve had a really good year all

things considered. 2008 should be

fun, and I hope you’ll keep reading.

Heinlein at his Hundredth

by John Hertz

reprinted from Vanamonde 760

He approximates the remote,

and familiarizes the wonderful;

the event which he represents

will not happen, but if it were

possible, its effects would

probably be such as he has

assigned; and it may be said,

that he has not only shown

human nature as it acts in real

exigencies, but as it would be

found in trials, to which it cannot

be exposed.

Johnson

Preface, Notes on

Shakespeare’s Plays (1778)

A. Sherbo ed., Yale Edition of

the Works of Samuel Johnson

v. 7, p. 65 (1968)

This is the centennial year of

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988), one

of the inest writers we’ve known. In

1939 he entered our ield, which he

called speculative iction, and over

two decades published six dozen short

stories and novels still unsurpassed

in quality. He had the gift, or skill,

of story. He had a sense of event.

He was a painter of people, some of

whom were aliens. He had invention,

which Johnson called the irst and

most valuable power of a poet. He was

entertaining: he used to say “We’re

competing for their beer money.” Born

in Missouri, the “show me” State,

he at his best, of which there is a

bushel, didn’t tell us, he showed us;

he could make an object, or a word,

show prevailing notions or technology,

or when the story or people needed

more detail, he could dilate. Four

years before Heinlein at the irst World

Science Fiction Convention in Missouri,

in the bicentennial year of the United

States, was Writer Guest of Honor at a

Worldcon for his third time, a writer for

The New Yorker told me s-f made itself

obscure. Heinlein had published s-f

in The Saturday Evening Post . Among

his jewels of those years are a dozen

books for juveniles, clear, compact,

craftsmanly, well worth the attention

of an adult. He came to feel these

chafed him. He burned for something

bigger, which brought him fame and

fortune, although beauty and even

brilliance are not always bought with

ire. At the 2007 Worldcon, the irst in

Asia, the irst in Japan, a display by

the Heinlein Society was in the exhibit

hall, and I went to a panel about him,

where people told how they agreed or

disagreed with characters in his works,

with whom they could or could not

identify. No one would notice or care,

I said from the audience, except for his

writing so well.

OK, this is wild. I got this sent

to me on paper and without a

name. Normally, I would never

run anything like this because

it’s the snarkiest thing I’ve

ever read and downright

frothy at the way it bites at a

lot of people who are friends

of mine (and maybe even at

me!), but this one I’m running

because it’s 1) the kind of

thing that bites at everyone on

every side of every issue that

seems to be running in fandom

right now and 2) made me

laugh so hard I had to explain

myself. I’ve got an idea of who

might have written it, but so

far no one’s stepped up to take

credit.

The Clubhouse Affair – Part I

The name is Cats, Barmy

Cats, and I’m a secret agent.

Now some of you folks out there

might see that as meaning “spy”

or “terrorist” or something,

but I prefer to see myself as a

Freedom Fighter. I belong to

an organization called CORPSE

Fandom. That’s the Committee

Of Really Persnickety and Senile

Elders. I don’t rightly know what

all of those words mean, but

they are good words. We are the

founders of Fandom, and it is

our sacred duty to protect our

community against Evil and

Iniltration. Our motto is “Fans

Are Born, Not Made”, and what

we mean by that is that if you

ain’t one of us already then

we sure ain’t gonna let you in,

unless of course we really like

you, that is.

Our mortal enemies are

the WSFS, the World Society for

Fandom Suppression, an evil

bunch of lawyers, accountants

and marketing executives who

are trying to steal fandom from

us and sell it to interlopers and

newbies. The WSFS makes a

Vague-Us Fandom Weakly –

December 2006

godamn fortune out of running

conventions that used to belong

to us, and we mean to get those

cons back.

The boss of our organization

is grouchy old guy called Mr.

White. That’s not his real name,

of course. It is just a codename.

Like in that there movie,

Reservoir Dogs. But don’t let

that get you thinking that we

are just a bunch of criminals or

anything. It is just a bit of fun.

A game we play. My English

counterpart likes to use what

he calls a “military metaphor”.

(“Metaphor” is an old English

word for a game, I think.) He calls

Mr. White “The Colonel”, and he

calls himself Captain Ddu. (“Ddu

means “black” in one of them old

languages they use in certain

remote parts of old England.)

I’ve done a whole load of

missions with Captain Ddu

myself, and I could really have

done with his help on this one,

but the poor guy still hasn’t

recovered from last year. That

was when the WSFS managed to

raise the evil demon Scaltzathoth

and send him against us. Poor

Agent O’Brien was blown away

by a lame waugh in seconds.

Captain Ddu managed to ight

the demon off, but he’s been in

the nut house ever since. He just

sits their drooling and muttering

to himself, “whatever, whatever,

whatever…”

So that’s how I came to be

running this mission by myself. It

began like this. Mr. White called

me into his ofice.

“Cats! Cats!!! Get your

godamn arse in here right away!”

“Coming sir. There ain’t no

need to bark at me like that, you

know.”

“Cats, if you don’t

understand why I always bark

at you then you are even more

brainless that I thought! Now

listen up, and listen up good!”

“Sir!”

“I’m sending you on a

mission, Cats! The WSFS are up

to their old tricks again! Do you

remember why we hate them!?”

“They stole our Worldcon,

sir.”

“And!?”

“They stole our Hugo

Awards, sir.”

“And their latest outrage

is!?”

“Sir?”

“They are instituting a

Lifetime Achievement Hugo!”

“Sir?”

“And they are not going to

give one to ME!!!”

“Why, the godamn iends,

sir! What shall we do?”

“What shall YOU do, Cats!

Listen up! The list of Hugo

winners is kept in a safe in the

WSFS headquarters in Boston!

I want you to sneak in there,

crack the safe, and replace their

list with ours! Here, look, on our

list, all of the Hugos are won by

ME!!!”

And that is how I ended

up here, in Boston, outside that

lowdown fortress of depravity

known only as… The Clubhouse!

organization in decades. What’s

more, she’s a right computer

whiz. Most of us CORPSE

guys are a bit laky with new

technology. We’ve heard about

new-fangled computers such as

IBM, DEC and the rest. We know

about these clever, so-called

“user-friendly” systems such as

punched cards and Unix. But for

the most part we are happy to

stick with our faithful Difference

Engines. They’ve served us well

for over a century. Why should

we change?

But Chris, she’s a computer

whiz. In no time at all she had

hacked into the WSFS network,

gotten past all of their wicked

security software, and stolen

their password right from under

their noses. Ha! She sent it to

me encrypted as a LOC in one

of those new-fangled e-fanzine

things. There was a message on

the front saying, “This fanzine

will self-destruct in 10 seconds.”

I couldn’t work out how to

get it open in time. But knowing

Chris, if she’d written one

fanzine, she’d write another ive

minutes later, and another ive

Good old Mr. White would

not send me out unarmed, of

course. Before I left, I was sent

to see our chief technologist,

V. He ixed me up good with a

whole pile of useful weapons,

all miniaturized and cleverly

disguised as business cards,

airline tickets, bow ties and

other sorts of pseudo-corporate

gee-gaws that them WSFS folks

so love to carry around with

them. My favorite gadget is the

iPhone, which is really a pocket

hectograph. Armed with it, I can

pub my ish in ive seconds lat.

Though of course for tradition’s

sake I would always take at least

ive months to do the job.

And so, well equipped for

anything I might face, I walked

conidently up to the door of The

Clubhouse and wandered in.

I was met by a beautiful

dame.

“Hi, I’m Geri”, she said. “Are

you a WSFS member?”

“Sure am,” I said, showing

her my Worldcon progress report

envelope with my membership

number printed clearly on it. V

had forged this, of course. No

self-respecting CORPSE Fandom

member would ever be seen

dead anywhere near a WSFS-run

Worldcon. But Geri was fooled,

poor dear.

“That’s great!” she beamed,

“and the secret password is?”

Once again I was well

prepared. This time it was not

V but Chris who saved my arse.

She’s one hell of a dame. To start

with she’s the only member of

CORPSE Fandom who is less

than 90 years old. Indeed, she’s

the only person we’ve let into the

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