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Shangri-La, issue 5, March-April 1948

Page 14

COLLECTOR'S ITEM #1

This is a department for everyone. In it we are going to carry a series of articles about collector's items--books, sets of ancient mags, or fan mags, on manuscript collections, photo-albums of fans, illustrations or what have you. This first article is by an Angeleno. We hope that the rest of our series will come from other places as well as here. If you've got an item of which you are proud, and which you would like to brag about, send it in and we'll use it. Any length will do, from a paragraph to several pages. Let's see what you can do. (Editorial note: Gus isn't a model of what is desirable. Let's have a maximum of meat and a minimum of meandering, please.)

THE FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST of Gus Willmorth
My collection of the FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST was bound into a two-inch volume soon after the last issue by G. Garnham, 63, Pottergate, Norwich, England. At that time the publisher, J. Michael Rosenblum, told me that in so far as he knew, it was one of three complete collections of FIDO that were in existance then. Since FIDO ran into forty-some issues in four and a half years, the collecting of it was a feat such as seems improbable to me now as I sit "en halo" back of one of the best colleting mediums for fantasy in the world - FANTASY ADVERTISER. (Plug not authorized by the Editor..) Certainly it isn't as easy to gather up old and rare fanzines nowadays as I found it then.
THE FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST first appeared in October 1940, incorporating the PSEUDO-FUTURIAN and Science Fantasy Review's WAR DIGEST, or so it says in the masthead. I have a few issues of JMR'd FUTURIAN, a little, green-covered, printed fan mag that appeared in (I believe) three or four issues. It may have been much longer, but that is the impression that I received. A good many of you have seen some of the post-war FANTASY REVIEWS and you know without my telling you, that it is a very good mag. Could be that the pre-war ones were, too. FIDO was instituted as a digest of English fan publications. Due to paper restrictions and shortages of other materials and time, besides, many of the English publications could no longer appear. Into this void stepped the FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST carrying as its contents the few pages that several publishers could scrape together. For instance, the the first issue contained (aside from the news, reviews, and letters in the main section) Dawn Shadows of Rathbone, and the Fantasy War Bulletin of C. S. Youd. The second issue hadn't any extra papers that I can find, but the third had the introductory issue of Doug Webster's The Gentlest Art, one of the nicest individual sheets ever published. Other sheets supplied at vaious times during FIDO's life were Rennison's Cosmos, Medhurst's The Fly in the Ointment, Burke's Moonshine, Turner's Zenith, Doughty's Tin Tacks, Carnell's Sands of Time, and so on over the best of English fandom for over four long years of war.
Chiefly I value my set of FIDO for the picture it gives of English fandom during the war period. FIDO was perhaps the only successful fanzine to appear in and to continue during those long years. There were other fanmag efforts to be sure, but none of them could possibly present the picture tha FIDO does. The news of the English fans being inducted into service, of being home on leave, of being in Africa, India, the Middle East, Canada, and of news, but where there were a dozen American publications, the FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST was the only magazine servicing those far flung fans. FIDO was carrying a pretty big torch.

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COLLECTOR'S ITEM #1 This is a department for everyone. In it we are going to carry a series of articles about collector's items--books, sets of ancient mags, or fan mags, on manuscript collections, photo-albums of fans, illustrations or what have you. This first article is by an Angeleno. We hope that the rest of our series will come from other places as well as here. If you've got an item of which you are proud, and which you would like to brag about, send it in and we'll use it. Any length will do, from a paragraph to several pages. Let's see what you can do. (Editorial note: Gus isn't a model of what is desirable. Let's have a maximum of meat and a minimum of meandering, please.) THE FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST of Gus Willmorth My collection of the FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST was bound into a two-inch volume soon after the last issue by G. Garnham, 63, Pottergate, Norwich, England. At that time the publisher, J. Michael Rosenblum, told me that in so far as he knew, it was one of three complete collections of FIDO that were in existance then. Since FIDO ran into forty-some issues in four and a half years, the collecting of it was a feat such as seems improbable to me now as I sit "en halo" back of one of the best colleting mediums for fantasy in the world - FANTASY ADVERTISER. (Plug not authorized by the Editor..) Certainly it isn't as easy to gather up old and rare fanzines nowadays as I found it then. THE FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST first appeared in October 1940, incorporating the PSEUDO-FUTURIAN and Science Fantasy Review's WAR DIGEST, or so it says in the masthead. I have a few issues of JMR'd FUTURIAN, a little, green-covered, printed fan mag that appeared in (I believe) three or four issues. It may have been much longer, but that is the impression that I received. A good many of you have seen some of the post-war FANTASY REVIEWS and you know without my telling you, that it is a very good mag. Could be that the pre-war ones were, too. FIDO was instituted as a digest of English fan publications. Due to paper restrictions and shortages of other materials and time, besides, many of the English publications could no longer appear. Into this void stepped the FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST carrying as its contents the few pages that several publishers could scrape together. For instance, the the first issue contained (aside from the news, reviews, and letters in the main section) Dawn Shadows of Rathbone, and the Fantasy War Bulletin of C. S. Youd. The second issue hadn't any extra papers that I can find, but the third had the introductory issue of Doug Webster's The Gentlest Art, one of the nicest individual sheets ever published. Other sheets supplied at vaious times during FIDO's life were Rennison's Cosmos, Medhurst's The Fly in the Ointment, Burke's Moonshine, Turner's Zenith, Doughty's Tin Tacks, Carnell's Sands of Time, and so on over the best of English fandom for over four long years of war. Chiefly I value my set of FIDO for the picture it gives of English fandom during the war period. FIDO was perhaps the only successful fanzine to appear in and to continue during those long years. There were other fanmag efforts to be sure, but none of them could possibly present the picture tha FIDO does. The news of the English fans being inducted into service, of being home on leave, of being in Africa, India, the Middle East, Canada, and of news, but where there were a dozen American publications, the FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST was the only magazine servicing those far flung fans. FIDO was carrying a pretty big torch. - 14 -