Other Peoples' Collections part 2

This next piece I found a couple of days ago in a science fiction/fantasy zine called Lighthouse.  You'll notice that the fourth name down on the left side is a recognizable one, and this is indeed a flyer for the infamous march during which Dr. King made his "I Have A Dream" speech.  When I found this, it struck me that this was an incredibly important piece of history.  I wonder how many of these flyers have been preserved is such condition?  At the top of the page you'll notice a typewritten line that reads "Just before the convention--."  This is in reference to Discon I, the World Science Fiction Convention, that was held in Washington D.C.on August 31 - September 2, 1963.  Perhaps a few of the zine writers would have been in the city early, and would have witnessed this historic occasion.  It is also of interest to me that this flyer was distributed in an amateur press mailing.  The typewritten information at the bottom ("FAPA 104 . August, 1963 . Pete Graham") indicates that the flyer was included in the 104th zine mailing of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, collated by Pete Graham., in August of that year.  This, along with the remarkable amount of female contributors to these zines, paints a very different picture of fandom in the early sixties to the despicably misogynistic one of the present day.  So, for your enjoyment, edification, whatever, the flyer for the March on Washington:

 

As with the Roger Ebert poem, this is not necessarily the sort of thing one might expect to find in a collection of sci-fi and fantasy zines.  What this might force us to consider is what we include in a collection.  The typewritten lines clearly mark this for inclusion in the FAPA mailing, but the content of the flyer is not oriented toward the content of the amateur press.  We could consider inclusion by completeness.  We could also perhaps consider inclusion by philosophy.  Science Fiction has long been associated with better worlds, and the March on Washington was certainly about that.  There is also the perspective of inclusion by accident.  The flyer was within the collection, and has been for 50 years, so is an intrinsic part of the collection.  But perhaps the perspective on the collection itself needs to be reconfigured from being a collection of amateur press zines to being a snapshot, or an archive, of social and cultural practices and attitudes from this era.

Bizarre Things I Have Found In My Collections #1

An irregular, in many senses of the word, feature I will put on this blog.  As I go through my various collections, I am struck by the very strange things that have managed to find their way into our popular (and not so popular) culture.  Here, I will showcase some of these oddities.

The first is a back cover ad from the February 1981 issue of Warren's "The Rook" magazine.  The main character of this magazine is the grandson of H.G. Wells' time traveller from The Time Machine.  This back cover ad, which ran on numerous issues of the magazine, has nothing to do with that.  Though the products that are being advertised are from another science fiction giant, which, one assumes due to copyright infringements, goes unnamed.  See if you know which it is....

Two things: One, the "[E]xciting adventures from the disco to the outer limits of space" sound just brilliant.  And two, I think I'd really like one of those jackets.  They look pretty badass.

That's it for this installment.  Next up, an ad for Saturday morning cartoons from a 1967 Superman comic book, featuring Moby Dick, action hero whale of the seven seas!