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Spacewarp, v. 5, issue 5, whole no. 27, June 1949
Page 10
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[[Illegible Title]] by REDD BOGGS (Member, NFFF) 2215 Benjamin St., N.E. Minneapolis 18, Minnesota FILE CLERK'S NOTE: Due to press of time, this installment of that loud-mouthed pillar known as File 13 will be composed mostly of odds and ends, without any lead item, such as "Open letter to August Derleth" last issue. However, there are some hot items coming up, one in which Sam Merwin is picked up and inconsiderately hurled through space and time to another editorial desk. Watch for this one, Samuel. Speaking of Sam Merwin, those of you who read the final Dream Quest will remember the merry laugh we had at Sam in the "Pro Phile" column, where his colossal ignorance about the book Venus Equilateral, which he had reviewed, was ironically pointed out. Well, Sam must surely be a prototype of that apocryphal book reviewer who reviews a book without reading it. Or perhaps "The Wheels of If" was rewritten for its book appearance. Check Merwin's review of the de Camp book in the July 1949 Startling, and see if you think he read the book. HISSTORY LESSON. Verily, few fannish fads have shown the perennial popularity of H.C.Koenig's famous "hiss" campaign. This fad, which was good for a mention in the Fancyclopedia and probably should have a paragraph devoted to it in "The Immortal Storm", continues to sprout forth ad lib in unexpected places, despite Koenig's own retirement from the field a few years ago. Before retiring, Hiss Honor assembled a vast collection of quotations from fantasy stories "in which characters are supposed to 'hiss' sentences in which most people couldn't find anything to hiss", as the Fancyclopedia describes it. More recently, editor Rapp has spotlighted an example of this sort of faux pas from his own installment of "Stf Broadcasts Again", and in the April 1949 Vanguard mailing, Virginia Blish used the following on the masthead of her magazine: "This-s-s is-s-s the s-s-sixth is-s-s-s-ue of S-S-S-Snarl, s-s-she hiss-s-s-sed, snarling and snarled, hiss-s-s-sing. (All this-s-s for the benefit of a man who isn't even a member. Tssk.)" Such spontaneous manifestations certainly attest to the lingering potency of the hiss campaign, and this column saluts Mr. Rapp and FrauBlish for so nobly carrying on the ancient traditions. However, it seems from this angle that Donald A. Wollheim's latter-day opinion on the Great Hiss Campaign has considerably more merit than its comparative obscurity would indicate. In his Phantagraph for October 1943, DAW opined; "At first this writer was inclined to feel that H.Koenig was justified in his attack on the use of the verb 'to hiss' for the meaning 'to speak with whispered sinister intent.' It was not in any dictionary with such a definition --and taking it with his given definition, it was most definitely im- 10
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[[Illegible Title]] by REDD BOGGS (Member, NFFF) 2215 Benjamin St., N.E. Minneapolis 18, Minnesota FILE CLERK'S NOTE: Due to press of time, this installment of that loud-mouthed pillar known as File 13 will be composed mostly of odds and ends, without any lead item, such as "Open letter to August Derleth" last issue. However, there are some hot items coming up, one in which Sam Merwin is picked up and inconsiderately hurled through space and time to another editorial desk. Watch for this one, Samuel. Speaking of Sam Merwin, those of you who read the final Dream Quest will remember the merry laugh we had at Sam in the "Pro Phile" column, where his colossal ignorance about the book Venus Equilateral, which he had reviewed, was ironically pointed out. Well, Sam must surely be a prototype of that apocryphal book reviewer who reviews a book without reading it. Or perhaps "The Wheels of If" was rewritten for its book appearance. Check Merwin's review of the de Camp book in the July 1949 Startling, and see if you think he read the book. HISSTORY LESSON. Verily, few fannish fads have shown the perennial popularity of H.C.Koenig's famous "hiss" campaign. This fad, which was good for a mention in the Fancyclopedia and probably should have a paragraph devoted to it in "The Immortal Storm", continues to sprout forth ad lib in unexpected places, despite Koenig's own retirement from the field a few years ago. Before retiring, Hiss Honor assembled a vast collection of quotations from fantasy stories "in which characters are supposed to 'hiss' sentences in which most people couldn't find anything to hiss", as the Fancyclopedia describes it. More recently, editor Rapp has spotlighted an example of this sort of faux pas from his own installment of "Stf Broadcasts Again", and in the April 1949 Vanguard mailing, Virginia Blish used the following on the masthead of her magazine: "This-s-s is-s-s the s-s-sixth is-s-s-s-ue of S-S-S-Snarl, s-s-she hiss-s-s-sed, snarling and snarled, hiss-s-s-sing. (All this-s-s for the benefit of a man who isn't even a member. Tssk.)" Such spontaneous manifestations certainly attest to the lingering potency of the hiss campaign, and this column saluts Mr. Rapp and FrauBlish for so nobly carrying on the ancient traditions. However, it seems from this angle that Donald A. Wollheim's latter-day opinion on the Great Hiss Campaign has considerably more merit than its comparative obscurity would indicate. In his Phantagraph for October 1943, DAW opined; "At first this writer was inclined to feel that H.Koenig was justified in his attack on the use of the verb 'to hiss' for the meaning 'to speak with whispered sinister intent.' It was not in any dictionary with such a definition --and taking it with his given definition, it was most definitely im- 10
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