 Without further ado, I would like to go ahead and turn the mic over to the esteemed Gordon Van Gelder, publisher, editor, extraordinaire of fantasy and science fiction. Thank you all for being here. Well, thank you for that introduction. I'm starting to look around to see if there was someone else here who was esteemed. Thank you guys for having me out here. I really can't tell you how pleased I am with all this. And I have to point out to you guys how lucky you are to have a library doing all this. You know, back in New York, Dominic Dunn used to tell this famous story about walking around Manhattan and seeing two women. I'm pretty sure it was by the United Nations in the East 60s. And one of them's carrying a copy of one of his books and he stops her and says, excuse me, ma'am, I just wanted you to know I wrote that novel and she picks it up. She looks at the author photo on the back, looks at him and says, so? That's sort of what it's like in, you know, back on the East Coast. So to see this library doing so much to celebrate science fiction is just a joy for me to, you know, I hopped the first plane I could get to come out here and see it. In fact, I'm dying to go upstairs and see the actual collection. So count yourselves lucky and trust me, take advantage of all the programming that they've got for the next two months because you're not going to find stuff like that back in New York. But I did want to say a few things specifically about about Mick McComis and the history of science fiction in SF. I can't do a whole thing on the history of science fiction in San Francisco. I think, I was hoping Tom Whitmore would come out except because exactly, he's in Seattle, but he could probably tell you off the top of his head everything going back to Ambrose Bierce and Jack London up through somewhat writer who's just sold their first story today and get it all right off the top of his head. I can't do that, but I can tell you that Anthony Boucher, Jay Francis McComis was nicknamed Mick by his wife Annette. He never liked Jesse or Francis all that much and he was, was of Irish extraction and was a very big guy and he just took to the name evidently, well the nickname I mean. He and Boucher cooked up the idea for a science fiction, a fantasy magazine in the mid 40s. Neither of them served in the war. Boucher had terrible health and life-long asthma and McComis I think had a bad knee and neither of them served in the war. But both of them saw a great demand and need for a magazine specifically a fantasy magazine that unknown world, unknown had not, had only lasted a few years and had wedded people's appetites, but hadn't really slaked them and Boucher went to half of the team that wrote is Ellery Queen, Frederick Dandee and said, hey you guys have got this Ellery Queen's mystery magazine going. How about we do an Ellery Queen's fantasy magazine? And Dandee said, No. I don't, you know, I'll introduce you to our publisher. Maybe he'll do something with you guys, but Ellery Queen doesn't do fantasy. And you do have to remember in those days fantasy and science fiction were sneered at much more than they are today. They were really seen as, you know, literature's orphan children or, you know, unwanted children. So anyway, Boucher and McComis took the train out to New York, met with Lauren Spivak, who was their publisher, who went on to create Meet the Press or Face the Nation, one of the, Meet the Press I think. And Spivak said, yeah, I like the idea. Right now there's too much paper shortage during the war, but you know start working on issue number one and we'll see if we can make this fly. Well, things went back and forth. It took four years before they published the first issue in 49 and it did well enough that they said, okay, let's try a second and a third and obviously it took off from there. Quickly went to quarterly and then eventually went to monthly. McComis and Boucher are one of the few editorial teams I know of that consistently worked well together. Editing does not work well in teams usually, but as far as I can tell, the two of them really just blashed to use Sturgeon's term and they'd say they did not, they often didn't know who had done which work. One of them would say this needs to be done and then the other one would say you write and write it up and so it would just be a genuine editorial collaboration. Anyway, McComis himself was kind of a Jack, you know, had bounced around a jack-of-all-trades. Master of none had not settled into any real career, but had hit it off in the 30s with some publishing people and wound up as a West Coast sales representative, I think for Henry Holt, and then later for Simon and Schuster. And he had met another guy named Ray Healy and had edited a big anthology of science fiction that I think is still in print, Adventures in Time and Space. So McComis and Boucher knew each other from college at Berkeley, I believe, in the 30s and they sort of reunited, like I say, they launched the magazine. And for years, you know, I've been publishing or involved with F&SF since 96, and for years I've sort of tried to dig up information on McComis. And the few people who knew him pretty much all said they never saw him sober. He had a problem with with alcoholism plagued him for years, and I think hastened his death. I know he also suffered from hypertension. Anyway, McComis sort of left the, let Boucher take the public aspect of the editorial work and Mick stayed more behind the scenes. So it was a lot harder to find out real information about him. Fortunately, his ex-wife Annette did a whole book about the early years, which I would hope would be in the collection up here. But I bring it as Visual Aid A, The Eureka Years, which is a really great document of the early years of founding the magazine. One of the things that I picked up from The Eureka Years, I just want to pass along, is that McComis and Boucher, one of their were immensely proud of the fact that they were the first ones to edit a national magazine from the West Coast. New York, publishing was so New York centric for so long, and especially in the days before transcontinental travel was so easy. I hesitate having just flown out yesterday saying that it's so easy, but but obviously a lot easier than it was in the 30s. The fact that they were able to edit a magazine successfully from San Francisco is a real, real achievement, a star in San Francisco's crown. I probably don't need to tell you guys many of the other stars in San Francisco's crown when it comes to science fiction, and I think the programming that the library has for the next two months will fill you in on a lot of that stuff, but I do have to point out one thing that just always amazes me. Back east, there's a prep school in New York, Chorus Man, that takes great pride in the fact that Jack Kerouac, James Salter, Ira Levin, the critic John Simon, several others I'm blanking on now, all graduated from there within the space of about five or six years in the 40s, I believe. They cannot say though that they produced two of the greatest novelists of the 20th century. In the same class at Berkeley as Ursula Le Guin and Philip K. Dick. That what continually boggles my mind about that isn't just that the two of them came out of the same class, they didn't even know each other. They got to be friends later on, but for years they said, well, maybe I saw you once, but no, I didn't know you. So the Bay Area has a lot to be proud of when it comes to science fiction, and the rest of the country is noticed. And that's the gist of what I wanted to say to you guys. If you have any questions, grab me before I go up and get absorbed in the collection up there. But I think Brian said that there is something here to kick off the whole SF by the Bay. I started to call it the wrong thing. There's a big thing to display now, right? Yes, right. So unless there's more, you don't want to hear me blather about, I think we should. What would you like to hear me blather about, more about how great San Francisco is? Well, I'll tell you, one of the things, when they were launching the magazine, they used a lot of reprints. And Boucher and McComis loved to argue like one of the 10 greatest stories of this sort, or the 10 greatest stories of that sort. And both of them were immensely well read. And part of the launch included obscure stories by writers who were better known for other works that they thought the magazine would be a great venue for bringing out to a wider audience. When they launched FNSF, they thought they were really going to have to scramble to fill each issue initially. They leaned on friends like Ted Sturgeon and Ray Bradbury to come up with stories for them for the early issues. But I think they said, initially, they were afraid that they were going to have to exhaust all their friends very rapidly. And then the submission started coming in after issue one. And I think by issue two, the local post office said they had to put out a separate mail bag just for all the submissions that were coming in. The number 240 comes to mind as, I think it was the number of manuscripts they were getting in a month, which is nothing compared to now. When I started in 97, I was getting 900 a month. I can testify to the fact that they do come in great abundance, but 240 is nothing to laugh off. One of the keys, I think, to Boucher and McComis working together so well was that they had a strict policy that either of them could veto something if they didn't like it. In order to run it, they both had to agree that they did like it. So sometimes one could argue the other one into agreeing to publish it. But if one of them said no, then it was out the door. I think that was probably a very sane way of doing it. Having worked with at least two editorial boards where a lot of cooks make for a very weak broth sometimes. I have a microphone here if you could ask your question. Can you identify, is there any through line in the editorial taste of FNSF that you can identify that started back then with them and has continued through? Or has it changed it with every editor? No, there is a through line. Mike Ashley, the British critic, says that FNSF is remarkable for having the most consistent vision for any magazine that's lasted this long. What was the anniversary this year, 70th? There are copies over here, which is why I pointed there. So you can check me if I've misremembered. There, Macomas and Boucher, from the start, emphasized a lot of value. At the time, a lot of science fiction was very gadget oriented. A lot of gimmick stories were common. And they had a strong emphasis on more traditional literary values, characterization, theme, setting. They didn't want, you know, they ran a lot of light stuff, but they didn't want, you know, what I would call fluff. And they definitely set the tone. The magazine's first issue was just the magazine of fantasy. They added science fiction with issue number two. From 1949, the magazine has always gotten more fantasy than it could possibly publish and never gotten enough science fiction. When I started in 97, we had a, I think the writer's guidelines said that, and I asked Ed Furman about it. And he said, oh, we've had that since Boucher's day. It's just been, you know, that and the fact that there's never enough humor coming in, you know, you know, getting the sort of story where the joke goes, I've suffered from my art as the writer, now it's your turn as the reader to suffer. That sort of story has always been in abundance in the submissions pile, but good humor has always been scarce. And the magazine has always had an emphasis, has always tried to emphasize humor in its contents. There are some other through lines that you can look at. Well, I mean, I can tell you, I think Ron Goulart has sold to every single editor of FNSF. If not, he only missed one. Actually, that's one of the things I meant to mention. Boucher would, was constantly, you know, starting up odd little projects and such, and he, for a while, he had a writing workshop operating out of the house in Berkeley. And at one of them, I know Phil Dick and Ron Goulart were there. And one of them, and I can't remember which one, was young enough that their mother had to drive them by to check the place out before letting them go in and go through the workshop. I can't remember which of the two it was. And I know Ron and Phil sort of competed to see who would be the first one to sell to FNSF. And Ron won, but it was a joke piece and it wasn't a short story, really. And Phil sold the first, was the first to sell a story to FNSF with Roug. Astrid Anderson also told me that her father, Paul, and Boucher and McComis and a couple other people, I can't remember, had a regular monthly poker game. The Outpatient's Poker Society. And Boucher apparently was a real poker sharp and would cook up his own versions of Seven Cards Stout or whatever with wild cards. Astrid said she loved those games because especially McComis would bring a pie, you know, they'd bring food. He'd always bring a pie from the bakery and she said, you know, white box wrapped with string. And they'd always be leftovers. And she said, I think she said it was always a Tuesday night. And those Wednesday mornings were great because her breakfast was always pie and pretzels. I think I went way off topic. Here's another question over here. I'll bring the mic. So as the, you've been both an editor and now the publisher of the magazine, which job did you like best or why didn't you like it? It's hard to say best or worst. You know, especially since, well, since for the first three or four years I was just editor, then I bought the magazine and became editor and publisher, thinking that that would give me the best job security I could have for continuing to edit it. And, you know, then after 14 or 15 years realizing that I wasn't being effective as an editor and firing myself. So it wasn't the job security wasn't that great after all. It's hard to say best or worst. You know, now that I'm only doing publisher, the publisher aspect of it, it's interesting to see how much trouble I avoided by wearing both hats, you know, in that I didn't have to have arguments with myself over what goes in the issue or what doesn't and whether or not to buy a story. But it was curious also, you know, John Stewart from the, what was the comedy network show? Yes, thank you. He said, one of the reasons he realized it was getting time for him to step down was that he wouldn't approve any skit that required him to change outfits. Because he, you know, essentially he just didn't want to bother with it for a cheap laugh. And I realized I was starting to take some similar shortcuts that I wouldn't do this or that editorially because I didn't think it was worth my time as a publisher. And so it was, you know, I was starting to recognize signs that, okay, as, you know, wearing my publisher hat, I see that the editor is not really doing 100% work here. And, you know, had to be pretty brutal with myself in observing what was working and what wasn't and saying, okay, something needs to change here. What is it in recognizing that a change in editor would be the best move? I think that answers your question because it's getting deeper into it is probably too much neapery about how a magazine is made, or at least this magazine. Shall we eat cake or do you want anything? Yes, let's eat cake. Thank you very much, Gordon. Thank you. Appreciate it. We're going to eat cake now. And I think we're hoping Gordon will cut the first piece. Honored to. Oh, thank you. Thank you. The cake is in the back. If you want to look at it before we cut into it. Yeah, there's the photo opportunity. Last chance. It has the SF by the Bay logo on it.