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My Fanac Friend Gene Simmons
When I was in high school, a little more than fifty years ago, I didn't pay close attention. There were more interesting things to do, like read a science fiction paperback or publish a fanzine. A fanzine was an amateur publication, usually mimeographed or hectographed, containing articles, letters, drawings, reviews, and sometimes short stories.
Science fiction fandom broadened a Midwesterner's world. I published a small magazine, The Solarite, for the last year or so of school, and had a few contributors and subscribers from as near as Belleville, Illinois, and from as far as New York City. I traded subscriptions with other amateur publishers, spent evenings typing argumentative letters to bigger zines like Yandro, in distant Indiana or Ohio. Some of the writers and artists in these publications became professionals: Jeff Jones, Dan Adkins, Juanita Coulson, Tom Dupree, Tom Reamy; a number were in their late twenties or older, tied into a society of teenagers by a lifelong love of science fiction. When high school ended, I knew three sf fans in New York: Marty Ross, in the far East Bronx, John Berry, in Bronxville, and Gene Klein, in Jackson Heights, Queens. That made it fairly easy to decide, after several days of orientation at a state university, to consider options. The university looked like a continuation of high school. New York, which I saw portrayed romantically every week on Naked City, looked like a door to the rest of the world. That fall, I got on a train that went up into Canada, then came down the Hudson to Manhattan. My friend Marty Ross helped me find a $15-a-week apartment on 223rd Street, off White Plains Road. We fudged it a little with the landlord, asserting I had a job along with Marty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. (The landlord took my mother’s name and address so he could write her that I was okay.) Next day I went job-hunting, and for some reason The Times hired me as a copy boy. I had traded letters with the fellow out in Queens, and drawn a cover for a fanzine he published, Cosmostiletto. One evening I went over to his apartment, met his mother, had dinner, and we talked science fiction, though I’ve read (not having remembered) that Gene was more interested in comic books. I don’t remember much of the visit. His mother probably was pretty. Gene was a couple of years younger than me. They lived in a brick building in Jackson Heights—big, small, I don’t remember. We must have corresponded a bit after that. But my fan activity was fading. I was trying to write fiction, was earning a thin living, spent many off-hours wandering New York as far south as Coney Island and to any subway stop that sounded interesting. When there was time, I was wondering what I would do about the draft. There wasn’t time for publishing the long-planned sixth issue of my fanzine (it still sits in a box in a closet). I lost touch with Marty, lost touch with John Berry, lost touch with Gene. I think of them and others in fandom now and then. I try to pretend I’m not nostalgic for anything, but it’s a lie. I have a boxed set of Naked City episodes. Once in a while, I Google the names of people I’ve known. I did that this morning. There’s no trace of Marty Ross; and too many John Berrys to sort. There was the linked article about a famous fellow who used to publish fanzines when he was a youngster in Queens and went by the name Gene Klein—long before the world learned of Kiss and Gene Simmons. There’s no reason this should be of interest to anyone, including me. Except: I tend to assume that people’s lives continue on whatever track I last saw them on. The school valedictorian becomes a business leader. The bow-legged cheerleader spends herself by thirty. The comics-book fan in Queens writes comic books or becomes an accountant. Not always, it seems. I joked with a friend that I should write to Gene Simmons and tell him that if he’d published better fanzines he might have had a career. February 12 2017
Science fiction fandom broadened a Midwesterner's world. I published a small magazine, The Solarite, for the last year or so of school, and had a few contributors and subscribers from as near as Belleville, Illinois, and from as far as New York City. I traded subscriptions with other amateur publishers, spent evenings typing argumentative letters to bigger zines like Yandro, in distant Indiana or Ohio. Some of the writers and artists in these publications became professionals: Jeff Jones, Dan Adkins, Juanita Coulson, Tom Dupree, Tom Reamy; a number were in their late twenties or older, tied into a society of teenagers by a lifelong love of science fiction. When high school ended, I knew three sf fans in New York: Marty Ross, in the far East Bronx, John Berry, in Bronxville, and Gene Klein, in Jackson Heights, Queens. That made it fairly easy to decide, after several days of orientation at a state university, to consider options. The university looked like a continuation of high school. New York, which I saw portrayed romantically every week on Naked City, looked like a door to the rest of the world. That fall, I got on a train that went up into Canada, then came down the Hudson to Manhattan. My friend Marty Ross helped me find a $15-a-week apartment on 223rd Street, off White Plains Road. We fudged it a little with the landlord, asserting I had a job along with Marty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. (The landlord took my mother’s name and address so he could write her that I was okay.) Next day I went job-hunting, and for some reason The Times hired me as a copy boy. I had traded letters with the fellow out in Queens, and drawn a cover for a fanzine he published, Cosmostiletto. One evening I went over to his apartment, met his mother, had dinner, and we talked science fiction, though I’ve read (not having remembered) that Gene was more interested in comic books. I don’t remember much of the visit. His mother probably was pretty. Gene was a couple of years younger than me. They lived in a brick building in Jackson Heights—big, small, I don’t remember. We must have corresponded a bit after that. But my fan activity was fading. I was trying to write fiction, was earning a thin living, spent many off-hours wandering New York as far south as Coney Island and to any subway stop that sounded interesting. When there was time, I was wondering what I would do about the draft. There wasn’t time for publishing the long-planned sixth issue of my fanzine (it still sits in a box in a closet). I lost touch with Marty, lost touch with John Berry, lost touch with Gene. I think of them and others in fandom now and then. I try to pretend I’m not nostalgic for anything, but it’s a lie. I have a boxed set of Naked City episodes. Once in a while, I Google the names of people I’ve known. I did that this morning. There’s no trace of Marty Ross; and too many John Berrys to sort. There was the linked article about a famous fellow who used to publish fanzines when he was a youngster in Queens and went by the name Gene Klein—long before the world learned of Kiss and Gene Simmons. There’s no reason this should be of interest to anyone, including me. Except: I tend to assume that people’s lives continue on whatever track I last saw them on. The school valedictorian becomes a business leader. The bow-legged cheerleader spends herself by thirty. The comics-book fan in Queens writes comic books or becomes an accountant. Not always, it seems. I joked with a friend that I should write to Gene Simmons and tell him that if he’d published better fanzines he might have had a career. February 12 2017