Joe Walter and I first met in the science lab of Fort Bragg Junior High shortly after I moved to the tiny town on the northern California coast in the middle of ninth grade. I was shy and scared: this was my umpteeth experience as “the new kid.” Joe was stable: he’d lived his life within a fifty-mile radius. By the age of fourteen I’d lived in three states; Joe had only been outside California once.

Because of a teaching system known as tracking, Joe and I shared no classes, and so knew each other only by name. In fact, we had at least one push-and-shove fight as a result of “the new kid” syndrome. (It amounted to nothing when compared to the number of times I was called to the office, and the one suspension I received, from knock-down-drag-out fights with other students.)

During the summer between junior and senior high, Joe and I became better acquainted only by accident: our mothers both worked for Sprouse-Reitz and they became friends. We soon discovered that it was easier to walk the mile between our houses than to walk the two and three miles into town. We had more in common than either of us expected: not only did we both live with step-fathers with whom we couldn’t get along, we seemed to idolize our mothers because of it. We also discovered each other’s interest in reading and writing an escapist literature known as science fiction.

Our friendship grew during the coming school year until it reached the point where we were almost inseparable. We adjusted our class schedules so that we shared Drama, and we both worked on the school newspaper (though during different semesters).

During the summer of 1973 I spent a month with some friends in San Jose, CA. When I returned to Fort Bragg I was devouring myself with the thought of publishing a science fiction magazine. At midnight, my first day home, I walked the mile to Joe’s house, rousted him from his bed in the garage, and told him of my plans. In a sleepy stupor he agreed to help if the idea ever bore fruit.

The seeds sown at that midnight meeting eventually became the first issue of KNIGHTS OF THE PAPER SPACE SHIP (KPSS). Because of a good relationship we had with Mrs. Imogene Richmond, head of the English department at Fort Bragg High, we were able to cajole her into giving us the supplies necessary to publish a “science fiction magazine.” Joe and I co-edited issue one and brought it out in December of 1973. It was 15 pages, ditto, and contained bad sf written by high school students.

Neither of us had ever heard of fandom.

KPSS switched to mimeo with the second issue, but remained essentially the same through the first six monthly issues. Our contributors and typists were classmates and friends with little or no knowledge of science fiction. Other contributions came as a result of sending sample copies at random to California high schools. John M. Robinson, two years ahead of us when we entered high school and off to college by the time we started KPSS, became a regular contributor with issue four.

Even so, Joe and I wrote most of the early issues and we became so dependent on pseudonyms that one of them eventually became a major member of Fort Bragg Fandom and a fanzine editor himself. Originally, I wrote as Patrick Myers to avoid the appearance of dominating KPSS, but he rapidly progressed from a simple pen name into a way of saying things, and writing about incidents, outside the boundaries of Mike Bracken. His forte was faan fiction, a style that captured Joe Walter and myself shortly after we discovered fandom, and his high water mark was a collaboration between Joe and I titled “Volkswagen Weekend” in KPSS 11. None of Joe’s pseudonyms ever gathered enough momentum to become a hoax, but “...And Then There Were Eight” (published under the name J. A. Van Horn in KPSS 2) won third place in the Santa Rosa Junior College/Press Democrat high school writing competition, fiction category. (The next year I tied for third in the news writing category.)

The use of pseudonyms went unnoticed by fandom at large, and most fanzine reviewers mistakenly assumed all of us were part of a high school sf club and that KPSS was a high school clubzine. Even after the pseudonyms were allowed to expire, it was hard to shake that image.

During the production of the first six issues (December 1973 to May 1974) Joe and I not only discovered fandom, we began to get on each other’s nerves. Fandom was a large audience open to just about anything we wanted to do—just the opposite of our classmates. We began pulling in different directions and we were rapidly losing any sort of editorial continuity. I doubt that any of our incessant bickering ever showed up in the pages of KPSS, but it led to a number of arguments that stopped just shy of punches. It was a volatile time, and one that could have destroyed our friendship had it not been for Joe’s calmer attitude.

With issue six came the final division in the ranks and it resulted in Joe leaving as co-editor (a move I had previously considered). I was left with a fledgling fanzine and a stable title; Joe had only his ingenuity. Our wounds healed quickly and we were both soon working on separate fanzines. I finished issue six of KPSS and Joe began working on A FLYING WHAT? (AFW?).

Before Joe finished AFW? 1, I published KPSS 7 and 8, and it was issue seven where Wayne W. Martin first appeared in a fanzine, having the last letter in that issue’s lettercolumn. I found Wayne’s name and address on a list of APA-50 members distributed prior to the first APA mailing, and sent him a sample copy of KPSS. After that, Joe and I frequently corresponded with Wayne and it led us to later declare him an honorary member of Fort Bragg Fandom.

Issue eight is where Joe first distributed a flyer announcing the formation of the Science Fantasy Press APA (SFPAPA). (Science Fantasy Press was a conglomeration we concocted to number every fanzine published by a Fort Bragg fan. The first two issues of Wayne’s THE E-STARIAN EXPLORER were published under this banner.) SFPAPA was a disaster: perhaps three people outside Fort Bragg Fandom were interested, and I remember receiving contributions to the first mailing from only one person. The first mailing was never made.

By August, 1974, Joe was ready with AFW? 1, and I had KPSS 9 in hand. We decided to mail them together to save postage and I tossed in the first issue of a six-page fanzine called OZONE. I had published OZONE to use up a ream of three-hole-punched mimeo paper I had received as a gift, and it never saw a second issue. In IT COMES IN THE MAIL 13, Ned Brooks reports that I also enclosed POOPED SHEET, a one-page mimeo effort explaining all the things crammed into the envelope. I cannot now located a copy of POOPED SHEET.

Right about this time, Wayne expressed interest in publishing his own fanzine, but, living in Fresno, CA, with no known fans nearby, he lacked the necessary equipment and the money to purchase it. Joe and I offered to print his first issue if he would keep the page and copy count relatively low. We also began sending him contributions.

The second issue of AFW? came out in October of 1974, right on the heels of KPSS 10. I went into near hibernation after that and began work on KPSS’s first anniversary issue—a task I finished while laid up from foot surgery.

November saw the publication of Patrick Myers’ first and only fanzine, THIS THING HASN’T GOT A NAME YET, GOT ANY IDEAS?, a two-page ditto affair that mostly called for contributions of a fannish nature. It was sent to approximately twenty people and received a response disproportionate to its size and distribution. Since it never saw a second issue, the submitted articles were either returned or published in KNIGHTS 13.

In late November, in the middle of preparations for my massive first anniversary issue, I received a package of stencils and a $9.50 money order from Wayne. The first issue of THE E-STARIAN EXPLORER (EE) had arrived and was ready to print. Officially published in December of 1974, EE was ten pages long and heavily influenced by Fort Bragg Fandom. Joe and I were the major contributors for the first two of its three issues.

Mid-December saw the distribution of KPSS 11, the first anniversary issue of the fanzine and the first anniversary of Fort Bragg Fandom. At 56 pages, it was the largest fanzine any of us had ever produced.

Joe returned in January of 1975 with the last fanzine he ever published (though not the last he edited), a 13-page one-shot called FANTABULOUS CRUD, and the only issue of his ill-fated perzine, DISASOCIATION (sic). It was shortly after that when Joe, Pat, and I voted Wayne an honorary member of Fort Bragg Fandom. We sent him a certificate proclaiming him such and I later saw it hanging on the wall in his living room.

Fort Bragg Fandom was beginning to destruct: starting in January my mother was in and out of the hospital until her death on March 4, 1975. Both Joe and I were in danger of not graduating from high school (due mainly to our habit of cutting classes to work on our fanzines or on the school newspaper which, at various times, we both edited), and I was getting hassled by school administrators for an editorial I had written in the school paper. They claimed it was libelous, closed down the paper, and took the whole matter before the school board, who wishy-washed and called upon the District Attorney to resolve the matter (unfortunately I left before his decision was announced, and am unsure of the outcome of the entire event).

Joe’s home life was never idealistic, and I believe that it was growing worse during this time. (His mother separated from his step-father during this period, and divorced him not too long after I left California.)

Wayne’s mother was slowly dying of throat cancer, but it wasn’t to take her life until two years later. His father had died years before.

In the midst of all this we must have printed the second issue of Wayne’s fanzine because my copy bears an April 1, 1975 postmark, and I remember driving to Fresno to spend a weekend with Wayne in early April.

The last KPSS before the name change, issue twelve, was published in April of 1975 and my only editorial was a brief tribute to my mother. I was still mailing out copies in July.

Only a few gasps remained.

THE E-STARIAN EXPLORER ended with the third issue. The postmark on my copy is October 1975, and the issue contains little of the neo-fannish craziness of the first two, and the distinctive touch of Fort Bragg Fandom is drastically muted. Wayne gave up the fanzine in an effort to publish a semi-prozine. He purchased many stories from pros and fans (myself included) and had the first issue ready for the printer when his mother died in February of 1977. It took all his money to bury her and he never published the first issue of MULTITUDE.

I published the third and last issue of Joe Walter’s A FLYING WHAT? as a last-ditch effort to revive the old camaraderie. Unfortunately, it failed in its appointed task. The issue itself is exactly what Joe handed me when I left Fort Bragg with my grandmother in May, with the exception of a cover and a short afterword.

Patrick Myers faded out of sight the way all good pseudo-people should.

I am the only regularly active fan to emerge from Fort Bragg Fandom, and, despite a slight name change, KNIGHTS remains as a last testament to a year and a half of hyper-fanac. Issue thirteen of KNIGHTS cleared away all the remains of the charred and broken body of Fort Bragg Fandom by printing nearly every article and every piece of artwork remaining in my possession from various defunct Fort Bragg fanzine titles, and subsequent issues have marked many changes in my lifestyle and fannish attitudes.

The hectic publishing schedule and the intense interaction of friendship that made up Fort Bragg Fandom heavily influenced at least three people’s lives, and the effects of that year and half can still be seen lingering faintly in the words and deeds of a small handful of fen.

Fort Bragg Fandom: it wasn’t the Derelicts, and it certainly wasn’t LASFS. It was, however, a small piece of fan history which deserves more than a footnote in some future tome.