“Knights”
Copyright © 1998, 2001
by Michael Bracken
Permission to reprint in any form is denied.
Updated 04/10/05
As an eighth grader, I wrote “The 1812 Battle at Two Rocks” (my only western), showed it to my mother, and told her I was going to be a writer. As a ninth grader I had a poem published in SHADES, my junior high school’s literary magazine. In high school I contributed to the literary magazine; wrote for and later edited the school’s newspaper; and contributed to a short-lived underground newspaper. I became a staff writer on my college’s daily newspaper. Since then I’ve sold novels, short stories, essays, poems, and random other bits of writing. I’ve edited company newsletters, helped edit a semi-prozine, spoken at writing conferences, and taught non-credit writing courses.
Yet nothing defines my writing career more than 21 issues of a fanzine I first published as a high school junior.
KNIGHTS OF THE PAPER SPACE SHIP (later, just KNIGHTS) began when my best friend and I couldn’t get our science fiction short stories published. Like a science fictional Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland—stars of a series of movies about young actors who produce their own shows—we decided to publish our own magazine. Joe Walter, who reached his fannish peak when Forrest J. Ackerman quoted him on the back cover of a Perry Rodan novel, co-edited and co-published the first five issues before he started his own short-lived fanzine, A FLYING WHAT?
We knew nothing of organized fandom and nothing of publishing. We filled the first issues with fiction—ours and that of our friends.
Later, we discovered fandom through a column in AMAZING, and learned even more through a column in LOCUS. We traded for other fanzines, discovering an entire subculture of people like us who read and wrote science fiction, and even more people who published fanzines about fandom.
KNIGHTS changed—from ditto, to mimeo, to offset. Fiction disappeared from the pages, replaced by columns from Grant Carrington, Charles L. Grant, and Thomas F. Monteleone. My high school friends’ contributions were replaced by the occasional piece from Robert Bloch, David Gerrold, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle. Fans like Don D’Ammassa, Phil Folio, A. L. Sirois, Rick Wilber, and many, many others filled the pages with words and pictures.
These are the people who taught me how to be a writer. They treated a teenaged wanna-be with professionalism and respect, they treated a 500+ copy mimeographed publication as if it were a professional magazine, and they lived the life—or were trying to live the life—that I wanted to live.
No lessons I have learned about writing since—no journalism class, no creative writing class, no conference, nor any seminar—has taught me as much about being a writer as the lessons I learned during my tenure as a fanzine publisher.
Grant Carrington read one of my first novel manuscripts and provided me with a detailed critique; Charles L. Grant published my only Nebula-nominated short story (preliminary ballot only) in one of his anthologies; David Gerrold did a favor that I can never repay, and in the process taught me the true definition of class.
That experience shaped my future in much the same way that lettering on the varsity football team defines some men’s lives, even though I don’t spend every waking moment with my buddies reliving that first double issue.
I had not thought about those days until two events had me mentally visiting Mr. Peabody and his Way-Back Machine. I turned 40 and a few months later began actively surfing the Internet.
I found and began swapping email with A. L. Sirois, illustrator of two KNIGHTS covers. Then, Bud Webster—former editor/publisher of ANIARA, with whom I had swapped fanzines—found me via email. Both are now professional writers, as are many of the other fanzine fans of my generation. We’ve all reached different levels of success, and we haven’t all done it in science fiction, but the dreams that had us wrapping stencils around mimeograph drums, holding collating parties, and restlessly awaiting the day’s mail, have carried us into our professional lives.
I’ve been many places and done many things since high school. I now live in a small city in Texas—famous for the phrase “We Ain’t Coming Out,” popularized by the late David Koresh—and I settled into the middle class.
My connection with organized fandom is tenuous as best. I attend a convention every two to three years, sit on a panel, maybe do a reading, and hang out with a few people I know...or go wandering around outside the hotel in search of non-fannish activities.
Even if I wanted to, I could not relive those defining moments of my life, yet I would not trade them for all the by-lines in ANALOG.
December, 1998, marked the 25th anniversary of the first issue of KNIGHTS OF THE PAPER SPACE SHIP. As a teenager, I never imagined that the simple act of creating a place to publish my own short stories would have such a long-term and profound effect on my life.
Writers should pay forward, helping coming generations of wanna-bes achieve their dreams. Sometimes, though, we also need to look backward and thank the people who helped us get here.
To the writers who shaped my life—all of those mentioned above and the many more who are not:
Thanks.
