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David Langford

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30 August 2024 In the great and perverse tradition of avoiding weekend publication, we precipitately present Ansible 446 for September 2024. • Minutes before this issue went to press, Steve Davies – who had kindly transported the First Fandom Hall of Fame plaque from Glasgow – delivered it to Ansible HQ. Many thanks! Behold:

First Fandom plaque

[From Ansible 446] I’m very grateful to Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer for representing me at the First Fandom awards and reading my traditionally inadequate acceptance: ‘I must admit I’m utterly gobsmacked. With hardly more than fifty years of fan activity under my belt, I never expected to gatecrash the hallowed portals of First Fandom. It’s like being invited to join the Mary Shelley writers’ workshop, or even the Cosmic Circle! Maybe next I’ll track down the legendary Second Fandom that Hugo Gernsback set up at the other end of the galaxy to guard his thousand-year plan and ensure that what we read is forever called “scientifiction”. Seriously: thank you very much indeed.’

9 August 2024 Just released: Glasgow 2024 Fan Funds Auction Catalogue and Silent Auction Catalogue. If you're not at Worldcon and want to bid, contact someone who's there! (Virtual members can use the Discord server to bid in the silent auction – see catalogue.)

8 August 2024 I was hugely surprised – not today but when notified some while in advance – to be enrolled into the First Fandom Hall of Fame during the Glasgow Worldcon opening ceremonies. Likewise my old friends Mary and Bill Burns among the living, and Peter Weston in the posthumous list that this year also includes Alfred Bester, Mike Glicksohn and Mike Resnick. As Walt Willis would say in moments of high emotion: "Cor chase my Aunt Fanny round the psionics laboratory." I wan't actually there owing to misgivings about public transport, acoustic-hell megavenues and Covid, but many thanks to the First Fandom Foundation, to Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer for accepting on my behalf, and to an audience that kindly cheered.

1 August 2024 The last issue before the Glasgow Worldcon – Ansible 445 dated August 2024.

1 July 2024 Time for Ansible 444, the July issue. Also yet another ebook and simultaneous paperback release in aid of TAFF: British SF Conventions Volume 2: 1952-1957 compiled by Rob Hansen.

31 May 2024 Avoiding weekend publication as usual, here is Ansible 443 dated June 2024.

1 May 2024 Mayday! Mayday! Help is urgently needed but all you get is Ansible 442. Also yet another ebook and simultaneous paperback release: New Worlds Profiles 1952 to 1963 edited by myself.

2 April 2024 Avoiding 1 April to show there's absolutely no fooling, here is Ansible 441. Winning the Doc Weir Award (in absentia) at the just-finished Eastercon was a huge surprise.

15 March 2024 Since I missed First Fandom by several decades, I hadn't expected this nominations list.

4 March 2024 Very pleased to hear that an Ansible Editions book – Rob Hansen's Beyond Fandom: Fans, Culture & Politics in the 20th Century – has won the Best Special Publication category of this year's Fanzine Activity Achievement Awards.

1 March 2024 Here we go again with the March issue of Ansible.

1 February 2024 Time now for the February issue: Ansible 439 with far too many death reports and Hugo scandal horrors. New TAFF-benefit paperbacks are A Vince Clarke Treasury by Vince Clarke and Fandom Harvest II by Terry Carr

24 January 2024 On Christmas Day I was asked to update the Guardian's stock obituary for D.G. Compton (written long ago by Chris Priest, who stepped down from that particular chore) and it has appeared at last on their website. Perhaps later in the printed newspaper too; I'm told there can be a delay of as much as six weeks. Later: it was in the 27 January edition.

2 January 2024 And now it's time for the first issue of the Newish Year: Ansible 438.

1 January 2024 Looking back ... what did I get done in 2023? Twelve issues of Ansible, and there'll be another one tomorrow. Unceasing maintenance work on the SF Encyclopedia, where since October 2021 I've been the entire technical staff while still writing the occasional new entry and updating heaps of old ones. Two "Ansible Link" news columns for Interzone, and there won't be any more because I am Old and Tired. One obituary rewrite for the Guardian, not yet published (that one was dumped on me on Christmas Day). Fifteen ebooks for the TAFF site's Little Free Library, not counting PDFs already created by others and now added to that collection. Seven paperbacks sold for TAFF, five based on existing ebooks and two brand-new. A few reprints but no new fiction. One reissued title of my own sold for corrupt personal gain, both paperback and ebook. Too many crosswords and rereads of old favourite books.