The Alexandria Trio

A 60-page, one-shot "combozine published for the heck of it and the Fantasy Amateur Press Association" by Dick Eney as Operation Crifanac CCXLI (=241; from internal evidence as well as Robert Lichtman's 2019 fanhistorical comment, distributed in mailing 105, November 1963, but no date is given anywhere in the zine itself). It included three items, so the title is a pun on Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet as Eney lived in Alexandria, Virginia, with the editorial joking:

certain of our members […] wanted me to put the filksong and the Apex article from TARGET: FAPA into an issue of Stupefying Stories and add that to the combozine […] if I did that, just to have another item in it, I’d have to be consistent and count all the elements, like the cover, and give the ’zine some such title as ALEXANDRIA QUINTET. Whoever heard of a nutty title like ALEXANDRIA QUINTET, anyway?

• Cover by Joe Mayhew and a page of general editorial introduction
• Target: FAPA (no issue #, 14 unnumbered pages, Operation Crifanac CCXXXVIII [238]) – Eney's general FAPAzine mostly with mailing comments to the "mailing CIV" (i. e. 104, August), much discussion of "the Ed Martin affair" etc. ("The Fundamentals of the APEX, 3-page record of a discussion of "Six members of The Cult")
• "An Open Letter to Lee Hoffman", con report from the Discon, 10 unnumbered pages, Operation Crifanac CCXXXV [235]
• "FTL and ASI: A Critique of the Man and the Book by Alva Rogers", response to Ah! Sweet Idiocy! "[A]vailable as a separate item […] Operation Crifanac CCXL [240] … 25¢ a copy. Permanently in print." The text itself has numbered pages ending with 28, but there is much supplementary material, unpaginated: reprint of Laney's original cover; 28th page of the Trio then is empty (verso of the cover?); dedication (by Eney's typewriter) to "the chief targets of Laney’s spleen", Forrest J Ackerman and Walter J. Daugherty; Preface by Rogers (one paragraph) and Eney (rather longer, 3 pages altogether). Robert Lichtman says "Eney also distributed “FTL & ASI” in the December 1963 OMPA mailing under the title Bixeltype. Although I haven’t seen [it, I …] guess that Eney included the same introduction there that he did in Alexandria Trio." Eney had serialized ASI in OMPA too through Phenotype.

The Alexandria Trio online at fanac.org.

---

Publication

1963

This is a publication page. Please extend it by adding information about when and by whom it was published, how many issues it has had, (including adding a partial or complete checklist), its contents (including perhaps a ToC listing), its size and repro method, regular columnists, its impact on fandom, or by adding scans or links to scans. See Standards for Publications.