Charles Fort Never Mentioned Wombats
Mystery spoof (Doubleday 1977) by fans Gene DeWeese and Buck Coulson, set in Sydney just before Aussiecon 1. Like its prequel, it is loaded with Tuckerisms and with fans appearing in cameo roles.
It is a sequel to Now You See It/Him/Them... with many of the same characters. Joe Kerns, a mundane reporter who stumbles onto fandom in 1974 at Discon II and gets involved in a murder investigation which involved serious doses of psionic powers, has been sent to Australia as a replacement for the usual travel reporter. On the plane, he discovers that it also carries sixty or so rather loud fans on their way to Aussiecon I. After they land in Sydney, he and they get sucked into to a rather contrived business with aliens who are observing us and may or may not be invading...or something. More psionics. More fannishness. (Unfortunately, the book ends by means of a psionic rabbit pulled out of a previously invisible hat.) Still, it's fun for the fans involved.
It also features an amusing introduction by Wilson Tucker poking fun at and telling stories about...Bob Tucker.
Main characters Identified fans __Tuckerizations__
- __Bob Adams__: A Tuckerization of James R. Adams
- Maydene Caitlin
- Kay Clarke: 6' Black woman who is a folk singer. She was partly inspired by Bev Clark (see Midwestcon 4), according to Buck Coulson, "The Yankee Privateer," in The Mentor 64 (August 1989, p. 12).
- Denny: Denny Lien a tall, thin American "who sported a huge mustache and sideburns that had gotten completely out of hand, but weren't really a beard...[who] never spoke unless it was to make puns -- really bad puns...his were particularly atrocious"
- Denver Cross
- Eric: Eric Lindsay "a dapper little Australian with a neatly trimmed beard"
- Joe Karns: The main character. Not obviously anyone.
- Irv Radsack: An alien masquerading as an Aussie fan.
- Rusty: Rusty Hevelin "with his bushy, red-grat beard"
- Don Thompson: Probably not Donald C. Thompson the fan. Maybe a Tuckerization.
Additionally, Bob Tucker Himself makes an unnamed appearance as a "bespectacled character who claimed never to have been on a plane before [and] kept intoning "Smo-o-o-o-th!"
See also: Charles Fort.
| Publication | 1977 |
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