Art Rapp

(December 29, 1924 – March 24, 2005)

Cinvention photo by Ran Cochran reprinted courtesy of The Cincinnati Enquirer in Bob Tucker’s Bloomington News Letter 13 (October 1949).

Arthur H. Rapp, a prominent fan in the 1940s and ’50s, discovered stf in 1942. He belonged to N3F, FAPA, SAPS (twice OE), YF, Misfits and the First Fandom club. He published several one-shots and fanzines including Spacewarp which was the focal point fanzine of Fifth Fandom. (For the first ish, he augmented his editorial staff with the fictitious Albert Warren and Gerald Dorman.) He published Mindwarp, Nebula, and The Michifan.

Starting out in Saginaw, Michigan, Rapp hosted meetings of the Misfits, and attended others in Detroit. He went with other Michifen to Beercon in 1948. He called his mimeograph “HIAISM” (Hit It Again It's Still Moving).

Stewart Metchette recalled in Spacewarp 42:

Saginaw! Mecca away from Mecca! 2120 Bay Street.

Arthur H. Rapp and his sprawling house, with rooms devoted to the necessities of life: stf magazines, sofa, stove, elimination depot, beer and pop cache, stencil niche, one bed in one room, another by his collection. In the stf room, his typer sat atop a small table, while boards laid between crates held up saggingly under the weight of pulps. Rejection slips from every fantasy-stf-weird publication were stapled on one wall, while original covers from SPACEWARP and MUTANT balanced its other half.

Here, at least once a month, the slans from Michigan gathered for sneak previews of forthcoming WARPS, to criticise some Rappian manuscript which Art was polishing for pro submission, or to talk about various subjects as fans are wont to do, and drink beer, pop, consume beans, dogs, chips, or eclairs. Saginaw was our only stf house; it was the Misfit Slan Shack or Tendril Towers.

After a meeting of the Michigan Science Fantasy Society in November 1949, two members set off a bomb in the front yard of Rapp's home. Police were called and neighbors gathered, and according to Rapp in an open letter he wrote of the incident, the bomb was heard two miles away.

Art Rapp in London, June 1958.

Immediately after, Rapp quit MSFS but didn't end Spacewarp until the next year, when he left the U.S. for military duty in Korea. Rapp turned Spacewarp over to F. Towner Laney and Charles Burbee for two issues while he served in Korea. In 1983, Rapp resumed publishing Spacewarp as a member of SAPS. The hundredth issue of Spacewarp appeared in 1992, and the last issue (#204) in the late ’90s.

He also published The Gripes of Rapp for SAPS. During 1950-1952, he was one of the co-editors of The National Fantasy Fan in 1951–52 and was president of the N3F in 1962.

Rapp was born in Chicago and served in the Army 1943–47, and again in the late 1950s. He married Nancy Share, another prominent fan, in 1961, and they moved to Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, where he lived until his death. They co-edited Churn.

• Photo on page 129 of Harry Warner's history of fandom in the 1950s, A Wealth of Fable (SCIFI Press, 1992).
• Short description of him in 1954 by Peter Vorzimer in Abstract #8 p. 62.

Fanzines and Apazines:

• Churn [1961] (with Nancy Rapp)
• The Gripes of Rapp [late 1950s] (for SAPS)
• Goofia Not-Poetry Leaflet
• The Michifan [1949]
• The National Fantasy Fan [1951–52]
• Nebula [1950]
• Spacewarp [1947-50, 1983-??] (for SAPS)
• Timewarp [1948-50] (with George Young)
• Wanigas [1949] (for SAPS)

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 1950 — N3F Laureate Awards for Best Fan Editor and Best Fan of 1949

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Person

1924—2005

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