Richard I. Barycz

(January 24, 1951 – April 6, 2024)

Richard Ignatius Barycz was a fanzine fan, letterhack and poet from London.

Barycz joined the BSFA in spring 1968 with the membership number 901 and seems to have remained into the twenty-first century. His interests as listed in the 'Correspondents Wanted' department of BSFA Bulletin #18 (July 1968) were 'writing and artwork'; he was also among the three of four youths there 'interested in hearing more about and/or seeing amateur magazines connected with fantasy and sf', as editor Archie Mercer phrased it. Greg Pickersgill who joined the BSFA a year earlier became a correspondent 'but that's kind of overstating the case because I found [Barycz]'s handwriting so difficult to read'. Barycz published four competent if brief reviews in Vector, the first appearing in October 1968 a few months after he joined the Association.

Barycz contributed a poem 'Spin' (five stanzas of four lines, quite regular, but unrhymed) to the first issue of Pickersgill's Fouler (numbered 2; September 1970). Pickersgill later, while critical of his young self, wrote

There was some good stuff in FOULER 2 though; one piece I can single out for particular note is a poem called SPIN by marginal-fan Richard Barycz. Deserves reprinting.

Steve Sneyd, an authority on genre poetry, described it as 'use[ing] the ritual of a child's counting game to explore the SOW of encountering the universe' and published it as one side of an Ace Double-style dos chapbook in 2001, together with selections from The Star-Seer's Aerial Voyage (1837) by William Dearden.

Fouler #2 also contained a fictional LoC on the non-existent Fouler #1 saying (it's anyone's guess whether such a title existed or it was actually an parody/in-joke)

the one poem I managed to decipher in its entirety was GATHER BLACK NIGHTS, by Barycz which was probably the best thing I have ever seen in fifteen years of fanzine-reading, and I was quite honestly nauseated by the fact that it had to appear within the absurd confines of your snotty little pamphlet.

Barycz didn't attend conventions, even in his home city, and met few fans although Pickersgill and Leroy Kettle visited him in his south London home around 1970. He self-published a 20-page chapbook Poems upon several occasions and to several persons (1976, contents unknown; the unusual title is actually borrowed from the 17th-century poet Edmund Waller).

Barycz published three issued of perzine Ycz in 1978–9; it topped the 'worst British fanzine' category in the Twll-Ddu Fan Unpopularity Poll of that season, although more due to production values than its content being archetypally that of a crudzine. Dave Langford commented on Barycz placing fourth Worst British Fanwriter:

There are mixed reports about Barycz fanwriting. It depends a lot on whether the fan concerned possessed an electron microscope to penetrate the mysteries of Ycz; the worst that can be said about this man's prose is that it's monstrously whimsical and tends to deal with boring old Star Wars. I hate to be a killjoy, but I suspect Richard doesn't deserve to be so highly honoured as this.

Barycz also appeared in lettercolumns and was a regular correspondent of Ansible from 1981 until 2021, confirming his whimsical tendencies indeed. He remained a subscriber to its paper edition, sending regular bundles of stamped addressed envelopes. Fans only learned of his death after no new envelopes were received.

Links

• Richard I. Barycz in Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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Person

1951—2024

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