Thomas L. MacDonald
(November 11, 1900 – ????)
Thomas L. MacDonald was a UK fan from Carlisle active in the late 1940s and 1950s. He was a member of the British Fantasy Library (BFL), the Science Fantasy Society (SFS), the N3F, and the 'NW German Society for Exploration of the Universe'.[1]
MacDonald joined the BFL in 1947. Librarian Ron Holmes was extremely unimpressed next summer after MacDonald offered to "print" (just duplicate, or even really print?) the directory and then didn't, "even to the non-return of lists".[2] However, the next Booklist issue by John Gunn in October "carried apologies to MacDonald" and apparently even claimed that the Directory was produced and available (except nobody ever saw it).
Walt Willis references this in his 1956–7 fanoir 'I Remember Me'[3] and also that MacDonald's was the first outside reaction, by a day,[4] to the first issue of Slant (sent out 27 Dec 1948):
It wasn't a comment though, or even a letter, just a few lines of verse in answer to some of mine about the pronunciation of van Vogt.
Apparently the Directory affair did not have much effect on MacDonald's involvement in fandom (even considering there was a significant hiatus between BFL and SFS). "T. L. Macdonald" (sic?) is on the SFS membership list in Science Fantasy News #2 as "Sc/65", where the Society's regional organisation assigned his Carlisle, Cumberland address under Scotland.[5] He is listed in the N3F 1950 Fan Directory and on the roster in The National Fantasy Fan of April 1952.
| Person | 1900—???? |
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- ↑ Given in quotes in the 1950 Fan Directory. This would be Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung, as Germany's counterpart to British Interplanetary Society was named between 1934 and 1956. For a brief "stub" of its current status, see wikipedia:German Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics; for slightly more of its history, the German version.
- ↑ See the Directory of Anglofandom’s entry or Booklist #6, July 1948, page 1, undeer the title BLACKLIST. Still, this was an "Emergency Issue" when Holmes declared himself "almost on the verge of a nervouse [sic] breakdown".
- ↑ Respectively Instalments 1: "Beginnings", Pamphrey 3, October 1956 and Woz 4, February, 1957, and then 2: "Slant, Vin¢ Clarke, Ken Bulmer, Clive Jackson", Pamphrey 5, July 1957, and Woz 5, May 1957. Collected in Warhoon 28, 1978, pages 447 to 449, and then Harp Remembered, Ansible Editions 2023 https://taff.org.uk/ebooks.php?x=HarpRem . Not to be confused with the 1990s column of the same name collected in 2021 as, somewhat confusingly, I Remember Me and Other Narratives.
- ↑ WaW noted that it came "from the nearest English fan to us", so the speed of over-Irish-Sea mail might be a causal factor there.
- ↑ http://www.gostak.org.uk/sfn/SFN2.htm (direct scan unavailable). For readers in other worlds and other times, it might be useful to save them looking up that Carlisle is a city in England's northwesternnmost county, some 8 miles south of the (modern/traditional) border; it was held by the Scots until 1092 and then, Wikipedia puts it, "became an important military stronghold", changing hands several times in the two countries' wars. Of course, this might make sense as there were no other members far away in that corner of England; the only (North) Irish Walt Willis was also lumped under Sc.
