Walter H. Gillings

(February 19, 1912 – July 17, 1979)

Walter Herbert “Wally” Gillings was a UK journalist and editor, active in fandom from October 1930 when he founded the Ilford Science Literary Circle (the UK’s first club). Eric Williams described him as “quiet of Speech but steel in resolution”.

At some point before 1927 he published a proto-fanzine, Merry-Go-Round Magazine. He founded the Ilford group with Len Kippin in 1930. Its first meeting was on October 27 and this and subsequent gatherings were documented in the The Ilford Recorder newspaper where Gillings worked. After the Ilford group effectively ended in summer 1931, he claimed in a letter to Wonder Stories in November 1931 that it had “blossomed out” into the British Science Literary Association, an essentially non-existent organisation although seemingly H. R. Hand may have led a proto-group in Manchester.

Starting in 1937 he published seven issues of The British Scientifiction Fantasy Review, an important early British fanzine. He was also the editor of the pioneering prozine Tales of Wonder, the UK’s first adult science fiction magazine. He attended the 1937 Leeds Convention and was present at the second in 1938 and the third in 1939.

Gillings registered as a conscientious objector around June 1940 (The Pseudo-Futurian #1), leading to him losing his job at the The Ilford Recorder. However he was turned down by two tribunals, forcing him to join the army for the sake of his family. He was invalided out in late 1943 and returned to journalism with the Sunday Pictorial (Futurian War Digest #23).

He was “Convention President” for the 1944 Eastercon. He chaired Whitcon in 1948 and the Loncon Eastercon of 1949, the first two of the Eastercon series. At Whitcon he was joined by his wife, Madeline, and their 14-year-old son, Ronald, the latter the first child-in-tow to attend a UK convention.

After the war, along with Benson Herbert, he founded Utopian Publications which published sf, fantasy and some soft-core pornography. He then edited the three issues of Fantasy, followed by the professional-looking fanzine Fantasy Review (later named Science Fantasy Review) which was incorporated into the new prozine Science Fantasy when he became editor in 1950.

After Ted Carnell became editor of Science Fantasy with its third issue in 1951, Gillings mostly gafiated although he attended Festivention that year and was announced as one of the judges for the International Fantasy Award panel in 1952. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the 1954 TAFF Race, won by Vin¢ Clarke. He did not attend the 1957 London Worldcon.

Starting in 1969, he published three issues of Cosmos, another fanzine, and also appeared regularly in Vision of Tomorrow with articles about the History of SF in the UK, and as a columnist in Science Fiction Monthly (1974-1976).

In 1978, the First Fandom club set up the Walter Gillings Travel Fund to bring him to Noreascon Two.

He had two SF stories published, one using his pen-names Thomas Sheridan. Some non-fiction appeared as by Geoffrey Giles.

• Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• Walter H. Gillings in Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 2014 – First Fandom Hall of Fame

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Person

1912—1979

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