Dancing and Joking -- fanwriting by John Hertz

John Hertz published this collection of his fanwriting in November 2005 as a souvenir of Westercon LVII, where he was fan guest of honor. If you donate five dollars to TAFF or DUFF (via the current administrators), John will send you a copy. I'm not sure that this deal applies to people outside North America, but you could always ask.

( A mini-review )

Challenger on Katrina

While I'm recommending fanwriting, I also want to put a plug in for the latest issue of Guy Lillian's Challenger. Guy has mostly stopped sending out paper copies of the zine, but the HTML version is very nicely done. The latest issue is focused on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. I haven't read all of it, but I particularly recommend Guy's own piece, "Gone With the Wind", which does a powerful job of showing us the city and the disaster through Guy's personal experience. Between that and Linda Krawecke's "Watching," about her experience watching the CNN coverage from the UK while trying to find out what was happening to her family in the area, I found myself reliving the intense feelings of five months ago. Again, this is amateur writing at its best, bringing us the powerful perspectives of our friends and peers and putting the huge events of the world into personal, human terms.

Guy is someone else I've only come to know since getting involved in fanzines, and I feel I know him a lot better after reading of his love for New Orleans and his horror at what has happened to it. Awesome stuff. There are also a couple of anti-Bush polemics, by Guy and by Alexis Gilliland, for people who are into that kind of thing.