Arthur Langley Sears
From the collection of John L. Coker III

My first was with a fan dealer named Julius Unger, who kept his business going in his apartment.  He lived in Brooklyn, and seeing his advertisement I went out there.  Julius Unger was a friendly chap, a fan himself, and I occasionally met other fans at his place.   To the best of my recollection, it may have been there where I met Sam Moskowitz.  Another time I remember Sam taking me to see Julie Schwartz, who immediately hit me for a contribution for the Convention souvenir journal.

I probably had read some of the advance announcements of the Convention in the magazines, so I showed up there.  I was not a witness to anybody being excluded, but I do know that most of the Futurians did attend the Convention.  In fact, all of those who were excluded were told that they could attend if they promised not to make any trouble.  As a matter of principle, those who were excluded did not want to make that promise.  We didn’t know until years later that Wollheim and others apparently had an agenda, and would win no matter how things worked out.  If they were excluded, they could point out that Moskowitz was undemocratic in the way things were run, and if they were allowed in and caused trouble they could point out that Sam’s group was not capable of running a convention.  New Fandom, the Convention sponsor, was bound to lose, no matter which way it went.  Some Futurians, such as Jack Robins and Dave Kyle, were not asked to give a promise, but were just waved in. 

One of the things that the convention has taught us is that fandom is no longer a really small closed group.  Along with the rest of society, it has become so pluralistic that you can’t have any sort of political lines drawn.  Another historical thing that has come out of the convention is the de-emphasis on science.  Conventions still will have an occasional science speaker, and there have been some very interesting ones, but it isn’t any longer a necessity.  At Nycon, one day was devoted to scientific lectures, as opposed to science fiction.  The evolution of the convention over the years has been that their whole point really is entertainment and companionship. 

Many of the things that were once considered very important no longer are.  A good reason for that is the fact that we live in prosperous times.  Since World War Two, there has been nothing like the Great Depression of the early Thirties.  Let me just give a passing example.  In 1931 or 1932, I remember going out with my father, who was a printer, trying to collect some bills.  He stopped next to a farm, and I wandered over to a boy about my age whom I saw there.  It was summer, and he was attired in just a pair of shorts.  We began talking and playing, and said that he had a brother at home.  When I asked him why his brother didn’t come out to play, he said that he couldn’t because he didn’t have any clothes.  The only thing that the two kids had between them was literally one pair of shorts.  They took turns wearing them.  That gives an idea of what was happening in this country at that time.  I don’t blame anybody, Futurians or otherwise, for being interested in socialistic ideas that offered people a better world. 

In 1939 I was living with relatives in the northern Bronx, going to college.  On Saturdays, I would hop a subway down to the city, where I would prowl around the secondhand bookshops.  I remember meeting John W. Campbell at the Convention.  I had actually corresponded with him back in 1937.  John was forward looking in terms of his costume, just as he was in his magazine.  He always wore a pair of slacks, a loose-fitting sports jacket, and comfortable rubber-soled shoes, quite different from the formal attire you would expect of someone who was editor of a magazine.  This was when his magazines were really hitting their stride.  He was publishing some of the stuff by Van Vogt.  The latest issue of Astounding at the time of the Convention had that beautiful pink and black cover illustrating Van Vogt’s story “Black Destroyer.”  I told Campbell how much I had enjoyed reading the story and I can remember how he smiled happily.

I remember a baseball game that was held on Sunday, the last day of the convention.   The Queen’s Cometeers beat the Philadelphia Panthers in a pitching duel, twenty-three to nine.  I was a pitcher and so was Art Widner.  Sam was captain of the New York side and John V. Baltadonis headed up the Philly team.  I didn’t look it – I was nearly six feet tall but I weighed only about one hundred twenty-five pounds – but I happened to be a very good softball pitcher.  Sam picked me for his team, and many years later I asked him why he did.  He said that I looked so skinny that he felt sorry for me. 

I was born August 8, 1920 in Nashua, New Hampshire, and grew up in a small town nearby.  I learned to read early, and because of a series of childhood illnesses that kept me indoors, I was soon doing well above my grade level.  In those days there was of course no television, and even radio was in its infancy.  People had to entertain themselves, and one of the few ways of doing so at home was reading.  Being a precocious only child accentuated this tendancy, as did my father’s habit of reading aloud to my mother and myself.

That is how I was introduced to the fantasy/science-fiction field in fact.  My father happened to read to us from a collection of Conan Doyle short stories, some of which were supernatural and some science-fiction.  I can still remember two of them; “The Great Keinplatz Experiment” and “The Ring of Thoth.”  This let me later to search out other Doyle books at my local public library, where I discovered Sherlock Holmes and acquired a liking for mystery and detective stories which persists today.

Science-fiction led me to science.  I was given a chemistry set when I was thirteen, and my father let me have a bench in a corner of his printing shop to set up a home laboratory.  I enjoyed experimenting there so much over the next few years that I resolved to make chemistry my life’s vocation. 

Meanwhile I was continuing to read widely, and discovered Jules Verne and the fiction of Carl Claudy, who wrote for THE AMERICAN BOY magazine.  For my fourteenth birthday I was given a copy of H.G. Wells’ omnibus of science-fiction SEVEN FAMOUS NOVELS.  Somewhere along the way I had learned of the existence of science-fiction magazines, but my parents thought the pulps were trash, and forbid my buying any.  By then, however, my desire for more genre fiction was great enough to make me disobey, and I purchased my first science-fiction magazine.  It was the December 1934 issue of ASTOUNDING STORIES.  I loved it and from that point on began to buy the magazine regularly.  The themes in the stories, particularly the one of individual scientists making remarkable discoveries were deeply influential, especially during my later teens.  I’m sure it is no coincidence that this period coincided with the regimes of Orlin Tremaine and John W. Campbell, Jr., who edited the magazine then.  These were golden years, for me as well as the magazine.

I bought occasional copies of AMAZING and WONDER STORIES along the way, but neither appealed to me particularly, probably because their stories seemed static and old-fashioned.  I didn’t like their illustrations as well as the ones in ASTOUNDING, either.

By 1937 I had learned of back number dealers where I could buy older issues and catch up on stories I’d missed, and because they were so cheap, I bought back numbers of other magazines, too.  I didn’t realize it then, but I had caught the collecting bug – I never discarded any of my purchases, even if I’d read everything in them. 

In my senior high school year, I had the good fortune to be awarded a full-tuition scholarship at New York University, and in the Summer of 1938 I moved to New York City to begin college.  I lived there with my mother and her relatives (my parents had separated two years earlier) and in order to cover personal expenses I took a part-time job as a page in a branch of the New York Public Library nearby.  My studies went smoothly – I took a double major, chemistry and English – and I was duly graduated with a B.A. degree in June 1942. 

My horizons broadened considerably during those college years.  Through a fan turned dealer, Julius Unger (1912-1963), I discovered fandom, meeting Sam Moskowitz, Julius Schwartz and several other fans living in the greater New York area.  I attended the Nycon in July 1939 and met a number of out-of-towners, as well as editor John Campbell, whom I found genial, approachable and pleasant.  I learned of the existence of fan magazines.  New York City has dozens of stores that sell second-hand magazines, and through them I soon completed my files of all the genre ones, even WEIRD TALES.  I had the good luck, in 1940, to learn of an older upstate fan who was disposing of his extensive collection of Munsey publications containing science-fiction stories.  These dated back to 1913, and I gradually bought them all.  He also owned files of the first fanzines – THE TIME TRAVELLER, SCIENCE FICTION DIGEST and FANTASY MAGAZINE, and I got these, too.

It was through reading “The Service Department” in the first two of these that I learned how extensive science-fiction in mundane publications was, and also about its appearance in book form.  The latter particularly interested me, for aside from the ones reviewed or advertised in the genre magazines, I knew of no source of information about them.  Early in 1942 I began assembling a checklist of these books for my own interest and for aid in collecting.  I never guessed at that time the consequences this would eventually have. 

But before describing these, let me deal with my professional career.  I went on to graduate study at N.Y.U., and as a result of this and research I was awarded a Ph. D. in chemistry there in the Spring of 1946.  I then held a position on the Chemistry Department’s staff, where I remained for ten years.  I then accepted a more lucrative post at a higher rank at the College of Mount St. Vincent, where I remained until retiring in June 1987.  Over these years I had accounts of my research published in academic journals, served as a visiting professor at three local colleges, was awarded a Bene Marente medal for outstanding teaching, and, subsequently, the title of Emeritus Professor of Chemistry.  I found academic life enjoyable, and never regretted my career choice.

During my college years I developed two additional interests: classical music and wines.  These, like fantasy, persisted for the rest of my life.

In exploring the reach of the genre into books, I realized how little the subject had been treated by fan magazines, which concentrated heavily on the doings of the pulps.  In late 1943 I set out to remedy this omission by bringing out a fanzine of my own, FANTASY COMMENTATOR.  Initially this was circulated in the Fantasy Amateur Press Association.  Its favorable reception there led me to increase its size and launch it as a subscription journal in December, 1944.  I was able to recruit other fantasy book collectors, such as Thyril Ladd,l Matthew Onderdonk, William Evans and Sam Moskowitz to write for the magazine, and of course I contributed articles myself. 

Another little-noted area at the time was fan history, and on my urging Sam Moskowitz agreed to treat this aspect of the field in his now famous account THE IMMORTAL STORM, which ran serially in FANTASY COMMENTATOR for several years before it appeared in book form.  COMMENTATOR proved successful, and it was only because professional duties ate into my spare time that I was forced to cease publishing it in 1952.

Impending retirement restored my leisure, and I was able to resume publication in 1979 on a more relaxed schedule.  [For those who may be interested, a detailed account of this cessation and revival may be found in the magazine itself: FANTASY COMMENTATOR III, 196 and 226 (1953); whole nos. 27 and 28].  In 2003 the 60thanniversary issue appeared, making it the longest-running periodical in the field.  It has indeed lasted longer than I ever dreamed it would.  As I look about me now, at the age of 85, I hope it will last a bit longer.  I have greatly enjoyed publishing it, and as long as my health and faculties permit, I shall continue to do so.