My first reaction to File 770:137 (other than admiring both front and back covers) was that my slight influence in fanzine fandom must be growing, if even the illustrious File 770 is doing covers in Frohvet Pink. Thereupon I opened the zine and discovered your editorial. To say that I was flabbergasted is an understatement.
     There's a scene in an unpublished story I wrote in which the students of a magic academy (the piece is several years old and predates "Harry Potter") are offered a problem. It is in fact a sneaky trick problem. But one of the students argues intensely her solution. The target of the exercise says apologetically, "The enthusiasm with which you make your case almost, but not quite, makes up for the fact that you are wrong." Life imitates art.

     Let's take that a piece at a time:
     "When Frohvet first appeared, the grapevine promised he was a hoax being carried on by several fans."
     Although it's true I was, and am, using a pen name, I disavowed being a "hoax" from the outset. And if anyone concluded that I was "several" fans, that was their conclusion, for which I accept no responsibility.
     "…the deliciously paranoid evidence that Frohvet, a ubiquitous letterhack, never tried to get a copy of File 770, or sent his fanzine Twink in trade."
     The adjective "paranoid" is yours. However, had you asked, you might well have found that I did not solicit trade with Fosfax, Plokta, Nova Express, or many other fanzines, all of which turned up unsolicited in my mailbox; only then did I send my own zine in trade.
     "Authors of fannish hoaxes send their material where the intended audience - faanish fans - will see it. They simply don't have the time to raise a smokescreen by writing to sercon fanzines."
     Ah, we're back to "hoax" and now "smokescreen." In fact, as would be apparent to anyone who has read my zine, my own interest has always been sercon, as evidence by, e.g., a regular book review section. I fear that, having been blindsided by this whole "hoax" preconception, you are trying to read into my involvement a whole cryptic subtext which simply is not there.
     "Tom Feller reported in SFPA, 'E.B. explained to us that 15-20 years ago he was very active in convention fandom under his real name… He used to write articles of Lan's Lantern under his real name as well.'"
     All true.
     That brings us to my note in response to File 770:136, in which I expressed the view that it would be gracious for someone like yourself, who has had many fannish honors, to step aside for awhile and let someone else have a chance. From this you conclude that I must be Moshe Feder. Uhh, no. I would be pleased if I were anything remotely like a fan of Mr. Feder's BNF status, it just ain't so. Among other problems, I believe Mr. Feder resides in the New York area. Ellicott City, Maryland, is where I actually live. Anyone is welcome to visit (a trifle of advance notice would be preferred.) I am not into fannish politics, indeed that was why I "burned out" of fandom, as described to Tom Feller. I wince at "late middle-aged," depending on how one defines the term, but it's true enough.
     In short, I keep telling people over and over, that if they heard my "real" name, 90% would go, "Who?" Not a BNF, not a hoax, just someone who wants to do a modest fanzine.
     As for my expressed views on the Fan Hugos, they reflect accurately my own opinion as well as that of many others - Guy Lillian and Tom Sadler and Nic Farey among many have taken similar positions. (Nor did I at any point suggest you withdraw "permanently." If you really want to know, my position is that anyone who wins three Fan Hugos in any one category should thereafter not be eligible in that category for two years. The present exclusionary nature of the Fan Hugos discourages fanac and initiative; and relying on individual restraint has patently failed.)
     Whoa. Deep breath. Have we covered that?
     [[I can't disagree that it's a pleasure to recognize good fanzines with an award, though the Hugos are not like the Winston Cup in auto racing -- winning is not the ultimate  reward for participating. Being nominated for a Hugo is like the cherry on the sundae if it happens - good, but not the main event. Then, of course, all that "excludes" a fanzine from a Hugo nomination is a lack of votes. This year, 30-54 votes was enough to qualify a Best Fanzine nominee -- if there is a "problem" couldn't it be "solved" by relatively small numbers of people nominating other good fanzines? Greater participation is the real key to diversifying the winners. People often comment about the repeat winners without considering that between 1990 and 2000 five different fanzines won the Hugo. An even higher rate of change is possible if more people make a commitment to nominate. Whether the Hugo electorate is knowledgeable about fanzines, they can only vote for what is on the final ballot. It isn't enough to merely agree with Andrew Hooper's highly insightful comment (from 1988), "The people [that] nominate the Hugos are a small group, and the people that are on the mailing lists for good fanzines are a small group, but they're not the same small group." We are dealing with such small numbers that individual fans who take the trouble to nominate can make a big difference.]]
     Always entertaining to see Worldcon from another point of view; although it appears your path and mine did not coincide. Concerning Dr. Bob Passavoy's, "Do you have what it takes to be a fan?" - If his examples are what it takes, then maybe not.
     Glasgow Worldcon bid: I recall saying at the time that the 1998 Worldcon in early August in Baltimore was advantageous due, among other reasons, that it fell during school holidays. This observation was generally ignored. Worldcon is held on Labor Day weekend, because it's always held on Labor Day weekend. "I like Buicks because they are my favorite car." Oh, well…
     [[In the past, Worldcons were typically held on Labor Day weekend because it was a dead time for hotels, so "bottom-feeders" like sf conventions could get cheaper rates. There's more competition for the weekend now, but the Worldcon stays around Labor Day for the same reasons many other annual conventions stick with a fixed holiday or date, because predictability it helps maintain its core of regular attendees. Running the con anywhere between mid-August and Labor Day seems to work fine - and as you said, an earlier date avoids a conflict for parents with kids in school. A date as early in August as the U.K. bidders want to hold it should work fine for them, but using the same date in North America would put it in conflict with some smaller cons - which brings us back to another advantage of keeping the Worldcon on a predictable weekend: fans aren't forced to choose between two cons they want to attend.]]
     Lloyd Penney repeats the common fiction that Lois McMaster Bujold "reworked a Star Trek novel" to the form of her first novel, Shards of Honor. In fact, as Lois has said many times in many places, among them a loc in my Twink #4, that an unwritten Trek novel was one minor source ("that old daydream") which influenced Shards, and from which she took chiefly the name of the central character "Cordelia," her hair color, "…and the setting/idea (hardly new) of two enemies forced to survive together… All the first media influences were jettisoned by that time. I no longer wanted to write imitation anybody; I wanted to write original Bujold." The loc was in response to an article I had done in Twink #3, psychoanalyzing Sergeant Bothari.
     P.S. Finally figured out what Grant Canfield's wonderful back cover reminded me of: Sort of a cross between the Bu-javid, the citadel of the aiji in Shejidan in Cherryh's Foreigner, with Neuscwanstein Castle in Bavaria. Looks as if it would be a great place to live, as long as one's legs were fit for lots of stair-climbing.

Did you have second thoughts about Alan White's cover? Or have to make a substitution? I ask because my copy is stapled twice, with a shred of pink paper under the first staple -- indicating that a cover was torn off and a new one restapled.
     [[The copy shop did an awful job on Alan White's cover, so I had them run another version, and replaced them myself.]]
     Or maybe it was a rewrite of the inside-cover piece - your "Editorial Notes"?  Had you said something far more scathing about E. B. Frohvet? Or guessed a different identity for him?
     I've met the man. I also had tangential dealings with him under his real name, back in the '80s. Under his real name (look it up if you have a copy of the fanzine) he had an article in BSFAN, back when the Baltimore clubzine was being edited by the Stileses. It was an once interesting and wrongheaded, revealing what I think of as "typical" neofannish paranoia about what he perceived to be The Powers That Be in fandom. (My memory of the piece has totally faded; I'm left only with my none-too-perfect recollection of how the piece struck me then -- more than 15 years ago.)
     This article inspired me. I wrote (on my manual Underwood) a long (several pages) letter of comment on it. I was proud of that letter; I thought it one of my best. I mailed it off to the Stileses with anticipatory pleasure. I looked
forward to seeing it published. Steve had been after me for a LoC on BSFAN for quite a while, and I was pleased that I'd finally written him a good one.  I sat back and waited for it to appear in print.
     It never did. Steve informed me that he'd accidentally thrown it out with the old newspapers and trash. "You'll have to send me another copy," he said. I told him I had no other copies. "You didn't copy it?" he asked, sounding dumbstruck by my revelation. "No carbons? No xeroxes?"
     "Steve," I said, "it was just a Letter of Comment. I don't make copies of my Letters of Comment." He was crestfallen. "Oh," he said.
     So I never had a LoC published in BSFAN and was not motivated to write any more.  I don't react well when people toss my letters out with the trash, sublime in the confidence that I can provide another copy. And perhaps it was Just As Well that letter was never published. Ghod knows what David -- oops! Make that "E.B." -- would have thought of it then.  He might never have reincarnated as "Frohvet."
     [[I naturally rose to the bait - your hint about his real first name, and his admission that he was on the 1983 Worldcon committee. All I discovered is that nearly everyone on the Constellation committee except the chairman was named David.]]
     He was at the 1998 Baltimore Worldcon. He seems like a decent enough chap. He has no presence in fandom under his real name, however, and I now think of him as another one of those fans -- like "Ted Johnstone" -- who has a separate name in fandom. No big whoop. No real "hoax" either -- I think you are vaguely recalling the attempt by Hooper and Gonzalez to hoax fandom into thinking they'd created "Frohvet"...a kinda reverse hoax of sorts. I don't think anyone took them seriously, even then.

For all the noise fans make over science fiction and the future, they are probably, as a group, the least qualified to live in it.
     As Samet Nuhiu pointed out last issue, the SF community is probably the last to take advantage of new technology in zine publishing and certainly the last to recognize it. While they claim it's the words that are important, in the end, it only refers to a technological constipation and a circling the wagons mentality. I'm hard pressed thinking of another awards group that
doesn't reward technical achievement and advancement of the beliefs they claim to hold so dear.  This is why so many talented fans become fringe fans, leave fandom altogether or move on to Comics Fandom where technology and innovation is applauded. I am at heartened to read there will be a special Hugo for the Best Website of 2001.

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