Chapter Five: Fusion Agonistes, or The Flight of the Albatross

Fusion Magazine is HRSFA's most demanding ongoing enterprise. A single issue of Fusion costs between $600 and $700 to publish, takes anywhere from two to ten months to produce, and (usually) involves the labor of between one-third and one-half of the Association's active members. It is often hard to understand why an essentially recreational organization like HRSFA would want to do something so expensive, difficult, and (for the Editor-in-Chief and his staff, at least) nerve-wracking, and the members of HRSFA have questioned the need for Fusion several times during the Association's history. The most recent of these inquiries, and the loudest, occurred in the fall of 1990, while I was Editor-in-Chief.

The purpose of the historical account which follows is to answer this important question: why should HRSFA bother to publish a magazine? It will also, I hope, afford the author a chance to reminisce, and to explain why and how he bolloxed his own term as Editor-in-Chief of Fusion.

Regarding the founding of Fusion I can, of course, speak only at second-hand, since the event occurred shortly after the establishment of the Association in November of 1987, at which time I was still a senior in high school. I leave it to older alumni to fill in the details of this early period, and to correct my mistakes.

Fusion began as the HRSFA Magazine SIG, led by one of HRSFA's first two co-chairs, Alec Crawford. Why it was founded I do not know; I suspect there was a demand by members whose sf and fantasy stories had been previously snubbed (by other campus literary magazines, Expos teachers, etc.) for a sympathetic publishing venue, which they felt HRSFA could provide. I also suspect that HRSFA members had a lot (or at least a fair amount) of energy and willingness to experiment with new projects during the first few months of the Association's existence. This was justification enough, at least for a one-shot magazine.

HRSFA's members voted on a title for their fledgling magazine in February of 1988, from a list of proposals that included such names as "Photon," "Warp," "Syzygy," and "Synergy." ("Personally," wrote Chaz English that month in Hydrogen Band No. 2, "I think all of these names are pretty stupid.") "Fusion" was selected because it was innocuous, non-technical (HRSFAns wanted their magazine to include fantasy and horror stories as well as science fiction), and suggested something inclusive, which the Association as a whole has usually sought to be.

The first issue of Fusion ­ "Volume I, Number 1" said the cover, hopefully ­ was released in May of 1988, six months after HRSFA was founded, with a print run of a few hundred copies. It was an 82x11-inch, 36-page magazine with cardboard covers, put together by Crawford and a staff of nine other people (ineluding four artists). I do not know where Fusion No. 1 was published (Kinko's would be my first guess), nor how much it cost ­ though it would be safe to say that it cost somewhat less than following issues.

The issue contained seven science fiction and fantasy stories (of which the best was, in my opinion, Alec Crawford's clear and engaging, if derivative, cyberpunk story "New Tokyo Rose"), a brief but well-researched article by Adam Sabra on Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and a fair amount of artwork, including some good illustrations by Gint Valiulis and William Kaplan. The letter "o" in the magazine's title, Fusion, was replaced, on the cover, with a computer-generated image of a disintegrating yin-yang symbol, which became Fusion's chief logo thereafter. And that was Volume One. It contained no advertising, nor any real signs that it was intended to be an ongoing enterprise.

The magazine drifted along for several months. An event of some minor future significance occurred in the summer of 1988: HRSFA members John Abbe and Andy Sabl, and future HRSFAn (future Harvard student, actually; at the time he was only a junior in high school) Kevin Wald attended a class on science fiction writing at Harvard summer school taught by the esteemed Algis Budrys. All of them would later bring the lessons they learned in that class to bear on HRSFA Writers' SIG meetings, and on Fusion copy-editing sessions (though these two different sorts of meetings were not always distinguishable from one another).

My own involvement with Fusion began a few months later, in October of 1988. It seems a terribly long time ago, now, and perhaps it was: Ronald Reagan was still President of the United States, cyberpunk was still (in Ian Watson's words) the flavor d'estime of the science fiction genre, and HRSFA itself was less than a year old. I was only a few weeks into my first year at Harvard, and was already trying to invent (rather than simply seek out) new ways to waste my time. One such way, I decided, would be to establish some sort of a science fiction writers' group through the college sf club, of which I was then (and for a long time to come, it turned out) a card-carrying member.

I announced my intention to form a Writers' SIG at a HRSFA meeting on October 17th Harvard College and gone on to do other things (like b, and quickly accumulated enough preliminary members to make it legal. (I still have the original signup list and draft SIG constitution, if anyone is interested. Don't all shout out at once, now.) The new SIG met three times by the end of 1988, and while the average attendance at meetings was only about four people, the conversation was lively. We chiefly discussed old science fiction and fantasy stories, and various "literary" things that HRSFA could do (for instance, establish a lending library), but several SIG members ­ Seth Narins, Chris Cassidy, and Andy Sable-brought in stories for peer review. It was soon suggested that Fusion Magazine might be a good place to publish some of these stories, once they were edited and polished. The publisher of Volume One of Fusion, Jason May, had become leader of the Magazine SIG after Alec Crawford graduated, and thereby became the second editor-in-chief of Fusion. He was a pleasant enough man, and initially expressed some interest in the Writers' SIG and in publishing some of the stories it churned out. However, he was, I suspect, never very enthusiastic about being editor (perhaps because he assumed the office, such as it was, in his senior year), and as the fall semester wore on he grew more and more reticent about his plans for the magazine. Finally, during a telephone conversation in January of 1989, Mr. May asked me if I would like to take over his position.

I quickly refused. I had received a free copy of Volume one of Fusion at HRSFA's introductory meeting back in September, and while I didn't think much of what I saw then, I knew that the editor's job was a hard and thankless one (not to mention one which few people saw much of a need for). Furthermore, I had just been nominated to the position of HRSFA Secretary, and I had final exams to take. At any rate, it was clear to me ­ and others ­ that the magazine was in a fairly sorry state.

John Abbe, who had then just managed to a acquire an office for HRSFA from the University, had an idea about resuscitating Fusion. He suggested making the position of editor-in-chief an officerial one, thus making the occupant of that position accountable to the whole Association for his performance (or lack thereof) ­ and, incidentally, making the magazine a concern of everyone in HRSFA. Abbe's idea was amenable to other HRSFAns, and in February the new office of Editor-in-Chief was created by the second amendment to the first HRSFA constitution. This had the immediate effect of unleashing Eric Hargan on the Association.

Hargan had previously only been a cadet member of HRSFA, his main contact with the organization being the Dungeons & Dragons campaign (nicknamed "Catholicworld" by those who played in it) that he had been running since 1986 or so. In early 1989, however, he expressed some interest in helping out with Fusion magazine, and at the very first HRSFA meeting he walked into that year ­ which happened to be HRSFA's annual general election ­ he was almost immediately elected to the office of Editor-in-Chief. It was the spirit of the times.

Quickly recovering from his shock, Mr. Hargan went on to serve with distinction as Fusion's third editor. In the process, he transformed that magazine from a toy and a nuisance into a serious student publication, and exerted a powerful influence on the rest of HRSFA's affairs. In February, Hargan attempted to capture the lion's share of HRSFA's profits from showing The Accused for Fusion, which he hoped to publish in an expenive, 8 1/2"x11", glossy-cover format. The arguments that ensued led to the temporary dissolution of HRSFA's officerial group and a rewriting of the Association's constitution, as recounted in Chapter Three. Moving on, Hargan held a champagne brunch at Eliot House to kick off Fusion's advertising campaign (which campaign proved unsuccessful, alas), and in March he (more or less) took over the new Writers' SIG and used it to copy-edit submissions to the magazine. And, despite his conservative bent, Mr. Hargan solicited technical advice from Adam Cohen, president of the successful liberal rag Perspective (which publication, incidentally, was the former inhabitant of HRSFA's office); Mr. Cohen suggested, among other things, that Volume Two of Fusion be produced in an 11-x17", tabloid format, which indeed it was.

In recognition of Hargan's leadership abilities, HRSFA's members honored (or perhaps cursed) him that May by electing him to the office of co-chair. He remained de facto Editorin-Chief throughout the summer, during which time he and a small technical crew (numbering only three persons, actually) turned to the task of production. This proved to be a difficult and drawn-out affair, particularly because Hargan, lacking suitable desktop publishing facilities, had to lay out and laser-print the magazine's copy at the Office of Information Technologies, and do all of the paste-up work in his summer apartment in Cambridge (nicknamed "The Warren"). Frequent doubtful inquiries into Fusion's eventual date of publication did little to boost morale, and later led Hargan to nickname the magazine "The Albatross." Finally, in late August, the boards were sent off to the printers (Turley Publications), and the magazine was returned in time for release at Noreascon Three (the 47th Annual World Science Fiction Convention) over Labor Day weekend.

Volume Two of Fusion ­ "Communications of the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association" ­ was a 16-page, 11"x17" tabloid with a print run of 5,000 copies. The features were three fantasy and horror stories ­ "Mother Is In Hell" by Andy Phillips, "The Face in the Portrait" by Ed Trudeau, and "Shard" (my own favorite) by Charles Keckler ­ an interview with Spike MacPhee, proprietor of the former Science Fantasy Bookstore in Harvard Square (conducted by John Abbe), and the partial rules to "THUGS ­ The Harvard University Gaming System" by Jonathan Kastin, Ryan Minor, Jotham Parsons and Gint Valinlis. The issue also contained a convention listing, a review of John Crowley's book Ægypt, three short editorials by Hargan, Chaz English, and John Abbe, a small amount of artwork (chiefly line drawings by Ed Trudeau and computer art by John Abbe)' and an innovative page-numbering device (also by Abbe). Funding for the issue was provided almost exclusively by a grant from the H/R Undergraduate Council, though a Cambridge computer shop (Accessories Plus) did provide some free laser-printing in exchange for one small advertisement.

Hargan's issue of Fusion represented a significant improvement over Volume One. There was only one significant flaw with that issue (other than the fact that almost everyone who worked on it was exhausted by the process): distribution, which was fair at Worldcon but very haphazard on campus that fall. At least 40% of the copies of Volume Two were still stacked in HRSFA's office, undistributed and gathering dust, by the end of 1990. Consequently, public reaction to Fusion was very limited. Two Boston-area residents who read the magazine at Worldcon asked to join HRSFA (and sent $5.00 membership checks), and a gentleman from Volgograd (in what was then the U.S.S.R.) named Igor Tolokonnikov sent a letter of praise, saying that Fusion was "Interesting as space!" But that was all.

In the fall Eric Hargan assumed the duties of his new office (co-chair), and Edward Trudeau, one of the main contributors to Volume Two of Fusion, was elected to succeed Hargan as the magazine's fourth editor. Trudeau was a fairly unenthusiastic Editor-in-Chief; apart from soliciting submissions at HRSFA meetings and doing a little promotional postering on campus, he made no real effort to start work on a third issue. (This may have been due in part to the fact that he had very few submissions to work with [next to none, actually].)

Trudeau was not without a sense of humor about his job; he replied to one inquiry about the progress of Fusion by claiming that someone had brought a lawsuit against HRSFA for Volume Two, and that he was too involved with legal matters to do any work on Volume Three. And his inaction was masked by (or at least consistent with) the exhaustion and malaise prevalent among HRSFA's older members ­ many of whom were seniors fast approaching the gates of Thesisland ­ that fall. In January of 1990, however, Fusion emerged once again as a more general problem. That month, during a private discussion of who could be found to serve as HRSFA's next group of officers (officerial positions were not particularly sought-after back then), Eric Hargan and I were unable to think of someone to succeed Ed Trudeau as Editor-in-Chief. We concluded that we would have to find someone young, full of energy and courage, and totally unaware of the difficulty involved to serve as editor of Fusion. In other words, we had to find a complete fool.

As it turned out, that fool was me.

At the HRSFA general election of February 5, 1990, I was nominated to the position of Editor-in-Chief by Bryant Durrell and, after some pause, accepted the nomination. Since there were no other nominees I was elected to the office by acclamation, and became the fifth editor of Fusion. Three years later I am still unsure why I accepted the office, particularly since I had decided not to run for any HRSFA office that year (having had an unsatisfactory term as Secretary). In the end, I suppose I accepted the job out of sheer hubris. With five heavy classes and a growing involvement with Perspective magazine (which I'd joined in September) to deal with, I felt that saving Fusion was going to be comparatively easy.

The first few months of my term went surprisingly well, actually. Within two or three weeks of my election I received a dozen submissions or promises of same from various HRSFAns and their friends, and in March I convened two editorial meetings and handed out the more promising submissions to those in attendance for copy-editing. A fairly enthusiastic first-year named Elizabeth Arkush agreed to do some interior artwork for the upcoming issue (after noticing the relative lack of illustrations in Volume Two of Fusion), and an even more enthusiastic freshman named Lee Valentine, who had just become HRSFA's second SIG Coordinator, agreed to serve as Fusion's business manager. This proved particularly fortuitous, as Mr. Valentine managed to personally sell four advertisements that spring and was pursuing several other business contacts when, in early May, I told him to stop.

Valentine's success derived mainly from his great personal energy, commitment, and stubbornness. He was aided, however, by an advertising policy which John Abbe and I devised: any business which agreed to give card-carrying HRSFA members a 5% discount on purchases would receive a free $25 ad credit in Fusion, good for a business-card sized ad or as down payment for a larger advertisement. This logically followed from the fact that two local businesses ­ the Compleat Strategist and a then-new sf bookstore named Pandemonium ­ already offered cardcarrying HRSFAns a 10% merchandise discount. At any rate, the policy helped Lee, John, and I to sell an amazing six ads for Volume Three: to Pandemonium, the Compleat Strategist, Games People Play (previously regarded as a very hard sell), Superhero Universe (which then had a shop near Harvard), The Wizard's Workshop (a now-defunct craft shop), and Arisia, Inc. It was the most successful part of my term as Editor ­ not that I can really claim much of the credit.

Our early momentum began to run out, unfortunately, in May, around the time I had originally hoped to publish the issue. Several of the submissions which I had been promised came in very late, were copy-edited even later, and consequently were not converted to Microsoft Word format until May 10. Exam period caused another delay, as did the general lethargy induced in most students (or in myself, anyway) by warm weather. Finally, on May 22nd, Liz Arkush, Lee Valentine, and I repaired to the office of Perspective (whose computers, laser-printer, and light tables we had contracted to use ­ an easy arrangement to make, since I was a member of Perspective's staff) to begin technical work on Volume Three. Co-chair Bryant Durrell had already done a little layout work on his Macintosh, but he left us plenty to do just the same.

We swiftly ran into two major obstacles: first, none of us knew very much about Pagemaker, the desktop publishing program we planned to use, and second, Perspective's staff repossessed their office on the morning of May 23rd to begin work on their Commencement issue. Tired and demoralized, I decided to put further work on the magazine aside until the fall, and after arranging for treasurer Amy Chused to pre-pay our bill from Turley Publications (publisher of Volume Two of Fusion and succeeding issues), I packed up and went home to Connecticut.

No real work was done on Volume Three of Fusion during the summer of 1990, chiefly because I was living at home and lacked access to reliable transportation or a Macintosh. I was also unwilling to assign any production work to other members of the magazine's informal staff ­ mainly because I felt that such work was my responsibility, not theirs. So the magazine languished, as it is wont to do. I sent letters of apology and explanation to our advertisers, saying that I figured a September release of Fusion would generate more readership than a late May release. (None complained.) That, and some minor planning for the fall, was the extent of my personal work on the magazine from late May until mid-September.

My morale dropped considerably during that time, of course. In the spring I had viewed Fusion as an interesting and challenging project, and had even planned to publish another issue by January of 1991. By September, however, I had come to view Fusion as just another burden to be borne, and was increasingly uncertain that I would even finish my term as Editor.

HRSFA's introductory meeting for freshmen in September of 1990 was the first in which prospective members were not presented with a new issue of Fusion. Incoming members of the Class of 1994 were instead given copies of Volume Two and a look at the cover of Volume Three (all that we had been able to produce up to that point), and a promise that the next issue would be out within a month. Lee Valentine and I went back to work on Fusion shortly after the start of classes, and by the end of October he and I and our production crew had laid out nearly all of the magazine on Lee's Macintosh and had pastedup a good deal of the copy. The end of our ordeal was in sight.

By this time, though, HRSFA members were beginning to express some concern at the repeated delays in the production of Volume Three (which was technically more than five months overdue), as was at least one advertiser, Tyler Stewart of Pandemonium. Moreover, treasurer Amy Chused was strongly and consistently critical of both my own editorship of Fusion and the need for a HRSFA magazine in the first place; her negative comments were a key factor in my decision to stop attending HRSFA officer meetings in october. Nevertheless, her criticism then deserves at least a partial answer now. To the previously-mentioned causes for delay of the publication of Volume Three-late submissions, relative ignorance on the part of myself and my production crew, and "dead" periods around exam time and over the summer ­ I must add another: my own laziness, which caused me to work on Fusion in fits and starts rather than with any sort of constancy. This caused a significant delay ­ possibly a month or more ­ and was my fault alone.

Regarding the question of why HRSFA needed a magazine at all, I will have more to say later.

Most of HRSFA's other officers were fairly supportive during my term as editor and understood the main causes of Volume Three's lateness. The only officer (besides Ms. Chused) who was particularly irritated by my lack of progress on Fusion decided to do something about it herself. Darcy Gibbons, who was elected to fill the co-chair spot vacated by Bryant Durrell in September, offered in early November to put her publishing expertise and the production facilities of HSA Text Processing (of which she was then an assistant manager) at the disposal of Fusion. I accepted, and within a month she and I and several other HRSFAns and HRSFA-sympathizers (Carl Anderson and Joe Eros, in particular) completed the process of laying-out and pasting-up Volume Three. The boards were sent to the printers on December 5 ­ Keith Sykes, our contact at Turley Publications, said they were "exceptionally well-done" ­ and the issue was released on December 7, 1990, a day that will surely live in infamy.

Like its predecessor, Volume Three of Fusion was a 16-page, 11"x17" tabloid with a print run of 3,000 copies. It featured two humorous stories ­ "The Aliad" by Blake Mellor and "Attack of the Killer Shoes" by Erik Hendrickson ­ two pieces of horror fiction ­ "Qaru" and "The Sphinx" by L.A. Nelson ­ and a report on the Arisia '90 science fiction convention by Fan Guest of Honor Spike McPhee, written in an offbeat, "science fictional" style. Also included were a gaming article by Lee Valentine, a poem by John Abbe, a review of James Morrow's only Begotten Daughter by Brian Cholfin, a lengthy convention listing by Bryant Durrell, and an editorial titled "Fusion Agonistes" by yours truly. There was a fair amount of artwork, including some excellent illustrations by Liz Arkush and Oliver Chin (who also did the cover). The magazine was funded in part by six small advertisements, in part by HRSFA itself, and mainly by another UC grant. The total cost of production was around $750 ­ that, and ten months of hard work and misery.

By this time, I had already decided to call it quits. I formally resigned the office of Editor-in-Chief at a HRSFA meeting on December 2, and after that only stayed involved with Fusion long enough to thank Turley Publications for a quick turnover, deliver copies of the magazine to our contributors and advertisers (all of whom were fairly pleased with the end product), and oversee distribution of Volume Three on campus. This went fairly well, thanks in part to the efforts of a somewhat off-the-wall sophomore who both helped distribute Volume Three and door-dropped old copies of Volume Two in the freshman dorms. His name was Matt Ender.

My most immediate legacy as editor of Fusion was the fact that practically no-one wanted to succeed me. Liz Arkush, one of the main contributors to Volume Three and my own choice as heir, expressed some interest in the office, then withdrew her name from consideration. No-one blamed her, really. Shortly thereafter, though, Matt Ender volunteered for the job and, lacking any opponents, was on December 9th duly elected to the office of Editor-in-Chief.

Ender's term as the sixth editor of Fusion lasted fourteen months and was not particularly crowned with success; like the other even-numbered editors of the magazine, he did not publish an issue during his tenure, citing a pronounced lack of submissions as his main reason. This is almost certainly true, though it should be noted in passing that the Writers' SIG, led by John Abbe, met frequently between the spring of 1990 and early 1991, and copy-edited a number of stories and poems written by HRSFAns. Whether Mr. Ender ever sought to convince the authors of these writings to submit their work to Fusion, and what the outcome may have been, I do not know.

Matt Ender's term was not a wholly inactive one: he appointed a small managerial staff during his first month or so in office, put together a series of promotional posters (designed by Merrill Kaplan, his art director), and attended a campus publishing symposium at the Kennedy School in April of 1991. However, some HRSFAns found his lack of progress on Fusion even more irritating than mine, and in early 1992 they found an opportunity to do something about it.

In October of 1991 I resumed leadership of the HRSFA Writers' SIG, which had been dormant for more than six months, and watched as that Special Interest Group enjoyed a remarkably successful and happy year. The group's success was due largely to its freshman members ­ Matt Duhan, Chris Exner, Sydney Freedberg, Marion Gammill, John Grothendieck, Erik Hanson, Megan McCallion, Clare Sammells, and David Vernal ­ who were active and devoted to a degree that older HRSFAns found surprising (if pleasantly so). Mr. Freedberg proved to be a particularly prolific and energetic contributor to the Writers' SIG, as well as to the general Association. In January, therefore, I and several other older HRSFA members asked Sydney if he would like to run for the office of Editor that year. He accepted and, on February 16, 1992, defeated Matt Ender in HRSFA's general election to become the seventh editor of Fusion.

It is possible to argue that Mr. Ender got something of an unfair deal at that election, since the Writers' SIG had given him a large pile of submissions ­ stories, poems, articles, etc. ­ in December, and had then helped to turn him out of office without giving him a chance to work with the material. Since Matt ran for two offices in February (co-chair and editor) I don't think his devotion to Fusion was, by then, particularly single-minded; serving as Editor-in-Chief does (or did) tend to lower one's opinion of the magazine's worth. I would, however, be happy to have Mr. Ender amend this chapter with his own observations about the magazine at a future time.

In any event, HRSFA's trust in Mr. Freedberg proved wellfounded. Armed with a large pool of submissions, a new and somewhat more workable magazine format (8~"x11"), regular access to friends' personal laser printers, and his own computer, he succeeded in publishing Volume Four of Fusion on April 15, 1992, less than two months after he took office. Since then, Mr. Freedberg has published two more issues of Fusion (Volume Five, Nos. 1-2) and is currently working on a third.

I will let him tell his own story, since, having graduated and gone on to other things, I can hardly do it much justice.

I have been saving one important matter for last: responding to the question "Why does HRSFA need a magazine in the first place?" I have two answers to give.

HRSFA is a somewhat idealistic and nebulous entity, and always has been; it is, in my opinion, chiefly a social organization for the intellectually playful. Publishing Fusion is a useful thing for HRSFAns to do because the magazine is something concrete, requiring a huge amount of labor and contact with non-HRSFA members (particularly advertisers, who help keep Fusion honest and reader-dependent) to produce. And it provides HRSFA members with a ready-made answer to the question "So what do you guys do, anyway?"

More importantly, though, Fusion provides, as it has from the beginning, a dependable venue for HRSFA members' (and other Harvard students') written works of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and related non-fiction. There has been a demand for such a venue at Harvard for quite some time, and always will be as long as other campus literary magazines focus exclusively on politics, post-adolescent angst, and (to use Eric Hargan's phrase) "blurry pictures of women with snakes." And, in publishing Fusion and actively soliciting submissions to it, HRSFA re-affirms the importance of the written word to science fiction and allied genres, and helps demonstrate that people can maintain an interest in sf for serious reasons, as well as for fun. Or so I would hope. Otherwise, I'm going to feel mighty silly.