The Michigan Daily-Friday, December 9, 1977-Page 5
CI-FI FANS ARE NORMAL PEOPLE, TOO:
TWO UNIQUE BOOKS
~2~A\ ~JiAFREUJD'S
"~A I Tr~LTI
I
ysca owers atray locals
By.R.J. SMITH bers of the "Stylyagi Air Corps" and occasionally," he noted with a snicker, But among the Air Corps, the o
By day, they are unassuming, incon- practice the craft of what they call "sci- "we discuss science fiction." servable similarities to the stet
iuous citizens "of Ann Arbor The fi fandom." The group, consisting of a roster of are enthusiasm, energy and ar
L
only ob-
reotype
n often
l/I1%LOA11L V& 1211 1 V . y AM
re librarians, biologists, part-time
writers, students and computer
pjogrammers, among other things.
ey are a group as varied and un-
specified as all the stars and planets
circulating in the heavens.
But once a week, as the moon. rises
and night falls, an "unusual" transfor-
mation takes place. Summoned by
those mystical powers that seem to
possess that atypical breed of human
called a "science fiction fan," these
self-same Ann Arborites become mem-
THE CRAFT IS not clearly definedl; a
typical "meeting" conspicuously
resembles a volleyball match. And
what purports to be a discussion of
business often rapidly disintegrates in-
to a group of 20-odd people gathered
around a table trading stories, quips
and chides.
"What we largely do is sit around and
jabber at each other," and "social
director" David Innes. "We work on
planning our annual convention, and
corps people that fluctuates between 30
and 40, got its name from the novel The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a science fic-
tion classic by Robert Heinlein.
"THEY WERE characters in the
book . .. it's sort of a jargon term-it
means young punks in Russian," said
Innes.
The term "science fiction" carries an
unfair connotation among people who
know nothing of the craft. A
stereotyped fanatic immediately
springs into the minds of many, one of
an overgrown kid with a calculator for
a brain and Coke bottle bottoms for
glasses.
consuming spirit of wonderment.
"IT EXPANDS your, viewpoint,"
claimed graduate student Janis John-
son, one of the handful of University
students in the group. "I can look at
myself as a citizen of the United States,
a member of humanity and as a citizen
of the galaxy. I don't think most people
have that viewpoint."
Along with the general exchange
about the latest "fanac"-for those un-
familiar with the lingo, fanac is sci-fi
jargon for fan activity-the business
meetings of the Air Corps have been
concerned with the final preparations
for their annual convention.
FBI probed details
of sadschildhood
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WASHINGTON (AP)-FBI agents
delved .into the recesses of Lee
Harvey Oswald's life but newly
released documents show they could
only , guess whether the scars of
childhood spawned the urge to assas-
sinate'a President.
Thousands of FBI documents ex-
amined Wednesday and yesterday
a Afresh details to the once-sketchy
pj ture of Oswald as a troubled child
a da lonely man.
the 40,001 pages made available on
V ednesday are half of the total FBI
fi on the assassination of President
J hn Kennedy, who was shot to death
during a motorcade in Dallas on Nov.
22; 1963. The rest will be released in
January as the bureau unseals the
material to comply with requests
under the Freedom of Information
Act.
A PRELIMINARY review of the
files has turned up nothing to dis-
prbve the Warren Commission's
cdnclusion that Oswald killed Kenne-
dy and that he acted alone.
The documents show that J. Edgar
Hoover, "then the FBI director,
believed the evidence proved that
Oswald was the assassin though he
expressed concern about the possibil-
ity of a conspiracy.
Questions about Oswald's reasons
for killing the President arose at the
time and have lingered since. Psychi-
atric reports and other material in
the FBI files portray Oswald as a
truant reared on a daily diet of
television, a boy who seldom ex-
pressed love and felt no one loved
him, a teen-ager who lacked curi-
osity despite above-average intelli-
gence.
"Lee was given a place to sleep in
the living room and' admitted that
this was very much in line with what
he had always been led to expect
from grownups - nobody ever had
any room for him," social worker
Evelyn Strickman wrote in an evalu-
ation of Oswald's home life as an
adolescent in New York City in 1953.
He spent several months of that year
at Youth House, a home for young-
sters in trouble.
"It seems fairly clear that he has
detached himself from the world
around him because no one in it has
ever met any of his needs for love,"
said a psychiatric report written in
the same period.
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