Things in my Tabs

[jhameia]

The other day while at the panel discussion on archival research in science fiction, I idly wondered if anybody had gone through and collected the letters of Carl Brandon. It occurs to me this might be useful to me later on, since I'm kinda leaning towards tracing the discourse of race and racism in scifi into the multiculturalism rhetoric in steampunk. I don't know if it would be worthwhile though... I mean, I'd like a book called "The Collected Letters of Carl Brandon" but that could be just me. (I'd also want some of the responding letters too...) I dunno. What do ya'll think?

But I wondered what else got said about race in scifi before RaceFail got underway so here's Samuel Delany's 1998 piece on Racism and Science Fiction.

The Beautiful Daughter: How My Korean Mother Gave Me the Courage to Transition

Comments

[netmouse]

Jerry Kaufman put together an edition of Brandon's writing called "The Portable Carl Brandon" at one point, but I don't think it's what you're looking for. I've read it and nothing in it refers to race.

In April 2009 I posted an inquiry to the Timebinders list about Carl Brandon's writing that Joel Zakem kindly forwarded to the Trufen list, since timebinders was pretty defunct at the time. Ted White wrote an extensive reply about Carl Brandon's writing (which I can send you in full if you're interested). Others also commented, but Ted's reply was the most comprehensive, and it did suggest that Brandon's letters might be illustrative on the subject of race as his fanzine writing was not. To quote Ted,

"'Carl Brandon' was probably the best and most successful (and most
benign) fannish hoax in the history of fandom. The original Brandon was
created by Pete Graham (and maybe Bob -- *not* Bhob -- Stewart) as a
toss-off in a letter of comment to another fan (Lars Bourne maybe) on
his fanzine. Terry Carr picked up on the name, and Terry wrote *most*
of 'Carl's' work.
"'Carl' had two presences in fandom: to fandom at large he was the
author of what came to be known as "Bradonizations," or fannish
adaptations/parodies/pastiches of famous pieces of the time like ON THE
ROAD. Some of these were serialized, most of them in Terry's fanzine,
INNUENDO. In addition to that, 'Carl' joined the Cult (an apa) and was
active there as both a member and officer (OA, Official Arbiter), and
subsequently joined FAPA, where he also ran for office (and might have
won, but for the fact that the hoax was exposed about then).

"If you read only the Brandonizations, you would find no mention of
Carl's race; it wasn't relevant. But in his correspondence, both
private and published, the subject sometimes came up, and occasionally
his 'friends' -- those who were in on it, mostly Bay Area compatriots of
Terry and Pete, like Dave Rike and Ron Ellik -- would remark upon it
within an appropriate context. (When out of towners came visiting,
Carl's absence would be explained as his 'visiting his grandmother in
Sacramento,' itself something of an in-joke.)
Carl's race did not come up originally; he was not created black. That
later occurred to Terry and/or Pete when it struck them as useful for
confronting fandom's bigots of the time. Most of us knew 'Carl' only by
correspondence, and he had a distinct personality of his own. The hoax
was maintained for two or three years and was very successful."

There was no indication on Trufen that anyone had collected the Carl Brandon letters at that point, but it might make a good point of inquiry if someone wanted to start such a project. It's not a completely public group - you have to contact the moderator to get added, but I can provide the info for doing that if someone is interested (I'm not posting it mainly because my info is 3 years old, but I'm sure I could get current info.)

[jhameia]

Oh, wow, that's really interesting!! Thanks for sharing, and yes, I'd love to read the whole response from Ted White. I can't decide if that makes my work easier or harder. I did get the sense that it was only CB's correspondence that made mention of his race, and even that would come up rarely, which is why I'm interested in seeing how it played out and what the responses were.