Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 15:59:01 -0500
From: Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Talking SF, oh my;
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

"Strong, Lee" wrote:

>         Yes, Mr. Carter spent a number of years puttering around with a
> history of the Land of Oz.  The International Wizard of Oz Club is the
> keeper of the Ozian flame, and new authorized works continue to appear in
> various media.  The official series is now up to about 40 books, including
> _Paradox in Oz_ and the latest, _The Rundelstone of Oz_.  _Paradox_ includes
> time travel, alternate time tracks and loops, and what can only be described
> as the Ozian equivalent of cyberpunk!

Lin was a big Oz fan and had a number of first edition Oz books (those were the
ones with the tipped in color plates which in some instances used metallic
inks).  But he was bigger on Ruth Plumly Thompson than I was (I preferred L.
Frank's books and the two by Jack Snow), and the book he wrote (in the '50s) was
much more in her vein.  I've read it.  Indeed, I was going to publish it in a
mimeographed edition circa 1964 -- and the stencils were typed -- but the
project was killed, I forget why.  He may also have worked on a history of Oz,
but the book to which I am referring was a book-length work of fiction, which he
tried to sell to Oz's publisher then (was it still Reilly & Lee?), but it was
during the period when the estate was not allowing any further Oz books to be
published.  It was Much Better than John R. Neil's two pathetic books, and
probably up there with the medium-grade Thompsons.  But it was not Great -- and
lacked the power of Jack Snow's books.

I recall when Oz fandom started up in the early '60s.  I almost joined it, but
didn't -- probably for the same reason I didn't care for Phil Farmer
appropriating Doc Savage and others:  I felt my relationship with those books
was too personal.   In the mid-'70s I virtually wrote a book set in the Oz
universe, using my character Doc Phoenix, with the Shaggy Man taken over by an
evil villain.  Unhappily, Marv Wolfman wrote the actual book, working roughly
from my outline but discarding all the opening chapters I'd written -- and I've
never been able to read the published result.

--Ted White