No mere transcription can give the true flavor of the original printing of The Eye of Argon. It was mimeographed with stencils cut on an elite manual typewriter. Many letters were so faint as to be barely readable, others were overstruck, and some that were to be removed never got painted out with correction fluid. Usually, only one space separated sentences, while paragraphs were separated by a blank line and were indented ten spaces. Many words were grotesquely hyphenated. And there were illustrations - I cannot do them justice in mere words, but they were a match for the text.The Eye of Argon (prev.), long hailed as the worst sci-fi story ever written, is at last available online in all its original glory.
The two issues of OSFAN that I have are replete with amazing typos, spelling errors, runtogether words and missing punctuation in a manner that will be familiar to readers of "Eye of Argon". I suspect that the vast majority of the errors in "Eye of Argon" were in fact not the author's fault, but were committed by the person (uncredited) who typed the stencils for OSFAN, who appears to have been a sloppy typist and rather sparing in the use of corflu. [...]By 1985, he had apparently had enough:
OSFAN: I am personally pruod of your story for OSFAN10, in the sense, that it is more than I could have done. Also the fact that when they were kidding you about it, you took it so well. I think you should be given a pat on the back for such good sportsmanship. You showed real character.
THEIS: I didn't know that.I mean, it was easier than showing bad character and inviting trouble.
The guys on [Hour 25] used to read "Eye" periodically and mock mightily. The author was rather hurt that his story, which he wrote out of love (however misplaced) for the Howard genre, was so hooted at. He said he would never write anything again. [...]In a way it strikes me as a little similar to what happened with Larry Walters (better known as "that guy who got arrested for flying over LAX in a lawn chair"): it's a funny story on the surface, but there's a fairly sad ending if you care to look. Sometimes people don't realize how much publicity they're buying themselves.
Jim Theis (pronounced "Tice"), 30 years old at the time of the interview in 1984, wrote The Eye around 1970, when he was about 16 years old. He now has a degree in Journalism. He still collects books, comics, German swords, but no longer writes fiction.
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posted by filthy light thief at 12:22 PM on December 1, 2009 [1 favorite]