Transcribed by Elaine Walker. Any and all typos faithfully reproduced.
I can’t remember when I started reading science fiction but I was very young. At that stage naturally I was reading children’s type SF, which was available in the children’s section of the local library. I also read a lot of older children’s type of fiction as well but once I had exhausted the SF in the children’s section I couldn’t wait until I was allowed to join the adult’s section of the library and devour the reasonably large stock of SF they had there. In those days at secondary school I had little trouble with home work and projects and assignments were very rare so I read incessantly.
About the time when I had exhausted all the SF reading material I could lay my hands on (the school library also had a reasonable stock) my parents decided to move from New Zealand to Australia. I then found new stocks of SF in the local public library. Unfortunately I also started Uni which considerably reduced my reading rate.
In all this time I had been reading only SF books although I had been aware SF magazines existed. In my second year at Uni I entered into a cadetship and for the first time I felt I had money to splurge on SF mags. It was only then from reading mags that I became aware that fandom existed. Nothing further initiated me into the mysteries of SF until now. Since I don’t feel particularly creative this is my contribution to this zine.
ROY FERGUSON