Historical Note

Trinketry was my first fanzine. I didn't intend it to be a one-shot at the time; I was expecting to get locs, and write another one, and so on. But a couple of months after producing the first issue, Steve Davies and I started working on Plokta, and I never got round to producing another one.

It was also hampered by circumstance. I dished it out to most of the people attending MisSaigon, a small convention at the Royal Clarence Hotel in February 1996. I certainly intended to send it to a bunch of other interested parties soon afterwards. But I never quite got round to it. So the total readership of the fanzine was about 60 or so. They mostly liked it pretty well, but because I'd handed it out at a con, they largely didn't get around to telling me so.

Luckily, the wonders of the web mean that it's not too late to send me a loc.

The content of this web edition is as the fanzine originally appeared, though there are a few slight changes, such as removal of my address and my no longer current email address. Otherwise, it's the genuine historical artefact.

Trinketry comes from Alison Scott . This is the first trinket, and I expect there will be others. It has been produced in a tearing hurry in the week immediately before MisSaigon, in a room so unbelievably cold that I'm surrounded by space-suit clad scientists researching superconductors. It is available in exchange for knick-knacks and gewgaws; would-be contributors should ensure that writings and drawings are shiny and of little consequence. To reinforce this, some of the material in this fanzine appeared first here and there on the Internet, a shiny thing of little consequence if ever I saw one.

Illustrations are by Sue Mason, apart from the Celtic moose, which was copied by me from a wall panel in the crypt of a genuine 11th century Celtic church which I found in Normandy by cycling down a rather moth-eaten lane and not stopping, even when it was obvious that it was impossible to cycle down and the only possible outcome was to fall valiantly into a hedge full of nettles. Which I did. I have photos of the church, but not for some reason of the crypt with the moose relic.

Hero of the Soviet Union

Much as it galls me to admit it, this accolade goes to Mike Scott, who came up with a copy of On Dustbins and Foxes, after I believed its electronic ashes had been scattered on the Internet equivalent of the Kop.

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