Isn’t this frustrating? Let me know if you’ve ever seen a format less practical than this one. You see, I’m competing with Dick Geis for the “most frustrating magazine format” award. Honestly, Dick, I wish you’d make up your mind.

I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say that this is everything a first issue shouldn’t be. Why I’ve got so many goodies packed in here just for you, I don’t know how I did it. There’s a story for you fiction people, reviews for all you people who read Fictum Miraculum, and hobnob for all of you others.

This is a personalzine for me: C.E. Bennett, so that I may flaunt myself on paper before you all. And I trust you’ll all do the same at some convenient later date. Mostly the zine will be reviews; those that are so recent that I can’t wait until the next issue of FM to print. Some fiction to keep me in practice, and observing deadlines.

At this time, I think the frequency of this little kipper will be one every two months. At no great expense either. Maybe monthly.

“An honest man will receive neither money nor praise that is not his due.” — Ben Franklin

Do you like Cracker Jack? Well, if you do, and if you’ve been eating it lately, you’ve noticed that it’s starting to come wrapped in a piece of tinfoil. Yes, there are still toy surprises inside, but I already miss the box. (However, this may help the tree/paper situation a little bit, thank Goz.) Just the same, I miss the box because it’s as much a part of Cracker Jack as the prize is. The smell of the box, remember? How the hell am I going to eat Cracker Jack without the box smell every time I dump more in my mouth? (Oh, the pressing problems of the world!) I guess it’s a case of “make due with what one has.” No more Screaming Yellow Zonkers, no Diggers, no more Cracker Back jox.

“You know what your trouble is, girlie? You ain’t got no faith in human nature.” — James Cagney to Doris Day in Love Me or Leave Me (1955)

I’m told, as a kid I was very quiet (though they never knew about those things I said under my breath). I had a dog when I was about a year old, or less. It used to protect me from strangers in the house and would sleep by my bed at night. Somebody poisoned it, twice. The second time my dog didn’t survive. I did. I’m typing this, not my dog.

I went to eight different grade schools, two high schools, and one university. I maintain that I wasted at least five years attending these places. They taught me nothing, therefore I know nothing.

I’ve never been arrested, I’ve never broken any bones, I don’t drive, but I have . . .

“It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.” — Mark Twain

Short thoughts on having seen Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange for the first time. Kubrick undoubtedly is one of my favorite film directors. If anything, I suppose his films can be called simply beautiful films to watch. Occasionally, the lighting or a particular angle shot will bother me, in a Kubrick film, but it’s something that can be shaken off easily.

For those of you who have seen A Clockwork Orange and have read John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar might have noticed something I realized during the film. Kubrick has closely portrayed (I’m not implying any intentions, mind you) within the film, the visual feeling of the dystopian city that I failed to picture while reading the Brunner book. Kubrick fleshed out for me the visions that I couldn’t quite [picture] in my mind’s eye to fully create Brunner’s future world.

The inside of Alex’s parents apartment (I feel) looked very much like Norman and Donald’s apartment. The placement of the bar, the walls, the window, the placement of the seats and keyboard, including what little free space was left in the room after all this. I thought that very interesting.

“The story is an author-rigged thing, but reality is a 100 percent unpredictable whore.” — Pietro DiDonato

Dork-Pizzle’s People: C.E. Bennett was born in 1955 and has spent half his life in perpetual bewilderment on the West Coast. He has aspired to be an artist, an actor, a mass-murderer and a gigolo — all unsuccessfully. He is virtually unknown in the science fiction world and plans to do something about it, I think.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all ye know on Earth.” — Keats