[SKRIVA] Livsfarliga texter
- From: Göran Jansson <jansonsfrestelse@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 07:31:40 +0200
Yttrandefrihetsprincipen och principen om öppenhet ska försvara framförllt
dom texter som censurivrarna försöker trycka ned och få bort. Det är dom
"farliga" texterna som är viktigaste att försvara och sprida. Jag postar den
farliga texten igen som ren princip och den borde också läggas upp på en
blogg så att den kan googlas på. Jag har ingen blogg men nu funderar jag på
att skaffa en och gör som jag har sett att Ola Lindholm har gjort på nätet,
en blogg med bara ett inlägg nämligen detta av John Henri Holmberg plus en
kort förklaring om varför texten läggs ut där till allmän beskådan.
Hälsar gör Göran
Av yttrtrandefrihetsskäl som ren princip, inte för att jag tror någon läser
den igen här på listan:
Notes on the Career and Accusations of Ahrvid Engholm
When reading the following, it is important to remember that Swedish sf
fandom is both comparatively young and quite small. The first Swedish fan
club was formed in 1950, but not until four years later was the sf prozine
Häpna! started; since it began already in its first issue to publish
information about British and American fandom, its launch is normally
considered to herald the beginnings of an active Swedish fandom. The first
Swedish fanzine was published in June, 1954; the first convention was held
in 1956, attended by less than 40 fans. Not until 1970 did a Swedish con
manage to gather as many as 100, and the largest convention held in Sweden
remains the 1976 ScanCon, with slightly over 450 attendants.
For the major part of its existence, even if it might be possible that more
potential fans existed in the country (though it should be remembered that
the Swedish population during the last half of the 20th century averaged
only around 7.5 million, or roughly one twenty-fifth of the US population ?
which means that 450 attendants at a Swedish convention is the percentual
equivalent of over 11.000 at an American), Swedish fandom also had huge
outreach problems. Häpna! existed from 1954 through 1965 and did carry a fan
column, although seldom very invinting; from 1972 another prozine, Jules
Verne-magasinet, also carried fan news, but was generally available at
newsstands only during 1972 and 1973; again during the 1982-1986 period a
third prozine, Nova science fiction, was generally available and published
fan information. But apart from these roughly seven years, fandom had little
opportunity of being discovered by new fans after the mid-1960s.
That this was important, and that the new magazines of the 1970s and 1980s
made a difference, is more or less obvious from the fact that after
theappearance of
the two new magazines, Swedish fandom was at its most active, and larger
than ever; this was the period from the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s.
During this period, Swedish fandom could boast perhaps as many as thirty or
forty simultaneously active fanzine publishers; the actual number of
individuals receiving one or more fanzines is hard to compute, but may well
at this time have been as large as a thousand ? at lest one fanzine was
printed in more than 700 copies. Still, the majority of these readers did
not consider themselves active fans, as the largest circulation fanzines
were oriented entirely towards science fiction news and criticism, and
theprint run of
the average Swedish fanzine has never been more than around 100 copies.
(That the Scandinavian SF Society during the late 1970s had close to a
thousand members was due not to any huge increase of the number of active
fans, but to the organization having bought the previously commercially run
Swedish Science Fiction Book Club; book club members wanting to keep buying
books cheaply had to become members of the SSFS.)
Due to these factors, Swedish fandom has always been dominated by small
numbers of highly active fans, and the impact of single individuals has
often been enormous. It is not difficult to name 25 or 30 fans as the main
shapers of the entire fifty year span of Swedish fandom.
Among these most influential Swedish fans, Ahrvid Engholm is for many
reasons the one most difficult both to portray and to give a balanced
account of; he, to a larger extent than anyone else, is the Janus figure of
Swedish fandom. Born in 1959 and since more than three decades an active
fan, he was for many years been both the possibly most active and innovative
all-round fan in Sweden, and Swedish fandom?s most controversial, aggressive
and uncompromising fanatic. Engholm?s first contacts with fandom occurred in
the mid-1970s, when he attended the 1975, 1976 and 1977 sf conventions in
Stockholm. In early 1978, he began attending club meetings, published his
first fanzines and became and indefatigable contributor to others. Engholm
is multi-talented: an accomplished writer, a quite decent artist, with a
good sense of layout and a good ear for the Swedish language. He immediately
came to occupy a dominant position among newer fans and in late 1978 became
the first recipient of the Alvar Appeltofft Memorial Award, instigated in
1977 to commemorate the recently deceased most famous Swedish actifan
of the1950s. Among Engholm?s earliest fanzines were
the personal Fanarkistisk skrivelse, the genzine Fanskap, and the newszine
BFF-news; in 1978 he also started an apa called Multipel, which however
folded after two mailings. In December, 1978, together with Anders Bellis,
he launched the (almost) weekly newszine Vheckans ävfentyr, for two years
the undisputed focal point of Swedish fandom. Already during this period,
however, a parallel streak co-existing with Engholm?s boundless energy and
creativity became obvious: his tendency to garrulousness far beyond
thebounds of reason. Vheckans ävfentyr ran constant campaigns in order
to force
its editors? will upon other fans. The fanzine campaigned to impeach
theboard of
the Stockholm-based Scandinavian Science Fiction Society, which Engholm and
Bellis viewed as too directed towards sf rather than fandom itself (during
this period, the SSFS averaged in excess of 700 members, ran an sf book
store in Stockholm, and arranged various member activities in its clubhouse
several times weekly; one charge made by the Vheckans ävfentyr editors was
that the club ?discriminated? male members by allowing the all-female
subgroup Feminac exclusive access to the club premises one evening per week;
all members had access most other evenings). They also disliked the editor
appointed to publish the SSFS member fanzine, and so campaigned to have him
replaced by Engholm?s and Bellis? editor of choice. Virtually all the fans
active on the SSFS board during 1979 and 1980 resigned in disgust at
theconstant squabble, which was by no means limited to fanzines but
also went
on vocally and daily at the club?s premises.
In December, 1980, John-Henri Holmberg (a board member and previous chairman
of the SSFS) invited Anders Bellis to a private party at his apartment
onnew year?s eve, along with a large number of other friends both fans
and
non-fans. Engholm,however, viewed this invitation as part of a previously
undisclosed plot on Holmberg?s part, intended to split the united front of
the Vheckans ävfentyr editors against the SSFS. Thus, Engholm demanded that
either he as well should be invited to the party, or that Bellis should
refrain from going. Neither happened, and consequently Engholm
single-handedly dismissed Bellis from their co-published fanzine. As a
consequence, in early January, 1981, Vheckans ävfentyr #89 was published in
two entirely different versions, one by Engholm, the other by Bellis. Bellis
went on to publish a further ten issues of Vheckans ävfentyr, while Engholm
retitled his newszine first Fanytt, later Science fiction-journalen,
although both times retaining its consecutive numbering from the earlier
Vheckans ävfentyr. He has kept publishing the fanzine, although lately
sporadically, until now.
This first break with Anders Bellis was not final, and no drawn out feud
followed. Engholm?s first really serious bout with other fans instead
occurred in late 1984, when he noted that the very active Tony Eriksson had
started to discuss comics in his fanzine. Since Engholm disliked comics, and
considered them neither fannish nor sf, it was obviously unfannish to write
about them in fanzines; when Eriksson despite having this pointed out to him
refused to stop writing about comics, Engholm launched a campaign to drive
Eriksson out of Swedish fandom. The feud against Tony Eriksson continued
unabated for three years and included such highly dramatic moments as when
Engholm in front of an audience of close to a hundred fans tried physically
to prevent Eriksson from completing the talk he was giving at the 1985
Swecon convention in Stockholm, a talk explicitly okayed by the convention
chairman Kaj Harju ? the latter a fact which not surprisingly led Engholm to
begin making Kaj Harju as well as numerous other fans secondary targets of
his attacks. That the Eriksson feud petered out in 1987 was not due to
Engholm tiring of his efforts, but rather to the fact that he found even
more pressing targets. What now occurred is what Engholm has ever since
called the ?SEFF Scandal?.
SEFF was the acronym for the Scandinavian-European Fan Fund, instigated to
send Scandinavian fans to conventions in Britain or on the European
mainland, and vice versa. In the 1987 race, Engholm supported Norwegian
candidate Johan Schimanski, while probably most Stockholm fans, including
John-Henri Holmberg, supported Anders Bellis; Jan Risheden was a third
candidate but ran no active campaign. Bellis gained a close victory, due
largely to a number of votes solicited and given via telephone. Engholm
considered this to be cheating, claiming that the votes so garnered were
?forgeries?. His stand was that a vote must be given in writing by the fan
voting, and that consequently votes given by proxy should not be accepted.
Maths Claesson, previous SEFF winner and the fund?s at the time current
administrator and single board member, ruled that the bylaws of the fund
contained no stipulation to support Engholm?s views, and that consequently
Bellis had won the race.
After Claesson?s ruling, Engholm used his newszine as well as other venues
(such as handing out leaflets at the Brighton Worldcon) to accuse Bellis,
Claesson, and Holmberg of fraud, cheating, theft (of the SEFF funds, which
were used to send Bellis to England for the 1987 Worldcon) and forgery
(since he claimed that the individuals voting by proxy had actually not been
contacted, a claim never substantiated and later seldom repeated). The feud
gradually grew as Engholm placed a growing number of fans not sharing his
views in ?fanzine blockade?, while demanding that Bellis, Claesson, and
Holmberg should be thrown out of fandom and dismissed from such fannish
institutions as the board of directors of the Alvar Appeltofft Memorial
Foundation, to which all three at this time belonged. When this did not
happen, Engholm additionally began accusing the board itself of shady
dealings and demanded the resignation of the Foundation chairman, Lars-Olov
Strandberg (note1); simultaneously, Engholm also intensified his feud
against Kaj Harju, who had supported Engholm?s ?enemies? and in order to
create a non-feuding fannish meeting place in Stockholm had taken
theinitiative to form ?Fhaan 21?, a series of weekly fan meetings held
in
different private homes and to which basically all fans except Engholm were
invited. In general due to the escalating feud between Engholm and large
parts of the rest of Swedish fandom, but also in particular due to the fact
that Engholm during the 1987 NasaCon, while drunk, had used a bench to smash
in the door to a room in the rented convention facilities, where he believed
more liquor to be stored, sf-club Sigma TC chairman Mats Lignell banned
Engholm from the committee formed to arrange future NasaCons. (NasaCon was
an informal convention arranged annually by Sigma TC in a Stockholm suburb
since 1980.)
Engholm, however, refused to accept being banished from the convention
committee, struck Mats Lignell with a baseball bat and decided that,
as thesole remaining legitimately appointed committee member, he would
arrange all
future NasaCons. In accordance with this view, he registered the name
?NasaCon? as a trademark with the Swedish patent office and set out to
arrange NasaCon 10 in 1989. Sigma TC as usual also arranged NasaCon 10 and
the year after NasaCon 11, both as previously held in the Saltsjöbaden
suburb. Engholm called these conventions ?Nazicon 1 and 2?; as he was banned
from attending, he spent six hours demonstrating and handing out leaflets
outside the doors to NasaCon 11, and now also threatened legal proceedings
should further encroachments on his patented convention name occur.
During this period, Engholm also broke with Sam J. Lundwall. For a number of
years, Engholm had edited and largely written the very impressive fan column
in Lundwall?s prozine Jules Verne-magasinet, the independent Swedish edition
of F&SF. However, by early 1989, the 1990 Worldcon committee in The Hague
had learned of the feuding in Swedish fandom, and decided to replace Engholm
as their Swedish representative. They instead chose the popular and
non-controversial active fan couple Andreas and Carina Björklind. Engholm,
however, did not recognize the right of the Worldcon committee to dismiss
him as its representative. When Lundwall despite Engholms views did not
publish the unpaid Worldcon advertisement given him by Engholm, but chose
instead to publish the ad prepared by the Björklinds and listing them as
Swedish representatives of the convention, Engholm accused Lundwall of
accepting bribes from the Dutch convention committee and resigned as Jules
Verne-magasinet?s fan columnist.
Before this, however, occurred also that part of the feud concerning
Engholm?s previous place of employment, LFP, Inc. LFP was a company set up
and incorporated in 1978 by Stockholm-based fans John-Henri Holmberg, Per
Insulander, and John Ågren (note2); their aim was initially to perform
sf-related and other freelance professional assignments through the company,
but from 1982 on, LFP also became a publishing house and as such published a
nationally distributed sf magazine, Nova science fiction, as well as two
lines of original paperback sf novels and occasional other books. From 1982
on, as LFP expanded to publishing, a number of part-time employees were
taken on, many of them fans, and including at various times Anders Bellis,
Maths Claesson, Ahrvid Engholm, and Roger Sjölander. Engholm was employed as
managing editor of Nova science fiction during the period from late 1984
through 1986; however for several reasons, including both the worsening
feuds, which precluded his cooperation with others employed by the company,
and the fact that sales of LFP publications were stagnating and that
thecompany was in financial trouble, Engholm?s employment was
terminated by
the beginning of 1987. In the fall of 1987, Anders Bellis devoted his fan
column in Nova science fiction (in the much delayed #1 1987) to a discussion
of the animosity and feuds then dominating Swedish fandom.
Ahrvid Engholm had never returned his set of keys to the LFP offices; it now
became evident that he still both retained and used them, for at some point
after this magazine issue had been delivered from the printers, but before
it had been mailed to subscribers, Engholm visited the offices, read
themagazine, took offense at Bellis? column, and removed
the entire print run of the magazine issue (some 2,000 copies) from its
place in the LFP storage room. When contacted by the company, Engholm
declared that he refused to return the magazine unless Bellis? column was
torn out of all copies and an apology to Engholm instead printed and sent
out with the issue. LFP refused to submit to this demand and instead both
contacted the police and ordered a reprint of the issue from the printers. A
month later, the issue was finally mailed to subscribers; by this time, a
new print run had been delivered and Engholm had as well returned
theearlier copies after being charged to do so by
the police. (Incidentally, it was also at the LFP offices, where SEFF
administrator Maths Claesson was employed, that Engholm in Claesson?s desk
drawer found the votes given in the SEFF campaign and photocopied them, thus
gaining the ?proof? of the proxy votes he has referred to since.)
The incident of the removed print run of Nova science fiction led to several
court cases during the years 1988 through 1993. In 1988, Engholm was first
sentenced in criminal proceedings to a suspended sentence for arbitrary
conduct in removing the magazine issue from its proper storage space; later
the same year, he was sentenced in a civil case brought by LFP to reimburse
the company for the cost of reprinting the magazine issue. Engholm, in
rebuttal, first tried to bring suit for defamation of character
against thepublishers of Nova science fiction; this case, however, was
dismissed by
the prosecutor?s office. He then sued LFP, Inc., John-Henri Holmberg and Per
Insulander in civil court, claiming not to have been paid for the work he
had performed on behalf of LFP (curiously, the amount of payment demanded by
Engholm was virtually identical to the amount paid by him for the reprinting
of the Nova SF issue). This case was tried by the Stockholm District Court,
which found against Engholm. On appealing to the Superior Court, Engholm was
informed at the pretrial court hearing that the defendants were tiring of
his innuendo and would this time demand restitution for all costs caused by
the trial; Engholm then at the suggestion of the Court dropped his charges.
He has since claimed that he did not lose his case.(note3) It should be
noted in this connection that Engholm already by the end of 1987 had begun
selling through his fanzines various books and magazine issues published by
LFP, something he continued to do for years, with the proceeds from these
sales purportedly going to what he called the ?SEFF Damage Fund?. He claimed
at the time, and has continued to do so, that what he sold were his
contributor?s and staff member copies. It remains a fact that the number of
free copies of books and magazines normally given to contributors and staff
members is quite limited.
The various feuds continued virtually unabated for close to ten years, until
the middle of the 1990s; a very large number of individual vendettas,
bizarre incidents and vehement animosities are not recounted here. By
themid 1990s, Swedish fandom was no longer recognizable: from being,
in
the late 1980s, larger and more active than at any previous time, it had now
shrunk to the point where virtually no fanzines were published, few
conventions were held and for years virtually no new fans had appeared and
stayed on. The only fan carrying on unabated was Engholm himself, who during
the 1990s spent great efforts ? initially quite possibly due to his various
conflicts with most other Swedish fans ? in creating ties to fandom in such
neighboring Baltic countries as Finland, Estonia and Latvia. He also began
writing short stories and created the SKRIVA Internet discussion list, where
amateur authors criticize and develop their writing abilities. Lately,
however, a feud on that list has led to Engholm?s ousting, after which he
has created a new SKRIVA list while the earlier one continues as previously
but without him. Engholm himself has by now published a number of short
stories professionally. Although his fanzine publishing has diminished and
virtually stopped in the last few years, Engholm kept publishing actively up
until the end of the 1990s. Notable are titles like Virkbilagan, a personal
fanzine published both on paper and electronically for several years, a huge
number of apa-zines (Engholm was active in most Swedish apas during
the1980s and started several), and numerous ambitious oneshots such as
his
Fandboken or his translated Swedish fanzine anthologies Swede Ishes #1 and
2. He is genuinely interested in fan history and has done much to document
otherwise easily lost parts of Swedish fandom?s past; worth mentioning are
his Filmfandom, a video cassette publication collecting amateur movies
produced by fans, as well as his simultaneous publication on paper and
onaudio cassette of Swedish fannish filksongs. Despite these
commendable
efforts, however, it is difficult to view Engholm?s influence onSwedish
fandom as primarily positive. The feuds beginning as early as 1979-1980 and
dominating his activity from 1984 and for at least ten years were disastrous
to the general tone and activity level of Swedish fandom. Engholm has never
seemed able to recognize any connection between his own opinions and actions
on the one hand, and on the other the dramatically negative influences
onfandom as a whole they have had.
John-Henri Holmberg
Notes
1. As ?evidence? of his claims that the board of directors of the Alvar
Appeltofft Memorial Foundation are scoundrels, Engholm has many times
repeated his peculiar claim that John-Henri Holmberg with the aid of
theother board members should have defrauded
the Foundation by borrowing money from it. The Foundation, capitalized
primarily by bequests made by Alvar Appeltofft?s parents (half of whose
combined estate was left to the Foundation), invests its assets in stocks,
bonds and otherwise; at one point, early in the 1990s, a loan running at
market interest was made to John-Henri Holmberg. The interest was paid
continuously and the loan principal was repaid in full at the end of
the1990s. It may be noted that
the only two fans to have served on the board of directors since
theinception of
the Foundation are Lars-Olov Strandberg and John-Henri Holmberg, who have
both been re-elected every third year; they also wrote the initial bylaws of
the Foundation when asked to set it up in 1977 by Alvar Appeltofft?s
parents. Lars-Olov Strandberg, born in 1929 and an active fan since 1956,
ended his professional career as Head Actuary of Sweden?s leading insurance
corporation, Skandia, and was in the unique position of being retained as a
consultant with his own office at the corporate headquarters for five years
after his obligatory retirement. Lars-Olov Strandberg was also a founding
board member of the Scandinavian SF Society in 1959, remained an officer of
the SSFS for over 20 years, served ? often in the capacity of treasurer ? on
the committees of at least 15 Swedish national sf conventions from 1965 on,
and is the first and so far only Swede to be selected as a Guest of Honor by
a world sf convention.
2. John-Henri Holmberg, born 1949 and an active fan since 1962, holds a
B.A. degree in Literature and Philosophy from Stockholm university and has
since 1972 been a professional book and magazine editor and publisher,
critic, translator and writer. He has translated close to 200 books, both
fiction and non-fiction, and so far published eight books of his own,
including a two-volume historical and critical overview of science fiction.
He reviews books both for Sweden?s third largest daily newspaper, Sydsvenska
Dagbladet, and for several magazines; at the Swedish Book Fair in 1999, he
received the prestigeous Jan Broberg Award for outstanding literary
criticism. 1988-1994 he served as the Fiction Publisher for Bra Böcker
Publishing Group, then the third largest publisher in Sweden; since 1995, he
is a director of Replik in Sweden AB, a company specializing in
Swedish-language editorial productions for foreign publishers, and in this
capacity has overseen close to a 2000 international book co-productions.
Since 2004, he edits and publishes the resurrected prozine Nova science
fiction. Per Insulander, M.D., born 1950 and an active fan since 1967, is a
physician specializing in cardiology; he simultaneously runs his own medical
practice in Stockholm city and is senior specialist and head of
thecardiology staff at Huddinge University Hospital in Stockholm. John
Ågren,
Ph.D., born 1951 and an active fan since 1968, is Senior Professor of
Metallography at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and has been
a guest lecturer at M.I.T., CalTech, Sorbonne, the Universities of Chicago,
Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg and numerous other institutions.
3. Obviously, these court cases are a matter of public record. Among
allegations often made by Engholm is the one that LFP was ?bankrupted? by
its owners, notably John-Henri Holmberg and Per Insulander, and that
in somefashion they enriched themselves to
the detriment of printers, authors, translators, and others who had
performed work for the company. In fact, during 1987, it became evident that
LFP was no longer profitable, and by early 1988, the company was in severe
debt. Operations were closed down and the owners had the option of either
declaring bankruptcy or bailing out the company. Declaring bankruptcy at
this stage would have been entirely legal and would also have saved
theowners from having to pay a fairly large part of
the total amount (roughly SEK1,5M, at that time around US$300,000) owed by
LFP. However, after discussions, since by Swedish law the owners would in
any case have to pay that part of company debts pertaining to taxes, it was
decided that LFP should pay all its debts, since paying only the government
but using bankruptcy to get out of paying the fellow fans and others who had
actually performed work was felt to be dishonorable. Thus, the LFP assetts
were sold to two newly formed companies owned by respectively Per Insulander
and John-Henri Holmberg, each company borrowing half the amount owed by LFP
in order to liquidate (but not bankrupt) the earlier corporation. LFP was
then left dormant for a number of years and finally volontarily bankrupted
and dissolved in the mid-1990s; at that time the company had no known
assetts nor any known private debts. By this procedure, employees, printers,
translators and others were all paid, although in many cases late; the loans
taken by Insulander and Holmberg ran for ten years and were finally paid up
by the end of 1999, at which time they, including interest, had contributed
well over $500,000 in 1988 currency towards making a clean end of LFP. It
is, however, sadly true that subscribers to the company?s magazine and
various book lines could not be reimbursed for the outstanding parts of
their subscriptions.
-----
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