Index to the fanzine Xenophile – part 1

7 comments

1. I have all the issues also and was an original subscriber right from the beginning. I was friends with Nils Hardin and we corresponded for several years. He was a regular at the early Pulpcons and winner of the first Lamont Award.

   The pulp ads were a big part of the magazine and when an issue arrived in the mail, I dropped everything and quickly mailed orders in an attempt to get pulps. I often sent more money than was required since that often gave me an edge in getting my wants. Money talks and it's a pulp jungle out there!

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2. Walker, you must have been the quickest mail order gunman in the east, judging by the collection you have now. Did your postal worker ever have anything to say about the volume of stuff delivered? Mine knows me by name because i get 2-3 packages every week, and when i told him it's all for a book collection, he shook his head…

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3. Sai, at one period lasting several years, I was ordering quite a bit of books, pulps, dvds, music cds and art. I was often receiving several packages per day, many times 8 or 9. I believe the most was one day I received 13 packages from different sources.

   My mail person at the time was a lady and she started to slam the packages down on the porch, referring to them as "another load of bricks". She complained more than once to me that she did not get credit for delivering packages and they only slowed her up, etc.

   After damaging some vhs video tapes and bound volumes by practically kicking them to my front porch, I started to listen for her mail truck and most of the time I managed to meet her at the bottom of my driveway and personally take delivery of my boxes without her having to walk to my front porch. This way I prevented any further damage.

   One seller in the UK used to send me many packages containing complete sets of literary magazines and customs started the unfortunate habit of stabbing some type of implement into the boxes. I guess they were looking for drugs or something illegal. This resulted in the ruining of a bound set of magazines since one bound volume was completely damaged by a large hole in the binding. The seller filed a claim with the Royal Mail and I got a couple hundred pounds credit but the set is flawed now because 20 or so volumes are nicely bound but one is made up of 6 individual loose magazines.

   Trials and tribulations of being an obsessive book collector… But I wouldn't have it any other way!

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4. My mail worker is very kind, and leaves packages at my front door, under the porch, so that they don't get rained on. Sometimes, though, someone else takes his route and they drop it off at the back porch, which i never use, and i spend a few minutes trying to figure out where it is…other than than, no problems to report. Never had a drop kicked package, thank god.

   Oh, and one time I was called to the post office to pickup a package and they thought i was shipping other stuff via media mail because, I kid you not, "it sounds like clothes inside…". They opened the package and saw the books and magazines. Now they never ask me anything…

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5. These days, postal workers should be glad they just have work. Overall, mail volume is way down from what it used to be.

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6. I don't know if that's correct. While personal mail volume has decreased, at least around here, Amazon uses USPS for a lot of their deliveries. And there's always junk mail, which seems to keep growing…

   I for one think that USPS does an excellent job overall, and you can't beat it for price most of the time. I've even had a cover painting delivered via USPS priority mail – reached in 2 days no issues.

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7. Looks like there was no #12 ? Skips from 11 to 13.

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