From FILE 770 by MIke Glyer

Guy H. Lillian III (1949-2025) Posted on August 24, 2025 by Mike Glyer Guy H. Lillian III, icon and champion of Southern fandom, died August 23 at the age of 75. His father-in-law, Joe Green, announced: It is my sad duty to inform you that my son-in-law, Guy Lillian III, died last evening. Many of you know Guy personally, and others thru his long years as a very active fan. He devoted a large part of his life to fandom and fanzines, including putting out two of his own for many years. Guy had suffered from Parkinson’s for several years. Earlier this year he had two strokes, and also a fall that broke a bone in his back. He has since alternated from hospital to nursing home. His worn-out body finally surrendered completely yesterday. Lillian was born July 20, 1949. (You might ask, how did Guy arrange to have himself born on the same date that Apollo 11 would later land on the Moon?) When Guy was 12, he found a copy of The Flash comic in a stack of old magazines at his grandmother’s house. He loved comics, but what really hooked Guy was the issue’s letter column. He told a Nerd Team interviewer in 2018: …At the time Julie Schwartz was editing Flash, and had a contest going, where the people who sent in the cleverest letters won original artwork and scripts. They can’t do that now. So, what they would do was write unbelievably corny, pun-filled letters. And for some reason Schwartz responded to that, and awarded artwork to these terrible letters. That ticked me off, frankly, because here these guys are getting all these treasures and I didn’t have any of these things, so I got upset about it. I wrote – by hand, on a tiny lined pad (I still remember it) saying that these guys were lousy comedians and he should save his prizes for more worthy efforts. Then I forgot about it. The next thing I know, I’m living in Riverside, California. I was about 13, I guess and I’m buying Flash #133. It featured the stupidest Flash cover of all time. It showed Flash as a wooden puppet running past a poster of Abra Kadabra, one of his villains, who was shooting a ray out at him. The thought balloon read: “I’ve got the strangest feeling I’m being turned into a puppet!” Ludicrous cover. Anyway, I looked in the letter column and I saw at the very end, I’ll never forget this, “And finally –Guy Lillian—despite himself—is stuck with the original script for ‘Kid Flash Meets the Elongated Man’.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. I leafed through the letter column and found my letter. I raced home, ecstatic. I just couldn’t believe it. Sure enough, they sent me the script…. Guy eventually had 120 letters of comment published in DC Comics. And he received the tribute of having his name attached to the Green Lantern’s 1968 debut character, Guy Gardner. After finishing his MFA degree at the University of North Carolina in 1973, he was offered a job at DC “at the magnificent salary of $100.00 a week to start, which was later raised to an even more magnificent sum, $110.00 a week. In New York City. It was paradise. It was terrific. I had a great time.” (Correspondence signed by DC Comics Assistant Editor Guy H. Lillian III in 1974 has been offered for sale as a collectible on eBay!) Prior to getting his MFA, Guy earned an undergraduate degree in English from UC Berkeley (1971). During his first year on campus he arranged to meet sf author Jack Vance, who lived in nearby Oakland. He retold the experience in Magicon PR 2 when Vance was a Worldcon GoH (1992). …The following is a verbatim entry from my diary, 4 November 1967. 1 was 18. I’d just started college at the University of California at Berkeley. I knew nothing. I didn’t even know that it was an act of intolerable rudeness, once you discovered that a for-real professional gee-whiz science fiction writer actually lived near your home, to do as I’d done: call him up and ask if you can come meet him. But I’d done it. And, tiredly, the writer had said sure, come on up. After an hour or so I had to leave, and Jack had to get back to work on his house. Like him, my generation is tearing down and building up, on the same spot, at the same time. We shook hands outside and Jack apologized in case he’d sounded either “too weird” or “too stuffy.” To me he only sounded intelligent and honest, not “stuffy” at all. “It’s a popular misconception that science fiction writers are weird,” I said. Jack grinned and scratched his thinning thatch of hair. “Well,” he said, “some of them are.”… At Berkeley he also gained his first experience as an editor working on the college magazine that Terry Carr had edited before him. In fact, Guy contacted Carr and was amazed to receive by return mail xerox copies of all of Carr’s issues: “Which they’ve since lost, and I could cheerfully dynamite them,” he told a panel at the 2001 Worldcon. Later on Guy studied law at Loyola University of the South in New Orleans, then practiced as a defense lawyer in the field of criminal law in Louisiana, including as a public defender. He wrote serious articles about some of these experiences for his fanzines. He was really a quite wonderful writer who always wore his heart on his sleeve. As a change of pace, he also wrote a picaresque account for Mimosa, “It Pays to Advertise?”, telling how he and fellow fan and attorney Dennis Dolbear drummed up some business, in the process making national news. Let me explain a brouhaha which made my friend Dennis Dolbear and I nationally famous — briefly, I hope — at the end of 1996. It was originally my idea: advertise in the home papers of tourists soon to visit New Orleans, some of whom would be bound to get in trouble on the streets of the Crescent City, and need lawyers. It only makes sense. People flock to New Orleans for events like the Sugar Bowl and Mardi Gras looking for a Good Time. Such people sometimes take their quest for Fun a bit far, and run afoul of the constabulary. To put it bluntly, they get arrested. They need lawyers. Strangely enough, I need something too. Money… Their advertising strategy attracted an unexpected bonanza of media attention – they were even interview by Sports Illustrated. A prolific fanwriter, Guy published innumerable apazines, a New Orleans clubzine, the genzine Challenger, perzine Spartacus, and fanzine review index The Zine Dump. Challenger was a 12-time Best Fanzine Hugo finalist (2000-2011), and Guy himself was twice on the ballot for Best Fan Writer (1988-1989). That he never won the rocket was a source of unconcealed frustration. But one very good thing did happen for him at the Chicon 2000 Hugo Losers Party. Right in front of my eyes, Guy and Rose-Marie Green Donovan became engaged. She’s the daughter of Joe Green, and Guy first met her at Joe’s famous Apollo XI landing party, also attended by Heinlein, Clarke, and others. They married on June 30, 2001 in Cocoa, Florida. Guy wrote in advance, “An Atlas-Agena is scheduled to be launched that very evening from nearby Cape Canaveral. As Joe Major says, a good wedding should have fireworks.” Two years later Guy and Rose-Marie were elected as the 2003 Down Under Fan Fund delegates. On their return from Australia they published their trip report, The Antipodal Route. Now the reason Guy had been eligible to attend the 2000 Hugo Losers Party was because File 770 won that year. Guy even suggested to me a way to we could inject some fannish humor into the moment, something I unsuccessfully tried to explain years later in my article “How I Won the Hugo and Lost the Civil War”. It seemed like a funny idea when Guy suggested it. Yes, exactly, it was his idea! No more than 45 minutes had passed since I’d been sitting alongside the other nominees at the 2000 Hugo ceremonies, quietly confident I’d won my last Hugo a decade ago. Then Teddy Harvia had announced my name. I headed for the stage in a fog of not-quite-speechless amazement and someone handed me the rocket on its beautiful wooden base. After the ceremony I stood happily on the periphery of the collected winners posing for the official Locus photo and traded quips with Michael Walsh. When that broke up and people began to head for the parties, Guy caught my attention and said he thought it would make a funny picture if he stood on the steps of the stage and we pretended to fight over the Best Fanzine Hugo. I felt sure he was right. That’s just the kind of stunt photo that used to crack me up when I edited the front page of my high school newspaper. Guy went over to Rosy and asked her to take the picture. Alone among the three of us she seemed a bit skeptical that this would be in good taste. She took the photo because Guy asked. Then I practically begged Guy to e-mail me a copy of the picture in time to publish in File 770… That photo! For Guy’s friends in the South, it changed File 770 from merely another fanzine into The Primary Obstacle to Guy’s Hugo. And Guy was a beloved Southern fan. In 1984 he won the Rebel Award, given to the fan who has done the most for Southern Fandom. And in 1987 he effectively volunteered as the first winner of the Rubble Award, given to the person who has done the most to Southern fandom. There was a tie vote, which Guy resolved by voting for himself. Guy H. Lillian III in 2003. Over the years Guy also wrote heartfelt obituaries for File 770 about close friends when they passed away. And he shared with us his dramatic experience with a tornado in 2004 that we titled, “Nearly Gone With the Wind”: Guy Lillian III says he had never seen a twister and regretted it. Then on October 29, while the latest in a series of terrible thunderstorms was marching across his section of Louisiana, Guy started driving home from work down the Old Benton Road and got caught in something much stronger and more dangerous than he expected: “A trashcan lid spun over my hood like a giant frisbee. The rain turned white. The white became opaque. I couldn’t see the road. I hit my emergency blinkers and pulled over, hoping I wouldn’t find a ditch… I remembered some of that twister [documentary]: the sudden white wind tearing hell out of the world. I said to myself, “Hell, I’m in the middle of it,” because I knew what was coming inside that depthless white pall. “Now I was heading away from the action. I floored Little Red and ran for it…. I turned back to Old Benton Road. The tall sign of one of the car dealerships was twisted like a pipecleaner and leaning. That just happened, I said to myself….” Guy assures everyone that he came through “Unscathed, both me and car — except for a small crack in the windshield (the car, not me). Found out that the twister was a Force 2. I’m not rattled about it, just … thoughtful.” He did a complete write-up in the next Challenger. Guy and Rosy moved to Shreveport before Katrina happened in 2005, so they were spared the worst of that disaster. In the next decade they moved to Florida, where Guy taught for awhile as an adjunct instructor of English at Eastern Florida State College. Guy at Contraflow in 2015. By Infrogmation of New Orleans. One of Guy’s last projects was gathering material for a Sturgeon-themed issue of his genzine. I wrote what I remembered about attending Ted’s UCLA extension course and sent it to him. I don’t think the issue came out. However, Guy did keep publishing Spartacus until November 2024. Just about the last thing he said in it was, “I expect December to be a difficult month, crawling with doctors and therapists. Hey, though, today I got my own walker! An early Christmas!” Which still makes me cry. His spirit was so much stronger than his body.

COMING IN JANUARY, MURDER AT WORLDS END

"A wonderfully clever take on the classic locked-room mystery.... I’ll happily follow foul-mouthed Miss Decima and steadfast Stephen Pike through many more mysteries, their dynamic is utterly delightful." — Kristen Perrin, New York Times bestselling author of How to Solve Your Own Murder With the looming passage of Halley’s Comet across the world's skies sparking widespread panic in 1910, the Viscount of Tithe Hall shutters his remote coastal castle in hopes of waiting out the supposed upcoming apocalypse. But when the Viscount is found dead in his sealed study, it is up to under-butler Steven Pike and sharp-witted Octogenarian and family matriarch Decima Stockingham to outfox a killer. To celebrate this brilliantly charming, twisty, and irreverent adult debut by #1 New York Times bestselling children's author Ross Montgomery, we're giving away 20 early copies in a Scene of the Crime-exclusive sweepstakes! Click here to enter for your chance to win. The Murder at World's End goes on sale January 6th. Click here to pre-order your copy.

Bob the Vampire Snail

Bob the Vampire Snail by Andrea Zuill Bob was just a regular snail, that is until one fateful night that caused him to become a … vampire?! In this hilarious and heartwarming picture book, join Bob the vampire snail as he embraces his unique love of tomatoes, discovers new and peculiar sleeping talents, and forms an unexpected friendship. $18.99 from Penguin Random House

Fabricated, A Cybil Lewis Novel

Fabricated, A Cybil Lewis Novel, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Mocha Memoirs Press, 2025. Cybil Lewis is a Private Investigator in the area that was once Washington, DC. She is a former District Regulator and still maintains friends in the force, but she has been known to show them up in solving the cases that end up in her lap. This time out, she is visited by Agents Lynn and Winsome from the Midwest Territory and is recruited to aid in their investigation for an escaped criminal. Nico Mars has been freed from his "Cradle", a stasis unit where he was receiving psyche therapy. He was convicted of murder, larceny and other nefarious conduct in Washington. As he was a Regulator in DC, he was moved to the Midwest District for unknown reasons. It is up to Cybil to find out the truth of what Nico really did, how he escaped, and why he would come back to DC and not head for parts unknown. Also adding o the investigation is the death of a community activist, two attempts on Cybils life and the arson of her wauto. There are some surprises that are discovered during the investigation. And of course the wealthy, the lawyers, and the police corruption have to be confronted in order to get to the final truth. One thing about Kurtz's writing is she always makes room for some unusual food references and visits Big Mike's Jazz Bar and The Cored Apple to keep her strength up during her adventures. Kurtz is always a fun read and this is no exception. Cybil Lewis is one of those characters that is quick to remember and enjoy. If you are not familiar with her adventures, there are three others out there for you. This volume is highly recommended.

STAFFING SHORTAGES AT THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION MEDICAL FACILITIES.

The Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act (VACAA) of 2014 and VA Choice and Quality Employment Act (VCQEA) of 2017 requires the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) to determine, annually, a minimum of five clinical and five nonclinical Veterans Health Administration (VHA) occupations with the largest staffing shortages within each VHA medical center (facility). Pursuant to this requirement, the OIG conducted a review to identify those severe staffing shortages by occupation. The OIG also compared the number of severe occupational staffing shortages against the previous seven years’ reports to assess changes. The OIG surveyed VHA-identified facility points of contact to determine severe occupational staffing shortages at each facility. Among the most significant findings in this year’s staffing report were the following: In fiscal year (FY) 2025, VHA facilities reported a total of 4,434 severe occupational staffing shortages, a 50 percent increase from FY 2024 in which facilities reported 2,959 total shortage occupations. Ninety-four percent of facilities reported severe occupational staffing shortages for Medical Officer occupations, and 79 percent of facilities reported severe shortages for Nurse occupations. Psychology was the most frequently reported severe clinical occupational staffing shortage and also the most frequently reported Hybrid Title 38 severe shortage occupation, with 57 percent of facilities reporting it as a shortage. Police was reported as a shortage by 58 percent of facilities, making it the most frequently reported severe nonclinical occupational staffing shortage and the most frequently reported of all occupations. All 139 VHA facilities identified staffing shortages.

PRAYERS FOR CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO

REPOSTED FROM FACEBOOK Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - Author I am sad to have to share some unfortunate news. Over the last year Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has faced a series of medical challenges that prevented her from posting online, responding to emails, or making personal appearances. While things are now stabilized, it is clear that she will not be returning to any of these activities in the future. A GoFundMe is being set up to deal with certain of her medical care costs that insurance is not covering. I will share this link soon. Quinn does treasure her friends and fans, and sends sincere thanks to everyone for their friendship and their personal and professional support. If you would like to share how much Quinn or her works have meant to you, or send any personal messages, please email them to me (SaichekPublicity@gmail.com). I will arrange for them to be read to Quinn, and any replies from her will be transcribed and forwarded. For the last year, Quinn's team and her physically-closest friends have been focused primarily on her care. But work has been ongoing regarding the re-release of Quinn's backlist and the publication of new works that were completed before these medical issues got in the way of further work. Stay tuned for further information on those projects. We thank you for your support, understanding, and kind thoughts. --Wiley Saichek on behalf of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro I WILL POST THE INFORMATION AS IT BECOMES AVAIABLE. QUINN WAS ONE OF THE FIRST AUTHORS TO SPORT A BARYON QUOTE ON FALSE DAWN.HER SAINT GERMAIN NOVELS HAVE BEEN FAVORITES SINCE THEIR INTRO

DUCTION,

A Song for You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdcSNruapQk The algorithms and AI are really kicking my butt. I bounce around on the various music sites, and today Spotify suggested a "daily mix" based on my previous choices. In today's choices are a lot of Sarah McLachlan, Kasey Chambers and Beth Nielsen Chapman, and this song was number one on the list from the late 90s and I thought I would share it with you. Let the song make its own mark on your soul, like it did on mine.