Dick Jenssen

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Fan
Name: Martin James Ditmar Jenssen
Alias(es): Dick Jenssen
Type: photographer, fanartist, fan
Fandoms: science fiction, Star Trek
Communities: Melbourne Science Fiction Club, Continuum, Spaced Out
Other:
URL:
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Dick Jenssen in 2000
Dick smirks (self admitted) upon receiving his 2010 Ditmar Award. (Photo by Helena Binns)
Dick Ditmar Jenssen
Bruce Tangle by Dick Jenssen
Trysting Place by Dick Jenssen

Dick Ditmar Jenssen (6 July 1935 - 7 March 2024) was a long-time fan and fanartist within the Australian science fiction community, known primarily for his involvement in founding the Melbourne Science Fiction Club (MSFC) and in helping to found the Ditmar Awards that were named after him.

His long and complex involvement with fandom - an 'on again, off again' affair in terms of gafiating and returning - reflected his nuanced personality, as inferred during his preamble and early remarks within autobiographical writing between 2004 and 2010:

Inherently lazy, I am attracted to actions which produce more than one result, and so have a predilection for puns and double entendres. I mention this because I hope that in what follows, phrases such as ‘being a science fiction fan’ may be replaced by ‘being gay’ without the contextual surrounds being changed. It seems to me, at least in my life, that both aspects of myself share similar features...


I am a fan simply because it is my nature to be so. It is not an active choice on my part. Indeed, to misquote Theodore Sturgeon very slightly, ‘Why must we love where the lightning strikes, and not where we choose? But I'm glad it's you, science fiction, I'm glad it's you’. But this means I must try to define what my nature is, in respect to SF. And here I will assume that my specific characteristics have, in fact, a wider applicability.[1]

His perspective on science and the cosmos was, to him, a natural bridge between science and science fiction:

I believe an SF fan is someone who lives slightly askew from those who inhabit the drab everyday world, someone who sees things from a modified perspective. Someone who can perceive the extraordinary in the ordinary, the ultra-mundane in the mundane, and the wonder which resides in the ubiquity of the commonplace. But there's even more to a fan. Most everyone will respond to the natural beauty of a rainbow, but most, even some scientists, will hold that the scientific explanation of the phenomenon etiolates that beauty to the point of extinction. Most scientists will appreciate the natural beauty and also that of the physics, but will believe that the latter is of another kind, inasmuch as it appeals to the intellect rather than to the senses. The science fiction fan (and the true scientist) will appreciate both the rainbow and the physical explanation, and will, moreover, see that the two together produce a new beauty more wondrous than either. They will respond to the defining characteristics of SF - to the sense of wonder and to the underlying science, even if that science is, all too often in SF, highly flawed, if not downright incorrect. But it must always be plausible..[2]

It is this love of science and science fiction that would influence his professional and personal lives.

Early Life

Dick explains his 'life before science fiction':

I was born, on July 6, 1935, in Shanghai, China, of a British father - Tia Jenssen - and a Russian mother - Gail, nee Bredihina. Mother, father and child were moved to Sydney in 1941 by Tia's employer - the Shell Oil Company. Gail and I left first, and Tia was lucky enough to be on the last ship out of Shanghai before the Japanese moved in. The rest of the family, apart from two of Gail's sisters, were interned during the war. British aunts, uncles, cousins, Russian aunts and cousins, Norwegian grandfather, Polish/Jewish grandmother all sat out the war in camps. All survived, but the family never really got back together - split amongst the US, Canada, England and Singapore...[3]

He grew up in a family where nobody was called by their assigned birth name, and so he became known as 'Dick' although he never knew why.[4]

His love of science fiction was seeded at a young age, inspired by a school friend's book of astronomical and space illustrations, and by a teacher reading aloud a story about a time traveller. Dick later was encouraged to read science fiction by another school friend, Race Mathews, and they later became involved in starting the Melbourne Science Fiction Club.[5]

Career

CSIRAC at Melbourne Museum, Wikipedia, Photo by John O'Neill, CC BY-SA 3.0 Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
Dick Jenssen doing brilliant things with the gigantic CSIRAC computer at Melbourne University, 1957. Among other things, Dick wrote the first computer game in Australia (perhaps the world). Photographer unknown.
Dick Jenssen on CSIRAC 1957 (Sun newspaper)

Museums Victoria acknowledges his career and early contribution to weather forecasting and computing in Australia:

In 1956 Martin James Ditmar 'Dick' Jenssen completed his B.Sc. course at the University of Melbourne, majoring in Physics, and was fortunate enough to be accepted as a Masters candidate with the Meteorology Department.He was to be supervised by Dr. Uwe Radok. Dick Jenssen was an avid fan of science fiction, and since the research topic was the development of a weather forecast using the digital electronic computer CSIRAC, he felt as though he would be living a science fiction story..

Australian scientists at CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research - later to become CSIRO) had built the world's fourth computer which had its programs, and data, stored internally in its memory. CSIRAC, as the computer was now called, had just been installed within the Physics Department...

Although working all night, usually once a week, it took many months for a 24-hour forecast to be eventually produced in mid-1958. This forecast was the first ever made in the Southern hemisphere. Further work by Radok and Jenssen used the model - by hindcasting backwards in time - to identify areas where more observational data were needed for future forecasting, if such prognoses were to be highly successful. [6]

Dick's involvement in CSIR work extended to creating and naming a computer simulation game (and an instruction leaflet on how to play) with the science-fictional title of "Telepathy".

Bruce Gillespie notes:

Dick’s career as a meteorologist was distinguished. He was head of Meteorology at Melbourne University when he took early retirement at the age of 55. Only recently did we discover that he performed the analysis and wrote the program to produce the first computer-generated weather forecast for the Southern hemisphere.[7]

Melbourne Science Fiction Club

Founding members of the MSFC. Top row, left to right, Merv Binns & Dick Jenssen; Bottom row, Bob McCubbin, Bert Chandler & Race Mathews. Photograph taken in 1952 by Lee Harding. SF historian Leigh Edmonds notes that Bert was not a member of the Group, so he speculates that this photograph was likely taken during one of his visits to Melbourne.
All original members of the Melbourne SF Club, taken in early 2000s at one of Race Mathews’ movie nights: Race Mathews, Merv Binns, Dick Jenssen, Lee Harding.
Olympicon in Melbourne, 1968: Dick Jenssen leads the auction with help from Tony Thomas, Lee Harding and John Foyster.

Dick and club co-founder Race Mathews acknowledge each other's presence and involvement in the founding of the club (originally called the Melbourne Science Fiction Group). Race Mathews later recounted:

The five of us - Bob McCubbin, Mervyn Binns, Dick Jenssen, Lee Harding and myself - made up the core of the Melbourne Science Fiction Group. The inaugural meeting of the MSFG took place in the living room of my home in Hampton on 9 May 1952. Lee records the occasion as having been instigated by "a sort of collaboration between Bob McCubbin and Race Mathews". In Dick's characteristically tongue-in-cheek view:


"Race, I'm sure, was the guiding light in the foundation of the Melbourne Science Fiction Group, for it was he who brought together those who would constitute its nucleus. (lf it seems remarkable that a 16- year-old could accomplish this - that is, the formation of the club, not the seduction to science fiction of a youth of but 15 tender years (me) - it must be remembered that Race was a boy of remarkable precocity. He always seemed old to me - an Olympian of wisdom. Baby-faced he was, Lee, but rather in the manner I've always imagined Odd John would be)."[8]

Bob McCubbin later recalled one of the outcomes from the early club which ultimately encouraged Dick's artistic creativity:

For many of the Group, the major interest is publishing. Merv Binns, Dick Jenssen, Race Mathews, Lee Harding and Ian Crozier formed Amateur Fantasy Publications of Australia (hereinafter referred to as AFPA), and by pooling resources, purchased a duplicator and supplies.[9]

Ditmar Awards

Dick recalled the naming of the Ditmar Awards:

And so it was again that when I was part of an organizing committee for a Convention to be held in Melbourne in 1969, there came another serendipitous occurrence. It was at this convention that the first Australian Science Fiction Awards were to be given. The committee met on a particularly stifling summer's day in the clubroom's oppressively hot confines. There came the usual (for anyone who is used to the way committees work, which is certainly slowly and very mysteriously) protracted and meandering discussion trying to fix on a popular name for the awards - Constellation, Southern Cross, DownUnders… Finally, thirst overwhelmed me, and my frivolous nature erupted, with the result that I facetiously suggested that they be called 'Ditmars'. To my surprise, this found favor; with Merv Binns being the most vociferous in support. Many years later Merv claimed that he did not know that 'Ditmar' was my Christian name - a claim of which I have trouble acknowledging the veracity. However, if anyone had asked for an explanation of why the Australian Science Fiction Awards should be colloquially called Ditmars, I was ready to say that I was intending to analyze the statistics of the voting forms on a Melbourne University computer known as a Digital Integrating and Tabulating Mechanism for the Advancement of Research. But no one ever inquired.[10]

Race Mathews (right) hands Dick his Ditmar Award, 2010. Photo: Helena Binns

He was later the recipient of two Ditmar Awards, in 2002 and 2010, both for his work as a Fanartist.[11]

Upon receiving his Ditmar Award in 2010, he gave a quirky "thank you" speech which included:

I must thank the entire SF community – writers, editors, readers and, most particularly, the fans. For sixty years, now, the fans I have known, and continue to know, have been the most effective support group I could have ever wished for. They have saved me many, many thousands of dollars in psychotherapist’s fees, and have helped to keep my neuroses merely simmering not exploding.[12]

He later expressed his appreciation in a more down-to-earth fashion:

Only four things belong in the category of 'what I would not want my life to have been without' - and even if these, too, were freaks of fortune, of stochastic serendipity, and due to circumstances beyond my control, they are mine alone, and could not belong to another's life. The major one is finding the love of my life and having that love returned and multiplied many times over... But short as my life with my love was - a tad less than fifteen years - it was a dream from which ‘…when I waked I cried to dream again…’... The other never-to-be-lost events are having the Ditmars bear my name, no matter how undeserved that may be; winning Ditmars myself in 2002 and 2010 in the category of Best Fan Artist, as well as four Chronos Awards in 2009, 2010 and 2012 (two that year); in receiving the Rotsler Award in 2016; and being made a Life Member of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club in April, 2005.[13]

Other Fan Activities and Achievements

Island 17 by Dick Jenssen

Bruce Gillespie recalls:

Dick gafiated from fandom after 1971. However, in 1993, Race Mathews enticed him into rejoining a group of his old fannish friends (and some younger, like us) for watching movies and dinner once a month...


Dick drew artwork for the MSFC’s fanzines in the early 1950s, but did not take up this interest again until computer graphics developed rapidly during the 1990s. Dick contributed a large number of cover graphics to fanzines and book publishers from then until 2020, especially covers for my SF Commentary and Bill Wright’s Interstellar Ramjet Scoop. He was very delighted to win two Ditmar Awards for Best Fan Artist.[14]

Dick's computer graphic artwork often inspired discussion and speculation as to its symbolism and influences.


Dick was also involved in occasional convention visitations and anniversary events with the Melbourne Science Fiction Club, and he assisted Spaced Out with moral and artistic support. He also participated in reunions and birthday dinners with friends at a local pub, until COVID lockdowns caused these to cease. He then began to suffer from illness that eventually caused him to move into a palliative care home, where he passed away early on the morning of 7 March 2024.

Personal Gallery

Sample Artwork Gallery

  • "008"

  • "Adam Eve Light"

  • "Adam or Steve" (supplied by Ditmar to the Spaced Out website)

  • "Ant Galaxy 6"

  • "Apple World Flare" (supplied by Ditmar to the Spaced Out website)

  • "Arabian Nights"

  • "Asteroids #6"

  • "At The Edge of the World (Modified)"

  • "Big Orion"

  • "Big Starry Mist B"

  • "Binary" (supplied by Ditmar to the Spaced Out website)

  • "Binary Takeoff"

  • "Dagon 14 (modified)"

  • "Drought 12"

  • "Dune Messiah 1 "

  • "Flight 16"

  • "Flight 32"

  • "LadyBug" (supplied by Ditmar to the Spaced Out website)

  • "Lonely Mist"

  • "Moon Io Jupiter Stars 2" (supplied by Ditmar to the Spaced Out website)

  • "Perhaps 27"

  • "Ringed Planet 23"

  • "Rocket Play 7"

  • "Xanadu 2"

  • "Zwilnick V5"

References

  1. ^ Dick Jenssen, My Life in Fandom, 2004 - 2010, reprinted in Leigh Edmonds, iOTA 13, 2017, p. 93. Please note that portions of this writing may be a reworking of his 2002 article, My Life in Fandom for Diverse Universe 14 (the newsletter for Spaced Out) but further references to this article defer to the more fully fleshed-out Leigh Edmonds reprint of 2017.
  2. ^ ibid, pp. 93 & 94.
  3. ^ ibid, p. 94.
  4. ^ ibid, pp. 94 & 95.
  5. ^ ibid, pp. 95 & 96.
  6. ^ Museums Victoria, "Dick Jenssen, Meteorologist (circa 1935-)"|[1]
  7. ^ Bruce Gillespie, "Dick Jenssen (1935-2024)", Locus Magazine, 8 March 2024.
  8. ^ Race Mathews, Whirlaway to Thrilling Wonder Stories: Boyhood Reading in Wartime and Postwar Melbourne, (guest talk at Nova Mob on 7 September 1994), reprinted in University of Melbourne Library Journal, Vol. 1 No. 5, Autumn/Winter 1995, p. 29.
  9. ^ Bob McCubbin, 'Science Fiction Fandom in Melbourne', (Etherline #12, 3 September 1953), reprinted in Leigh Edmonds (ed.), iOTA 13, December 2017, p. 32.
  10. ^ Dick Jenssen, op cit,p. 105.
  11. ^ "Dick Jenssen", Fancyclopedia 3.
  12. ^ Dick Jenssen, Ditmar Acceptance Speech 2010 (from personal papers archived by Bruce Gillespie)
  13. ^ Dick Jenssen, My Life in Fandom, op cit, pp. 105 & 106.
  14. ^ Bruce Gillespie, op cit.
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