If You're Looking For a Way Out
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| Title: | If You're Looking For a Way Out |
| Creator: | Mark Reinsberg |
| Date(s): | Printed April 1940 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Science Fiction |
| Topic: | Pseuicide |
| External Links: | Hosted online by the Iowa Digital Library; The Science Fiction Fan #41, pp. 17-19. Apr. 1940. |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
If You're Looking For a Way Out was a humorous 1940 article by science fiction fan Mark Reinsberg. The article suggested a strategy for BNFs to escape fandom with their dignity and reputation intact: faking their own death. By sheer coincidence, it appeared in an issue of The Science Fiction Fan that announced the recent creation of The Stranger Club. One of the first founding members named in the ad was Earl Singleton, who would fake his own suicide in January 1941.
The name of the fan in the essay, Jack J. Ackerwitz, is a reference to famous fan Forrest J Ackerman. If Reinsberg had any specific incident in mind while writing, it was probably the first of two death hoaxes involving his friend Bob Tucker. In 1936, a fellow boarder had sent a letter to Astounding Science Fiction announcing Tucker's death in a hospital bed, just hours after asking for another issue of Astounding. The letter was printed, and when editor F. Orlin Tremaine discovered the truth, he banned Tucker from the magazine's pages for years, believing he was the one responsible.
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Let's say you're very active and well-known fan, having made science fiction an integral part of your life after a hard-fought battle for recognition, You're putting out a very promising fan magazine, getting a lot of enjoyment out of publishing it, even if it does take up quite a bit of your time. Your S-F collection has been completed, requiring a large investment over the three or four years you've been collecting, and now you are venturing into the fan man angle hoping to get all there have been published. You've become more and more involved in science fiction activity and and the responsibility for numerous fan activities and organizations is in your hands. Let's say that you are on your way to becoming number One Fan of the world, and you can cinch the title if you can just put that big event over. Imagine, further that you have a talent for writing which is gradually developing into the achievement of authordom (you've written countless articles for fan mags and already had a short story published in a professional magazine).THEN, YOU HAD TO GIVE IT ALL UP!
What if, in your absence, your parents conspired to nip your budding S-F career, and as the first step in their campaign burned down the house--and in the ashes you discover your collection, like the rest of the house -- ashes! What if you knew that your fan magazine was to fold up in its next issue -- and you owing about $25.00, in unexpired subscriptions! What if -- God forbid -- you wrote some terrible slander about a certain S-F character in your regular column and this person decided to visit your city--along with a group of his friends.
THESE SITUATIONS CALL FOR ACTION!
Things look very bad. You'd give anything to straighten it all out without steps as drastic as giving it all up, but then...Circumstances as relentless as an editor's rejection face you. The question is not what to do---that's as plain as day, but rather how to do it without losing face. How can you give up science fiction gracefully?
YOU FINGER THE TRIGGER OF YOUR 38 CALIBRE WATER-PISTOL AND GAZE OUT OF THE 50TH STORY OF YOUR HOTEL --- MEANINGFULLY!
It all looks pretty much like a"dead heat"-get it? You'd rather die than give it all up---and you probably will. What to do??? Your gun won't work, and they've put protective bars outside strategic windows. How can you die without ending up on a marble slab? Things look black (it's night-time -- you know).
THEN, LIKE A BOLT FROM THE BLUE -- you decide to die! (How original).
But not just an ordinary death--you don't relish embalming fluid in your veings. You're going to engineer a death every S-F fan will envy. You're giong to die a science fiction fan's death! And like a stenographer, you start rattling off senseless things on the battered typewriter.
THINGS START HAPPENING (You've run out of manuscript paper have transferred your typewritten efforts to tissue sheets --- It's rude to call it toilet paper!
The first insane thing you do is write two letters to every reader's column reading something like this:
"Inasmuch as I am dying in the hospital of syphylis, I thought I might take advantage of the great opportunity to finally get a letter printed in your junky mag. Confidentially, it stinks! Your loving reader, Jack J. Ackerwitz."
"Mr. Ackerwitz was found dead the next morning when he failed to appear at the first call for breakfast. Fish fry tonight. Urs true, Jules Laverne."
At the bottom of which, certain editors broke all editorial restrictions to insert the following note:
"After sending this letter, if Mr. Ackerwitz hadn't died -- I'd of come over and killed him myself," Ye Ed.
BUT THAT ISNT ALL; THE BEST IS YET TO COME.
You then prepare your Memorial Volume, containing every bit of junk you've ever had rejected, including Merritt's "Goon Mule", Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", and a set of free dishes. You also do what no other dead man has ever done -- you autographs every Volume, thus sending the value up tremendously. When the postal authorities are knocking at your door you pull the"coup de gras". You let out the greatest scoop of all times; in your regular column you announce your own death!
(I'M NOT GOING TO LET THIS DARN STRAIGHT-JACKET BOTHER ME ONE BIT)
Thousands of fans announce their intentions of attending your funeral -- to make sure, and simultaneously you announce (under a psuedonym) that there will be a Science Fiction Convention held the same date in your city. The effect is stunning. Transportation is positively tied up for miles around your house as fans gleefully munch pop-corn while viewing your dead body. YOUR BODY? Oh yes, I forgot to mention:
YOU CAN'T LET ALL THOSE FANS DOWN AFTER THE BIG BUILD-UP, AND THEY'D KILL YOU ANYWAY IF THEY EVER LAID EYES ON YOU!
So I'd advise taking poison and forgetting the whole damned business! It all comes out fine in the End.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. Reinsberg was found dead the day after we received this manuscript. My first reader got to him before I could. Ah! well now I can marry his sister and take over his S-F collection.