In Your Teeth "Gentlemen"
| Open Letter | |
|---|---|
| Title: | In Your Teeth "Gentlemen" |
| From: | Leslie Perri on behalf of the Futurians |
| Addressed To: | Sam Moskowitz, William Sykora, James Taurasi |
| Date(s): | 1939 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Science Fiction |
| Topic: | The Great Exclusion Act |
| External Links: | Hosted online by fanac.org |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
In Your Teeth "Gentlemen" was an open letter zine written and illustrated by Leslie Perri following the first Worldcon. After the ousting of six members of her fanclub, the Futurians, Perri accused the convention committee of dictatorial behavior in the planning stages and beyond. The letter's main target was William Sykora.
This first response from the Futurians seems to contradict some later accounts regarding police involvement. Sam Moskowitz at some point stated that the police had to be called to remove the Futurians; Donald A. Wollheim later said in The First Side - The True Side that none of the Futurians ever made contact with police. He does mention that they asked an officer if the police had been called and were told no. However, he names James Taurasi as the person who "may have" called them instead of William Sykora, the person named in Perri's open letter.
According to Forrest J Ackerman's report on the convention, a copy of In Your Teeth made its way into Moskowitz's hands on the last day of the convention, and he read it out loud to Taurasi and Sykora.
Excerpt
We should also have loved to join your convention. You convention, gentlemen and scholars, except for the fact (and science fiction friends take note) that it was YOUR convention, iron bound by personalized disputes carried to the extremity of the most high handed juggling of common decency and respect for the freedom of respected members to object to just such insidious elements as show fair to destroy whatever progress can come from so promising a group.Page 3
Two years were spent in the preparation of the World Convention. Countless antagonisms were created in the squabbles over its control. You, personally, spent a large amount of money both in its preparation and its presentation. You devoted practically all your liesure time to building the Convention. You went out of your way to conciliate professionals and fans you personally and cordially despised. You maneuvered, posed, pleaded hysterically for harmony and unity through the various organs at your disposal. You ignored agreements made by yourself to guarantee fair and equal representation at the Convention. You crushed through the overwhelming weight of money power all democratic opposition to your dictatorial control of the Convention, which control you shamelessly admitted. You created, at the expense of time, money, nervous energy, friendship, trust and honor a great, glittering, impressive and false front.Page 7
While the Convention was in progress you were approached by the editors of several professional magazines, every visitor from outside the Metropolitan district, several prominent professional authors and many fans who asked you to admit to the Convention Hall the people you barred.Your answer, Mr. Sykora, was that rather than admit them you would call off the Convention, cancel it, make it nil. Rather than admit six perfectly harmless people you were willing to resolve into total nothingness the efforts of two years.
Why, Mr. Sykora, may we ask? Were we armed with machine guns, and bent on violence? Evidently you thought so because against us you arrayed the unanswerable forces of the law, submitting we law-abiding citizens to the humiliation of being forced morally beyond the pale of decent, civilized people.
You threatened us with the perils of arrest and confinement on false charges because we opposed, on intellectuals grounds your dictatorial control of the Convention.Page 7