Lee Harding
| Fan | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Lee John Harding |
| Alias(es): | Leo Harding, LJ Harding, Harold G Nye |
| Type: | |
| Fandoms: | science fiction |
| Communities: | Melbourne Science Fiction Club, Aussiecon, Space Age Bookshop |
| Other: | |
| URL: | Lee Harding (Wikipedia), Displaced Person (Wikipedia) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Lee Harding (19 February 1937 - 19 April 2023)[1][2][note 1] was a long-time, prominent science fiction fan and author, one of the co-founders of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club and editor of some of its earliest publications.
He was born in Colac, a country town in Victoria, and later grew up in Geelong. He began writing his own stories at seven, and at age twelve he bought his first typewriter. He discovered science fiction during his teenage years. He left school at fourteen and became a professional photographer, pursuing that career until 1969.[3] Subsequent jobs included working in Space Age Books.
Dick Jenssen later recalled Lee's enthusiasm for photography:
Stanley Kramer had come to Melbourne [in 1968] to film On the Beach, Nevil Shute’s end-of-humanity cautionary novel. So cautionary, indeed, that all human life was extinguished. Now Lee, in an early job had been involved with a photography firm, or as an apprentice/trainee. Accordingly, when filming was ongoing in the streets of Melbourne, Lee was there documenting the process, creating, let’s say, a bystander’s view of the making of the film. Lee showed us some of the photos, and had put them together into a “diary” of a few pages, but, to my knowledge, never published them. Which is a pity. Then a year or so later, the film industry came again to Victoria for the colour movie THE SUNDOWNERS starring Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum. Again Lee was there with his camera and rolls of colour film – this time, judging from the write-up, he was on set when he took photos, and may have actually interviewed some of the actors. Yet again, although Lee showed some of us a prospective article, I heard, or saw, no more of this. Another pity. In view of these adolescent adventures, it is no wonder that Lee was almost – perhaps even more? – enthusiastic about film than SF. He cared about movies, and about every aspect of film-making. Lee’s greatest love, as far I could tell, was for musicals – I sometimes felt that had Lee been the dancing//singing/acting talent that Gene Kelly was, he’d have been in… (p. 9).[4]
Bruce Gillespie reported on Lee's enthusiasm for theatrics at a 1971 convention:
Lee Harding came in. While Merv [Binns] whistled and sang, Lee Harding began his Fred Astaire routine. The convention became a sing-along and mainly stayed that way. After the impromptu concert, we had dinner. Everybody received one meatball, so Harding spent most of the night making an attempt to get another meatball in his spaghetti. The committee-member’s girlfriend arrived, so Lee Harding and John Bangsund promptly sat her between them. Toasts to Tolkien’s birthday and Asimov’s birthday followed. For a hushed audience Lee Harding played the first strains of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony on his teeth.[5]
It should be noted that at around the time of this convention, Lee had joined Merv by working for some years at Space Age Books.
Founding the Melbourne Science Fiction Group
Race Mathews hosted the first meeting of what was later renamed the Melbourne Science Fiction Club:
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".[6]
Dick Jenssen later recalled those young years:
I first met Lee seventy-one years ago - he was fifteen and I was sixteen – and it was my school friend Race Mathews, a sixteen year-old teenager, who brought us together and into the Science Fiction fan world. Race was a keen reader of SF, and had been getting in touch with as many fans as possible. Which was a tough ask, for in the early 1950’s Australia, there were not many who were willing to admit that they read that “Buck Rogers trash”.It was not a wild and stormy night when we met at Race’s parents’ house, but it was cold and windy, so that the warmth of both the rooms and the fans was cheering and welcome. Being the two youngest there, Lee and I gravitated to each other, and found that there was some comparability there. (p. 6).[4]
Lee himself recalled those days of science fictional scarcity:
... the desperate schoolboy search for the glittering American all-colour comics during the war years. In those days the words ‘Printed in the United States of America’ possessed a wondrous magic. Our own poverty-stricken publications could never match those fabulous products...[7]
He also had his finger on the pulse of fandom across the country, as evidenced by his report on Perth fandom (and its interconnectedness with fandom around Australia) in 1953:
Perth fandom, for long un-organized, has been brought together as the Perth Science Fiction Group, under the aegis of Roger Dard... he has long had the ambition to organize Perth fandom into a cohesive whole, and this had been finally accomplished with the PSFG. In addition, honorary membership has been given to: Leo Harding, Don Tuck, Dave Cohen, Bill Veney, and Arthur Haddon for the great work they have done in furthering Australian fandom, and Ken Slater overseas.[8]
Dick Jenssen recalled how this scarcity of SF material - and its accompanying underground fandom enthusiasm - produced one outcome for the early MSFC:
Lee and I would meet with Merv most lunchtimes, [and] chat away... We three developed a friendship bound together by our passion for SF. Under Lee’s enthusiastic guidance we decided to create and publish our own fanzines. These were heady times for us with many a setback but which finally resulted in the publication of “Perhaps” and “Etherline”... it thrust Lee into the forefront of SF fan commentators, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney.(p. 6).[4]
Writing Career
Lee's first published article was a 1959 review of On the Beach, illustrated with his own photographs. This article in Photo Digest led to a monthly column.[3]
His first published short story was Displaced Person, published in the London-based Science Fantasy magazine (issue 46) in 1961; this story was later expanded and published as a full-length novel of the same name in 1979[1][3] (also known as Misplaced Persons in the US)[1] and won the 1980 Book of the Year Award from the Children's Book Council of Australia.[1]
During the 1960s, Lee wrote about twenty science fiction and fantasy stories, most of them being published in the British magazine New Worlds.[3]
Apart from Displaced Person, his other YA novels included The Children of Atlantis (1976), The Frozen Sky (1976), The Weeping Sky (1977), Return to Tomorrow (1977), The Web of Time (1980), and Waiting for the End of the World (1983). Adult novels include A World of Shadows (1975) and Future Sanctuary (1976). He also wrote non-genre novel Heartsease (1997).[1]
He reviewed genre fiction for Australian SF Review from the first issue (June 1966). He also edited the anthologies Beyond Tomorrow: An Anthology of Modern Science Fiction and The Altered I: An Encounter with Science Fiction (both in 1976), the latter of which presented some of the productions of an sf workshop in Australia presided over by Ursula K Le Guin following the first Aussiecon, and Rooms of Paradise (1978). He received the Chandler Award for life achievement in 2006.[9]
As a fan author, Lee wrote and narrated the soundtrack for the first Anti-fan film, Aussie Fan, helping to publicise the bid for the first Aussiecon.. P\He was also the producer of Joe Phaust, Australia's first fan opera.[10]
Death and Legacy
Towards the end of his life, Lee reminisced about "the good old days" during a 2017 Facebook discussion on changes in fandom. He jointly lamented the past and softly chastised those who were critical of younger generations:
Young people today have no interest in the PAST, only the PRESENT: they live for NOW, for they may not have a tomorrow. We old timers had it good - no, more than good: we had it GREAT: those were Golden Times. Our world seemed infinite, our possibilities unlimited. So no good complaining about the young of today : their lives may be much shorter than ours. No wonder they often get up the nostrils of people like ourselves. ... Just let the young BE, and cease seeking applause where none exists because none is due. We've had our time - we lived in a Golden Age, Young Lords of our world. Let the young have theirs, while they can.[11]
Due to illness, Lee spent the last few years in Perth with his family, who reported his death at 6:33 am on 19th April 2023, and acknowledged his love of 'worlds of literature and books, theatre, cinema, photography, and music.' He also loved cooking, his family, and his extended family within the science fiction and amateur theatre communities.[2] Bruce Gillespie's 2006 tribute aptly summarises Lee's place within his beloved science fiction community:
Of all the people who have featured in the Australian science fiction scene since World War II, Lee Harding has had the most diverse and interesting career. Although he has never earned a great income from science fiction, he has done much to contribute to the vigorous field that is today’s Australian SF scene.[12]
Notes
- ^ Different sources list different dates for his death, ranging from 18th to 20th April. The date of the 19th is supplied by his daughter Belinda in her tribute to her father.
References
- ^ a b c d e Author unknown, "Lee Harding (1937-2023)", Locus, 1 May 2023
- ^ a b Belinda Gordon, "Lee Harding, my father", in Bruce Gillespie, SF Commentary #112, June 2023, pp. 4 - 5.
- ^ a b c d Paul Collins (ed.), "Harding, Lee (John)", The MUP Encyclopedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 1998, p. 85.
- ^ a b c Ditmar, 'Memories of Lee', April 24th 2023, Ethel the Ardvark, #211, May 2013, pp. 6 - 10.
- ^ Bruce Gillespie, "NO AUTOGRAPHS AFTER MIDNIGHT: Advention I, New Year 1972", 8 May 1972, Scratch Pad 8, February 1994.
- ^ Race Mathews, 'Whirlaway to Thrilling Wonder Stories: Boyhood Reading in Wartime and Postwar Melbourne', The University of Melbourne Library Journal, Volume 1 Number 5, Autumn/Winter 1995, p. 29.
- ^ Lee Harding, 'I Remember AFPA', originally published 1963/64 and reprinted in iOTA #13, December 2017, pp. 50 & 51.
- ^ Lee Harding, 1953, reported in Leigh Edmonds, 1953 - Perth Science Fiction Group, iOTA 08, July 2017, page 15
- ^ John Clute, "Lee Harding", The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 29 August 2023.
- ^ Author unknown, "Lee Harding", Fancyclopedia 3.
- ^ Lee Harding, quoted in Leigh Edmonds, "Editorial - Of Sorts: What happened to ‘old fandom’?", iOTA 06, May 2017, page 3
- ^ Bruce Gillespie, Award speech for Lee's Chandler Award, March 2006, as reprinted in Ethel the Aardvark, #221, May 2023, p. 12.