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33 MEMPHEN ANNUAL # Addenda A publication of the Mid South Science and Fiction Association, this ish solely edited by TOM FOSTER. All rights revert to original artists. Production, collating, technical help from JERRY HAGER, Greg Bridges, Kestrel Bridges, Kiara Tao Bridges. Please use the Club P.O. Box as Tom's current address might best be called fluid. That is Memphen, P.O. Box , Memphis, TN 38182, USA As most reading this will know I have been touting Tom Foster for nomination as Best Fan Artist for some time now. Tom's been doing Fan Art since he was in High School over 30 years ago and has been published in lots of fanzines and has been esp. active in the past with Minneapolis fanzines such as Rune, etc (he then lived west of the Mississippi River at least - West Memphis,AR!). Lately he's been mostly been doing art for Memphen, as well as other projects. As Memphen is primarily directed at the MidSouth area fans, I as editor have been mostly sending it to local fen and to outside fanzines only when I have a few ish's piled up, to showcase Tom's work. I figure a few ish's of Memphen with Tom's art plus what contribs I may have gotten or done myself, might be worth an occasional ish of the better zines such as Challenger, Mimosa, Wabe, Littlebrook, etc. Mostly they've been generous enough to send all for all in trade for Memphen. With the quality of Guy Lillian's Challenger or the Lynch's Mimosa, that's a bit like getting an elephant for a mouse. I'd say the average page count for Memphen over the years has been around 6 pages counting Tom's usually great cover and most of that local club news. Having some idea what goes into putting together genzines like Chall or Mimosa, I can only say they re being VERY generous. I realized several years ago, tho, that I was not serving my favorite fan artist and good friend his due, esp. considering his always generous contribs. as I was not sending out copies of Memphen to fandom more widely to appreciate Tom's art, too. So, I started send more ish's out, in clumps of 2 or 3 (2 usual ish's of Memphen can go out for one stamp usually). In 2002 I thought why not try to get Tom nominated for Best Fan Artist Hugo? So I tried for that and the FAAN awards too. I think the effort was a little misunderstood as Memphen got some nominations and not Tom Foster! There's a HEAP of better zines out there then Memphen so keep them in mind, NOT

34 Memphen, but do think about Tom Foster for Best Fan Artist. About Tom, tho, he's an aw shucks kind of guy with a passion for his art. He certainly can't seem to stop doing it that's for sure, which is always fine by me. His vision is own. For some years his finances have been in more than a little distress - a long dragged out divorce, a son in College (now studying in Japan - notice the Japanese/ Back Front Cover), a bit of a loss of confidence set in which affected his art for awhile. For some years now he's been working at an Antique Mall on Union Ave. in Memphis, which has kept his basic bills paid but not much more. Lately, he's had some luck selling his art - a series of Memphis Blues musician greats to a bar in Pennsylvania, doing art for movies being made in Memphis (one with Rip Torn - 40 Shades of Blues which by the way is one of the featured films at Sundance this year and Cowboy Jack s Home Movie or Shakespeare is a George Jones Fan which is a featured film at Tribeca Film Festival in New York City plus has been optioned to be shown on the CMT Channel, Midtown Memphis Sketches (out soon), The North Mississippi Allstars latest Album cover and a Furry Lewis Retrospective Album cover, etc. The Cowboy Jack film was directed by Robert Gordon and has won 2 awards at the Nashville Film Festival already, usually with mentions of the work Tom did on it. Tom did art that took up 7 or 8 minutes of the film. He did cells of B & W storyboard which were sent to a company in California that morphed it from one cell to the next and colourized it. Tom said it turned out surprisingly good. The director already has said he wants more art for the film as CMT wants Cowboy Jack s to be longer to fit the format they have in mind. A review of Cowboy Jack s is at AINT IT COOL d=20096 Tom edited an Art-ish of Memphen a couple of years ago, and quite attractive it was too. This Memphen Annual is his,too; a combination of some of his art for Memphen and work with other Fan artists such as Ken Fletcher, Steve Stiles. etc. So enjoy! Production notes on this ish Tom took the original art he had, collaged it, did all the layout then gave me the sheets to print after he told me that it was going to take close to 40 cents a sheet to print it (ummm, 8 sheets, times 200 plus collation, folding and stapling which would have been extra). My brother In law has a HP laser printer that will do 11X17's so I laid the sheets out to take advantage of that, Jerry Hager did the printing, I and Kestrel Bridges did the collation, folding and stapling plus will likely help with the envelope stuffing. So for the cost of a laser cartridge and ½ plus a couple reams of 11X17 paper (are they still called reams at that size?) This was done. Now comes the postage! The Adobe Acrobat PDF file is being generated with Wordperfect at a somewhat reduced resolution to keep the size of the file down. Feedback on that aspect is welcome. A note about the return address for the club. The building that used to be the Post Office that housed the actual Box was condemned. The row of buildings that it is part of is some 80 or 90 years old I think and some years ago they tore down the one between the Post Office and the others in the row to give them at least a little parking. Well, it seems there has been a bit of subsidence, the walls cracked so the Post Office had to leave. The weakened w all has a parody of shoring to support it now, even tho no one is actually in the post office building. The Post Office has has moved the pick up to another post office with plans to move the actual Post Office Boxes to the lobby soon, with promises that the P.O. Box will be good for another year. Of course this new PO has truncated lobby hours and how often do you see a wanted poster for the robbery of THAT post office? Not just shots of Osama Nut Laden? So for the next year, you may continue to use the old address of P.O Box Greg Bridges (who by the way generated this text portion of the Addenda) is responsible for any text errors here in or problems with resolution due to scanning, etc. This is available for the usual while supplies last!

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