The Lankhmar Star Daily

It’snearly the anniversary of the Lankhmar Star Daily, thirty years since the nowalmost-forgotten fanzine rocked society to the core.  Founded in Cornwall, its first incarnationdrew on the popular-culture of the very early 80s for those that missed the 60sto cling to the 70s with bloodied and rather dirty fingernails. Since in 1982it was still 1973 in Cornwall this was rather easier than perhaps the scathingcritics and later Lord Chancellors knew. Certainly when I visited a couple ofyears later cars were horse-drawn and young men went to work in tin mineswearing striped loons, or practised being old by spending the day in a librarycomposed of yellow paperbacks reading the paper.

Closed down by issue 3, the LankhmarStar Daily (curiously and still proclaimed to this day as an accident  regarding the initials) was forced to move toBournemouth and the exploding hippy scene there amongst a Christchurch Roadthat mostly sold litter. Still facing charges of obscenity (later acquitted)the mysterious editor ‘Adeptus Magus’ living on cheap beans and listening tohome-taped music re-launched the ‘fanzine of dissent’ on April fool’s day,selling 6000 copies by lunchtime. Challenging the law on homosexuality, tighttrousers, Kate Bush, and the ongoing war in Vietnam some thought it hadsomething to do with role-playing-games when a typo replaced ELP with RPG.

It was here that the multi-authorfranchise fiction Hurry On Sundown was born where with very few exceptionsstories were written by a widely spread band of thin, hairy people but whichwas described by the then Lord Chancellor as ‘a wankfest’. He still contributedthough. The still unnamed Adeptus Magus was joined towards the end of its runby the equally shadowy ‘Great ArgleBargle’ who wrote a lot about punch cardsfor computers and how to make a Nuclear device. Sundown was picked up as youdoubtless know by Trident Comics which is why the Adeptus Magus is now morepopularly known for his long run on Batman, the Black Canary, and famously thetwelve issue miniseries lauded by Alan Moore Three Wax – the story of a belly dancer, a valkyrie and Kate Mossfighting crime in a post-modern tale of psychedelic superhero nudity. And verygood it is too. 

For myself I came on board during thestill legendary Schoolkids Of LSD issue. Before this point I had only made anysort of contribution by getting noted in the Player’s Handbook alongside smalliron spike and small leather pouch, the inclusion of Small Homosexual Tendency.An inclusion that saw the whole run withdrawn by TSR. It wasn’t much of anissue, not much of my stuff made it in since those similarly ungifted lads intheir mid teens were insistent on the issue being about sexism, the role of women ingaming, and poetry about why don’tthe nice girls like me?

In these days of instant... blogs, it’shard to imagine a time when fanzines fulfilled that role. Typed, pasted,photocopied and sent out in envelopes it took effort and dedication to do. Andthe LSD was by far the best of them, especially those that tried to do exactlythe same thing but not nearly so well.