Fan History: Les Flood

Photo: Les Flood; text by Peter Weston.

During the 1950s and early ’60s Leslie Flood’s ‘Fantasy Centre’ bookshop at Sicilian Arcade, near Kings Cross, London, was the absolute mecca for SF enthusiasts. He had a huge stock of new and secondhand books and magazines, including scarce US titles - desperately sought-after, in those days when currency controls prevented imports from America. Many treasures were to be found in that basement, but science fiction alone couldn’t support a shop in such a central location, so the ground floor was given over to music and records - not such a bad idea in 1956, when this picture was taken, when jazz and science fiction were contemporary bedfellows.

Les Flood was a regular at the ‘White Horse’ pub meetings and conventions, and was also one of the ‘Gang of Four’ (along with John Wyndham) who launched the International Fantasy Awards in 1951. He was involved with the establishment of the London-based SF Luncheon Club in 1954, and in 1957 presented the final IFA to a bemused J.R.R. Tolkien for Lord of the Rings. Les was closely associated with Ted Carnell’s New Worlds as a reviewer and supporter, and eventually took over the Carnell literary agency when Ted retired. Les died in August 2007 in Spain, where he had lived for many years.

(28 OCT) Fan History: Ted Carnell at the British Interplanetary Society, 1936

Photo: from the collection of E.J. Carnell; text by Peter Weston.

Science fiction and space travel have always been inextricably entwined, as demonstrated by the first meeting of the London branch of the British Interplanetary Society more than seventy years ago on 28 October 1936. Among the members were Ted Carnell, prominent on the left of the picture, later to become editor of Britain’s most important SF magazine, New Worlds, for 141 issues from 1946-64. In this image – which has been air-brushed at some date possibly for use in a later publication – in the front row to the right of Carnell is the 19 year-old Arthur C. Clarke, at this time newly arrived in London from his native Minehead to work as an auditor for HM Exchequer. Next to him is Walter Gillings, who only a few months later would launch Britain’s very first SF magazine, Tales of Wonder, which ran for five years until 1942. To the right of Gillings is the somewhat older Prof. A.M. Low who had by this time already written his first SF novel, Adrift in the Stratosphere. The Professor became President of the British Interplanetary Society for a period, and this meeting was held in his office in Piccadilly.