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I suppose it all started when I was nosing through Mum's BWA. But Mum doesn't like me diving into things - she tends to look disapproving and say Always remember to define your terms, but surely Mum doesn't need defining? Oh, all right then. Mum is the most wonderful person in the world (or was that something she wrote when I left the keyboard unguarded to go and collect the post?). Mum started to get interested in science fiction when she was reading through her brother's library. Can't be too surprised, really - number one book she read was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and number two book was John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids. Don't know what number three was. Then, as a logical extension of actually reading the stuff, she got involved with fandom, and because she was stuck with the two of us kids, she chose those writing groups called apas as a way of communicating without having to get caught between fandom and home.
BWA is one of these apas. It's for women only and for women from all different countries. Mum writes for it and, if I'm lucky, I can see bits from it occasionally. And this bit I saw was by a Seattleite called Getsu-shin. She had come home from a party one night with her partner and just as their car turned into the driveway, two rabbits lolloped across the lawn. When caught, they turned out to have completely different characters and, surprise, surprise, the rather dopey one who thought that Getsu-shin's telephone was a litter tray was the one which was donated to some animal charity. The other speedily became christened JC (short for Jesus Christ, what is he into now?] and the twosome household became a threesome as JC started developing his territory.
Mum read this article to us as a bedtime story, I think it was because she liked it the first time, but we wanted it again ... and again ... and again ... and I think it must have been Mum who, in an attempt to distract us, who suggested that we might like to produce an animal-based fanzine and that if we asked nicely, then Getsu-shin might let us reprint that article.
Not only did Getsu-shin say yes, but Margaret Organ-Kean said I could use the illustrations to go with the story, plus any other illustrations I liked! And she sent quite a lot, loads of studies of rabbits, some genuine ones, others fantastical rabbits with clothes on doing un-rabbit like things like skating.
It didn't take too long to get a couple of other articles - one about whales, one about the cats Mum had when she was young, one about anime and then we found the most marvellous illustration from Ian Gunn of wolf threatening a rabbit who was saying something like Oh, no, mister, do anything you like, but please don't put me into a virtual reality! And with an illustration like that, the title of Cybrer Bunny was obvious; plus, thanks to a bit of nifty typing from Mum, it was all ready for Corflu in 1994, with a further run for the Winnipeg Worldcon in August.
Since then, we've produced another seven issues, my brother Rob and I (is he another of those terms I have to define? I hope not. Suffice it to say that he's younger than me and can be OK sometimes). This issue is different though. Instead of finding the articles, finding the illustrations or sending the piece to an artist and asking for something appropriate, Mum's gone and got herself busy (busier than usual I think is what I'm suppose to say here). She said I could put the zine on my web page, but that any HTML would have to be learned and done by me, while she lounged around reading history books, on the excuse that she was tired. So that's why there's been a (very long) delay in getting this out, practically a year since the last issue.
Uh-oh, Mum's put down her book, which will probably mean that she's going to purse her lips again and say A piece of writing should have a beginning a middle and an end - and where's your end? My end is that I hope you will enjoy reading this and if you should fancy letting me (or Rob) know, well, just start clicking.
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Please leap in time and space to go to how to enjoy cockroaches or memories of Tintin or a story about a good teacher or even to look at some feedback - from the previous issue. If you want to go back, no problem, this is your route home. Rob and I both hope that you will enjoy reading this, stranger.
from Tara and Rob - this day of 1September 1996.