Where is the comet?

Once upon a time there was a movie producer named Ed Wood who produced movies that were so bad that they were good, movies like Plan 9 from outer space. Someone even made a movie about him. Ed Wood is famed in SF circles for his movies. However he wasn’t the only Ed Wood who was famed in SF circles.

Once upon a time there was a big name fan named Ed Wood. This was back in the days the attendence at worldcons was in the hundreds and there were no trekkies. Ed was a fixture of Midwest fandom, and one of the partners in Advent books.

In the mundane world Ed was a nuclear chemist. Like many fans he was morbidly obese. Like many fans he was a pack rat. (In fandom it’s called being a collector.) I’m told that his house in Hartford became structurally unsound because of the quantity of paper stored in the attic.

Back in the days before he married his wife JoAnn he had an apartment. This apartment was the sort of apartment that a fan like Ed Wood would have. It was short of the ordinary amenities and long on shelving for his SF collection. For example, he had but one fork, one knife, one spoon, one cup, and one plate.

One day his fiancee JoAnn came over with some of her friends to make the place civilized. As you might imagine Ed had not invested any great amount of time in cleaning the place, so the first thing the ladies wanted to do was a thorough cleaning. The cleaning supplies, if there were any, weren’t in evidence so JoAnn asked, “Ed, where’s the Comet?”

Ed replied quite innocently, “It’s in the living room on the second shelf, but there were only three issues.”

People were fond of telling the story of Ed and the Comet. I suspected that the story was exaggerated so I asked Ed about it once. He got very red and muttered, “Well how was I to know?” Apparently the story was all too true.