Darroll Pardoe
(May 31, 1943 – January 28, 2021)
William Darroll Pardoe, a Stourbridge, UK, fan, was a member of the Young Science Fiction Reading Group, the BSFA, the Stourbridge Circle, and of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group, which he joined in 1965. He was also a member of several APAs: OMPA, APA-B, SLAPA, Frank's APA, Get Stuffed, Pieces of Eight, and Pictish.
From 1967 to 1969 Pardoe was resident in the USA, as a postgraduate student at Ohio State University, and partook in local fandom, serving as secretary for COSFS. From there, he joined OMPA during the 1968/9 hiatus (his Pablo 1 was the only contribution saved from the lost mailing 51) and went on to serve as its treasurer in 1970–6.
Pardoe also edited the later incarnation of Les Spinge (1966–79), one issue of Vector (#44, 1967) and one of Dark Horizons (1974). He took over the editorship of the newszine Checkpoint from #47, April 1974, changing the format to a single sheet of offset-printed quarto, folded to give 4pp; after #62 a year later and a half-year hiatus, it was taken over by Ian Maule.
From the mid-1970s he issued a succession of perzines/letter substitutes, often with the word "pig" in the title, interspersed with the occasional one-shot, and from 1983 he was a regular contributor to several UK-based APAs.
Pardoe used house name Cringebinder Publications (leading to a letter of complaint after he had used it in his Vector), though not with unique numbers at first. Starting with the first issue of Stulticiae Laus (April 1975) he maintained a sequential numbering across all of his fanzine and apazine titles and issues, for his own records even if not explicitly on the fanzines themselves. He said in Pig on the Wall 17 (April 1983) that it was "as far back as I have a complete record. There were perhaps 70 items published by me before then, but I no longer have the means to make a comprehensive list. Nor, indeed, am I especially motivated to do so." His list had reached 244 by October 1990, implying that with the excluded pre-1975 titles and issues his likely total count was well in excess of 300. He carried on producing fanzines until at least 1999.
He married fellow fan Rosemary Nicholls "just" before the April 1970 issue of BSFA Bulletin (#32, p. 3). The same issue mentioned he would be the editor of the British Tolkien Society's "magazine", but this did not happen.
Darroll died of Covid-19.
- Pardoes' website (in Wayback Machine)
- Darroll Pardoe in Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- A Tear for the High Star Falling [1983, 1994]
- Arthur Rose Weir -- Memorial Anthology [1971]
- Checkpoint [1974–5] (issues 47–62)
- Dark Horizons [April 1974] (issue 8)
- Endless Highway [1983–84] (for APA-B)
- Falling Leaf [1988]
- Just Another Dream Going By [1982–84]
- Les Spinge [1966–79] (issues 15–36)
- Meet on the Ledge [1977–82]
- Pablo [1968–72] (for OMPA; some issues with Rosemary Nicholls)
- Pig on the Wall [1982–85]
- Piglet [1985-88]
- Pigs Can Fly [1997–99?]
- Stulticiae Laus [1975–80]
- The Flying Pig [1988–97?]
- The Postal Menace [1971] (for OMPA; one issue)
- Vector [1967] (issue 44)
- Vita Sancti Cubiani [1985]
Additionally various individually-titled contributions to:
- Get Stuffed [1983–84]
- Pictish [1987–90?]
- Pieces of Eight [1987–90?]
- SLAPA [1984–90?]
A run of eight untitled 2- or 4-page fanzines in 1980
| Person | 1943—2021 |
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