I remember one Thursday eveing in the old White Horse, Ted saying to me in a grim tone of desperate comi-tragedy: "I can't sell stories without an agent; but I can't get an agent until I sell." But he did sell. Notably to the Nova Publications, where he held the record of more sales than any other writer, and the distinction of having the longest run of consecutive-issue stories. Sales to Astounding followed, novels, serials, a whole gamut of fresh creative new writing from this born writer.

His pseudonyms ran into double figures, his output was prodigious, he crashed market after market. People began to talk about the 'E. C. Tubb style.' He brought a fresh breeze of clear and realistic thinking into sf story plotting and presentation. As editor. of Authentic Science Fition he insisted ruthlessly that every story must be logical, that none of the sloppy thinking and pseudo arty-craft emptiness ruining sf at the time could be allowed. His own work may fall into an 'E. C. Tubb style'; but there are many E. C. Tubbs, in writing style and story content no less than in his private life. Once publication had been achieved there poured from Ted a flood of stories: the tough, realistic almost cold-blooded chronicle of life on other worlds; the argumentative story where Ted dissected mercilessly the minds and motives of characters only he could create; the flamboyant period piece; the beautiful emotional stories that, in more than one instance, reflected a crisis in his own life; the mood pieces - but more of them later.

Now, fifteen or so years later, the output has slowed down a little; but it is still the same, if more mature, restless probing brain forever seeking something beyond the facile answer that dreams up still more superb E. C. Tubb stories.

Many people believe they know Ted Tubb. To talk to them individually is to realise that each knows - or thinks he knows - a different person. The most common misunderstanding is to imagine that the Ted Tubb who so grandiloquently conducts auctions and swashbuckles at conventions is the true man; more people see (and hear!) him presiding over auctions than see him at parties, but even the Ted Tubb who can talk solidly for an hour or more and hold his listeners enthralled is not the true man. Nor is the Ted Tubb who so dearly loves to girt on armour and sword and sally forth in knightly joust. Nor, too, is the man who will passionately argue an obviously lost cause purely from the love of verbal cut and thrust. One of the more interestingly ridiculous assessments of Ted came from a critic in connection with those mood pieces he writes with penetrating understanding of the human - as well as the alien - condition.

To paraphrase, the critic, adopting a meretricious view of Ted as a cynical grabber without loyalty to anyone or anything, admitted he must be a master craftsman to distil the pure beauty and tenderness of human feeling that so powerfully pervades his mood work. Yet, when you know the real E. C. Tubb, said this critic, how you realise all this fine feeling is a sham! Poor, deluded, blind critic! It is truer to say that Ted's mood pieces more frankly reveal the true man than any other facet of his personality we can perceive. But even that is not all the truth - E. C. Tubb is an enigma within an enigma and the whole swathed with a multi-coloured camouflaging halo of sparkle and genius so that, perhaps, the true man will never be revealed.

Many great stories have come from Ted's typewriter and he has appeared in many markets, his quirkish sense of humour joying in the international detection needed to clear up rights for a radio adaption in South Africa. His 'Star Ship' has been televised on French RDF. HIs 'Alien Dust' - and who can 'forget that Masterful evocation of the first real colony on Mars, done with loving care that makes it all so real? - has achieved national newspaper acclaim. And one mass-production pot-boiling author, now deceased, has been given credit for a couple of ECT works that show up the rest of that writer's output in no uncertain fashion.

"They landed like two dreams and a mdghtmare." "He was doing alright until he broke his leg." "The metal whispered." "God walked in his garden..." "He was an old man and tired..," These,and so many, many more - famous openings all. "He awoke to the sound of roaring trumpets..." this from 'The Last Day of Summer' the only story from a British magazine to be included in the 1955 SF, 'The Year's Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy' American anthology. And then there are 'The Dogs of Hannoie', and 'Tea Party', this from Nebula, two of Ted's own favourites. Myself, I recommend you to 'The Bells of Acheron.'

Ted is a Londoner and, like myself, proud of that. He is in his early forties, preferring to be 'young-old' rather than 'old-young.' He is blessed with a wife and two daughters, living in his own house in South London, wherein is a study that has given birth to more out-of-this-world schemes and ideas than most places on the globe. As his profile in New Worlds #20 claims, he has been reading sf 'as long as he can remember' which takes his memory back to the pre-war days of the Clayton Astoundings, and it is his profound grasp of the knowledge of the golden days of Astounding, the period 1939-42 that contributes to give him a solid edge of professional competence and understanding of the field lacking in so many more modern writers. Ted inspired the formation of the British Science Fiction Association and edited the first 'Vector', his enthusiasm and dynamism moving an entire convention into action.

No one has carried out a detailed literary survey of E. C. Tubb's work, while so many inferior writers are lauded with ridiculous fervour, and perhaps this is due to his own modesty concerning his work - the Ted Tubb who holds the floor and passionately argues cause and ideas is far removed from the Ted Tubb who sits at his desk to write of those ideas. He once wrote a story at breath taking speed, felt it to be not up to his usual standard, but, being ECT, decided to send it to an American market under a pseudonym. It sold first time out. That is like Ted; he doesn't believe in trumpeting all he does and frenziedly seeking applause. This very brief appreciation cannot hope to even mention all the wonderful stories he has written or to deal with the essential humanness of his handling or to probe the reasons for his success; let us hope that his work will soon form the subject of a survey that will bring into the open the debt all readers of sf owe him for the pleasure he has brought.

It goes without saying that Ted is not honouring us by being Guest of Honour so much as we are honouring him - but I'll say it all the same. When I first heard Ted was to be Guest of Honour at the 1964 Easter Convention, my first reaction was to say: "And about time too!"

We do honour here at this convention to a man who has done a great deal for science fiction - and the enduring happiness is that he has yet more to write... Listen to this man for he has much to tell us. He is a professional writer and he likes company and the spark-striking struggle of verbal combat - and if you don't know what to say to him, I suggest the best possible words are. "What's yours?"

H.K.Bulmer.