The Eye of Argon
Jim Theis
 ; Chapter 1 : The story starts with a violent swordfight between the barbarian Grignr and some soldiers. Grignr is on his way to Gorzom in search of wenches and plunder. ; Chapter 2 : Grignr arrives in Gorzom and goes to a tavern, where he picks up a local wench (with a "lithe, opaque nose"). A drunken guard challenges him over the woman; he kills the guard, but is arrested by the man's companions and brought before the local prince, who (on the advice of his advisor) condemns him to a life of forced labour in the mines. This chapter contains the first of several occasions when the word slut is applied to a man, presumably as an insult. ; Chapter 3 : Grignr sits despondent in his cell, thinking of his homeland. ; Chapter 3½ : A scene of a pagan ritual involving a group of shamans, a young woman to be sacrificed and a jade idol with one eye: a "many fauceted scarlet emerald", the Eye of Argon. ; Chapter 4 : Grignr sits bored and anguished in his cell and is losing track of time. He battles a large rat and it inspires him with a plan, involving the corpse of the rat. ; Chapter 5 : The pagan ritual proceeds, with a priest ordering the young woman up to the altar. When she fails to proceed, he attempts to grope her. She disables him with a hard kick between the testicles, but the other shamans grab and molest her. ; Chapter 6 : Grignr is taken from his cell by two soldiers. He takes the rat pelvis he has fashioned into a dagger and slits one soldier's throat. He then strangles the second and takes his clothes. He wanders the catacombs for a time, finding a storeroom, and narrowly avoids being killed by a booby-trap. Below this room he finds the palace mausoleum. He resets the booby-trap in case he is being pursued. :He hears a scream apparently coming from a sarcophagus. He opens it to find the scream is coming from below. He opens a trap door and sees a shaman about to sacrifice the young woman. He ploughs into the group of shamans with an axe and takes the Eye. The young woman, Carthena, turns out to be the tavern wench. They depart. ; Chapter 7 : One priest, who had been suffering an epileptic seizure during Grignr's attack, recovers, draws a scimitar and follows Grignr and Carthena through the trap door in the ceiling. ; Chapter 7½ : The priest strikes at Grignr but he triggers, and is killed by, the reset booby-trap before his sword can connect. Carthena tells Grignr of the prince, Agaphim, who had condemned him to the mines. They encounter Agaphim and kill him, as well as his advisor Agafnd. :They emerge into the sunlight. Grignr pulls the Eye of Argon out of his pouch to admire. The jewel melts and turns into a writhing blob with a leechlike mouth. The blob attacks him and begins sucking his blood. Carthena faints. Grignr, beginning to lose consciousness, grabs a torch and thrusts it into the blob's mouth. Traditional photocopied and Internet versions end at this point, incomplete since page 49 of the fanzine had been lost. The ending was rediscovered in 2004 and published in The New York Review of Science Fiction #198, February 2005. The authenticity of this "lost ending" is still disputed by many. ; The Lost Ending (Remainder of Ch. 7½) : The blob explodes into a thousand pieces, leaving nothing behind except "a dark red blotch upon the face of the earth, blotching things up." Grignr and the still-unconscious Carthena ride off into the distance. The version usually found on the Internet is incomplete, ending with the phrase "-END OF AVAILABLE COPY-". Susan Stepney claims to have the missing ending section, including information on how the lost ending was discovered. Quoting from that page: For the history of this great work, including the eventual discovery of the legendary lost ending, see New York Review of Science Fiction #195, November 2004, and #198, February 2005. Ansible, Langford's science-fiction newsletter, reports in its February 2005 issue that "according to a letter in The New York Review of Science Fiction (January 2005), a complete copy of the relevant 1970 fanzine has been unearthed in the Jack Williamson SF Library at Eastern New Mexico University. JWSFL collection administrator Gene Bundy reports that the long-missing Page 49 begins: "With a sloshing plop the thing fell to the ground, evaporating in a thick scarlet cloud until it reatained its original size.'..." Because the novelette was at least once re-typed and photocopied for distribution, without provenance, many readers have found it hard to believe the story was not a collaborative effort, a satire on bad writing, or both. The webmaster of a now defunct site called "Wulf's 'Eye of Argon' Shrine" argued that the story "was actually well paced and plotted. He went on to say that, although he didn't believe it himself, 'at least one sf professional today claims that the story was a cunning piece of satire passed off as real fan fiction.'" Langford reported the following, sent in by author Michael Swanwick, in Ansible #193: :I had a surprising conversation at Readercon with literary superstar Samuel R. Delany, who told me of how at an early Clarion the students and teachers had decided to see exactly how bad a story they could write if they put their minds to it. Chip himself contributed a paragraph to the round robin effort. Its title? "The Eye of Argon". The 1995 reprint was attributed to "G. Ecordian," after the hero, Grignr the Ecordian. Langford considers it well known that Theis is the author, and surmises that Delany misremembered the event. Author Stephen Goldin said that, during a convention, he met a woman who told him she had done the actual mimeographing for the Ozark-area fanzine. Lee Weinstein reports that he had originally heard that Dorothy Fontana had distributed the photocopies. Weinstein, however, later discovered Usenet posts by Richard W. Zellich, who was involved in running the St. Louis, Missouri area convention Archon. Zellich reported in 1991 posts that Jim Theis was real and attended the convention for years. What Weinstein calls "the smoking gun...the long missing citation" was a 1994 posting from New York fan Richard Newsome, who transcribed an interview with Theis published in OSFAN #13. Theis was quoted as saying, "How many professional writers have written a complete story at so early an age? Even so, 'Eye of Argon' isn't great. I basically don't know much about structure or composition." The interviewer praised him for showing good sportsmanship, and Theis replied, "I mean, it was easier than showing bad character and inviting trouble."