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You will often hear repeated online that “little is known” about Jim Theis. Granted, there’s not a lot online. He passed away before the days of social media, for one thing; for another, none of his family seems to be social media users—his wife appears to still be alive, as are his two sons, but none of them have presences on any social media platform that I could find. But if you dig, you can find enough, and what is available reveals hints of Jim’s character. 3/

First, the facts: James Francis Theis was born in St. Louis County, Missouri, on August 9, 1953 to Lillian Kroupa Theis and Norbert Theis. His middle name, Francis, likely was for his paternal grandfather, Frank Joseph Kroupa, who was born in 1881 in what is now the Czech Republic. Jim was an only child. 5/

By the time he was 16 and a junior at Lindbergh High School, Jim was heavily involved in fandom, and was a member of both the Ozark Science Fiction Association (OSFA) and the Comic Fandom Club, later known as the Graphic Fantasy Collectors of St. Louis (GraFandom or GraFan). The Eye of Argon was published in the August 1970 issue of OSFAN, just a couple weeks after Jim’s 17th birthday. However, this was not Jim’s first appearance in the zine, nor would it be his last. 6/

Perusing the available issues of OSFAN at the FANAC Fan History Project reveals that by March 1970, Jim was an active and established member of OSFA. He is mentioned as being in attendance not only at the club’s meetings, but at all of their quite-frequent parties. He already has a nickname in the club: the Nomad. (When Jim writes this himself, he capitalizes it as NOMAD, which leads me to believe this was a Star Trek reference.) 7/

The majority of the issues of the zine are just recaps of the club’s antics, most of which involve everyone piling into Doc Clark’s broken-down Chevy, dubbed Loki, and attempting to drive to a party, a picnic, or a concert, usually with Loki breaking down along the way. At one point, Jim’s dad, Norbert, is credited as rescuing Loki with a battery jump. 8/

Once the group gets wherever they’re going, wild antics tend to ensue, usually in the form of strip poker or drinking games. The writers are quick to note that Jim does not participate, owing to his age, but this seems to be contradicted by a letter printed in the April 1971 issue wherein Al Bakker writes from college to ask about his old drinking buddy Jim, and recounts some of Jim’s hijinks after “imbibing the godly nectars.” Sober or not, Jim seems to have been the life of the party. 9/

The November 1970 issue contains possibly my favorite Jim anecdote: an entire article chronicling the print party for the previous issue, which was held at Sue Watson’s house, aka the Slan Shack. (Slan being slang of the time for a SF fan.) The entire purpose of the article? Documenting that "JIM THEIS VOLUNTARILY, REPEAT, VOLUNTARILY WORKED!" (As the article states, "If you feel like dieing [sic] of shock, how do you think I feel?") 10/

As you read through the available archives of the OSFAN zine, you start to get a sense about who these people were. They were a boisterous, goofy, outgoing group of nerds, many of them teens, who had a ton of in-jokes. In fact, the majority of the issues were JUST in-jokes. Every issue had a bit of news about upcoming cons worldwide, some reviews, and then recaps of their own meetings and parties. Every one of those articles was dripping in in-jokes. 11/

Which brings us to The Eye of Argon, published in OSFAN 10. This was a departure for the zine—up to this point, it had published some poetry, but otherwise it was firmly a news zine, not a fiction one. The inclusion of EoA made the August 1970 issue at least three times longer than the typical OSFA zine. It was the first fiction piece they published, but it was a piece written by someone who was *well*-known within the club. 12/

The Eye of Argon itself is an obvious ripoff of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian stories from the 1930s. It has been lampooned for decades as being “the worst fiction ever written.” But there are two things that I think people are missing: First of all, a 16-year-old wrote it. Maybe back 30 years ago, it might have seemed unique. But we have the internet now. We have Fanfiction.net now. 13/

The fact of the matter is, we all start out writing crap. That’s how we learn. I know what my writing was like when I was 16. And I know why my writing was the way it was, too—I was parroting what I was reading and watching. And you can see that in Jim’s writing. Because it’s definitely a cross between parroting Howard… and parroting what *his friends were writing in OSFAN.*

Which brings me to point number 2: He wasn’t the only one in the OSFA writing this way. 14/

If you read through the other articles in the zine, you see that everyone’s using goofy purple prose to talk about anything and everything. Part of the reason it’s so hard to parse the in-jokes is BECAUSE everything is dripping in the goofy prose. It took three instances of Loki being mentioned before I realized it was a car and not an animal. The secretary of the club is the Keeper of the Flame. The editor is Ye Ed. There’s an imaginary leprechaun in attendance at every gathering. 15/

In addition to this, nobody ever actually believed EoA was any good—including Jim himself. I don’t know how the other members of OSFA found out he’d written it, whether he mentioned it to them offhand or if they even helped him in the writing of it. But they all, from the beginning, loved it not because it was good, but because it was *fun*. 16/

So, what about the Jay T. Rikosh Award? One of the curious facts learned by the rediscovery of the lost final page of the story in 2005 (an adventure I’m not getting into here—see sources at the end of the thread for the full story) was that Jim was the winner of this award. Many, including the 372 Pages hosts, assumed that this was supposed to be some kind of prize for excellent writing. It’s… uh… not quite. 17/

Jay T. Rikosh is a mysterious figure in the OFSA. Per Roger MacBride Allen in The Scholar’s Ebook Edition of The Eye of Argon (which I totally bought last night to research this rant), no one by the last name of Rikosh has ever existed in the United States. Allen speculated that Rikosh might have been an imaginary person, and he even theorized it might have been Jim Theis himself. 18/

(Link: Scholar's Ebook Edition: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/48288)

Jay T. Rikosh is absolutely a made-up name—and Rikosh, as one of the OSFAN editors, is listed with a fake address, the only member of the editorial board to do so. But he’s not Jim Theis. In the August 1970 issue, there is an article that explains that Rikosh goes by a pseudonym in fandom and does not want his IRL name or address revealed. It’s written in a joking way, but I suspect he probably was concerned about career implications in a time when fandom was considered odd at best. 19/

So what is the Jay T. Rikosh Award? It was a special award, conceived upon the publication of EoA, to be awarded to club members “For action and manner above and beyond the call of reason and fuggheadedness.” Ron Whittington, himself a later recipient of the award, wrote in the Sep. 1970 issue, “I must admit that Theis' "Eye of Argon" novelette gave me a few minutes of great fun the other night. He is well deserving of this month’s JAY T. RIKOSH award and has my vote for this trophy!" 20/

The Rikosh Award was a popularity contest in the club. Per the OSFAN December 1970 issue: “Of the local winners thus far... the one thing they have in common is that which earned the award for them. They are popular members of the club that did, created, or acted in a dunderheaded fashion. The award is never given to someone that is disliked or unpopular.” And Jim was the inaugural winner precisely because of all the lulz that EoA brought. 21/

In an OSFAN interview with Jim in the November 1970 issue, Giuseppe Caporale comments that he personally is proud of Jim for being such a good sport about all the teasing everyone gave him over the story.

CAPORALE: I think you should be given a pat on the back for such good sportsmanship. You showed real character.

THEIS: I didn't know that. I mean, it was easier than showing bad character and inviting trouble. 22/

Throughout the pages of the zine, Jim is absolutely roasted for the story, and yet everyone also is completely delighted by it. In other words, the reaction of the entire SFF community over the decades to come, where parties were made of trying to read it without laughing… this was going on from the very beginning. This is why OSFAN published it *in the first place.* And Jim knew about this. He was *in on the joke.* 23/

And the fact that he was in on the joke from the beginning makes some of the caricatures that the internet has tried to paint of him over the ensuing decades ring especially untrue. In particular, the portrayal of him as bitter in the unaired 1984 Hour 25 radio show. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s try to fill in what happened between EoA’s publication and when it became a cultural phenomenon. 24/