This is not a hoax. Jim Theis was a real person who wrote The Eye of Argon in all seriousness as a teenager and published it in a fanzine Osfan in 1970. But the story did not pass into the oblivion that awaits most amateur fiction. Instead a miracle happened and transcribed and photocopied texts began to circulate in science fiction circles gaining a wide and incredulous audience among both professionals and fans. It became the ultimate samizdat an underground classic and for more than thirty ye