"The Eye of Argon" was published in 1970 in OSFAN, the journal of the Ozark SF Society, issue number 10. Photocopies -- invariably with the last page missing -- circulated for decades, and it became a regular sf convention challenge to read Jim Theis's mangled prose with a straight face. This HTML document is based on the standard ASCII text of the story, widely available on line. In the January 2005 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction it was revealed that a complete copy of OSFAN #10 had been unearthed in the Jack Williamson SF Library at Eastern New Mexico University. Thanks to the collection administrator Gene Bundy, the missing half-page of text appeared at last in NYRSF #198, February 2005, and has been inserted below.
Jim Theis himself, who was 16 when "The Eye of Argon" first appeared, reportedly died circa 2001 at age 48. He will be long remembered in sf fandom.
