The Eye of Argon is a 1970 sword and sorcery fantasy novella by Jim Theis (1953–2002) that narrates the adventures of the barbarian Grignr.

[4] Theis was "a malaprop genius, a McGonagall of prose with an eerie gift for choosing the wrong word and then misapplying it," according to David Langford in SFX.

[5]Sometime in the 1970s, science fiction author Thomas N. Scortia obtained a copy of The Eye of Argon, which he mailed to horror novelist Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

Yarbro wrote to Darrell Schweitzer in 2003: Tom Scortia sent me the fanzine pages as a kind of shared amusement, since both of us tended to look for poor use of language in stories.

This work was such a mish-mash that we took turns reading it to each other until we could stand no more...About two weeks after the story arrived, we had a dinner party, mainly for MWA (Mystery Writers of America) and book dealer friends, and Joe Gores got to talking about some of the really hideous language misuse he had seen in recent anthology submissions and had brought along a few of the most egregious.

[Locus reviewer] Tom Whitmore asked if he could make a copy of it, and I loaned it to him, and readings of it started to become a hideous entertainment.

[8] It bears this note at the bottom: No mere transcription can give the true flavor of the original printing of The Eye of Argon.

What mismatches remain are mine.However, the online version was found to contain errors when an original copy of the fanzine was discovered in Temple University's Paskow Science Fiction Collection in 2003.

The ending was considered lost until a complete copy of the fanzine was discovered by librarian Gene Bundy at the Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library at Eastern New Mexico University in 2005.

[10] Bundy reported the discovery to Lee Weinstein, who had found the copy in Philadelphia, and subsequently published the article "In Search of Jim Theis" in the New York Review of Science Fiction 195.

Since at least the 1990s The Eye of Argon has been read aloud, usually as charity events, at several American science fiction conventions, such as OryCon, LosCon, and 5Con.

[13] James Francis "Jim" Theis (pronounced [ˈtaɪs]; August 9, 1953 – March 26, 2002)[14][15][16] wrote The Eye of Argon at age 16.

[21] In an interview on Hour 25 (the presenters of which would periodically stage a reading of The Eye of Argon) in 1984, Theis stated that he was hurt that his story was being mocked and vowed never to write again.

Because the novelette was at least once re-typed and photocopied for distribution without provenance, many readers found it hard to believe the story was not a collaborative effort, satire, or both.

"[3] David 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.

[24]Author Stephen Goldin said that, during a convention, he met a woman who told him she had done the actual mimeographing for the OSFAN publication.