"Fanzine" is a term that has been in use since the 1930s, a coinage that spread through "first fandom"...
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| Title: | "Fanzine" is a term that has been in use since the 1930s, a coinage that spread through "first fandom"... |
| Creator: | paghat the ratgirl |
| Date(s): | Aug 14, 1999 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Zine Fandom, SF Fandom |
| Topic: | Fanzines |
| External Links: | embedded in the discussion is here Archived |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
"Fanzine" is a term that has been in use since the 1930s, a coinage that spread through "first fandom"... is a post by paghat the ratgirl imbedded in a larger discussion at alt.horror.cthulhu.
Some Topics Discussed
- when fanzines were first "created"
- what is an apazine, what is a sercon, what is a crudzine, what is a genzine
- "newsstand" zines = mainstream, for-profit magazines
- what is a semi-prozine, a term this essay's writer promoted in the past
- the Hugo Awards and their place in the definition of 'zine
- it used to be cheaper to mail one's publications to other fans, and it is understandable that some fans like the less expensive "net" to broadcast their creations
- fiction was not an expected, or respected, item in science fiction zines; "serious" writers wrote for money in books
- Trekkies ruined everything with their lack of science fiction fandom institutional knowledge
- kids today ("nurds") are clueless disrespectful about fannish history, and they should respect their elders ("whiney old feebs")
From the Essay
"Fanzine" is a term that has been in use since the 1930s, a coinage that spread through "first fandom" of which most of the well known science fiction writers over the age of 65 were members (actually, most over 85 or dead). A fanzine was originally any magazine (usually mimeographed but by whatever means was to hand) that was edited & produced by a science fiction "fan". "Fans" established something of an international "community" but especially a 48-states community through the long lettercolumns in science fiction pulp magazines of the 1920s onward -- the early fanzine contributors & the letter columns of pulp magazines correlate closely.
These were not "fan" magazines in the sense above described by Jim, except they tended to consist of writers who also read pulp magazines & later mass market science fiction paperbacks, & many either did write or hoped to write science fiction for professional publication. But the subject matter of fanzines ranged all over the place & only occasionally were about science fiction per se. Many of the editors & writers -- H.P. Lovecraft a famous example -- were earlier involved with a movement that began in the Victorian era, the "Amateur Press Associations," which still exist & have not much changed from the 1800s -- an "apazine" being an extremely shortrun fanzine produced for distribution between apa members on whatever topic the editor-writer was pondering on a given day.
However, the Hugo Award for best fanzine retains the old meaning. A fanzine is any small press magazine published by a science fiction fan, & if you go through the winners for the last 35 years, you will find very few with a focused content such as described above. Some have boastfully been about everything EXCEPT science fiction despite that their distribution tended to be restricted to s-f fans & especially that minority of fans with some historical perspective about & at least second-hand knowledge of their descendance from First Fandom.
Among fanzine editors & contributors the creme of the crop were the "genzines" or fanzines with general topics ideally treated in a Benchleyesque manner. The second level in the hierarchy were fanzines about s/fs as a literature, mostly essays of the sort Sam Moskowitz wrote. These were called "Sercon" fanzines, meaning "Serious & Constructive" and the Benchleyesque was excluded. There was overlap of course; Don D'Ammassa edited a leading genzine AND wrote sercon essays about s-f. The amateur magazines that consisted primarily of fiction were usually regarded as poor third-cousins to genzines & sercon fanzines; though I personally always liked the fiction fanzines best, one has to admit they were rarely the quality of writing found in Granfaloon, Simulacrum, Warhoon, Mythologies, Yandro, and the whole genzine crowd whose contributors in retrospect look pretty impressive, while the fiction fanzine contributors with highly significant exceptions now appear to be primarily a "where are they now" crowd.
The best writers did not often contribute to fiction fanzines, just as the web's best writers are never to be found in fiction e-zines. The best writers then as now sold their fiction professionally. But many wrote whatever entertaining nonfictional nonsense came to mind for fanzines, & the great fanzine contributors included many who also wrote fiction, i.e., Ted White, Walt Willis, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury (who published his own fanzine as a kid), ad infinitum, & a good many who were never professional fictioneers but were awfully good at the fanzine essay.
So the "true" fanzine editors looked down their noses at fiction fanzines, though fiction fanzine editors often felt superior because they were aspiring to something professional. For this reason the goofy tag "semi-prozine" arose in 1973 among fiction fanzine editors -- I helped promote that embarrassing term -- meaning a fanzine with a professional wannabe personality. The term was temporarily adopted as a Hugo Category, but was misunderstood to mean a fanzine with a large distribution & mostly only Locus ever won it. The term seems finally to have died a deserved death though it remains that the fiction fanzine editors dislike the term "fanzine" & most would just call themselves small press magazines, period.
A lot of what would formerly have been fanzine activity has today transferred to the net in the form of horror, science fiction & fantazy e-zines, but mostly it is the lowest end that in print form used to be called "Crudzines" with the lame opinions & lamer fiction of never-will-bes. Good fiction continues to find print outlets. But the day of high-end Genzine seems to be gone because printing & mailing costs are prohibitive. In 1965 you could print & mail a 50 page fanzine in a sturdy envelope for less than a quarter full cost ("the sticky quarter" payment alluded to a quarter that had been scotch taped to a postcard, & which was sufficient to cover all expenses except personal salary) so you could reach 250 people for $65, pretty affordable even if you gave every single copy away for free. Today the equivalent would cost more like $3.50 per copy to produce & mail which makes the net seem awfully appealing though I seriously doubt even so many as ten out of 800 "hits" at an ezine location consisted of actual readers, whereas the old 300-copy fanzines were read by at least 300 people from front to back -- 300 people who either were or would soon be helping define what would be published professionally, so getting a name in the fanzine world could help sell actual books, whereas being a name in the ezine world defines you as a slushpile reject. Hence the correlations between today's ezines & the classic fanzines is very superficial.
I'm disappointed Jim Hawley, like so many interested parties, lack this historical perspective on fanzines. The great influx into fandom of people who don't know the history of fandom & fanzines began with the Trekkie influx so that now the "fan" as First Fandom would have recognized him or her is an extreme minority. This makes me feel like one of the last "movements" in literature -- the phenomenon self-consciously understood by every First Fandom participant & for a couple "generations" to follow at least through the 1970s -- has not only been deluted [sic] to nothingness in the present, but even forgotten as part of our history. Except by us whiney old feebs lamenting the good old days of fandom, those of us who remember when 500 nurds could form a convention & every single one of them had read the same books & 20% were the writers themselves, compared to todays 5000 conventioneers among whom hardly any have read anything whatsoever even if they stupidly think they can write it.