Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2017: Week 26

Letterzines were non-fiction zines that allowed discussion and chat among groups of fans before email, mailing lists, and the Internet were available. These zines printed letters of comment (called LOCs) from subscribers so they could carry out meta discussions, conversations, and what we would now call flame wars, as well as news about the source text and the fan community. Even non-letterzines often had letter columns filled with LOCs.

The earliest use of the term documented in Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction is 1950.