Seven the Hard Way

Zine
Title:	Seven the Hard Way
Publisher:
Editor(s):	Carrie Hagen
Date(s):	August 1987
Series?:
Medium:	fanzine
Genre:
Fandom:	Blake’s 7
External Links:
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cover by Shann

Seven the Hard Way is a het 83-page Blake's 7 anthology.

The front cover is by Shann. There are no interior illustrations.

sample text

The Editorial

This is your friendly editorial which very few people read and which I am going to write anyway. For those of you who had to wait a little while to get this 'zine (and Les Imbeciles) sorry — I had to move and get ready for school right after Scorpio V, so although I got the fliers ready, the 'zine wasn't quite finished. Oh well, it's not too late.

Of course, I hope you enjoy this 'zine. All of the stories were never meant to be published. They were written as personal statements, or to share with our friends. But then we got the idea to do a 'zine, and we realized that most Blake 7 fans should be considered friends anyway, so why not share. Besides, we were getting tired of reading bad stories, and decided to write our own (bad stories, that is.)

Most of these stories had interesting beginnings, running along the line of "Colette, I want to write, what should I write about?" "What about a ghost story?" "Naw, just read one." "Vampire, werewolf?" "Werewolf, yeah, that's the ticket!" "But not Avon, pick on somebody else." "O.K."

Two of these stories were reactions to two types of story that I have read a lot of, some done very well, and some not: The dream story and the Avon wallow story. Neither should be taken too seriously. (Nothing I write should be taken too seriously!)

I'd like to thank everyone who encouraged me to write and get this 'zine together. Especially Pat Benatar who came up with the title (I wonder if she's a Blake's 7 fan).

Apologies for spelling errors. All of them are typos (I think), I should know how to spell, since I'm getting my master's in English, but who knows. You may note that often I will use British spellings, but not consistently. Nothing is consistent in the 'zine, because all of the pieces were edited separately. Sorry to those who care about those things.

But, enough apologies. Enjoy the 'zine, and please tell your friends and have them order too.

Bye,

Carrie

Contents

• Editorial by Carrie Hagen
• Calculated Heroics by Carrie Hagen (1)
• Priorities by Colette Boloch (39)
• The Way Out by Lynne Leeper (42)
• The Ultimate 'Bobby, I Had the Strangest Dream' Story (But Read It Anyway!) by Carrie Hagen (66)
• It's a Tough Job, But Somebody's Got to Do It by Carrie Hagen (68)
• Wallow, Wallow, Wallow by Carrie Hagen (73)
• The Quest to the Throbbing Tower by Carrie Hagen (77)

Reactions and Reviews

I guess this zine should really go on the erotica list (which includes mixed gen-and-smut zines), since one of the stories, "It's a Tough Job...," is a very explicit adult story with lots of anatomical detail.

Lynne Leeper's PGP story includes romance but is gen, strictly non-explicit.

"The Quest to the Throbbing Tower" is an odd one, very enjoyable (my favorite in the zine) but hard to classify. It starts out looking as if it will be a PWP, as the narrator-heroine goes into a bar looking for fun (yes, it's that kind of throbbing tower she has in mind) and meets Vila. Then it turns into an adventure story when she finds herself on Scorpio by accident, and finally it takes a sexual turn once again. The sex is not described in detail, but the word fuck is used, so I suppose the story should probably be considered adult.

The dream story is short but excellent, a real chiller; it deserves a better title. I also appreciate the use of Dayna as POV character in this story, and of Soolin as the beautifully suffering protagonist of "Calculated Heroics" (though there is plenty of action for the other characters in that one too).

Overall this zine is much better than I expected, a pleasant surprise. I wish that instead of self-publishing, the authors had submitted their stories to an editor who had done a bit of editing. They're not bad as is, and with some polishing they could be quite good.

The zine is old and not easy to come by, and probably wasn't all that widely circulated in the first place. I wonder whether anyone would be interested in doing edited reprints of some or all of the stories-- Horizon, maybe? I seem to recall that they were looking for stories featuring the women, and for het adult stories for a new Alternative Seven.

Is Carrie Hagen still in B7 fandom, and does anyone know her? She also did another B7 zine, Les Imbeciles, which I think is humor, but I haven't seen it.