FANZINE

   A fanzine is an amateur magazine produced by sf fans. The term "fanzine", coined by Russ Chauvenet in 1941, has been borrowed and used by comics collectors, wargamers, "underground" publishers and other non-sf enthusiasts. The fastest-growing category in the mid-1980s was the soccer fanzine.The first known fanzine was The Comet (May 1930) ed Raymond A. PALMER for the Science Correspondence Club, followed by The Planet (July 1930) ed Allen Glasser for the New York Scienceers. However, both of these were mainly about science, although the second did include reviews of the professional sf magazines. Some regard the first true fanzine-certainly the first major one - as The Time Traveller (\#1, Jan 1932) ed Julius SCHWARTZ and Mort WEISINGER. Schwartz, with others, went on to publish Science Fiction Digest (FANTASY MAGAZINE). These and other early fanzines were straightforward publications dealing exclusively with sf or amateur science, and were produced by local fan groups founded in the USA by the more active readers of contemporary professional SF MAGAZINES. However, as interest grew and sf fans formed closer contacts and friendships, individual fans began publishing for their own amusement, so that fanzines became more diverse and their contents more capricious; fan editors also began to exchange fanzines and to send out free copies to contributors and letter-writers. Thus fanzines abandoned any professional aspirations in exchange for informality and an active readership-characteristics that persist to the present and distinguish fanzines from conventional hobbyist publications. From the USA the idea spread to the UK, where Maurice Hanson and Dennis Jacques started NOVAE TERRAE (later ed E.J. CARNELL as the forerunner of NEW WORLDS) in 1936. Since then fanzine publishing has proliferated and many thousands of titles have appeared. Probably 500-600 fanzines are currently in production, the majority in North America but with substantial numbers from the UK, Australia and Western Europe, and occasional items from Japan, South America, South Africa, New Zealand, Turkey and Eastern Europe.Many modern sf writers started their careers in FANDOM and published their own fanzines; Ray BRADBURY, for example, produced 4 issues of Futuria Fantasia (1939-41), which contained inter alia his first published stories. Other former fanzine editors include James BLISH, Kenneth BULMER, John CHRISTOPHER, Harlan ELLISON, Damon KNIGHT, C.M. KORNBLUTH, Charles Eric MAINE, Michael MOORCOCK, Frederik POHL, Robert SILVERBERG and Ted WHITE. Some still find time to publish: Wilson TUCKER, for example, has continued to produce Le Zombie since 1938. Fan editors are of course free to produce whatever they like, and so fanzines vary dramatically in production, style and content. Normally they are duplicated, photocopied or printed, consisting of anything from a single sheet to 100+ pages, and with a circulation of from 5 to 5000 copies, though the tendency in the 1980s has been to call fanzines with a circulation of over 1000 SEMIPROZINES. The smaller fanzines are often written entirely by the editor and serve simply as letter substitutes sent out to friends; others have limited distribution within amateur press associations such as FAPA and OMPA. The larger fanzines, with an average circulation of 200-500, fall into three main categories, with considerable overlap: those dealing with sf (containing reviews, interviews, articles and discussions); those dealing with sf fans and fandom (containing esoteric humour); and those dealing with general material (containing anything from sf to Biblical engineering). (A further category consists of fanzines exclusively publishing amateur fiction; these are not listed in this volume unless widely enough circulated to be regarded as semiprozines.) On the fringe there are specialist fanzines catering for FANTASY and SWORD-AND-SORCERY fans, others devoted to cult authors such as J.R.R. TOLKIEN, H.P. LOVECRAFT and Robert E. HOWARD, and yet others which deal with sf films or tv series such as STAR TREK. Since 1955 there has been a Best Fanzine category in the HUGO Awards, and since 1984 a Best Semiprozine category also.A selection of 36 important fanzines - some now regarded as semiprozines - from different periods of fandom receive full entries in this volume: ALGOL, The ALIEN CRITIC , ANSIBLE, AUSTRALIAN SF REVIEW, AUSTRALIAN SF REVIEW: SECOND SERIES, BIZARRE, CRITICAL WAVE, FANAC, FANTASY COMMENTATOR, FANTASY MAGAZINE, FANTASY REVIEW, FANTASY TIMES, FILE 770, The FUTURIAN, HYPHEN, JANUS/AURORA, LOCUS, LUNA MONTHLY, NIEKAS, NOVAE TERRAE , PSYCHOTIC, QUANDRY, QUARBER MERKUR, RIVERSIDE QUARTERLY, SCIENCE FICTION: A REVIEW OF SPECULATIVE FICTION, SF CHRONICLE, SF COMMENTARY, SCIENCE FICTION EYE, SLANT, SPECULATION, THRUST, VECTOR, The VORTEX, WARHOON, XERO and YANDRO. Data on another dozen or so fanzine titles are available by following up cross-references. The majority of the above are critical magazines, and many are listed again under CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF.

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