Most Saturday afternoons I’m usually recording my expenses in the
cheque transaction booklet and cleaning house so that later in the
day I can work on what I enjoy most: writing. But this Saturday I
ditched the usual routine and took a bus out to the second annual
Sacramento Zine Fest held held at the Verge Center for the Arts in
downtown. My first experience with zines was when I picked up a
couple free science fiction fanzines at my first full sci fi/fantasy
convention, BayCon in San Jose, several years ago. Soon, I came
across one called The National Fantasy Fan and purchased a
membership that gave me as many as six issues a year. I even wrote a
review of a Larry Niven book for one. That was one of my first
published works. Ever since then, I’ve always been interested in
the zine scene. Many famous speculative fiction writers started off
writing for fantasy and science fiction fanzines--Harlan Ellison and William Gibson to name two.
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| Many fantasy and science fiction fanzines featured unknown authors who would become famous, such as this one by 'Superman' creator Jerry Siegel. It's issue number 3 of the 1933 fanzine, Science Fiction. Credit: Wikimedia Commons |
So what is a zine?
Simply put, it was the thing in self-publishing before
self-publishing went online. Zines are self-published magazines and
books produced on low budgets and by small special interest (or
niche) groups. They are normally what the big, traditional publishing
houses won’t publish because they do’t fit their marketing
agendas. Before self-publishing went online, many unknown writers and
artists would publish cheaply, produced magazines called “zines”.
Many of these were published by special interest clubs such as
science fiction and fantasy fan groups, political interest groups,
pop music clubs, and artists clubs.
But as much as
internet has made it easier to publish higher quality products, zine
publication still continues today online and off. Much of its
survival is due to the interest in the print-based culture of the
medium but also in its small community focus. It’s like print books
and vinyl records today: there’s streaming music and e-books so why
do we need vinyl or print? We need it because there is an experience
and culture in the art that we don’t get through intangible,
digital images and text.
Here are some of the
highlights from the Sacramento Zine Fest:
A table that sold
copies of mini zine books of art and short stories. One of these I
bought for only two bucks (I told you they’re produced on very low
budgets!): a mini booklet of “bad” short stories. However, as I
told the author who was selling these, “bad” is relative. I read
all of them on the bus going home and most of them are actually good
at least as humour.
Fantasy Art.
Comic Books: from
full length ones by Sacramento’s Eben Burgoon to
pocket-size/quarter-folded ones by others.
Fandom arts and
crafts such as ones of Mario Brothers characters and Hello Kitty.
A table displaying a
sample of the Sacramento Public Library’s zine collection. The
library subdivides this collection into locally produced zines that
they shelve in their central branch’s Sacramento Room and a general
collection for zines that were produced elsewhere and so are shelved
elsewhere.
I asked the library staff woman at the table if they
accept fantasy and science fiction fanzines for donations and she
said, delightedly, that they do and that they even have a Star
Trek zine in their collection. I told her I might have some extra
zines of the genre that I may want to donate. Today was the first
time I heard about their zine collection. So, as I
told her, I’ll have to stop by the
library sometime and check
it out!
A zine author’s
1920s Royal typewriter. She said it was still in working condition.
It reminded me of Harlan Ellison’s collection of old typewriters.
He wrote his stories using a manual one even into the age of PCs.
This is a good thing if it makes the author work more comfortably.
Other zines and
related stuff: political publications, transgendre publications and
art, tattoo and punk zines and art.
Sure there’s
internet that allows us to publish whatever we want in one form or
another. But print zines are a culture within themselves which
consists of subcultures within that in which fantasy, horror and
science fiction fanzines are just a few of. Unlike Twitter and
Facebook, they also tend to draw people to real time and space events
such as Sacramento Zine Fest.
Do you or have you
read or written for a zine?
Next time: Another
Insecure Writer’s Support Group post which will be up a week from
this Wednesday. So there may or may not be a post next Saturday.
Until next time . .
.
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