Zines come in all shapes, sizes and genres, but I must confess one of
my favourite types is the sci-fi zine. Pre dating the popular bio-zine
of today and their (now) middle aged cousins the music and political
zines from the Punk rock era; science fiction and zines have been
synonymous with each other for over 80 years. This fact was brought
home to me after I catalogued a couple of sci-fi zines from the
Henderson collection. Btw we now have over 1000 items from the Henderson
collection catalogued!!
Science fiction zines, commonly called “
Fanzines”
(they are the genre of zine to coin the phrase), are still an important
part of the zine world though they do not seem quite as popular as they
once were. As a science fiction fan this seems sad to me. So, when in
recent times, I came across a couple of particularly interesting
examples of fanzines I was very pleased.
The first zine is called “
My time annihilator: a brief history of the 1930’s science fiction fanzines” by Christopher Todd. This zine, to borrow a quote from
Zinewiki,
“Details the origin as well as printing and distribution methods of
early zines. Christopher describes finding a book called The Fanzine
Index, which listed science fiction fanzines from 1937 to 1952, and
hunting down titles from the list at a Temple University archive.
Selections from the early zines illustrate My Time Annihilator”.
What I love about this zine is that it shows us some snippets of
early fanzines while detailing some of the rich history behind zine
making. OK so while it’s not actually a fanzine zine (or maybe it’s a
fanzine of fanzines?) it does take us on a time travel journey through
the history of early science fiction zines.
The second zine is called “
Megca”.
Well I think it’s called “Megca”, those of you who go to the record
will notice that the title is enclosed in square brackets, which is
cataloguer speak for “For various reasons this information may not be
entirely correct, I think it is correct but am not 100 percent certain
{cataloguer scratches head, crosses fingers and hopes for the best}”,
followed by two alternative titles also enclosed in square brackets to
show other potential alternatives for the title. In this case the
square brackets and alternative titles are because the title is written
out in a very dramatic font, which looks wonderfully artistic but also
makes it a little difficult to read for the humble cataloguer! {Although
now I look at the scanned image it suddenly looks much clearer than the
actual item – tricky!}
Luckily I didn’t let it put me off reading this somewhat rough but
compelling (very) short story. Only every second page is populated with
a sparse text, alternating between pages of dark rough illustrations.
The story, though somewhat cryptic so therefore open to interpretation,
is about the fate of some interplanetary explorers after their ship
crashes, stranding them in a hostile environment. What I love about
this zine is that it represents another type of fanzine, which is also
often called a ‘literary’ zine, as it is a creative work written in the
Sci-fi genre rather than a zine dedicated to the genre.
It reminds me also that many zine creators are also aspiring fiction
writers, who use zines as a starting point for their careers. In the
past, an author getting their short stories published in a literary zine
or publishing their own work as a zine has been a precursor for getting
their stories published more widely in pulp fiction serials or in short
story anthologies – this is how sci-fi and fantasy authors such as
Vol Molesworth,
Ray Bradbury and H.P. Lovecraft got their start. It is fun to think
that the creator of Megca may one day become a popular sci-fi writer –
and the NLA will have preserved a copy of their earliest work.
