| I'm not particularly a fanzine fan, so I can't really answer in
very much detail, but I'll give it a shot.
Fanzine contents vary from zine to zine, dependant solely on the
whim of the editor. Some are strictly news-&-reviews oriented,
some are personal ramblings, some discuss sf&f in various ways,
some print fiction, some restrict their focus to certain subjects
(usually film/tv series or certain book series), etc.
I basicly only read 4 fanzines: LOCUS, SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE,
SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW, and OTHERREALMS. The first two are news-
oriented zines and are all but indispensible to the serious sf
reader/fan/collector (well, it's worth getting at least one of
them --- both are not necessary). Each publishes news items of
interest to sf fans about sf people and publishing, lists of
recently published (LOCUS) or forthcoming (SFC) books, articles
and columns of sf fan interest (eg. reviews), and the like.
The last is an electronic fanzine circulated from Usenet (I
suppose that net.sf-lovers/SF-LOVERS DIGEST is also a fanzine
of sorts as well). SF REVIEW is one of the major discussion-type
fanzines, and is worth subscribing to.
I don't have an SFR handy to give you subscription info, but here's
the info for the others:
LOCUS (Charles N. Brown, editor/publisher), P.O. Box 13305,
Oakland, CA 94661. US rates (second class/first class) are
1 year: $24.00/$32.00 or 2 years: $45.00/$61.00 (make checks
payable to Locus Publications).
SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE (Andy Porter, editor/publisher), P.O.
Box 4175, New York, NY 10163-4175. US rates (first class)
are 1 year: $23.40 or 2 years: $44.40 (make checks payable
to Science Fiction Chronicle).
OTHERREALMS (Chuq von Rospach, editor/publisher), available
free by subscribing to the moderated Usenet newsgroup
"mod.mag.otherrealms" (information on subscribing to
Usenet newsgroups can be found in the conference
ROLL::USENET).
net.sf-lovers is an unmoderated Usenet newsgroup. Every once
in a while (usually once a day or two), all of the messages
from net.sf-lovers are collected into a digest (along with
additional messages from people on ARPANet) and mailed out
on the ARPANet. You can get on the DEC re-distribution
list (maintained by John Covert) for this digest by sending
a request to COVERT::SF_LOVERS_REQUEST. Or you can simply
subscribe to the newsgroup.
--- jerry
|
| Jerry has told you about the 'mainstream sf' fanzines. There is
also a large fanzine population that is mostly filled with fan fiction.
Original stories written using characters from TV shows or movies.
Since the legality of this is often in question it is harder to
find out about these publications, but go to any sf convention and
ask a dealer who has used books. They usually know about them and
can tell you about them.
Almost any TV show you can think of has stories written about it,
whether it's sf or not. If you're interested, send mail and I'll
try to give you some addresses.
kris
|
| I did briefly mention the existence of media-oriented fanzines,
though I didn't go into the "fan-fic" type, mostly because I'm
not well versed in that (a friend's girlfriend, however, has
what is probably one of, if not *the*, largest collection of
STAR TREK and STAR WARS fanzines in the world).
Anyways, regarding the legality of this type of zine, while use
of the characters *is* technically a violation of trademark, the
studios that control these characters know about the fanzines,
and tend to ignore them. Since most, if not all, the fanzine
publishers are responsible enough to give a copyright and/or
trademark notice to the holders in the zines, there really isn't
a legal problem as long as said holders don't complain.
--- jerry
|