Fanzines on display from world's largest collection

Bob Backstrand says: "Saw your piece on the first issue of bOING bOING from 1989. Last year I built a web-site for UCR library and the worlds largest collection of fanzines. The fanzine link is my favorite. It was a lot of fun to produce and scanning through endless stacks of these zines was a real thrill."

 Spcol Eaton Image Dtny533292Letter writing and clubs were a solace to people passing through the Depression, especially when the topic of discussion was another world or a better future. Fanzine production, however, proliferated after World War II, following the curve of developing technology of reproductive printing devices accessible to the amateur. Some see a "golden age" of fanzine fandom occurring in the late 1950s through the 1960s. At this time, a split occurs in terms of editors' and readers' approach to the activity of fanzine writing and to the content of the fanzine. On one hand, there are fanzines that follow the "faanish" way, that is, focus on the activity of fandom rather than its "content" (SF literature). The motto here is the acronym FIJAGH, or "Fandom Is Just A Goddam Hobby." These hobbyist fanzines are filled with gossip columns about events and members of what becomes, over the years, an increasingly incestuous group of fans. On the other hand, there are the "sercon" fanzines, meaning fanzines "of serious content," focused on the sacred task of commenting on, and judging, the increasing output of SF/fantasy literature.

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