Fannish Fridays

This Friday, Amazing Stories launches a new feature – Fannish Fridays.

Every week on Fridays (hence part of the name) Amazing Stories is going to gather together a series of posts that focus on fandom (hence the other part of the name).

In addition to our regular daily content that covers the spectrum of genre interests (from infrared to ultraviolet), Amazing Stories will be publishing several additional articles (that we hope to add to over time*).  Those new features now include:

Friday Fanzine:  We’ll be publishing the contents of an entire fanzine right here.  Most will be drawn from the publications available at eFanzines.com, the de facto repository and online hangout maintained by uber fan Bill Burns.  If you subscribe to the notion that Trufandom resides in fanzines, eFanzines is your capital. (There’s an upstart on the horizon, the Canadian Science Fiction Fanzine Archive, that is just getting its feet under itself;  we’ve made preliminary inquiries but haven’t heard back yet.  Hint.) You’ll get a brief intro to the publisher and other people involved and then the whole ‘zine, suitable for reading.

Fan Fotos: Blasts from the past and (hopefully) pics from the present.  Photographs of fanac (fan activity) from conventions, club meetings and get-togethers.  We lead off this week with a selection of photos from the archive of one Fred A. Levy Haskell, founder of Minn-StF, editor of Rune and many other fine publications, itinerant relaxacon guitar player and all around fan.

Fan History:  Steve Fahnestalk has already been regaling us with his personal fan history (though of course this week he chose to submit a movie review – all good plans gang aft a-gley….Steve was not informed in time – Ed’s fault – so don’t blame him.  Blame the other Steve.)  He will be joined on Friday’s by B. Morris Allen’s bi-weekly Introduction to SF and, hopefully others will offer up additional pieces on fans, fandom, fan history, conventions and all that other fannish fun stuff.

Naturally we’ll include some bits and pieces of current fannish happenings;  hopefully we’ll be able to interview influential fans, find out what makes them tick (which could be a dangerous proposition), highlight events and explore different fandoms (from Filk to Trek) and maybe try to make a little sense of this whole phenomena along the way.  Now THAT’S wishful thinking!

*That asterisk up there?  That’s our way of saying that there’s plenty of room at the table:  attending a convention?  We’ll be happy to publish your pics and con report.  Got a new fanzine coming out?  Let us know.  Have some good photographs from past events?  Send ’em along.  Want to produce a full length feature based on the Enchanted Duplicator?  We’re there!  If you’re a fan and have something to say, we’d like to hear it and share it.