Articles and posts that deal with being a fan of SF, fantasy and horror in all of their iterations.
Are you a Fan? Of course you are, you’re here! Why not demonstrate your fannishness and take a crack at nominating for the annual Fan Activity Awards? It’s FREE and its FUN! The Fan Activity Achievement (n) Awards were originally given out in the 1970s for Fanzine and related Fannish activities that the fan community […]
Before From Hell, before Watchmen, before The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, there was The Ballad of Halo Jones. Co-created by writer Alan Moore and artist Ian Gibson, Halo Jones was a space opera about a young woman who is swept up in a vast galactic war. Appearing from 1984 to 1986 in the British weekly comic 2000AD, the Ballad won several Eagle Awards. Then, everything stopped. The […]
SF Signal is a phenomenon. This past year at the Chicon 7 Worldcon, the website was nominated in two categories – Best Fanzine and Best Fancast – and walked home with the honors in the Fanzine category, the first website to do so, and in its very first year of eligibility. 1,922 Hugo ballots were […]
Immortal ConFusion was rather a bittersweet experience. I hadn’t been to the convention in years, although I attended annually from A² Relax Icon in 1974, up through my college years in Ann Arbor, when I also helped run the con. About the time I was graduating, though, All Ann Arbor Fandom Was Plunged Into War, […]
If this photo gives you the creeps, congratulations, you may be human. But in another few years, it may not be so easy to tell. And as usual, science fiction is largely to blame.
Ever since foreign film and television have become popular in the English-speaking world (and title cards were a thing of the past, of course), there has been the great debate over whether subtitles or dubbed-over voices are the more appropriate method of viewing material in other languages. Many, many, many anime fans will tell you […]
I went to all the early ConFusions. The name change came about, I’m told, because Ro (who informs me her name was then still Nagey, the change to Lutz-Nagey not occurring till a few years later, with his first marriage and exit from Ann Arbor) got tired of typing A2 Relax Icon. In those days, […]
Well it looks like I put my foot right into it in my previous post! Several people objected to my definition of the term “Fan Art”. They felt that it was not in accordance with how “Fan Art” has historically been defined and used within Fandom, and how it is still defined with regard to the […]
Happy Monday, everybody! I’m very excited to be joining the Amazing Stories Magazine blogging staff. Every week, I’ll be posting something new, mostly focusing on anime! Anime is an interesting and widespread topic, and I think it’s going to be very insightful (for myself as well as the readers) to write about it in the […]
Over the last three weeks I have discussed the sources and causes of Science Fictions self-esteem problem. The genre’s inability to shed it’s pulp roots and ongoing pulpishness, the relative obscurity of SF to the book reading public and the enduring legacy of brainless Hollywood Science Fiction films have all contributed to the critical non-acceptance […]
I have been producing fanzines off and on since 1976, shortly after encountering science fiction fandom and this particular aspect of that hobby interest. As anybody who has ever pubbed (that is fanspeak for “published”) an ish (“issue”), the life-blood of fanzines is the letter of comment (here’s another fanspeak term: loc, or LoC, depending […]
This year was the 40th ConFusion. Or perhaps it will be next year. The numerology of this Michigan convention has always been somewhat doubtful, since its numbering started with 13, unless you count the initial convention the preceding year, when it wasn’t named ConFusion at all. What’s certain is that in 1973, a bunch of […]
Folks who read my author bio will have realized I lead an interesting life or that I have a passion for Starbucks. No wait, that wasn’t it. Yes, you will have noticed that I’m something of a hardcore gamer and that I’m visually impaired. Granted, the latter does make my chosen love of all things geeky a […]
A couple of months ago came an announcement that caught many of off-guard. The announcement I refer to is that of the Star Wars franchise being sold to Disney and the plan of a new trilogy to be released that follows Return of the Jedi and further plans for annual releases of Star Wars movies […]
The only time the public pays attention to Science Fiction is when that great machine of mass marketing and “entertainment” called Hollywood inundates the collective consciousness with that most dreaded of phenomena: the Summer Blockbuster. But isn’t that a good thing? Should we not rejoice that the tools of cinema capitalism put our beloved Science Fiction […]
“I have a Cosmic Mind — now what do I do?” Fanspeak is what we call the jargon of fandom that grew up in fanzines and is still in use in the internet age. It’s full of terms that apply to sf, often taken from the pages of novels and stories, as well as words […]
Steve Stiles is a living double entendre: not only does he draw icons of the field, he is an icon of the field. If brushing twilltone off your lap after reading is a familiar experience, Mr. Stiles will need no introduction. You have no doubt marvelled at his art. You’ve also probably laughed your posterior […]
I said last time that I wasn’t going to debate the definition of “fan” here. But one of the most important defining characteristics of fandom is our shared language. From founding fan Forrest J Ackerman on, fen have delighted in neologisms, and, of course, language helps to define a culture. We all use a great […]
Hello, I’m Leah Zeldes and I’m a fan. I have been a fan since 1973, not long after I discovered the concept of fandom in the pages of — not coincidentally, an Amazing Science Fiction column called “The Clubhouse” — and it seems to me that for most of the time since I’ve been arguing […]
