loc on Fanstuff #11
Good evening, Arnie.
As you now know - and have acknowledged in your zine - my fanzine Askance is *not* folding: The usual quarterly issues come out in March, June, September, and December, but June of 2012 was largely devoured by an online graduate statistics class to complete my doctoral degree plan in Education. So because of that commitment, I announced that I would simply shove the June issue back to July in order to focus on the class. I am glad I did, too; it was a difficult course - bad enough I'm not very mathematical in the first place, and research statistics requires some serious higher math skills that I'm rusty on - but I passed the sucker. Sure, it was a C grade, but that counts. Now it's onward to preparing for my preliminary exams in early September, then defend my research proposal at the end of September. Fall semester this year will be devoted to my research and even more dissertation writing. All is proceeding according to plan, meaning I will graduate in May 2013 from Texas A&M University with my Doctorate in Education. It will be tough, oh yes, and may require my being rather flexible in publishing Askance, but the zine will continue, if anything as a means of maintaining my sanity -- whatever will be left of it, that is.
With that business out of the way, you packed a bunch of comment-laden material into Fanstuff #11, so I might as well dig in.
First off, FAPA is probably the most revered apa in science fiction fandom, and for good reason. Founded by Donald Wollheim back in 1937, it definitely was a brilliant idea. At that time, FAPA was probably the best way to distribute fanzines, and to think it is still a going concern is a testament to its staying power and allure. Your brief history of FAPA's development and influence was well done. Once in a great while I get the urge to send in the necessary dues to join FAPA, but at present, that would not be a good idea. Once my PhD work is done, then I can think about this again. There are many good people involved with it, and to think that FAPA is at 300 distributions is a landmark achievement. How long it will last depends on its members. I hope your optimism for its future bears out. Because it is true that many fanzine fans prefer the good, old paper zine, I can follow your logic about FAPA being a place where paper zines are welcome and to be a repository for that tradition. Well, we shall see. In the meantime, congratulations to FAPA and all those involved with it.
Since the topic here is apas, I am saddened to see SNAPS end its run. Let it be known that I enjoyed my membership in SNAPS immensely. So many good people involved: besides you and Joyce, of course, there were JoHn Hardin, Jacqi Monahan, Teresa Cochran, James Taylor, Shelby Vick, Ross Chamberlain, Laurie Kunkel, John Nielsen Hall, R Laurraine Tutihasi, Chris Garcia, and oodles more. Face it, it contained a damn good bunch of folks, and I am sad to see SNAPS fade away. Of the other apas that I have been involved with - Lasfapa, Minneapa, and Azapa - during my time in fandom, SNAPS is the longest running membership I have had. My apazine Nukking Futz saw 41 issues, which are the most issues of any single title I have ever produced. I liked being involved with it, and I thank you for letting me be a part of SNAPS.
Eric Mayer's commentary on the state of loc-writing in the modern era of electronic fan publishing is quite on the mark. I still consider letters of comment the life-blood of a fanzine much as mailing comments are the life-blood of apas. Without that feedback, a fan editor could very quickly pack up his virtual mimeo and steal away quietly into the night. The good news is that more people are turning to online fan activity - what I call cyber-fanac (I consider myself mostly a cyberfan now, even though I do still go to cons when possible) - to maintain their connectivity with others. See, fanzines are one aspect of the community of fandom, providing one avenue of communication. In fandom, communication keeps us together. As communication technology changes, so will fans. We are a resourceful lot, adapting to changes in reproduction over the years: carbon copies, hectographs, lithographs, offset presses (for those wealthy few), ditto machines, mimeographs, photo-copiers, and so on, have all become part of the legacy of fandom's desire to stay connected with each other. The electronic age of fanac we are in now certainly does result in fewer locs; as Eric noted, one time I invented three locs to "fill up" the loccol (only Lloyd Penney, bless his dutiful heart, wrote the only real loc in that issue of Askance), but I decided to make them silly, a virtual hoax letter column. The tactic worked: I got some fun responses as a result of my efforts. Now the zine is doing well.
But Eric is right that most e-zines don't get many locs, perhaps because the action of sending paper zines to each other spurred the tradition of producing a tangible response: send your own fanzine in exchange, write a loc or article, draw some illos or a cover. That sort of thing. Those of us who were birthed and swaddled in twilltone still try to fulfill this tradition because that is how we were raised, so to speak. That was the fannish culture we experienced, so we did it. Nowadays, the Internet implies that everything is "free" so not that many people feel obligated to respond with an e-mail loc, artwork, or even a fanzine: those tend to simply show up at efanzines.com. At least Bill Burns lets us know on the fmzfen listserv or through an rss feed that a zine has been posted to the site.
Eric's closing comment that the fanzine community is rather insular strikes, home and we may indeed be "a close-knit group [with] strictly limited potential audiences." That makes sense. If we can reach out to others - and the Internet has a remarkable ability to provide this outreach - and bring more folks into this particular aspect of the fannish communication link (like blogs, listservs, social media, and e-mails), then electronic fanac and e-zines can survive. Again, like I have said many times before, we shall see how the era of cyber-fanac develops. The future will no doubt surprise us with what actually happens. We won't know until we get there.
Man, that's a rather existential viewpoint, ain't it?
Hey, this was a wonderful issue, Arnie. Lots of interesting viewpoints and ideas presented. I like the 'Loccer Room House Rules' you included at the start of the loccol. Very good ideas, ones that work across all of fanzine fandom. I thank you for that, and look forward to the 12th issue of Fanstuff, which I assume will be posted this coming weekend. You are definitely on a prolific roll right now, Arnie, and that's good.
All the best,
John Purcell
"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a
shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
- John Adams (1735 - 1826)