Zines

[kerravonsen]

I am happy to announce that the last copy (that I have -- I'm not sure about Judith P) of Refractions #4 has been sold! I spent this afternoon having a nice long chat with a lass/woman/girl/female/person who came to pick up a copy of Refractions #6 and I managed to persuade her to take away copies of #5 and #4 as well.

Now I just have to finish converting #3,4,5 and 6 from MS-Publisher over to LyX. (sigh) Which I've been meaning to do for a few years now. But I need to do it before this current computer dies. (sigh)

Still, it was a pleasant afternoon.

Now I just have to remember to have an early tea before I go off to get my CPAP stuff (hopefully) tonight.

Comments

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I have two copies left. It's a darn good zine, but B5 never seems to have been a zine fandom. Odd really.

If anyone wants to buy a copy, just drop by http://www,knightwriter.org

[kerravonsen]

B5 never seems to have been a zine fandom. Odd really.

Not really odd; the fans were following the request of JMS not to make zines while the show was on the air. He didn't mind the existance of fanfic; he just didn't want the legal hassles if he accidentally saw any while still writing for the show. The on-line fanfic was done on a mailing list for the same reason -- no newsgroup or web-page to reduce the possibility that JMS might accidentally see it or be construed to have seen it. The main B5 fiction website grew out of that mailing list, and the novel that makes up Refractions #4 was posted on that mailing list, which is where I saw it, and liked it so much that I thought it was worth making a zine out of, even if it had been seen on-line first. Even though I made the zine while the show was still on their air, I didn't worry about the no-zines thing, because I'm in Australia and didn't expect that there'd be many, if any, of my zines making it to the US.

I guess the non-zine-ness has just become a habit for the fandom; or else, the fact that the heyday of any fandom is while it is on the air, there just wasn't enough critical mass afterwards to get people zine-making.

The other possibility is that B5 fen are all new-fen who joined fandom after the heyday of zines and therefore assume that the web is the only medium suitable for fanfic, but I really don't think that's the case, because I know there's tons of old-fen who at least loved it when it first came out. I remember a bunch of us at a con, being asked what we thought of B5 and we chorused back that it was the best thing since B7. No new-fen there.