Fanzines

Dateline: Fandom. A female country: ten women for each man here, at the Star Trek Convention. Women with husbands who will never travel at warp ten: a phone switcher, a policeman, a dentist. Their children eat pacifiers solemnly: plastic handles, it would seem, for the head. Serious, attentive women —much like those who fret about beginning-middle-end at writers’ conferences—and I don’t intend to mock them. They are in charge of our small legends.

“Artwork and layout and editing. A good fanzine takes months, sometimes years to produce.” Lynn has one in her hand: thirty contributors, two hundred pages, lush printing. Cost: $12.35 postpaid. A comely item; my publishers should care so much. “We’re learning to write. We all hope to move up from fanzines to paid writing. But, meanwhile, this is a place where we can get published. Where we can read each other’s work and criticize it. You know: we say, That isn’t the way Captain Kirk would talk or Spock would think. This ’zine took 140 hours just to type on computer tape. Most of us have jobs or children. Believe me, no one can make a profit. Anyhow, we’re not allowed to. That’s why these are called fanzines, not magazines. We’d be infringing on the Star Trek copyright if we made money. We have to be amateur—though not amateurish, I hope. And, if you like your teeth, don’t call me a trekkie.”