randy_byers | Fanzines received at Worldcon

I don't think of Worldcon as a fanzine convention, but I may have come away from Interaction with more fanzines than from Corflu Titanium. Chunga 10, which we distributed in June, already seemed stale.

Ansible 217 - Winner of the Hugo for Best Semiprozine. Next year it will be competing for Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form (as some wag commented, although it wasn't Wag).

Arimonitti 2 - It was a pleasure to meet Finnish fan Jukka Halme at the convention, if only briefly. This is his FAPA zine, and it immediately rewards the reader with a funny haiku. What is it about SF fans and haiku?

Banana Wings 23 - The Hugo-nominated

fishlifters have been publishing like mad lately and also put a lot of work into the Worldcon. Here's hoping they don't suffer a post-con meltdown! In this issue, the high-heeled

fishlifter helpfully explains about twats.

Bento 17 - The pocket-sized zine from David Levine and Kate Yule, with a useful recipe for Nerve Gas Chicken. Like Plokta, they create their own whimsical universe.

The Best of MOZ issues one to six - A collection of pieces from Corflu Titanium GOH Murray Moore's ANZAPA zine. I think I have the originals, too, or at least some of them.

Can't Get Off the Island - This collection of Interaction Fan Guest of Honor Greg Pickersgill's fan writing was not handed out, but sold for something like three pounds sterling. It looks to be very thorough, covering his whole career. It's difficult to find copies of his old fanzines, so this is a real treasure. Contact the

fishlifters if you want to acquire your own.

Convertible Bus ? - Dad blast it! I've ended up with two copies of Gimmickry, which means that Sharee must have both of our copies of this zine from

swisstone. Another one-sheet on white A4 paper, so it's easy to see how that happened. Guess I'll have to go to Australia to swap zines with her.

Gimmickry - A one-sheet from

hawkida in which the gimmick is that all contributions must be no more than 50 words. Good gimmick: we approve of concision. I have an under-50-word LOC that I'm refining.

Meta 2 - The house organ of Third Row Fandom, which is taking British fandom by strategy (or is that vice versa?). All I've read so far is the advertisement for the Journal of Recursive Studies, which definitely tickled my Internalist heart.

Of Physicists and Fen: a fanzine - from Swedish fan Anna Davour, whom I hadn't heard of before.

mrhedgehog vouched for her, so she must be good. This zine has already been posted to efanzines.com.

Plokta 34 - The Plokta Who issue of the (at last!) Hugo-award winning fanzine, with another wonderful cover by

bohemiancoast and a shit-stirring response by

hawkida to Peter Weston's critique of the recent Eastercon. The fact that it took Plokta 33 issues to win a Hugo makes me feel tired.

Zoo Nation 6 -

flyingsauce has won the last two Novas with this excellent zine, and he barely missed taking the fifth spot on the Hugo ballot this year. That would be the spot Chunga took, so I feel his hot breath on our collective neck.

A couple of zines that Sharee got and I didn't:

Floss 5 -

surliminal swears this is her last paper zine, no really, she means it this time. I'll be handling the North American distribution, because it has a brilliant piece by yours truly. Presumably I'll mail myself a copy at that point.

Shiny 2 - Possibly actually known as Shiny Shiny, this is

flickgc's second under-distributed zine. Amusing stories with copious footnotes, and very nicely designed. It has a hand-crafted feel, and perhaps that makes it too expensive to distribute properly?

Something from a Bristol fan -- a friend of estimate_lad, I think -- but I didn't note the title.

So that's fifteen new zines. I also came away with a small boatload (a skiffload?) of old zines from the freebie table in the fan room, thanks to suggestions (as in, "Here take this one" as a zine was thrust into my nerveless hands) from the long-haired

fishlifter and

the_maenad. The biggest score was a copy of the eighth issue of Wrinkled Shrew (which I found myself), but I also came away with copies of John Foyster's Chunder (in which title several readers have found a resonance with Chunga), Rob Jackson's Maya, Malcolm Edwards' Tappen (got to meet Malcolm, too), D. West's Daisnaid, and many, many more. The freebie table (with donation cans benefitting the fan funds, IIRC) is a brilliant way to redistribute old fanzines, and

jerrykaufman and I had a discussion about how we might be able to do something similar at the Seattle Nasfic or elsewhere.

Once again, it appears that paper fanzines aren't quite dead yet. Maybe next year!