The Science Fiction Fanzine Sample collection is comprised of 82 titles, and a total of 116 individual fanzine issues. The zines range from the 1930s to 2000, though most titles are from the 1960s and 70s. These zines were likely deposited together by Dr. Willis McNelly, the founder of the science fiction collection. Here are some of the most influential zines in our archives from the 1960s and 70s.
The Tolkien Journal, like Fantasiae where we left off in the tour of L.A. zines, is another zine responding to the extraordinary rise of the fantasy genre in the 1960s, after the counterculture embraces The Lord of the Rings. The Journal was established by the New York Tolkien Society, which experienced rapid growth during this period. This issue features articles on the dispute over the first unauthorized edition of Lord of the Rings printed in the United States. The Tolkien Journal grew beyond its zine beginnings to become a refereed, respected academic journal, still running, cataloged beside other professional literary journals in the Modern Language Association Bibliography.
Xero by Pat Lupoff, Dick Lupoff, and Bob Stewart is an eclectic zine well known for its groundbreaking study of comics, “All in Color for a Dime,” which became a book, one of the first book-length studies of comics ever published, in 1970. Xero won a Hugo for best fanzine in 1963, the year of this issue. Zines served comics, what have come to be called graphic novels, as it served science fiction and fantasy: as a way for popular literatures to develop a scholarly tradition before academia would even read it.
The first Hugo Award for best fanzine was established in 1955, as zines became an institution inside sf. The following are examples of influential award-winners from the mid-century's widespread proliferation of zines. From the 1960s to the 1990s, pre-internet, zines were the main way for fans to meet and organize.
Warhoon (1952-1985), published by Richard Bergeron, won a Hugo for Best Zine in 1962. Warhoon had a wide circulation and is always notable for its spectacular covers.
Amra (1959-1982), published by George S. Scithers, won a Hugo in 1964.
Amra is another key zine in the rise of fantasy literature, this one focused on a subgenre Fritz Leiber named "sword and sorcery" for the first time in Amra’s pages. Zines allow fans to categorize and offer critical overviews--inventing the critical vocabulary for genre literature first, long before academia.
Yandro, published from 1953-1986 by Buck and Juanita Coulson, won a Hugo in 1965.
Yandro is a general science fiction zine, and so belongs with these other key mid-century zines. However, Yandro only appears here after being pulled out of CSUF's separate Star Trek collection because this general interest zine points toward a new phenomenon, not just the first Star Trek zine but the first "media fanzine." To find out what that means and what Star Trek zines accomplished, head to the next section of our tour, "Star Trek and Philip K. Dick Zines,” which begins by looking inside the pages of this very issue of Yandro…
We hope you enjoyed a closer look at our earliest zines, and at the growth of science fiction zines into the mid to late 20th century. Continue to our next section to learn more about two powerful sf fandoms and how their zines changed everything.