Ah, those heady days of science fiction, the Golden Age of sci fi. Writers like Heinlein, Silverberg, A.E. Van Vogt. And a new hobby arose: fandom. Sure, a lot of people read those authors, and loved them, and thought about them. But some took it farther and there developed an actual HOBBY: being a fan of sci fi. Fandom was born. And you weren’t just a fan by yourself, in your bedroom with the banners on the walls and the models you built, or maybe in your parents’ basement where you were still living, surrounded by unsteady stacks of paperbacks.

No, if you were a true card-carrying member of Fandom, you wrote corresponded with other members of Fandom. You all wrote each other letters, and then people started writing one response on a mimeo stencil, and mailing it out to everyone they knew, who would write back in similar fashion. Then there were fanzines, which were also mimeographed, but had articles, commentary, and often just opinionated soundings-off from the editor. It all sounds pretty exciting to me, and not just because I always loved the smell of mimeographs.

It was the idea of that communication, with other people who loved the same things you were enthusiastic about, people you could talk to and they actually KNEW what you were talking about.

Of course, now there is a proliferation of that. Now, any sci fi fan can (and many do) write BLOGS instead of publishing ‘zines. But one big difference is: a blog is essentially published in one place. Maybe people read it, maybe they don’t, and you don’t direct it to certain people (as you do when you actually have to lick a stamp and put it on an envelope — remember those?).

Of course, you can send links around, to places like Facebook, Twitter etc., or you could even email people to tell them to follow a link to your blog. But do they actually READ it.. The thing about fanzines was that people did read them, but more than that, they CARED about what they read, and they wrote back. I’ve been doing a blog for a long time, and the worst thing is not when you get spam in your comments. It’s when you don’t get ANYTHING in your comments. I get a lot of hits, but people don’t answer back after they take the nuggets I proffer. Obviously those nuggets mean something to me, or I wouldn’t go out on a limb of putting them in public.

If you’re curious about this wonderfully fun book, which is the presenting reason for writing this post, you can find it here: http://smile.amazon.com/Zombies-Gene-Pool-Sharyn-McCrumb/dp/0345379144/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435281804&sr=8-1&keywords=zombies+of+the+gene+pool