THEMEMORY HOLEPERMACOLLECTIONCATALOGVersion 8 -- April 2014
To Permacollection
Catalog
This is the final (ish) edition of what I still call for sentimental reasons the Memory Hole Permacollection catalog. It is a straightforward listing of all fanzines that have been in my collection during the period up to 2010(ish), presented as a fanzinography in the format used for the British Fanzine Bibliography by Peter Roberts and, latterly, Vince Clarke. That format of course is closely allied to that used by RD Swisher and Evans/Pavlat for their groundbreaking works covering the world's fanzines up to 1952. This is no fly-by-night evanescent thing here, there's real historical background, see! Much as anyone cares these days now everything gone all electric. See how you all cope after the Big Solar Flare... Once upon a time I thought that this sort of thing was actually important to science fiction fandom; the bitter reality is that it matters to about two dozen people worldwide, and that's a descending number as they die off by age or accident. Anyway, I'm a fanzine collector so I keep records. It also helped Peter Weston in researching for his fanhistorical fanzine PROLAPSE so not all useless. To be frank, though, the effort to update this listing is not repaid by the use made of it by sf fans; I've often seen on mailing lists fans debating at length simple facts about issue titles, dating and so on that could have been resolved in an instant by recourse to this listing. And that is after years of publicising it, several mirror sites elsewhere, and a now defunct internet mailing list called - gosh, wow - MEMORY HOLE - on which some of these aimless conversations occurred without anyone wondering why it was called MEMORY HOLE in the first place. It all seems so futile. And it is. Anyway, the emphasis throughout has been on providing identification details of titles and issues - the most important parts of each listing are the title, issue number, and date. To a large extent all other information elements have been simplified -- so please read these notes as appropriate. All these fanzines here listed actually exist. I have touched them, counted the pages, searched out the dates and editors names, all myself. HOW-2 The first three lines are the TITLE, COUNTRY OF ORIGIN, and EDITOR. In any given fanzine the Title is usually self-evident, and changes of title are indicated in the listing. The Country of Origin is usually simple too, though in this catalog no change is indicated for the very few instances where a fanzine has been produced in more than one country during its run; the 'original' country is the one cited in every case. The abbreviations are standard --
AUS = AUSTRALIA And probably others I can't recall right now. The Editor listed is almost always the editor(s) of the fanzine from its inception to cessation, but some changes of editor are shown by a ' / ' rather than the ' & ' used for co-editors. However, for the sake of simplicity not all changes of editor are shown, and usually (E&OE) both the original editor, and in the case of a change, the subsequent editor most closely associated with the fanzine are listed. I'm actually really surprised how deficient some of the editor- entries are in this version, but without the time and energy to go back and re-examine the fanzines and do corrections and updates there's nothing I can do at the moment. But really all I can say is you'd be amazed at how many people have put out fanzines with no sign on them at all as to from whom they emanated.. The data for each individual issue is presented in up to six columns - Issue Number, Date, Format, Size, Pagecount, and Note. Issue Number -- the first column, is straightforward. The only departures from a simple 1,2,3,4 -- listing are un-numbered issues (obvious) and Volume/Issue numbers, which are shown as ' 2.3 ' for example, the number before the dot being the Volume, the one after the Issue number within the volume. Occasionally you will see entries in the Note column reminding you of this. Not surprisingly even more people fail to number their fanzines than fail to include their names and addresses, so a certain amount of creative fanzinography has been done here. Dates are given as Month/Year or Season/Year. In the case of issues where more than one month is cited in the colophon (ie Jan/Feb 1995) the first month given is the one listed. In terms of Season, you will find WINter, SUMmer, SPRing, FALl, and AUTumn, and also EASter, which is common for UK fanzines produced to coincide with the annual Easter convention. When no Month or Season is apparent in dating the date entry will show simply ' /56 ', for example. You're probably ahead of me here - yes, even more people give no indication of ever having experienced a calendar in their lives, and with no sense of time and historicity leave their fanzines undated. There are many undated fanzines that can't be readily pinned down even by reference to other fanzine listings. Sometimes the closest we can get is to a whole decade, so there are a lot of Date entries showing something like ' /6? ', which shows that the fanzine in question was produced during the Sixties, but with no readily identifiable year. And occasionally even the decade is a guess... . However, overall in this version of the catalog I have chosen to leave this element of uncertainty rather than make potentially confusing guesses. I sometimes think a lot of people simply expect their fanzines to be thrown away after one reading - is that a greater insult to themselves or to their readers, I wonder? Format -- the third column. The abbreviations here are pretty standard -- m -- mimeograph/duplicated In every case only one of these options is given. Where more than one method of reproduction has been used (for example mimeo and ditto, or mimeo and litho, or even more than two) the predominant method has been given as the format -- the essential reason for this is to enable the entry to work as a quick identification guide, an assist to properly understanding which issue is which. For that same reason no great forensic effort has been made to detect exactly which reproduction method has been used - it is given as that which it appears to be at first glance. Anyway, I can't actually tell the difference between good copying, good pc printing, and litho any more. Size -- this has been drastically simplified in many cases. Size isn't everything after all and a rough guide is all that is required to make a satisfactory identification.
Q is British Quarto, the once-standard 8 inch by 10
inch page size. The most elegant and visually satisfying
fanzine size, it is tragic that it can no longer be used
easily. Page Count -- in almost all cases pagecount has been verified by actual tedious counting -- including, please note, the covers as four pages; ie a fanzine with unnumbered outside cover pages and an internal pagecount of 40 will be listed as 44 pages. As these pagecounts have been verified by hand, literally, they sometimes differ from those given in previous fanzine listings. Notes -- these include Changes of Title, mentions of Volume/Issue numbering, some changes of Editor, amalgamations and so on. Once upon a time the idea was to expand the Notes into fuller descriptions - with anecdotes, pictures, full casts of characters, and live sound. Really, how unlikely, now. The Permacollection catalog is presently on a Paradox database. If you would like copies of the Paradox tables (which can also be supplied as Access tables) along with a copy of the appropriate data-entry form, please contact me at the usual address. Please note -- none of this information is 'copyright' in any sense. Please copy, loan, or otherwise distribute it as you see fit, as computer data or printed paper. A credit would be nice. Greg Pickersgill gregory@gostak.demon.co.uk |