Jerod:
In a listing for Factsheet Five-electronic, I saw that you welcomed
reviews. So here are reviews I did recently for my e-zine. Maybe
you can use them.
Cheers,
Brant Kresovich
============================================
Comics
Keith Again! October 1995. Keith O'Brien, 1333 N. Hillcrest Circle,
Mesa, AZ 85201. Price: $2?/trade. To improve drawing and inking
with a brush, Keith decided to chronicle his vacation to San
Francisco. He went there to give a presentation about tarot cards.
The text is funny and honest, and the inking looks good (mini /
24).
Art & Mail Art
The Mail-Interview Project. Ruud Janssen-TAM, Postbus 10388, NL-
5000 JJ Tilburg, Holland.
[email protected]. Price:$3. Since 1994, RJ has
interviewed mail artists by mail, fax, cassette, and e-mail. He
publishes the results in print and e-mail. This interesting and
informative material about the mail art scene will convert people
who dislike mail art because of its seeming lack of quality
control. Well worth checking out (Euro-digest / 16).
Zimmerframepileup. Loose Hand Press, 54 Hillcrest Road, Walthamstow
E17 4AP UK. East to read and enjoy literary venture. The poems are
tolerable because, unlike poems that mar American zines, they're
honest and concise instead of earnest and cool. The columns
"Interviews with Normal People" features an interesting talk with
an ordinary old woman. Also includes some curious dreams by readers
and fiction like voices from the past (Euro-standard / 20).
Politics
ZineZone #15 December 1995. 47 Retreat Place, London E9 6RH UK.
Anarchist and punky concerns, Bob Black reprints, collages that
have a point (unlike most zine collages), fair amount of zine
reviews for UK connexions, music and exhibition reviews. A good
effort; they don't burn up their energy with anger (Euro-standard
/ 28).
Review zine
Muuna Takeena #2. Talvipaivanseisaus Prod., c/o T. Palonen,
Hepokuja 6 B 26, 01200 Vantaa Finland. Trades: the usual, cool used
stamps and non-sport trading cards. Reviews music and zines. This
issue is thicker than #1 and it's in English, making it an
extremely useful resource for North Americans seeking connexions in
the UK and Northern Europe. Send in your tunes and zines to these
for review. Right now (Euro-digest / 20).
Perzines
Opuntia 26.5. Dale Speirs, Box 6830, Calgary Alberta, Canada T2P
2E7. Price: $3 sample, trade or loc on previous issue. This perzine
is one of the best around, so it is unhappy news that DS says a
perzine might be released only annually to avoid repetition. Oh,
well, he will still release issues of letters and SF con reports,
both of which are interesting. Included with this issue was a
persuasive detournement and informative why-for and how-to article
on publishing a zine (Euro-digest / 12).
Anorak Redemption #1, Nigel E. Richardson, 35 Cricketers Way,
Kirkstall Lane, Leeds, LS5 3RJ UK.
[email protected].
Price: the usual. NER is one of the best writers in the indepedent
publishing scene. His humor is up there with Doug Holland, but his
style and range are all his own. In this first issue of his new
project, he aims at SF fandom, the empty politics of Tony Blur
(sounds familiar, somehow), starting a trans-Atlantic romance, and
attending a suburban bondage party. Some music and zine reviews.
Good mix of SF fanzine, perzine, and review zine (Euro-standard /
10).
Drift #77. Box 40, 90 Shuter St., Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2K6 Canada.
Price: $2 cash or IRC. Zine reviews mixed with intelligent letters
mostly about politics and macro-economics in these doleful times.
Also personal material and submissions of art, collages, poems,
rants. Good work (standard / 12).
Steady State Vol. 2. Sam Hammer, PO Box 65304, St. Paul, MN 55165-
0304. Sara was an English teacher in a remote place in Hokkaido,
Japan for a year. This zine is about her teaching experience,
impressions of Japanese culture, and off-hours fun and travel. This
zine really fills a gap because I don't know of any other zines by
people who have lived with those delightful and maddening people.
Please publish more (digest / 20).
Review Zines
Trash Barrel. Donald Franson, 6543 Babcock Ave., N. Hollywood, CA
91606-2308. Price: free/trade. SF fanzines cover not only
conventions, book reviews, and news, so check them out for travel
and good personal writing, too. TB is a short but useful review
zine of these publications (standard / 2).
Grrls
Virago. Address for academic year: Sarah Manvel, 1 Mead Way,
Bronxville NY 10708-5999. till 5/24:
[email protected]. Summer:
1905 Sands Dr, Annapolis MD 21401-6233. Price: $2. Subs: $7 for 4.
A forum for intelligent, loud-voiced, ill-tempered, strong,
spirited women to talk about anything on their minds. Contributions
welcome: articles, cartoons, rants, poems, interviews, diary
entries, short stories, photos, anything that's by or about women.
Male friendly. The deadline for contributions for the first issue
is March 15.
SF & Fantasy
Attitude #6. 102 William Smith Close, Cambridge, CB1 3QF, England.
[email protected] or
[email protected]. Price: the
usual. This SF fan effort is excellent. This issue has the
customary SF convention reports. It had two fine articles about SF.
One was a gripe about how the popular mind has associated Star Trek
with science fiction, when, in truth, Trek is anti-SF that
diminishes the sense of wonder true SF gives. The other was a well-
argued discussion of the phenomenon of people nowadays being very
interested in the future and outer space, but turned off by the
genre science fiction. This piece meant something to me because I
am old enough to have associated SF with a future that held promise
(Euro-standard / 64).
Medley
Charity Shopper #2. Katrina Dixon, Flat 3, 8 Lauriston Gardens,
Edinburgh, EH3 9HJ UK. This is all about searching for goodies in
second hand markets, jumble sales (AmerEng: rummage sales), junk
shops, car boot sales (AmerEng: guys selling stuff out of their
trunk), and of course charity shops (AmerEng: St. Vincent dePaul-
like places). Enthusiastic articles on Super-8, Viewmaster, gold
lame dresses and lot of advice. Contributions always welcome so
write down those strange, wonderful, lucky experiences now (Euro-
digest / 20).
E-zines
>From Sunday to Saturday.
[email protected]. Personal zine with an
emphasis on SF fandom. Don Fitch has been active in SF fandom since
the Kennedy Administration. He draws on much experience among
"Fandom... a world-wide (or at least multi-national and multi-
cultural) assemblage of like-minded people who communicate with
one-another in several areas of mutual interest." Yes! This is the
fundamental reason that SF fanzine publishers and zine publishers
should exchange their work more frequently. Mutual interests
include reading (not many of us readers left anymore), travel, and
our future.
MEZ.
[email protected]. A weekly perzine by Stephen Brooks. He
covers comics, politics, interests, activities. He reviews paper
and electronic zines. He's a disciplined writer, worth checking
out.
