Science Fiction and Fandom

What Kind of Fan Are You?

One of the great things about being a fan of science fiction is that you can participate at any level you like. You can just read the books or watch the movies. You can go to conventions and meet other fans, authors, artists and publishers. You can help run the conventions. You can write for fanzines or you can edit them. You can even aspire to become a "filthy pro" writer, artist, publisher or editor, and when you succeed, you can remain a fan.

Below you'll find some links of interest to all kinds of fans.

Of Interest to Readers and Convention Fans

Our store's site: has science fiction board games (as well as many classic games) and artwork by Real Musgrave, Michael Whelan, Alicia Austin and more. Also dragon figurines from the Windstone Editions line by Melody Pena and Pocket Dragons by Real Musgrave, and some fantasy and science fiction jigsaw puzzles.
What Are The Best SF Books?: Here's a constantly updated list of the 100 best sf books. The list changes, but if you watch it over time, you'll get a good idea of the books you ought to read. You can even enter your own vote.
Lone Star Con 2: The World Science Fiction Convention comes to San Antonio August 28-September 1st, 1997. If you're a fan, you don't want to miss the chance to visit the biggest convention of them all, especially if it's in your own back yard (we Texans have Big Back Yards).
Worldcon Home Page: Check on the Hugo awards and the location of future World Science Fiction Conventions.
The SFWA Home Page: Here you can find the past and present winners of the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Awards.
NESFA: The New England Science Fiction Association, sponsors of great Worldcons and they publish books, too!

Local Events

Science Fiction Readers Group: meets on the third Saturday of each month at 4:00 pm. Call 520-6463 to find out what book is being read and discussed this month.
Society for Creative Anachronism: Meets at alternating locations in Midland and Odessa on Sunday afternoons. If the idea of participating in real, live Jousting and other medieval pastimes appeals to you, call Astral Castle (520-MIND) for dates and locations.

Fandom

Fancyclopedia II: Dating from 1959, here is an online version of a classic fannish text. Read through a lot of weird and wonderful entries to get a feel for the history (and fun) of fandom.
Fanac Fan History Archives: A major site in progress hosting pages for fan funds, the Timebinders home page and more, all directed toward preserving the history of fandom. This is fanac.org, a non-profit group.
Fanac.Com: This one looks like it's just coming up online. Maybe web hosting of web pages for fans? At least I see a few familiar names here, so I'm just throwing it into this list so I won't lose track of the URL.
Britain's FIAWOL: Home of the Who's Who In Fandom list of active fans of science fiction, with data on how and when they have participated. Here you'll also find a British Fanzine bibliography, and Feminists Against Censorship, as well as Rob Hansen's home page.
THEN, A History of British Fandom: And speaking of Rob Hansen, here you will find the web version of his fanzine history.
The Enchanted Duplicator: A tale of Jophan's travels in search of the enchanted machine that turns out fanzines.
The Reaffirmation: Rob Hansen's sequel to The Enchanted Duplicator.
Ansible: Returning to the present, real world of fandom, read one of our funniest writers' newzine about the current doings of fans and the things fandom concerns itself with. Heck, go back in time by reading back issues, too.
The Wide World of Fandom: There's so much more to fandom than just my little corner of it. There's filking (where the musically inclined hang out) and anime fans, there are gamers, renaissance recreationists and more. Here is a good starting point to go off exploring more of what fandom offers.

Fans

These pages are links to other fans' pages on the net. These folks are members of a sort of "old-fashioned" variety of fandom, known as fanzine fandom, in which the members participate by reading, writing or drawing for, commenting on or publishing little magazines called fanzines. Once upon a time fanzines dealt with science fiction (this variety is now known as a "sercon" -- short for "serious constructive" fanzine) but nowadays trufannish fanzines deal more with fandom and the every-day lives of fans with some emphasis on a science ficitonal slant. Lest you think that messing about with fanzines is a trivial pursuit, you might want to consider that most of the people on the list below are published writers and/or respected editors by profession. (Many Big Name writers and editors in the field started off as fans; you'd be surprised!)

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