Once upon a time,
there were loads of Doctor Who fanzines
and even when the Internet arrived they thrived for a while because they
tended to go into more depth than was generally acceptable on websites or
blogs. Yet now the generational shift means that younger fans don’t really know
paper fanzines because they are growing up with the brevity and instant opinion
that current social media, blogs and forums tend to suit. Why bother
constructing an elaborate argument when you can Tweet your opinion in a handful
of words and an emoji to a greater audience than most fanzines ever achieved?
The word `fanzine` is
a simply an amalgam of `fan magazine` and was first coined as far back as 1940
by someone called Russ Chauvenet. Prior to this amateur magazines were called
fanmags or letterzines and the earliest recorded example is believed to be `The
Comet`, a science fiction zine that appeared in 1930 in Chicago. The first Doctor Who fanzine was probably `Tardis`
edited by Andrew Johnson from the mid -1970s though the BBC recognised Doctor Who Fan Club did have a monthly
newsletter which might be considered a fanzine of sorts. The boom really began
with the formation of the Doctor Who Appreciation
Society (or DWAS) in 1976. This itself was partly brought together by `Tardis` readers
and contributors as it became the Society fanzine.
