edgeMedia

Mark Shainblum

Originally published in Enrage magazine, 1994.

            The old rules are gone. The new rules aren't written.

            We're existing after what has been. Before what will come.

            In short, we're living on the edge.

            This is a place where we explore our strange new/strange old world.

            Where what has gone before is remembered, but not revered.

            Where what will come is explored, but not predicted.

            This is a place where all media are equal. Where the exploration is what counts, not the getting there.

            This isn't your father's Oldsmobile.

            This isn't your father's world.

            This is edgeMedia.

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The zine revolution

            Amateur magazines, or fanzines, have been around for a long time. The earliest fanzines were published as early as the 1930s and were largely devoted to science fiction and fantasy.             Painstakingly produced in runs of a hundred copies or less on those ugly purple ditto copiers --or on technologies even dirtier and more primitive-- fanzines became the glue that bound together the world science fiction subculture known as "fandom." In this respect, fanzines were an early, low-tech predecessor of the virtual communities found today on the Internet.

            The earliest non-SF fanzines, published in the 1960s, were mostly rock or comic book-oriented and were often produced by former SF fans.

            But now it's the 90s, and there are no taboos. Today, mostly due to desktop publishing, laser printers and photocopiers, the fanzine has slipped the surly bonds of science fiction and become the much more broad-based zine.

            There are political zines of every leaning and persuasion, from anarchist liberaratian on the right to anarchist Marxist on the left. There are zines about the fringe, B-movies, feminism, alternative lifestyles, alternative medicine, (*ahem*) hard music, work, spirituality, and, oh yes, sex. Every kind of sex. Every style, flavour and permutation of sex, from plain vanilla missionary to stuff that would turn the Marquis de Sade's ears red.

            There are slick colour zines indistinguishable from mainstream magazines, there are handwritten zines photocopied in batches of five copies. There are audiozines on cassette and videozines on VHS. There are even virtual zines on the Internet, CompuServe and the other online service.

            Zines have even spawned their own zine, Factsheet 5: The Definitive Guide to the Zine Revolution, a veteran of the trade which has been around since 1982 (roughly the Paleolithic in zine terms). The latest issue is 136 pages long, divided into 24 sections and features capsule reviews of something like a thousand zines.

            Just a quick sample of titles selected at random: Tatmag, Splatterspleen, Unclassified: Newspaper of the Association of National Security Alumni, Keltria: Journal of Druidism and Celtic Magick, International Queer Non-Conformist, Transsisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, Lost Highways: Quarterly for the Classic Trailer and Motorhome Enthusiast...

            I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.

            About a year and a half ago Factsheet 5 founders Mike Gunderloy and Cari Goldberg Janice wrote a book called The World of Zines, published by Penguin Books. That seems to have opened up whole new vistas for the zine scene, because things have just exploded since then.

            And guess what? You can participate! No 800 numbers to call! No ginsu knives to buy! Both The World of Zines and Factsheet 5 feature information on producing your own zine. F5 even offers a 32-page booklet called The Zine Publisher's Resource Guide, which details exactly how you can get into the zine field.

            I'll let you in on a little secret: I got my start publishing zines. Just think, one day all this could be yours...

Factsheet 5 is available for US$6 per copy or US$20 for a five issue sub. The Zine Publisher's Resource Guide is US$3. Unlike many magazines, they accept Canadian cash, at: P.O. Box 170099, San Francisco, CA 94117-0099.

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Future Imperfect

            Speaking about sex... (as if an excuse was needed), something seems to be going on among those young men and women who usually wouldn't be caught dead in that ugly back section of the magazine store.

             Future Sex, a new erotic/cyberculture magazine out of San Francisco seems to be winning acceptance more as kin to Wired and Mondo 2000 than to Penthouse, Hustler and their even-scummier shrink-wrapped rackmates.

            Edited by Lisa Palac, one of a growing group of anti-anti-porn activists that Esquire magazine dubbed the "Do Me" Feminists (a name so stupid and sexist it'll probably stick), Future Sex is indeed somewhat different from the usual male-centered stroke books of the past.

            But is it different enough?

            Granted, the models in Future Sex haven't all just arrived from the Planet of the Cassaba Melons, and the magazine's photographers seem to understand that there are photographic techniques beyond smearing the lens with Vaseline (*Gasp!* There is even... brace yourself for it... male nudity!).

            It's still a nudie book, though, to use an old-fashioned term. It stills markets itself with female body-parts exactly the same way as Penthouse, Playboy and Hustler do, except those female body parts are covered and emphasized with hi-tech fonts and computer-generated graphics.

            Future Sex is really the nexus where the new technologies and erotica (or porn, whatever) are meeting. The magazine is just chock-full of ads for CD-ROM and online pornography and other --more "interactive" shall we say-- technologies that I didn't even know existed.

            Sexually, it's going to be a very strange world in the 21st century. And this may be your opening glimpse into it.

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Count Down

            Michael Bishop has long been viewed as one of the... stranger voices in science fiction. His Nebula-Award winning novel Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas turned 60's rebel-science fiction writer Dick into a demi-god like figure haunting the rich and powerful.

            His current book, Count Geiger's Blues (Orb, 1993), is a nasty, funny, postmodern dissection of high art and popular culture.

            Told in a dreamy, fairy-tale voice, the book recounts the "adventures" of Xavier Thaxton, a newspaper art critic who hates popular culture --but through a highly improbable series of circumstances-- gains an allergy to high art, superhuman powers, and a skintight spandex costume.

            The way Bishop dissects both the art world and the comic book scene makes it clear that he knows both well. Their weaknesses and their strengths.