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Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing

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EP 367 - Amazing Stories, Fanzines, and Community with Lloyd Penney

Jun 21, 2024

Mark interviews Lloyd Penney, the editor of Amazing Stories magazine about his work on Amazing Stories, his forty years of engagement with the fanzine community, and more.

Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments from recent episodes, a personal update, and a word from this episode's sponsor.

Learn more about this self-publishing/WIDE-publishing focused cruise.

In the interview Mark and Lloyd talk about:

  • Meeting Robert J. Sawyer when they both attended Ryerson University in Toronto
  • Lloyd's first and only published science fiction story (which Rob was responsible for)
  • Getting involved in science fiction fanzines
  • Forty years of experience being engaged with fanzines from Canada, the United States and all over the world
  • The definition of what a fanzine is
  • How the common community ends up talking about almost anything else once they've established their commonalities in related to things they are fans of
  • How the production of fanzines have changed over the years, from mimeographs, to photocopies, to digital
  • Starting off his experience in engaging with fanzines by writing a letter of comment
  • The letter column being the heart of a fanzine
  • Social media having replaced the fanzine in a lot of ways, but how that has reduced the more nuanced, well-thought out responses and behavior
  • The "reaction" of social media verses the "responses" in fanzines
  • An example of a recent fanzine that Lloyd recently received
  • The first issue of Amazing Stories coming out in 1927
  • A fan, Steve Davidson, who, about 2008, wondered what happened to the copyright on the name Amazing Stories, found it was available and secured them
  • How Spielberg needing to purchase the rights to the name for a TV show helped pay for the production of the first few issues of the new version of the magazine
  • How Lloyd got involved with Amazing Stories in 2018 and then became the editor in chief of the magazine
  • The magazine being (at the time) an online magazine, with no current print issues available
  • The Patreon and merchandise that's available to help support the magazine's operation
  • Running two Kickstarters - one of which funded, and the other, which didn't fund
  • And more...

 

After the interview Mark reflects on the value of getting involved with such a prestigious magazine brand as Amazing Stories, as well as the strong sense of connection and engagement with readers that can happen within the fanzine community.

 

Links of Interest:

 

Lloyd Penney is a Canadian science fiction writer, science fiction convention organizer and a dedicated fan who took his long time science fiction interest and turned it into a career recently - as the editor-in-chief of Amazing Stories one of science fictions longest running magazines. He had previously written extensively for science fiction fanzines.

 

The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0