apazine n.

Plus apazines of all descriptions.

APA, Amateur Press Association. A group of people who publish fanzines and, instead of mailing them individually, send them to an official editor, who makes up a bundle periodically (altho these mailings have sometimes not been temporally regular) and distributes one to each member. Such apazines are contributed to the bundle by their publishers without charge, being considered exchanges for the other members' fanzines. The procedure saves time, work, and postage for the publishers; and since the mailing bundles are identical and all members may be assumed to know their contents, comments on them lead to lively discussions. For fan APAs see under FAPA, OMPA, and SAPS, all still active, and 7APA, Vanguard, and WAPA, now defunct. (Whether the Cult is an APA is hard to decide, but go ahead and look it up anyway.)

For official apazines, the perpetrator ought to be able to wait until the next mailing to have his included; if he wants to send it out to the members as an unofficial apazine, okay.

Another fascinating near-miss in this instinct toward the fanzine was experienced by one Howard Scott, an amateur journalist in the 1870’s. He issued a publication called The Rambler and collected ayjay publications of others that laid much stress on speculative science. A surviving bound volume of such apazines contains such items as an article about possible inhabitants of other worlds, information on the more abstruse habits of birds, mesmerism facts, and a discussion on the possibilities of phonetic spelling. There must have been trufaanish instincts among Scott’s circle.

A fanzine for general circulation in fandom is called a genzine (general interest fanzine) as opposed to one for an amateur press association (apa) which is called an apazine.

My APAzines had names like Poppycock, Horse Feathers, Crap, and Bull.

My Element Lad uber-crush gave me my big break in comics. From my first scribblings in an APAzine, to my first mainstream comics gig!