Have I mentioned that I miss the old days? Sure, these days are great, and you can find all kinds of information on the Internet, but back in 1993, before the 'Net was like it is today, the real thrill was to go to the mailbox and find a copy of a great magazine, settle down in an easy chair with a good reading lamp, and page through some outstanding articles.
Just take a look at the cover articles in this issue of Scream Factory, for example. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Feast your peepers on the ToC. It's almost too much too take in. And these aren't skimpy little articles and reviews we're looking at. The issue comes in at 128 oversize (8-1/2 X 11) pages of small print. Nonfiction, stories, reviews, interviews, and it's all great stuff. You can tell that by looking at the writers. They don't print 'em like this anymore. Or if they do, I don't see 'em.
I thought I'd given all my periodicals to the Cushing Library at Texas A&M, but I ran across this one the other day when going through some material on a hard-to-reach shelf. I'm glad I found it and selfishly happy to have it still in my possession.
11 comments:
You making me all misty eyed ala Maynard G. Krebs. This was one hell of rich era for horror in all versions and Scream was one of the finest magazines. Cemetery Dance was the leader but Scream Factory was an engaging and unique contender.
Maybe not all issues were as packed with good stuff as this one was, but they were all fun. Your article on Gold Medal in this one is great.
Well, this was Just Before the Web really kicked in, and such late-era dinosaurs as THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE and SF EYE also bestrode the better newsstands, providing a similar locus for such articles (and some fiction) in their respective bailiwicks.
I'm going to sound like an utter geek but the most impressive thing to me was reading this line embedded in tiny print in the subscription info: "This magazine was produced on a MacIntoch IIfx..." Ah, the days of desktop publishing when a 40mhz CPU was super fast and 4MB of memory was top of the line. Those Macs used to cost nearly $10,000!
And after using an Amiga 3000 to produce my own zines, working at a monthly "alternative' tabloid in DC using Macs was not exactly torture, but was less than pure pleasure in comparison...
I'm not going to mention the old days of mimeo zines.
OK...I will. My first one (back in the high-school days) was on ditto, and I did One (1) typo-heavy issue (essentially a test) and Never Again. Everything afterward was photocopied or photo-offset, after composition on a typewriter, computer or at a light table. Having letterhacked to MIMOSA, I admired their production, but had no desire to emulate. (And some stuff I've seen, including even reprints from Lee Hoffmann's QUANDRY, make appreciate the wisdom of avoiding that fine but time-consuming tradition.
I did a dittozine after Hurricane Alicia in 1983 because I couldn't get to any other kind of copier. It was a mess and probably some of the members of the apa couldn't read it. I think I did only the one.
And curious readers should be made aware that some of the folks responsible for THE SCREAM FACTORY now do BareBoneSez:
http://barebonesez.blogspot.com/
Always worth a look, and bare bones was a good little mag, itself, when it was print.
I cranked out my own mimeo zines for APA-5 for years, and later paid Art Scott to print them for Dapa-Em. I still remember the smell of the ink and the feel of the fawn-colored fibretone paper.
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