The science fiction fans of the first half of the century took the APA one step further. Fandom expanded beyond the letterpages of pulp magazines and began putting out their own mimeographed magazines, cementing the subculture. Micro-presses filled the gap when the major publishing houses began to focus more heavily on the bottom line than their own tony reputations. Poetry, controversial material and subversive rants including everything from Socialist anti-war tracts to fascist sociological theory were cranked out by the micropress. The radical politics of the 1960s and the disintegration of the New Left into a myriad of squabbling World Parties of the International Proletariat kept small printing presses humming, but the birth of punk in the 1970s and the arrival of cheap photocopying technology triggered the zine explosion.
Zine genres vary.
Distribution can cover major magazine stores and record shops like Tower, or can be confined to a mailing list of fifty eager readers. Micro-press book publishing utilizes many of the same technologies and aesthetic principles as the zinesters. Micro-press books are often smaller, produced more quickly and sometimes even held together with tape or staples instead of binding. Late Capitalism gets its cut of the zine revolution though. Rather than eschewing the subversion of the micropress, the mainstream has embraced it.