AltaZine

AltaZine was a UK-published Blake's 7 letterzine which ran for seven issues between January 1996 and late 1997.
It was created and edited by Neil Faulkner.
Judith Proctor assisted in some matters: "I don't edit AltaZine, Neil Faulkner does that. I just copy and distribute it for him (and disagree with him on virtually every topic of discussion." from a comment by Judith Proctor on mailing list Lysator (July 20, 1996)
"Altazine is basically a cheap, cheerful and occasionally irreverent letterzine." from a comment by Judith Proctor on Lysator (December 3, 1996)
==The Beginning==
The effects of the The Blake's 7 War was still being felt years after the original blow-ups in 1988 and 1989.
It was produced by Neil Faulkner and Judith Proctor in response to editorial restrictions imposed on the Horizon Letterzine, two issues of which Faulkner had edited in 1995. As Faulkner's editorial for AltaZine 0 explained: 
In 1999, Faulkner wrote: 
In 2000, the editor went into greater detail on Lysator, the Blake's 7 mailing list, about his reasons for deciding to publish Altazine:
==The End==
==Content==
Although envisaged primarily as a letterzine, AltaZine also included articles, convention reports, zine reviews, art, cartoons, vignette fiction, limericks, filks and anything else vaguely B7-related that the editors could cajole out of their subscribers or invent for themselves. Much of the zine's content ultimately came from either Faulkner or Proctor, with Faulkner determining the thematic nature of each issue (from AZ 3, each issue was focussed on a particular theme). Faulkner's editorial style was influenced heavily by rolegaming fanzines, particularly Paul Mason's Imazine and its mock-confrontational approach, such as letters peppered with snarky editorial interjections.
Many of the articles in AltaZine were concerned with Blake's 7 fan fiction, particularly what the editors considered to be the common pitfalls of the B7 fanfic then extant. Points raised in these (often deliberately provocative) articles were discussed at some length in the letters of comment that were the ostensible reason for AltaZine existing in the first place.
The burden of generating sufficient material to pad the zine out to length, coupled with the general dearth of contributions, led to Faulkner folding AltaZine after AZ 6. (AZ 7, though promised, never appeared.) In retrospect, it can be seen that AltaZine appeared just as Blake's 7 fandom was migrating in earnest to the internet, a medium much more suited than any print zine to the kind of open-ended discussion that Faulkner was attempting to facilitate. Print as a medium of fan discourse was dying, and AltaZine can only be regarded as an evolutionary dead end.
Nevertheless, AltaZine can also be seen as part of the 'new wave' of Blake's 7 fan writing that emerged in the late 1990s, when B7 fan fiction became more sophisticated, more experimental, more outward-looking and more 'literary'. Although nowhere near as 'edgy' as it liked to think it was, AltaZine did play some small part in this resurgence, though with a subsciber base of just a few dozen its impact could never be great. Some of its contents are reprinted online here.
From the flyer posted to Lysator in 1995:
A 1997 comment by Judith Proctor:
==Fan Comments==
===1997===
==Other Letterzines/Apas With Much Blake's 7 Content==
* Pressure Point (1987-1989)
* The Terra Nostra Underground (apa, 1989-1993)
* Liberation Letters (1991-?)
* The Neutral Arbiter (1991-1993, with a single 1994 outlier)
* Rallying Call (apa, early 1991 to at least 1998)
* Horizon Letterzine (1992-1998)
* Dandruff Droppings (apa, 1992-?)
* Battle Stations! (apa, 1994-not much longer)
* Strange Bedfellows (apa, May 1993-November 1997)
* The Way Forward (apa, 1995-ongoing)
* AltaZine (1996-1997)
Also see: List of Letterzines.
==General Fan Comments==
==Issue 0==
January 1996, 44 A4 pages slide bound, compiled on an Amstrad PCW with dot matrix print (used for the first three issues).
Originally envisaged as a slim-line launch issue with just a few articles to generate discussion, AZ 0 ended up as a full length zine with a wide range of content. Articles included The Enemy Within (the role of the antagonist in fan fiction, by Judith Proctor), the role of e-mail zines (a relatively new phenomenon within fandom), also by Proctor, some thoughts on writing style (by Faulkner and Proctor), Let's hear it for Dayna (analysis of a largely disregarded canon regular, by Faulkner), Who's In Control (on military intelligence within the Terran Federation, by Faulkner), Servalan and Sleer (Proctor), two articles on the Liberator (by Proctor and Faulkner respectively), Blake's Great (by Joyce Bowen), Should Zines Publish Serials? (Proctor), and How Many Ways Back? (a taxonomy of B7 fanfic, by Faulkner).
Additional content includes two pieces of fiction, Cover Story by N O'Treally (i.e. Faulkner), and part one of Voyage of Terror by Ellen A Rufkin (anagram...), three cartoons by Faulkner, a page of zine news and three pages of zine reviews. Four letters of comment fill 13 pages of the zine. There are also two full-page illustrations by Whitby27.
===Issue 0: Reactions and Reviews===
==Issue 1==
April 1996, 54 A4 pages comb-bound. The cover attempts, with only partial success, to depict the crew of the Liberator as the characters from Reservoir Dogs. (Whilst 'Ms Jenna' and 'Nice Bloke Vila' look passably like the canon characters, 'Mr Blake' looks like nothing more than Harvey Keitel wearing a woolly hat).
The first 'proper' issue of AltaZine contains a range of articles from diverse contributors, with Proctor confining herself to zine reviews and a letter of comment. Articles include Avon and Anna by Jean Graham, Attack of the Claypit People (common pitfalls of B7 fanfic, by Faulkner), Lemme Tell You What Like A Virgin's About... (a comparison of B7 with Quentin Tarantino movies, by Faulkner), Why Blake is so Frequently Depicted as a Moron in Fan Fiction by Sondra Sweigman, Standard by 7d6 (experiences of role-playing B7, by Faulkner), The Art of Falling Apart (on the Avon/Cally relationship, by Faulkner), and Let The Young Blood Freeze!, examples of (supposedly) awful fan writing selected by Faulkner.
Additional material includes The Test (short fiction by Brad Black), part two of Voyage of Terror, The Passenger (Iggy Pop filk by 'SLR', actually Faulkner), Chuck Berry filk (by Faulkner), a cartoon by Faulkner/Andrew Williams, zine news, zine reviews, and 6 letters of comment over 23 pages.
=== Issue 1: Reactions and Reviews===
==Issue 2==
Summer 1996, 50 A4 pages comb-bound. Cover is a photocopied portrait of Servalan with a safety pin through her nose and the legend Never Mind the Federation - Here's the Bollocks in cut-out lettering.
* The Crucial Element?, article (Faulkner analysing the Blake/Avon relationship) (1)
* Destroy the Old Order, article (Faulkner comparing punk with Blake's 7 and fandom: "Why B7 was punk, why fandom isn't") (5)
* Sex and War, article (Faulkner and Proctor debating the 4th-season episode Power) (8)
* I Really Tried to Write This B7 Story But... by Chris Blenkarn (meta essay) (12)
* Slash: The Case Against, essay (Faulkner and Proctor's contrasting views on slash fiction) (16)
* Voyage of Terror, part three, fiction (B7/Beavis and Butt-head crossover) (19)
* Zine News (20)
* Reviews by Chris Blenkarn, Neil Faulkner and Jean Graham (21):
** Avon #2 (Blenkarn), see that page
** Raising Hell #6 (Blenkarn), see that page
** Evasive Maneuvers (Blenkarn), see that page
** Southern Seven #5 (Blenkarn), see that page
** Input #1 (Blenkarn), see that page
** Chronicles Annual 1986 (Blenkarn), see that page
** Southern Comfort #2.5 (Blenkarn), see that page
** Serrated Seven (Graham, reprinted from Cephlon), see that page
** Aquitar (Graham, reprinted from Cephlon), see that page
** Beloved Adversary (Graham, reprinted from Cephlon), see that page
** Gambit #10, #11 (Faulkner), see that page
** Star Three (Faulkner), see that page
** The Horizon Technical Manual, part one (Faulkner), see that page
** Horizon #2 (Faulkner), see that page
* five letters of comment (Brad Black, Judith Proctor, Pam Baddeley, Susan Bennett, Sondra Sweigman) (29)
* Editorial (49)
* a poem by Avon lamenting Anna Grant's death (uncredited, but by Faulkner)
* short fillers by Brad Black
* Conditioning, Brain Washing, Memory Blocking and Occasionally Brain Prints, article by Judith Proctor (supposedly in this issue, but does not appear in the table of contents)
* a review by Judith Proctor for The Mark of Kane (Horizon Fan Club's audio tape: two stories written by Chris Boucher, the voices are Gareth Thomas and Brian Croucher)
===Issue 2: Excerpts from Letters===
 
=== Issue 2: Reactions and Reviews===
==Issue 3==
Undated, but likely very, very late 1996.Judith Proctor wrote on December 3, 1996: "Altazine issue 3 will be a month or two late as Neil Faulkner has just changed computers and has got to type a lot of the LOCs a second time as the old and new discs aren't compatible." comment by Judith Proctor on LysatorJudith Proctor wrote on December 9, 1996: "I've just got the masters for issue #3 from Neil, so I'll be copying it as soon as I feel half-way fit, but the Xmas post may slow it getting out to people." 42 A4 pages comb-bound.
This and future issues were compiled on a Sharp FontWriter with consequent improvement in quality and readability of print. Cover features photocopied image of Avon confronting Blake in the final moments of the series, with speech bubbles reiterating a very old joke about hamsters and sellotape. AZ 3 proclaimed itself to be a 'Kinky Sex Special!'
Articles include three perspectives on slash (Why Slash?, Random Thoughts on Some B7 Slash Pairings and Romancing the Slash) by Sarah Thompson, Loving Them to Death (discussing hurt/comfort fanfic, by Faulkner), All In The Mind (on conditioning and brainwashing in B7, by Proctor), and a report on the 1996 Who's 7 Convention, by Faulkner.
Additional material includes a short piece of untitled fiction by Brad Black, Aunty Anna's Agony Column (by Faulkner), zine news, zine reviews, 6 letters of comment over 18 pages, and a country and western-style filk by Faulkner.
==Issue 4==
Spring 1997, 50 A4 pages, stapled. Cover (supposedly) depicts an ageing craggy-faced Avon standing over Blake's tombstone, but Faulkner's limitations as an artist are more than usually apparent here.
AZ 4 touts itself as a 'hardtech special', with 'hardtech' being a style of fanfic writing that was never satisfactorily defined, and not least by Faulkner who coined the term in the first place. Articles include an attempt to define it by Faulkner, The Politics of B7 by Pat Fenech, A Hard-Wired Seven? (writing B7 as cyberpunk, by Faulkner), [Note: only half of this essay is at hermit.org before it cuts off. The entire essay can be seen at Lysator as well as Archive of Our Own Erotica in Fanfic by Sondra Sweigman, Oh No, Not Tarrant!... (personal experiences of writing for particular characters, by Faulkner), My Top Ten Episodes (by Faulkner), Ve Haf Vay Of Making You Talk (on Federation interrogation techniques, by Proctor), and Beating The Odds (survival rates in fan fiction, by Faulkner).
Additional material includes Zine Fever (filk by Proctor and Kathryn Andersen), Freeze On, Young Blood (more fanfic howlers), a tongue-in-cheek comparison of B7 and Star Trek by Brad Black, Aunty Anna's Agony Column (by Faulkner and Chris Blenkarn), six letters of comment over 24 pages and back page art by Joyce Bowen.
==Issue 5==
Summer (around August) 1997, 46 A4 pages corner-stapled. Cover depicts a group of decimas (from the 1st-season episode The Web) at a bowling alley to tie in with AZ 5 being an 'Unearthly Alien Special'.
Articles include Not Of This Earth (a discussion of aliens in SF in general and B7 in particular, by Faulkner), More Human Than I Am (discussing 'humanoid' aliens in particular, by Faulkner), Fraggle Waggle, or I'm Looting The Body (moon discs as player characters in the Horizon B7 Role-Playing Game, by Faulkner), Media*West convention report (by Proctor), On Zine Reviews by Chris Blenkarn, What's Wrong With Action Scenes? by Russ Massey, I Drink Therefore I Am (considering 'the merits of the various members of the crew as martini mixers', by Chris Blenkarn), What Might Have Been (factual article on casting considerations for the series, by Russ Massey), and Once A Jolly Rebel (on political reality in B7 fan fiction, by Faulkner).
Additional material includes After Hours (short fiction, by Faulkner), Del Tarrant's Deep Space Cookbook (satire, by Faulkner), a limerick by Susan Bennett, a couple of B7 elephant jokes, zine news and reviews, and five letters of comment over 17 pages.
==Issue 6==
Autumn (end of November) 1997, 40 A4 pages margin-stapled. Cover for this 'Spicey Girlpower Special' depicts the five leading female characters of the series as the Spice Girls and was drawn by Whitby27.
Articles include Deadlier Than The Male (by Faulkner) and The Women of Blake's 7 (by Pam Baddeley) discussing the role of female characters in the series, Get Away From Her, You Bitch (an analysis of the action woman in SF, by Faulkner), Good Women Wasted (underdevelopment of the female leads in B7, by Faulkner), The Definitive Guide to Women in Media Science Fiction by Russ Massey, Starfleet Experience 1997 convention report by Chris Blenkarn, and On Being A Fan Artist by Whitby27.
Additional material includes an Otis Redding filk by Faulkner, fillers by Brad Black, the one entry for the (prizeless) B7 Blues competition (from Brad Black), a spoof flier for the upcoming Deliverance 98 convention, and four letters of comment over 10 pages.
==References==
Category:Blake's 7 Non-fiction Zines
Category:1996 Zines
Category:1997 Zines