linguistic:translation
Fandom and fanzines

Science fiction fandom emerged from the letters column in Amazing Stories magazine. Soon fans began writing letters to each other, and then grouping their comments together in informal publications that became known as fanzines. Once in regular contact, fans wanted to meet each other and organized local clubs. In the 1930s, the first science fiction conventions gathered fans from a wider area.

The earliest organized online fandom was the SF Lovers Community, originally a mailing list in the late 1970s with a text archive file that was updated regularly. In the 1980s, Usenet groups greatly expanded the circle of fans online. In the 1990s, the development of the World-Wide Web exploded the community of online fandom by orders of magnitude, with thousands and then millions of websites devoted to science fiction and related genres for all media.

The first science fiction fanzine, The Comet, was published in 1930 by the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago, Illinois. One of the best known fanzines today is Ansible, edited by David Langford, winner of numerous Hugo awards. Other notable fanzines to win one or more Hugo awards include File 770, Mimosa, and Plokta. Artists working for fanzines have frequently risen to prominence in the field, including Brad W. Foster, Teddy Harvia, and Joe Mayhew; the Hugos include a category for Best Fan Artists.