A part of this scene is the creation of your own sys-
tems of design, publishing and distribution. The
modding fan press has a long history and is a part of
the internal power struggles within different disci-
plines. Car tuning fans have their magazines, such as
Lowrider, amateur radio broadcasters theirs, such as
CQ, home crafters theirs, such as Craft, many with a
committed team of writers in close contact with the
fans. Fans started the majority of these, filling a gap,
and soon turned out to define the scene, often in al-
liance with major distribution companies or often
licensed by the original authors of the scene that the
fans gather around.
What is especially interesting about self-published
fanzines is how they “hack” into the creation of
meaning within popular culture. They bypass the
control mechanisms of the original authors and ride
on the main narratives. Their hacked stories are
made into zines to be easily shared among other fans
that do not rely on the official fan clubs and their
controlled channels. We will look at these specific fan
methods later but first we will start with examining
zines themselves, the DIY vectors.
Zines are a common form of self-published media.
They can refer to the clandestine distribution of the
illegal handmade Samizdat zines that were sup-
pressed in the Soviet Union, especially during the
post-Stalin times (Saunders 1974) or to photocopied
indie or punk zines, often listed through the resource
Factsheet5. They are small, handmade amateur pub-
lications. Cultural critic Stephen Duncombe de-
scribes them as
noncommercial, nonprofessional, small-circulation
magazines that their creators produce, publish, and
distribute by themselves. Most often laid out on plain
paper and reproduced on common Xerox machines,
zines are sold, given away, or, as is common custom,
swapped for other zines. They’re distributed mainly
through the mail and are advertised through the
grapevine of other zines and in the pages of zines
containing reviews of other zines. (Duncombe 1998:
427)The zines have traditionally contained all kinds of is-
sues, always edited with a very personal touch to con-
tain stories, poems, “comix”, hand drawn illustra-
tions, as well as cut-and-paste collages from other
media. Topics have varied extensively, from home
engineering to poetry, with the aim of discussing
personal obsessions as well as distributing informa-
Star Trek relations have intrigued the fans since the
beginning of the series, especially that between the two
main characters, Captain Kirk and his first lieutenant
Spock. It set off numerous fan fiction zines that included
stories reinterpreting of the narratives in the different Star
Trek episodes and skillfully writing own additions inside
the canon of the original episodes.