File 770 Celebrates Two Anniversaries This Week

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File 770 reaches two big milestones in January. Today is the 45th anniversary of the fanzine (January 6). And the 15th anniversary of this blog arrives on January 15.

Some Filers have written a few pieces – book reviews, poetry, pop culture posts – that will appear during the week as part of the celebration.

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37 thoughts on “File 770 Celebrates Two Anniversaries This Week”

  6. Happy Birthday, and many thanks to everyone who’s sustained the zine and blog over the years!

  8. Mike & all,
    Congratulations on both “The 15 and the 45”!
    As a descendant of Scots, I’m also glad to have a new and nicer association with that expression. “The 15” to Scots means the 1715 uprising to free Scotland from the rule of George I. “The 45”, in 1745, was supposed to do the same against George II (and was Bonny Prince Charlie’s shot at the English throne, too).

  17. I’m sure some of my issues of ‘Kraith’ are older than 45 and I’m fairly sure it wasn’t the very first Star Trek fanzine. That also doesn’t include Sherlock Holmes stories written and distributed by & to fans that date back before 1900, even if they weren’t called fan fiction. How are they figuring the anniversary?

  20. @Mary A. Bauer–I’m not sure what the initial publication dates of other zines have to do with the initial publication date, and hence the anniversary date, of the fanzine File 770.

    I reread Mike’s post, and nowhere does he claim it’s the oldest zine. Just that January 6 is the anniversary date of bothvthe blog and the zine, both called File 770.

  21. “Today is the 45th anniversary of the fanzine” was misinterpreted as a reference to fanzines in general, not the GOAT of science fiction fanzines we keep pouring our words into like we never fear running out.

  22. By the way, what’s the oldest fanzine any of you have? I have some issues of a Star Trek fanzine from 1977 (my first fanac was letters to that zine, typed on my mother’s manual typewriter)

  23. Oldest fanzine I bought new: It’s a Fanzine! #1 (1980), edited by Gene Kehoe. It was an excellent gateway to comics fandom.

    Oldest fanzine I bought old: Ah! Sweet Idiocy (1948), Frances Towner Laney’s legendary takedown of science fiction fandom. I had wanted to read it for years after it was referenced in Sharyn McCrumb’s mystery Zombies of the Gene Pool. But it wasn’t as entertaining as I hoped. There’s quite a bit of vile anti-gay hatred.

  24. @Andrew (not Werdna)
    I think I had some Trek zines from 1976. Don’t think I have them now, but I’ve moved multiple times. I do have some from a bit later.

  28. Fun fact, FWIW: 770 x 45 x 15 = 519,750 = 2 x (3^3) x (5^3) x 7 x 11. Such an abundance of prime factors means that FILE 770 is a prime example of a great zine! (And always has been, I have to say.)

  30. Congrats, Mike!

    Oldest fanzine in my collection: Think it’s an issue of Tucker’s LE ZOMBIE from the 1940’s.
    Oldest fanzine I bought new: Dick Geis’ SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #28, November 1968. It was my introduction to “real” fandom. (It’s all Geis’s* fault!)

    *OT, but… I only recently learned the currently accepted possessive form of words ending in “s”, like Kansas, is supposed to end in “s’s” (“Kansas’s”). I think it looks awful and Wrong. AITOF? (Am I The Old Fart?)

  31. What I learned about possessives in college was that if you pronounce it, you write it.

  33. I think it looks awful and Wrong.

    As someone who cannot possess anything without it being Rogers’s I second that emotion.

  34. The apostrophe is used for contraction too. For the possessive, “s’s” is shortened to “s'”. There ain’t nothin’ wrong wi’ it.

  35. (Have been trying to send this several times already, but Something Up There Does NOT Like Me):

    Many happy returns! I have not read issue #1 per se, but lately have googled up a few from the 1980s and they are just as much fun (and information) as they must have been back then.

    The oldest physical fanzine I own (if I only could remember where) must be from the late 1980s, literally a few days before the Revolution. The very first one I bought new was IIRC (late) 1991, and I think I subscribed the year after (we had to provide our own SASEs).

    As a nerdy EFL (ELF) speaker, I am very much in a favor of ‘s in all cases (except the greengrocer’s), and don’t get me started on the serial comma…

  36. 45 years is just amazing. I stand in awe.

    @Andrew (not Werdna): Argh! You made me go near the Don’t Go Near Those Shelves. How am I supposed to put all that dust back? I have a copy of Roy Tackett’s personalzine Dynatron dated November 1975: he had some extra copies and brought them to an Albuquerque SF Society (ASFS) meeting. I may have given him a dollar for it, can’t remember now. The very oldest I have is Geis’ The Alien Critic Number Five from 1973, but I didn’t buy that until much later, when he was selling bundles of back issues.

    @Bruce Arthurs: I believe that should be 1978.

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