Support your local fanzine

Back in the day, when rock musicians were desperately trying to join the establishment instead of staying true to their rebellious roots, the kids started their own punk rock revolution to reclaim the soul of music back from what Mick Farren called the “turgid master stream of traditional establishment showbiz”. Coincident with this musical revolution, other kids started producing their own magazines to document the anarchic happenings and “all the things that have always been unacceptable to a ruling establishment” (Mick Farren, again). Rather than wait for some pompous journo to report on a Ramones gig in London in July 1976, one particular kid, Mark Perry, produced his own mag and named it after a Ramone song.

The fanzine, Sniffin’ Glue, followed a tradition that can be traced back to the 1930s. Fans doing it themselves. In 1976, Sniffin’ Glue kick-started a wave of punk rock fanzines. “A burst of colour and excitement against a background of dullness, hardship or frustration” (Mick Farren, who else?). Fans producing their own magazines, at their own expense, from their bedrooms, writing about what they love, for their own enjoyment, because they’ve got something to say and because it needs to be said.

In the 80s, football was going through its own series of crises: crappy old stadia, ID card threats from the government, indifference to fans from football clubs, and antipathy from the vast majority of the public who thought we were all tarnished with the same thuggish outlook as the boot boys who used our clubs to express their hatred of everyone and anyone (including themselves). We were locked up behind metal cages and treated like dirt whenever we went to see our teams.

So, real fans started their own revolution and football fanzines were born, most notably with When Saturday Comes in 1986. As with Sniffin’ Glue, an explosion followed. Literature produced by and for the fans. A former punk fanzine writer armed with Letraset, Pritt Stick, and a stapler, started Forest’s first fanzine, Brian, in 1988 and more followed. Anyone with something to say could say it. I even managed to get The Tricky Tree and The Trent Times to publish one or two of my own rants. None of them changed the world, but getting them printed made me feel better.

And now, we’ve got a new wave of fanzines at Forest: Trevor Francis Tracksuits & Oh Mist Rolling In. Written by fans for fans. If you’ve got any interest in finding out what real fans think, make sure you get hold of one. Or both.

Meanwhile, in the US, film and television writers have gone on strike. So what? Why should we care? Because this is one of the first skirmishes in the war against Artificial Intelligence. The screenwriters are striking to have the use of AI in screenwriting regulated. They have a point. AI is taking their jobs.

IBM have stopped hiring for about 7,800 jobs that could be replaced by Artificial Intelligence. Machines have been coming for our jobs for hundreds of years. That wouldn’t be a problem if we had a universal basic income or if we all owned the means of production, but we don’t. My old mate Ned Ludd fought against machines taking his job 250 years ago. The alternative was to lose his livelihood and starve. Personally, I don’t mind machines doing the boring work. But if a machine does my job, I don’t benefit. The company does.

AI writing scripts for B-movies and daytime soaps may be the thin end of the wedge, but it won’t end there. First it’ll be the screenwriters, then the songwriters, then the novelists, then the journalists. AI won’t be able to express what it means to be human for the simple reason that it isn’t human. AI won’t be able to produce those astounding insights or those incredible artworks that humans can.

We all of us want to express ourselves; however, some folk have real talent with words. Those that have the ability can express universal truths for all of us. I love how Billy Bragg and David Gedge describe exactly what it feels like to be someone like me. Afua Hirsch and Akala can write about their own lives with such skill that I can start to understand what it is like to walk around in their shoes. Ali Smith and Bernadine Evaristo write beautiful prose that makes me pause and think about the world as it is now. True artists like these and the many others who can write are like gold dust. We should treasure them.

If we are left with AI, then our world becomes more ordinary. What we are able to read will become a rehash of previous thoughts and past ideas. Imagine a world where the majority of text is produced using AI. Where do you go for creative writing? How do you go to find out what real people, humans, really think? We should treasure all of our writers. There are loads of folk who write better than I do. Many of them write in fanzines. There may come a time when independently produced literature – samizdats, fanzines, whatever – is our only source of real information. Not today. Not tomorrow. But one day, fanzines may be our only hope. If we let AI do our writing, we let AI do our thinking. Then we are in real trouble.

OK, I admit it. I’ve got skin in this game. I am neither artificial nor intelligent. I’ve written for a fanzine or two (mostly rehashes, ripoffs, and repeats of someone else’s previous thoughts and past ideas). But, think for yourself. What would you rather read?

Fanzines are fun. Fanzines are important. Fanzines and fanzine writers area vital part of our culture. We should support them.

And, as Mick Farren would say: that, gentle reader, is where you come in.

Support your local fanzine.