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THEN, my wide-ranging history of the first fifty years of Science Fiction Fandom in
the UK, was published as a fanzine part-work from 1988-1993. Doing extensive research in
public records
and old fanzines, as well as writing to and conducting interviews with many old time fans,
I uncovered surprising links to contemporary peace groups, the counter-culture, and even
to the Beatles. The first major work to cover this subject in the UK, it became the
standard reference.
The expanded and upgraded edition (not updated - the history of UK
fandom from 1980 onward is a story for someone else to tell) saw its first book
publication in 2016 (see link at bottom of this page). The Internet gave me access to research
resources I did not have when I originally wrote THEN, resources I took full
advantage of when working on the current book edition. It also gave me the opportunity to make
stuff available to others that I couldn't before, hence THEN: The Archive.
The purpose of the Archive is to act as a repository for some of the material I referenced
when researching and writing THEN that people should find interesting for its own sake, some
complete old fanzines, and ancillary material such as, for example, the lettercolumns that
appeared in the original fanzine part-work version of THEN. And, of course, there will be stuff
I just think is cool. Everything is grouped by the five decades covered by THEN, and these will be
added to periodically.
All copyrights acknowledged, all articles, photos and artwork remain the intellectual
property of their creators.
From next month this site may be archived regularly as part of
the British Library Web Archiving Programme. Should anyone not want their material
included, they should contact me urgently to request its removal from the website.
...Rob Hansen, July 2011.
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Convention reports, TAFF reports, and other works by such as Frank Arnold, William F. Temple, Walt
Willis, Bob Shaw, Dave Langford, Greg Pickersgill, Leroy Kettle, and others are available in ebook
form here. Those I'm responsible for can be found
here, with individual download pages as listed below:
Free downloadable ebooks edited or co-edited by me:
- BEYOND FANDOM: Fans, Culture,and Politics in the 20th Century (73,000 words)
*NOTES*
- GENERATION FEMIZINE (67,000 words)
- BRITISH SF CONVENTIONS Volume 1: 1937-1951 (63,000 words)
- BRITISH SF CONVENTIONS Volume 2: 1952-1957 (101,000 words)
- 1957: The First UK Worldcon (67,000 words)
- 1965: The Second UK Worldcon (61,500 words)
- HOMEFRONT: Fandom in the UK (1939-1945) (163,500 words)
- BIXELSTRASSE: The SF Fan Community of 1940s Los Angeles (194,000 words)
- CHALLENGING MOSKOWITZ: 1930s Fandom Revisited (47,500 words)
- FAAN FICTION (1930-2020) - an exploration (61,000 words)
- THEN AGAIN: A UK Fanhistory Reader 1930-1979 (123,000 words)
- THE FRANK ARNOLD PAPERS (44,000 words)
- TEMPLE AT THE BAR (41,000 words)
- THE BEAST OF TRUE RAT (107,700 words)
- THE COMPACT ELLA PARKER (65,500 words)
- THE HARPY STATESIDE (42,000 words)
- THE HARRISON SAGA (32,000 words)
- CREATIVE RANDOM HARRIS (276,000 words)
- TAWF TIMES TWO (89,000 words)
Free downloadable ebooks written by me:
Free downloadable ebooks with Introduction or Foreword by me:
Print versions of a small number of the above ebooks are now available. You will find these
here.
OLD UK FANZINES ONLINE
(other than those to be found on this website - see below)
Including Fannish DIRECTORIES and Who's Whos
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A WALKING TOUR OF LONDON'S FANNISH HOLBORN (65 min video)
HISTORY OF THE FIRST-THURSDAY LONDON MEETINGS
KNOWN UK FAN GROUPS 1930 - 1990
IDENTIFYING FANS
In addition to photos in convention reports and the like, there are now a number of photo galleries on
this website that will help in identifying fans from the period it covers:
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THE 1930s
The decade in which SF fandom in the UK was born, beginning its life in a suburban house
in Ilford. It was a decade of firsts which saw the UK (and the world's) first science
fiction convention in Leeds, our first fanzines, and our first national organisation,
the Science Fiction Association.
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STANDARD REFERENCES
NEWSZINES
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OTHER
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FANHISTORY REFERENCE BOOKS
- A short list of useful works.
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