IDEAS: Zine But Not Heard

Edgy and underground, homemade fanzines mine punk-rock love and crepe-sole shoes to make words on paper radical again

There are those who argue that the underground these days can be found on the Internet: the global computer network allows its travelers to move about anonymously and carve out a corner for narrow, unconventional obsessions. But there is another, subterranean world of people with aliases and attitudes that makes the Internet seem almost fuddy-duddy. E-mail? Postings? Those are for executives and housewives.

The real underground has taken the very un-Postmodern step of depending on paper and the Postal Service: this is the low-tech, unwired world of photocopied "fanzines" (from fan magazines), the vanity projects of a new generation of publishers...

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