About Fanzines and Out of the Kaje

So What's a Fanzine?

A fanzine, or 'zine' as it's commonly known is basically a small-scale magazine produced for the love of it and distributed on a not-for-profit basis. Anyone can write one, and they can be about any topic/s dear to your heart. Some people produce Punk zines, Heavy Metal zines, skateboarding zines, etc. etc. The kind I'm interested in, and put out myself, isn't quite like these. The fannish community (and by this I mean Science Fiction fans) has a long tradition of producing fanzines which revolve around, or at least peripherally involve, Science Fiction.

There are many different kinds of Fanzine, including (but not limited to)

Genzines - about subjects of general interest, and usually written and/or edited by more than one person
Perzines - personal fanzines, generally the work of just one person and focusing on stuff of interest purely to them eg.family, cats, gardening, etc. Perzines tend to be much more chatty in tone than genzines.
Crudzines - Nobody (well, almost nobody) chooses to produce a Crudzine. The term is usually used as a derogatory one, descibing a fanzine with flung-together/offensive/low-quality or otherwise cruddy content, poor presentation, and low quality reproduction. If someone describes your painstaking production as a crudzine, that means they didn't like it - don't worry too much, and get on with what you want to do.
Clubzines - zines produced on behalf of a club or organisation, featuring articles, news etc. relevant to the club eg.info on the latest Star Trek movie, fan-fiction and an article on the science of Trek in a zine for a Star Trek club.
APAzines - fanzines produced for distribution mainly or solely through an APA. Often very chatty, but there's no law that says they have to be, and usually including Mailing Comments of some description.
Newszines - a zine produced on a regular basis, and mainly (or solely) containing news about the genre and the Fannish community. Often also with a large letter column for people to share their own news and views.
Reviewzines - just what the name suggests. A zine largely devoted to reviews of the latest books, movies etc.

Most people decide on one type of zine when they start out, and produce that for varying lengths of time before getting tired of it and starting something new. Occasionally, a zine mutates all by itself, upgrading itself from a crudzine to a perzine for example, or drifting from perzine to genzine as more people start to contribute. At other times the change is quite deliberate, and reflects a personal change of focus on the part of the editor - a former media fan, who produced a zine devoted entirely to Battlestar Galactica for example, might decide that they're tired of the whole genre, and move on to producing a much more general perzine, if they don't leave fandom entirely that is. Some people actually produce more than one zine at a time - a clubzine and a perzine, for example. I'm something of an addict in this - I'm a member of three APAs, and I felt it was cheating to reuse material, so I produce no less than four different fanzines, three for the APAs, and the much more widely circulated Out of the Kaje.

For Information on APAs in general, and my apazines in particular, click here. To read about Out of the Kaje, continue below.

What's this Out of the Kaje thing all about?

Many people have asked me where the name for this zine came from, and whether it has any special significance. Well, it does and it doesn't. Because my initials are KJ, I decided I wanted a title which reflected that, and started looking for words which I could subvert by changing a few letters...

Breakaje - something I'm quite good at, but not the best title in the world
Wreckaje - a not very optimistic prediction of the outcome of my self-publishing venture - maybe not...
Corkaje - the fanzine for those who tipple (but I don't, generally)
Dorkaje - my brother's suggestion, and a homage to Dilbert
Kajual contact - a play on the Klingon work 'chaj', a friendship term used from female to female
Iron Kaje - the name of the first science fiction novel for adults I ever read (by Andre Norton.)

Bird Kaje - now we're onto something! This lead to

From the Kaje
Fleeing the Kaje
and of course the winning title - Out of the Kaje

I liked this one, because it has a double significance. Most of the content is written by me (though that may change at a future date, and I welcome submissions of material from others) so it does come 'Out of the Kaje' - ie. out of my mouth. At the same time, this fanzine was my first attempt at fannish publishing, and I hoped that it would be a way to express myself more freely, a way out of the cage of mundanity and boredom. Some others have asked whether there was any similarity to the term 'Out of the Closet' (and whether I was perhaps revealing more of my intentions than I meant?) but that's not actually the case :-) The only closet I came out of had nothing to do with my sexuality, but rather was the one that many science fiction fans hide in... That closet was well and truly cast aside when I started handing out copies of my zine to some of my friends and family, who had no idea that I was into this stuff at all (and who didn't understand some of it AT ALL...) That's OK - I didn't expect them to, but I wanted to share a side of myself that I had kept very private, and to come Out of the Kaje :-)

But now I suppose you want to see what's actually IN this zine of mine?
Follow this link to a complete INDEX of Out of the Kaje.

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