How did people blog before there was an internet? They published fanzines. Well, OK, there are probably more differences than similarities, but fanzines were full of personal essays just like blogs and readers sent in letters of comment and got into discussions and referenced things they'd read in other zines. Since fanzines were paper and it all depended on the mail, the whole process proceeded in slow motion, or so it appears in retrospect.

Some fanzines printed material from contributors, some were the work of the editor alone. They were not, in any literary sense, amateur magazines, but like blogs, vehicles for personal expression/communication/discussion.

Fanzines are still published. (see eFanzines) Although many are produced in electronic format (particularly in pdf) most adhere to the same sort of schedules and layout as traditional fanzines. Certain editors consider that they are merely using the internet to more easily, and cheaply, distribute their zines, which the diligent reader ought to print out after downloading.

Dave Burton recently published a fanzine, Catchpenny Gazette 10 , which among other material contains some excerpts from this very blog. I suppose it is my age showing, but to me, material reads better presented in a magazine or book format.

Among the contents, Dave Locke questions the presumptions of whoever said no two snowflakes are identical; Chris Garcia invesigates the mystery of why the February 1992 issue of Amazing Stories was found at the Computer Museum; Peter Sullivan discusses the internet as an "attention based economy"; and the lettercolumn boasts a missive from Gregory Benford.