iOTA is a little efanzine put together by Leigh Edmonds for the singular purpose of keeping informed the fans who are interested the progress of his project to write a history of Australian sf fandom with a focus on the period from 1956 to 1975, and sundry offences.
Leigh’s kindly sent me electronic copies, and we chatted last weekend about how it’s progressing. As a professional historian, he’s talking to key fans active pre-1975 and sharing his interim results in iOTA. You can download copies at efanzines.
As he notes in the first issue:
The first reason for researching and writing as history of Australian fandom is; why not? From an academic point of view, I think that a history of what science fiction fans did might be considered a vital adjunct to the current study of science fiction, due to the very close relationship between sf and fandom over the generations. I’m also keen to do this because most of my recent history projects have been about large organizations employing thousands of people, and I’m looking forward to a project in which it is possible to get closer to people and their daily lives. Perhaps most important, this project will tell a story about what fans did and what their lives were like. We had fun, didn’t we? That should be worth celebrating.
The Adelaide Fan Review 