Howdy gang! I'd like to
reiterate my request for original fiction
e-zines (must be nominally available via e-mail). Keep your eyes
peeled and let me know what you find. Thanks so much to those that
have already sent in suggestions.
I've been asked
where I find the variety of
e-mail-zines that I review. So I figured
I'd give away all my trade secrets and sources in one fell
swoop, by covering (and sort of reviewing) them. And, as usual, there'll be
a 'short take' at the end.
Now I
figure that many of you think that I'm really lonely and hang out in a darkened room for hours on end glued to my monitor reading way too much stuff.
To set the record straight: I'm really not lonely (honest) and my space is
quite well lit. I'm not glued to the screen and have resisted ever
owning a PC (at least in the past 9 years) to keep my rad level
to a minimum and do all my reviews and reading at the office.
(BTW, thanks to Merak Projects for providing me with a really kick-ass
machine and a 7 Meg ADSL line...)
Anyway back to the original point of
this week's ramble: Resources.
Thanks
to Chip Rowe Zines Resources, LowBandwidth and Robin Ward at the Mining Co.'s Zine site.
E-mail Resources: E-mail-zine Lists
New-List
http://scout18.cs.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/lwgate/NEW-LIST/
Secret's out: my primary source for
e-mail newsletters and publications has to come from a very
useful list called New-List, a production of the Internet Scout Project. This is a mailing list that
publishes info on new mailing lists. Each new mailing list gets
a posting to the list, and only a small fraction (of 50-100
listings per week) are e-mail newsletters/zines. Through a
process of quick filtering I remove all the discussion lists and
once a month go through the huge stack of newsletters and
subscribe to the ones that look interesting. Given the volume of
the list, it is not for the faint of heart, but hell if you've
the time you can garner some great finds here..
Web Resources: E-mail-zine Lists
Low
Bandwidth
http://www.disobey.com/low/
My fave e-mail-zine index site. These
guys tend to fit my e-mail delivery philosophy quite well and
tend to be more eloquent and determined about e-mail as push.
This site is purely e-mail-zines and covers a wide variety of
topics with reviews for many of the listings - literally
something for everybody. (As a reverse plug, these guys were
kind enough to continue the listings and contacts with many of
the e-mail-zines that used be listed at Todd Kuipers'
E-mail-zines list).
E Journal E-mail
Newsletters
http://www.edoc.com/jrl-bin/wilma/ema
I haven't visited this one in quite a
while but is another source for e-mail based publications. It's
part of the larger and more extensive E
Journal site.
Web Resources: General E-zine Lists
Keep in mind these resources don't list
just e-mail-zines, but you can usually find an e-mail version of
a few of the listed Web e-zines. Also, I'm listing the ones here
that I've found useful in my searches; this is not meant to be a
comprehensive list.
In no particular order:
Punk
Zines
http://www.worldchat.com/vic/wwp/zines.html
According to the site: "zines are a
major part of the punk 'culture'". There's a huge number of
zines (~450) listed here, almost all of them are on-line and a
few have e-mail versions of sorts. There are a fair number of
broken links here, but if you persist you'll end up finding some
really good content. Loads of those listed, as would be
expected, do music and culture reviews, but the points of view
and content spectrum are very broad. Don't let the
mainstream definition of "punk" frighten you away.
Electric
Pen
http://www.execpc.com/~catrina/pen/
I've been sneaking through here a fair
bit over the past few weeks in my search for original fiction
e-zines. I found a number here that fit the bill and
rediscovered a couple that I'd not seen for quite a few years
(like DargonZine). Nicely ordered and sorted the full listing
numbers 50+ and is available in a genre topic list. As a bonus,
it's not a bad site to look at.
New Jour
http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/
Ok, this one is "crazy big" and lists any
(every?) on-line publication. Over 5000 publications listed,
with listing dates over the past five years. The site has a
search function and lists all items alphabetically. I took one
look and kinda gave up, but if you've got the time, there's
gotta be some great stuff in here. But,
as a nice bonus you can sign-up for e-mail (mmmm... my favorite)
notification of new publication listings.
Zine
World
http://www.oblivion.net/zineworld/
Sort of a random and small to medium-sized assortment of e-zines. Quite a few good ones here.
ZineRack
http://www.zinerack.com/
The ZineRack is pretty to look at and is
actually pretty easy to use. Troll through here and you may find a few new
gems. Strangely though, Salon is considered to be a zine. I
guess each to their own.
Yahoo - News and
Media
http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/
Yahoo is the largest and most popular
site index on the Web and has very extensive listings of on-line
zines, newsletters and journals. The three main sub-categories
on this page are Journals, Newspapers and Magazines, which yield up extensive
links. You might also want to look through the Radio section; many stations do provide an e-mail
synopsis version of their news and shows. Like all the above
items, there's no guarantee on finding e-mail versions of what
you want, but you could lose yourself in here for days...
E-Zine-List
http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/
Geez, I'm in such a rush to give you
nice and eclectic lists that I forget the grand-daddy of 'em
all: John Labovitz's E-Zine-List. This site is well organized
and is the best source on the Web for e-zines. E-mail,
Web, Gopher, FTP, TelNet - you name the on-line delivery
mechanism and there's probably one here to fit the bill. An
excellent keyword list and a search function makes this easier
than some to get through. I really have no idea how many are
listed here but it's gotta give New Jour a run for the money.
Electronic
Newsstand
http://www.enews.com/
The ultimate in commercial e-publication
lists, the Electronic Newsstand is a portal site for an
extensive listing of hundreds of well-known print mags and their
on-line presences. They also provide an extensive subject guide
leading you to hundreds of more obscure print mags, zines and
newsletters. This one is worth a stop, especially given its
excellent organization and design. Hey, as a bonus you're
encouraged to subscribe to the paper versions via the listing
interface.
That's about it for this week. I
could continue for another few lines, but hope I've highlighted
some good starting points.
If you have a chance, visit the core
destination for zines/e-zines Chip Rowe's E-zine Resource Guide .
E-zine
Title: Joe Lavin's Humor
Column
E-zine
Description: Joe Lavin's Humor column has been around since
1991 and hit the Web somewhere in 1995. Each week brings a
humorous look at current events, technology, politics culture
and various miscellaneous topics.
I've seen Joe's
column around on and off for the past couple/few years and never
really read them until last month. Lots of good stuff, written
by a very literate and articulate guy. Give it a whirl.
Frequency of
Publication: weekly
Subscription
Instructions:
Send an e-mail message
to: humor-list-request@joelavin.com
In the message body
type:: subscribe humor-list your e-mail address
WWW
location:
http://joelavin.com
Contact
Information:
Allen Thompson - joe@joelavin.com
Cost:
free
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