Xero (SF fanzine)
Encyclopedia
Xero was a fanzine
Science fiction fanzine
A science fiction fanzine is an amateur or semi-professional magazine published by members of science fiction fandom, from the 1930s to the present day...

 edited and published from 1960 to 1963 by Dick Lupoff
Richard A. Lupoff
Richard Allen Lupoff is an American science fiction and mystery author, who has also written humor, satire, non-fiction and reviews. In addition to his two dozen novels and more than 40 short stories, he has also edited science-fantasy anthologies. He is an expert on the writing of Edgar Rice...

, Pat Lupoff and Bhob Stewart
Bhob Stewart
Bhob Stewart is an American writer, editor, artist and film maker who has written for a variety of publications over a span of five decades. His articles and reviews have appeared in TV Guide, Publishers Weekly and other publications, along with online contributions to Allmovie, the Collecting...

. With a main focus on science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 and comic books, Xero also featured essays, satire, articles, poetry, artwork and cartoons on a wide range of other topics.

The articles and letter columns often featured well-known contributors: Dan Adkins
Dan Adkins
Dan Adkins is an American illustrator who worked mainly for comic books and science-fiction magazines.-Early life and career:...

, Otto Binder
Otto Binder
Otto Oscar Binder was an American author of science fiction and non-fiction books and stories, and comic books...

, James Blish
James Blish
James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...

, Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...

, Algis Budrys
Algis Budrys
Algis Budrys was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names "Frank Mason", "Alger Rome", "John A. Sentry", "William Scarff", and "Paul Janvier."-Biography:...

, Lin Carter
Lin Carter
Linwood Vrooman Carter was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor and critic. He usually wrote as Lin Carter; known pseudonyms include H. P. Lowcraft and Grail Undwin.-Life:Carter was born in St. Petersburg, Florida...

, Avram Davidson
Avram Davidson
Avram Davidson was an American writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche...

, L. Sprague de Camp
L. Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...

, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

, Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...

, Ed Gorman
Edward Gorman
Ed Gorman is an award-winning American author best known for his crime and mystery fiction. He wrote The Poker Club which is currently in post production for a film of the same name directed by Tim McCann....

, Ron Haydock
Ron Haydock
Ron Haydock was an American actor, screenwriter, novelist and rock musician.His band, Ron Haydock & the Boppers, was sometimes compared to Elvis Presley...

, Roy Krenkel, Frederik Pohl
Frederik Pohl
Frederik George Pohl, Jr. is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years — from his first published work, "Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna" , to his most recent novel, All the Lives He Led .He won the National Book Award in 1980 for his novel Jem...

, Larry Shaw
Larry Shaw (editor)
Lawrence Taylor Shaw was a Hugo Award-winning science fiction fan, author, editor and literary agent who usually published as Larry T. Shaw....

, Robert Shea
Robert Shea
Robert Joseph Shea was an American novelist and former journalist best known as co-author with Robert Anton Wilson of the science fantasy trilogy Illuminatus!. It became a cult success and was later turned into a marathon-length stage show put on at the British National Theatre and elsewhere. In...

, Steve Stiles, Bob Tucker
Wilson Tucker
Arthur Wilson "Bob" Tucker was an American mystery, action adventure, and science fiction writer, who wrote professionally as Wilson Tucker....

, Donald E. Westlake
Donald E. Westlake
Donald Edwin Westlake was an American writer, with over a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction or other genres...

, Ted White
Ted White (author)
Ted White is a Hugo Award-winning American writer, known as a science fiction author and editor and fan, as well as a music critic...

, Paul Williams
Paul Williams (Crawdaddy! creator)
Paul Williams is an American music journalist and writer. Williams created the first national US magazine of rock music criticism :Crawdaddy! in January 1966 on the campus of Swarthmore College with the help of some of his fellow science fiction fans...

 and Walt Willis
Walt Willis
Walter Alexander Willis was a well-known Irish science fiction fan, resident in Belfast.Willis was awarded a 1958 Hugo Award as "Outstanding Actifan" , which replaced the Best Fanzine category that year. He was nominated for a best fan writer Hugo in 1969 and two retro-Hugos in the same category...

.

Books

The format of Xero imitated Ace Books' Ace Doubles
Ace Books
Ace Books is the oldest active specialty publisher of science fiction and fantasy books. The company was founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn, and began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns...

 (two novels bound together with cover illustrations on front and back). When Xero was flipped over, it revealed a second cover leading into an article on comic books. These articles were mostly about 1940s superheroes: "The Spawn of M.C. Gaines" by Ted White; "Me To Your Leader Take" by Richard Ellington; "The Big Red Cheese" by Dick Lupoff; "The First (arf, arf) Superhero of Them All (Popeye
Popeye
Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...

)" by Bill Blackbeard
Bill Blackbeard
William Elsworth Blackbeard , better known as Bill Blackbeard, was a writer-editor and the founder-director of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art, a comprehensive collection of comic strips and cartoon art from American newspapers...

; "OK, Axis, Here We Come!" by Don Thompson
Maggie Thompson
Margaret "Maggie" Thompson , is the editor of Comics Buyer's Guide, a monthly comic book industry news magazine...

; "One on All and All on One" by Tom Fagan
Rutland Halloween Parade
The Rutland Halloween Parade is an annual event held on Halloween in the city of Rutland, Vermont, since 1960. The parade has a strong superhero theme and has been the setting for a number of comic book adventures...

; "A Swell Bunch of Guys" by Jim Harmon
Jim Harmon
James Judson Harmon , better known as Jim Harmon, was an American short story author and popular culture historian who wrote extensively about the Golden Age of Radio. He sometimes used the pseudonym Judson Grey, and occasionally he was labeled Mr...

; "The Four-Panelled, Sock-Bang-Powie Saturday Afternoon Screen" by Chris Steinbrunner
Chris Steinbrunner
Peter Christian Steinbrunner was an Edgar Award-winning American author, broadcaster and historian specializing in detective film and fiction....

; "Captain Billy's Whiz Gang!" by Roy Thomas
Roy Thomas
Roy William Thomas, Jr. is an American comic book writer and editor, and Stan Lee's first successor as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. He is possibly best known for introducing the pulp magazine hero Conan the Barbarian to American comics, with a series that added to the storyline of Robert E...

; "The Second Banana Superheroes" by Ron Goulart
Ron Goulart
Ron Goulart is an American popular culture historian and mystery, fantasy and science fiction author.The prolific Goulart wrote many novelizations and other routine work under various pseudonyms: Kenneth Robeson , Con Steffanson , Chad Calhoun, R.T...

; and "Comic of the Absurd" by Harlan Ellison. These articles were later collected in the book All in Color for a Dime (1970).

Other articles and art from Xero were reprinted in The Best of Xero, published by San Francisco's Tachyon Publications in 2004. John Hertz
John Hertz (fan)
John Hertz is a long-time Los Angeles, California science fiction fan.Winner of the Big Heart Award at the 61st World Science Fiction Convention , he is active in the fanzine community, publishing the fanzine Vanamonde. Three collections of his fanwriting have been published, West of the Moon ,...

 reviewed The Best of Xero in Emerald City:
Davidson, Carter, and Stiles all contributed to Xero; Stiles, who in 2004 was on the Best Fanartist ballot, then drew with a stylus on mimeograph stencils, the technology of the day. Pat & Dick Lupoff typed stencils in their Manhattan apartment, printed them on a machine in Noreen & Larry Shaw’s basement, collated by hand, and lugged the results to SF cons or stuffed them in mailboxes. The machine had not been given by Damon Knight
Damon Knight
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan. His forte was short stories and he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the genre.-Biography:...

, A. J. Budrys
Algis Budrys
Algis Budrys was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names "Frank Mason", "Alger Rome", "John A. Sentry", "William Scarff", and "Paul Janvier."-Biography:...

 explained in a letter after a while, but lent. Eventually drawings could be scanned by electro-stencil, a higher tech. Colored ink joined colored paper, sometimes wildly colored. Xero could be spectacular. Knight later founded the Science Fiction Writers of America; he and Budrys were each later Writer Guest of Honor at a Worldcon. James Blish won two Retrospective Hugos in 2004; in Xero he reviewed Budrys’ Rogue Moon (not reprinted by Tachyon), and Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

New Maps of Hell. You’ll also see Anthony Boucher, Harlan Ellison, Ethel Lindsay, Fred Pohl, Rick Sneary, Bob Tucker as "Hoy Ping Pong", Harry Warner—fans and pros mixing it up. Roger Ebert, later a movie critic, contributed poetry, often free-style, or formal and funny in his fanziner’s version of Browning’s "Last Duchess":
This crud
I print for you disgusts me; the thud
Is of your fanzine dully falling.

External links

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