The Tattooed Dragon Meets the Wolfman—Lenny Kaye's Science Fiction Fanzines 1941-1970
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"In the fragile, yellowing pages of Kaye’s fanzine and scores like it, we find the secret history of a world largely invisible to mainstream culture, a world animated by shared passions but also riven by turf wars and ideological bloodletting (between the allegedly Communist Futurians and SF’s right-wing flank)—a social world, in other words, as real as the 'real' one." — Mark Dery
The Tattooed Dragon Meets the Wolfman is an annotated visual catalogue of science-fiction fanzines in all their mimeographed glory from 1941 to 1970.
These zines—perhaps the original zines—were initially small-run circulars traded amongst fans that offered criticism, letters to the editor, and gossip amongst the SF, fantasy, and horror communities from the 1930s up until the digital age. More so, these homemade publications were also where many of the greats cut their teeth—William Gibson, Fritz Leiber, Robert Anton Wilson, Harlan Ellison, August Derleth, Ray Palmer, Robert Bloch, Robert Silverberg, Tuli Kupferberg, Roger Ebert, Michael Moorcock, Lester Bangs, Forrest J. Ackerman, Earl Kemp, L Sprague de Camp—to name just a few. And in a macro-sense, the SF zines herein also represent early subcultural media networks, paving the way for the zine explosion that was to come years later in rock, punk, skate, fashion, and art.
The SF zines collected in this book were drawn from an archive assembled by Lenny Kaye, most famously the guitarist for the Patti Smith Group and compiler of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era. But Kaye was also an original SF head. His collection, which is now housed at the University of Miami, presents some of the most shockingly beautiful visionary art and enthusiastic writing from this cultural node.
The Tattooed Dragon Meets the Wolfman also contains essays on the history of fandom by Lenny Kaye, Johan Kugelberg, and Philip K. Dick-award winning author Jack Womack.
This is a crucial grab for science fiction fans, illustration freaks, and those historians of pre-internet social networks.
Published by Boo-Hooray in an edition of 500 numbered copies.
Edited by Johan Kugelberg, Jack Womack, and Michael P. Daley
196 pages / 8.5" x 10.75" / Softcover
Offset covers. Interiors printed on Risograph with lots of colors.