Copyright © 2023 Rick and Ruth Coy

Hello and welcome to Florida Fandom on line.  Florida Fandom has been around since 1976 as a Fanzine. We have tried to stay with the times as well as we could.  When we started we would type up articles on an electric typewriter and then cut out and paste them together using rubber cement, adding press type for the titles and pasting on original artwork.  We would then take the paste up to a printer and have it printed offset. We would latter move to a computer - which at first we could only use for titles and logos because the dot matrix wouldn’t print well. (We tried it once) After inkjet printers came out we could print articles on it, but we still had to cut and paste (Using scissor and rubber cement, not control C and Control V) And we could then get photocopies that looked as good or better than the offset prints for a fraction of the cost. Then computer got better and programs like MS Publisher came out (the first real publishing program we had thanks to Dale Snodgrass).  And could if needed print out issues as you needed (although photo copies were still used for awhile) next big step for desk top publishing was the laser printer - make copies that looked professional. In 1996 we went the next step - going online!  Our first site was on a free geocities site- when geocities was taken over by Yahoo we upgraded to our current site with our own domain name. (Yahoo has was taken over by Version - and now it called Turbify. )  Our hope was to created an ever growing site, retaining the original departments from the zine.  In October 2011 we went to the next step… Florida Fandom was 35 years old…we wanted something similar to our print issues, which we hand not done since we put the site up. So our 35th Anniversary Issue came out in PDF format.  You can still download a copy from this site, just click here.   We have also started several other PDF projects at the site called The New Florida Fandom  They included two best of Florida Fandom and our Revision Project versions of the older issues.  After doing our Anniversary issue and realized how much more we could do today, I wondered they would have looked like.  So for fun we redid the first issue using a computer and publishing program - for our guide lines we wouldn’t change text or ads. Artwork we would copy (or if we had the original scan it) Logo and things we redid using what we have now, photos that we cut out of magazines we would go searching for on the net - if we couldn’t find the exact same one, we would use one similar.  When we did any changes we only did what we felt we would have done originally if we had the tech to do it.

Back in 1976 Ruth and I wanted to start a Florida based fanzine being both for and about Florida Fans.  Having been introduced to Fanzines by John Ellis (of Star Trek Federation of Fans) and having co-editied with John many of the STFF newszines, Tholian Registry, I was ready to start.  After a few issues we realized that the zine was for more than just fans in Florida, as we had readers and contributors from all over the country.  Today we live in the mountains of East Tennessee, but the zine and site will Stay Florida Fandom.

We have added a zine called “Florida Fandom Presents: Smoky Mountains Fan Connection” that we are doing in both PDF and Print form.  We give them out at a booth we have at indoor flea market in Knoxville. You can check it out by clicking on the link called New Florida Fandom above.