Factsheet Five

From Free net encyclopedia

Factsheet Five is a periodical originally published by Mike Gunderloy when he lived in a slanshack in Alhambra, California in the early 1980s, prior to his move to New York state, where he continued to publish. It consisted almost exclusively of short reviews of privately produced printed matter (originally mostly science fiction fanzines), along with contact details. In the early 1990s, its comprehensive reviews, that ran into the thousands in any issue, made it the most important publication in its field, heralding the wider spread (beyond science fiction fandom) of what would eventually be called fanzine or zine culture. Before the adoption of the web & e-mail beginning around 1994/5, publications such as Factsheet Five formed a vital directory for connecting people of like-mind: one of many examples of this is the queer 'zine culture of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Jerod Pore took the bits that generated the paper Factsheet Five and produced Factsheet Five - Electronic, which was one of the first zines to use the Usenet newsgroup alt.zines.

(Compare to the periodical Sound Choice in the cassette culture.)

Mike Gunderloy's Factsheet Five Collection is now held at the New York State Library and Archives in Albany, New York, where it occupies 300 cubic feet.

Gunderloy currently works as a computer programmer, and co-authored the book SQL Server 7 in Record Time.

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