Telling Our Own Stories: A Fandom History (ft. Sarah Barsness)

Sun, 17 May 2026 23:50:11 GMT

What are the origins of science fiction fandom? How do we know about them? And what has changed about fanhistory in the intervening years? And most importantly, am I too sercon? We look from the 1930s to now, conducting a historiography of fandom. For the modern aspect, I brought in fan archivist Sarah Barsness, who told us about digital preservation methods and the reality of being an archivist in the modern era.

And thus, season one of the podcast comes to an end! What would you like to see in season two? More interviews? More research? Do you really just like my con reports? Leave a comment below.

Here is a link to the fanzine that contains The Mystery:

https://www.fanac.org/fanzines/Fan_Slants/fans3.pdf

Attributions:

Intro music created by Kevin McLeod

"Piano Between" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Dark Hallway (clean)" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Fonts used are A25-Squanova by Angoes25, Batuphat Script by Debut Studio, and Helvetica Neue Condensed Bold

Links can be found at mffpod.carrd.co

The Minnesota Fandom Factor

Telling Our Own Stories: A Fandom History (ft. Sarah Barsness)