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Since its first published appearance, as the title of a 1943 article by Don Thompson, the phrase 'Fandom is a Way of Life' has been used as a rallying cry to identify fandom as a set of meaningful socio-cultural practices (Eney 1959b). Mid-century sf fans were defined by their production of fanzines, sending letters of comment to magazine editors, attending conventions, and other active fan engagements. In addition to these identified behaviours, the definition of an sf fan was often explicitly gendered. According to Jack Speer, editor of the first Fancyclopedia (1944), 'SF is his ruling passion' (Speer 1944a; my emphasis) while women fans were regarded as appendages to the true (male) members of sf fandom. This article, by contrast, counters this patriarchal view of fan membership and fan activity by examining the fan labour of women in 1950s British sf fandom. It does so by identifying the marginal collectives of 'femme-fans', as they were described in the first issue of the amateur produced Femizine (1954-60), the first centred fanzine.1 In highlighting women's contributions to Femizine, this article argues that women in sf fandom utilized fanzines to voice their passionate and resistant narratives about domesticity and fan culture in the post-1945 period.
This article expands upon prior feminist sf scholarship which has explored the roles played by women within fandom and magazine publication from the 1920s to the 1970s. A key starting point is Justine Larbalestier's The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (2002) which, taking its inspiration from Joanna Russ's 1980 article 'Amor Vincet Foeminam', sets sex-war stories by men and women in the context of the gendered antagonisms that occurred within mid-century fandom. Also taking inspiration from Russ, but inverting her critique of female writers of the 1950s as parochial and unchallenging, Lisa Yaszek's groundbreaking Galactic Suburbia (2008) not only reclaims women sf authors such as Mildred Clingerman, Carol Emshwiller, Zenna Henderson, Alice Eleanor Jones and Judith Merril but also explores their relationship to the gendered spaces of home and domestic labour. Whereas both Larbalestier and Yaszek resituate neglected works of women's sf within the gender politics of fan disputes and the post-1945 era, Helen Merrick's cultural history The Secret Feminist Cabal (2009) explores women's involvement in fandom and the emergence of...