PADS
PADS, an abbreviation for Printing and Distribution Service and sometimes styled PaDS, was a British APA-like-entity sponsored by the BSFA in the mid-1960s. It was conceived for British fans who wanted to publish fanzines but did not have a duplicator or direct access to one. It allowed an editor to assemble their material and send it to a central mailer, who would then produced the fanzine and bundled it with other PADSzines into a mailing. PADS helped fans with little money publish, but each PADS-published fanzine looked a lot like the others. PADS was criticised by Ratfandom as being a means for production of crudzines although there were a few genuinely good fanzines that resulted from PADS, such as Mike Ashley's Xeron. Many PADSzines were additionally widely distributed outside the PADS system.
Charles Platt announced the service in his own Beyond 5 (April 1964) and it was confirmed to the wider BSFA membership in Vector 26 the following month. Doreen Parker would type the stencils and Platt would duplicate them. Initially an unofficial BSFA service, the first mailing appeared in October. In the BSFA Bulletin 1 (December 1965), Archie Mercer announced that he and Beryl Henley would be taking over PADS which would henceforth be formally under the auspices of the BSFA. Their first mailing was the fourth. This arrangement continued until January 1967 when the BSFA Bulletin 10 carried an announcement that a new administrator was being sought. This was followed by increasingly desperate requests in 14 and 15. The tenth mailing was issued in late 1967 with only a single fanzine, Adrian Cook's Warlock and that was the effective end of PADS. BSFA Bulletin 19 (September 1968) announced the suspension of the service, adding that Dave Sutton had taken on the administration but only one person had expressed an interest in participating.
Contributors:
- Mike Ashley – Xeron
- John Barfoot – Bumblie
- Harry Bell – Grimwab
- Adrian Cook – Warlock
- Jim Grant – Fusion
- Beryl Henley – Link
- Graham Hall – Doubt
- Dicky Howett & Christopher Priest – Padlock
- Chas Legg – Entropy, Freewheelin'
- Tom Jones & Brian Stableford – Proteus
- Steve Moore – Vega
- Charles Platt – Garbistan, Insomnia
- Christopher Priest – Yawl-B, Thud-F
- Mary Reed – Link, Crabapple
- Peter Weston – Nexus
- Charlie Winstone – Effell, Whim
- Dave Wood – Bad News
Links
| Publication | 1964—1967 |
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