The Very First Blog

I was thinking about the medium of blogging, and what an interesting vehicle it is for individuals to express their ideas when it occured to me that I had run into a very similar concept in my youth... and it made me think that the idea of "blogging" has a pre-Internet print precedent in the concept of the "fanzine." Way back in 1975, an interesting little publication called Alarums & Excursions began circulating amongst folks who enjoyed playing role-playing games (dungeons and dragons and other games of this genre). The idea was simple -- anyone could write for the publication -- the requirement was just that each contributor had to print up their own pages of the publication, as many pages as there were expected subscribers. Each writer would then mail his or her printed pages to Lee and Barry Gold who would assemble the pages of all contributors and send them back out as the next issue of the magazine. Each author's pages would look a lot like a blog page -- a series of disconnected thoughts on different topics reflecting the author's interests. Amazingly I find that the publication is still in print and has come out every month but one since 1975...