Neon Dreams and Data Streams

Why did I give my webpage a title?

Neon Dreams and Data Streams is a title I first came up with for a cyberpunk zine I created, and I really love it—so that's pretty much all there is to it!

What's a zine?

I’ve only recently discovered the fascinating hobby of making and swapping zines. (I haven’t done much swapping yet - but making one has still been very exciting!).

A zine - pronounced zeen, as in magazine - is usually small, DIY in some way, and made with the intention of sharing, collaboration, and community building.

They can be sold, traded, or given away for free, depending on the creator's goals. 

But they’re usually made without profit in mind. 

Made to be easily and cheaply produced, zines help interrogate and dismantle traditional structures of publication and information dissemination. 

A simple 8 page zine can be made from a single piece of A4 paper, folded and strategically cut to create a booklet. A zine made this way contains all the contents on one side of the paper, and so can be easily photocopied, so creating many copies becomes relatively easy.

This method of production also means zines are often black and white - so they can be quickly and cheaply reproduced. But that is not the rule. There really aren’t any hard and fast rules when it comes to zine making.  

People who make zines do so for varied reasons: to share something they are passionate about, to document an aspect of their life, to create a snapshot of their holiday memories, to vent about something that is making them angry, to be informative, to share their art, to voice an opinion, to give the gift of words, or whatever else might complete you to put pen to paper. 

Historically zines fall into a long lineage of self-publishing. From fan zines of the 1930s, punk music zines of the 70s and 80s, to the Riot Grrls of the 90s, zines were ways to share important information, opinions or ideas, and foster communities. 

Which is how I came to make this zine:

Data Streams and Neon Dreams: Or what is cyberpunk to me, and why do I love it?

I made a colour version and a black and white version of my zine

It started with my desire to distill some of my thoughts and knowledge about cyberpunk into something concrete. I have since realised that there is more I want to discuss about cyberpunk than can fit in one volume, but that is part of the appeal of zines—they are so easy to make that they can easily be multiplied. 

They are easy to make, but the contents can be as challenging as you like, which is where I found myself in this project. Drafting the contents took me weeks. I started out just writing, figuring it out as I went, and then revising and shuffling ideas into a more logical sequence. It was a very rewarding process.

I’m bookish by nature, so I err on the essayistic side sometimes when it comes to writing. The zine format was a wonderful way to allow me to write with freedom, weaving my personality and opinion into what I was writing, but I could maintain some factual integrity with references and checks. It still came out a bit like an essay though!

So here it is - my cyberpunk zine:

Thanks for visiting,

Let me know if you want to trade zines or even if you just want a copy! (I've made them; I really should figure out the sharing part!)

Sheri