Warren A. Freiberg

(February 21, 1940 – June 2, 2000)

Warren Allen Freiberg was a Chicago-area fan active in the 1950s. He is remembered for asserting “Fans are jackasses.”

He was Ted White’s first fan correspondent. Ted wrote of him in Science Fiction Five Yearly 22 (November 1976, p. 22):

His name was Warren Freiberg and his fanzine was BREVIZINE. BREVI- (as we intimates referred to it) was a 4" x 6" fanzine, produced on a postcard mimeo not so different from my own. I was much taken with it -- and even more so since Warren had printed a snippet from a letter of mine in that first issue, which was the first time I was to see My Name In Print.

Freiberg was something of a fugghead. He adopted a very pretentious editorial tone in BREVI-, and lauded all his writers (most of BREVI- was bad amateur sf) as The Next Bradbury....

However, Warren launched me into fanzine fandom, even if rather inauspiciously (I had no idea then, but BREVI- was generally held in contempt among older, wiser fans). I became BREVI-'s staff cartoonist (I was still regarding myself as an artist) and also did covers. The first cover I did was on standard 8 ½ x 11 paper, since I had no idea that art was to be stenciled directly by tracing it. Freiberg must have sweated to reduce the drawing to the size he published it, but -- to give him credit -- he did an adequate job of it....

The first BREVIZINE arrived at my house right after Christmas, 1951. In 1952 I devoted most of my fan energies to contributing to BREVI-, buying my own little mimeo that summer. In spring, 1953, BREVI- went 'large-size", meaning that Warren had bought a full-size mimeo. I mourned the passing of the pocketsize BREVI- and decided I'd put out a small fanzine of my own.

Fanzines and Apazines:

• Brevi-Zine Adventures [mid-1950s]
• Brevizine [1952–53]

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Person

1940—2000

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