The Totally Imaginary Cheeseboard - by Jean Airey and Laurie Haldeman.
illustrated by Gail Bennett.
This, in my opinion at any rate, is one of the classic zines of Blake's 7 fanfic. The story is built around a teleport malfunction that causes Avon and Paul Darrow to change places so that Avon ends up in the middle of a Blake's 7 convention. We follow second-season Avon through his encounter with fandom, American culture, ice cream, shopping malls, Gareth Thomas, Jackie Pearce, Michael Keating and videos of the third and fourth seasons. The results range from the hilarious to the touching. My favourite scene is where they are measuring him for new clothes, and one highly nervous female fan is trying to figure out how to take Avon's inside leg measurement. The characters of the actors as well as Avon are well developed and feel right.
There is an extensive reference to this zine in Henry Jenkin's 'Textual Poachers. (an examination of fandom from an academic viewpoint and an interesting read in its own right)
I suspect one of the reasons that this zine works better than other that have been written on similar themes is that Avon doesn't promptly fall in love with one of the fans. Another reason is Gail's artwork which beautifully illustrates so many of the scenes.
This is an A4 reprint zine done from quarto masters suplied by Jean Airey, slidebound with a card cover. As it is a reprint rather than a new edition, I don't have the text on disc, so I can't post any extracts from the text.
Out of print
There is also a third Novel in the Cheeseboard Saga Cost of the Cheeseboard
Last updated on 23rd of March 2007.