Lagoon

Lagoon was a science fiction fanzine by Simon Ounsley.

Lagoon was published in the UK in the 1990s.

Contributors included Abigail Frost, Dave Langford (Ansible), Steve Palmer, and D. West.

Irwin Hirsh writes in The Australian Science Fiction Bullsheet #34 (1994); "Simon Ounsley's "Welcome to the Pleasure Dome" is probably the best fanzine article l've read recently. Published in Simon's LAGOON 6 the article is part con report, part fiction, and skilfully marries effective descriptions of (some of) Simon's encounters at a Novacon with commentary on the nature of those descriptions."

Hirsh also mentions, "other items in the issue include...D. West's review of fan art. Noting that art in fanzines is an area which has avoided being a matter of discussion, D's article is intended as a primer, as the spark plug in an attempt to get some discussion going."

If that was indeed his goal it worked, because in the Summer 2005 issue of Challenger, Taral Wayne, in his article "I, Fanartist", contends, "A few years ago D. West wrote a comprehensive and generally intelligent overview of fan artists for a fanzine called Lagoon, published by Simon Ounsley. There was a sample illo for every artist D. covered. For a very good reason, I was one of the few readers who clued in that the samples were fake, and that D. had drawn them all. Uniformly they were very good, and it took a careful eye to see that the hand that had rendered them was not as advertised. Except for one that is. D. used expressions like "twee", and "the technical quality of the artwork is not so outstanding…" in delivering his judgement. When he came to pastiching my work, however, it was frankly crap. He couldn't do it."

Letters came from Avedon Carol (Pulp), Gary Deindorfer, Jackie Duckhawk, Brad Foster, Alan Hunter, Terry Jeeves (ERG), Linda Krawecke (Six Shooter, Start Breaking Up), David Redd, Vicki Rosenzweig (Quipu), Pat Silver, and Steve Stiles, among others.

Lagoon won the Nova Award for Best Fanzine in 1993.As well, Ounsley also won the award for Best Fanwriter the same year, and also in 1995.

In the 1980s Simon Ounsley did the fanzine Still It Moves. He later published the fanzine Connection in the 2000s.