Adventures in Reality - The Complete Collection book

Near 500 page A4 softback edition with full colour reproductions of every issue and more. The definitive complete collection of legendary Coventry fanzine Adventures in Reality.

Put together by Alan Rider, Adventures in Reality was a fanzine from Coventry in the early 1980s that both fitted snugly inside the post-punk landscape of the time and did its utmost to avoid many of the tropes most fanzines were given to. Like most of them, however, each edition was produced with a youthful energy and passion itself manacled to an attitude only really emboldened by this cultural shift.

In between diatribes and a salubrious dash of humour, Adventures in Reality proved itself to be amongst the vanguard, running countless reviews, putdowns of the apathy dominating the city, and interviews with all from Attrition and Human Cabbages to Bauhaus and SPK, cartoons, spin off 'zines, the Adventures in Reality record label, and suchlike. Everything adds up to an intoxicating mix absolutely perfect for the time that spawned it.

Over the course of its 13 issues, plus related titles originally published anonymously, Adventures in Reality proved itself to stand above its immediate competition and made a formidable impression not only nationally, but also internationally.

This compendium gathers all 13 issues in their entirety, as well as the other titles and additional ephemera, alongside insightful introductions to each issue, an in depth interview with Alan Rider, a foreword by Matthew Worley, blurb by Nicholas Bullen of Napalm Death (himself inspired by Adventures in Reality to start his own ‘zine), and several other bonuses.

Presented in a substantial A4 book, this offers an intimate insight into what it was really like to create and edit a fanzine in the early 1980s post Punk period, and makes for a perfect return trip to a uniquely creative time long gone, but still of keen interest to those wishing to unlock, or revisit, that special period in musical history.

As Alan himself says, "Fanzines were never intended to form a part of mainstream pop culture. They were underground, counter culture, an alternative that existed to shine a light on new music in a way that commercial publications could not and would not. Wilfully obtuse, Adventures in Reality sought to seize that ground, breaking the mould of what a post-punk fanzine was expected to be and by doing so, adding an extra dose of subversive originality to the pool of UK underground alternative music culture.