Intro - how do you say 'Nimoy'?
I fell for Start Trek during its original run, when I was six. I remember standing in the shade on the porch of the house (only cool place in a Modesto summer) trying to figure out how to pronounce "Spock's" last name. "Nimny" was as close as I got.
Half a dozen years later, i was scribing down the humorous or poignant tags at the end of each ST episode. And a new issue of TV Guide arrived one day - all about Star Trek conventions! There were tears in my throat. I still have the pages. A couple yearr later, the Puget Sound Star Trekkers started up, and I was off to my first con at the old World's Fair site in downtown Seattle, and my first gathering with other fans. Through PSST I found the Northwest Sci. Fic. Society, all in Seattle... too far for a too-young-to-drive kid (to this day, hearing fannish vocabulary plops me back into that old house in Seattle, the youngest of the fen, listening to someone reading the just-out Man of Steel and Woman of Tissue. Happily though, I was eventually not the the only person from Tacoma going to the events. We found each other, had our own meeting in our town, and soon Otherworlds Unlimited (OWU) was born, in Tacoma. Where my mom was much happier to drive me.
I was instantly creating fanzines; I was after all a writer :-). It was cool to amaze everyone, I was this kid creating magazines by hand (and then Postal Instant Press for the printing). I also got gropped inappropriately by an adult once. That was not cool. I had no examples to learn from; I will never forget an artists waving his finger at me because I had rubbed all the cover text letters directly onto his cover art. I had no idea I should've made a copy and given the original back... Fanzines were my first use of computers, too! VIC-20 and on from there. I wrote fanfic, including my share of slash (well, this about naming all the types of fandom...).
When I moved to Santa Barbara after college, I started the Santa Barbara Science Fiction Alliance, and we were a happy and productive club for years; Loscon was our holy event of the year (though being constellations in the local Solstice parade was a blast, too). The club continued of for a few years after I moved to the Santa Rosa area, but eventually petered away.
Now, in the San Francisco bay area, I only dally with fandom. I have other communities I put most of my energy into... sometimes I wish I could get involved in fan writing again (I know, do it is the answer!). I have been a big fan of Xena, Buffy, Angel, DS9, Farscape and Firefly (I still wanna see the movie again!). I have danced with furries, bought bishonen fantasy naughty books, and I own Dark Shadows CDs. I read both science fiction and fantasy, though probably more SF over all; I will take good writing, characters, and ideas wherever I can find them. I have just started attending the occasional Bay Area Sci. Fic. Assoc. (BASFA) meetings; it is a coming home. I notice though that fandom needs new blood (RJ, I really liked your post on the graying of fandom).
This is fun. :-)
Half a dozen years later, i was scribing down the humorous or poignant tags at the end of each ST episode. And a new issue of TV Guide arrived one day - all about Star Trek conventions! There were tears in my throat. I still have the pages. A couple yearr later, the Puget Sound Star Trekkers started up, and I was off to my first con at the old World's Fair site in downtown Seattle, and my first gathering with other fans. Through PSST I found the Northwest Sci. Fic. Society, all in Seattle... too far for a too-young-to-drive kid (to this day, hearing fannish vocabulary plops me back into that old house in Seattle, the youngest of the fen, listening to someone reading the just-out Man of Steel and Woman of Tissue. Happily though, I was eventually not the the only person from Tacoma going to the events. We found each other, had our own meeting in our town, and soon Otherworlds Unlimited (OWU) was born, in Tacoma. Where my mom was much happier to drive me.
I was instantly creating fanzines; I was after all a writer :-). It was cool to amaze everyone, I was this kid creating magazines by hand (and then Postal Instant Press for the printing). I also got gropped inappropriately by an adult once. That was not cool. I had no examples to learn from; I will never forget an artists waving his finger at me because I had rubbed all the cover text letters directly onto his cover art. I had no idea I should've made a copy and given the original back... Fanzines were my first use of computers, too! VIC-20 and on from there. I wrote fanfic, including my share of slash (well, this about naming all the types of fandom...).
When I moved to Santa Barbara after college, I started the Santa Barbara Science Fiction Alliance, and we were a happy and productive club for years; Loscon was our holy event of the year (though being constellations in the local Solstice parade was a blast, too). The club continued of for a few years after I moved to the Santa Rosa area, but eventually petered away.
Now, in the San Francisco bay area, I only dally with fandom. I have other communities I put most of my energy into... sometimes I wish I could get involved in fan writing again (I know, do it is the answer!). I have been a big fan of Xena, Buffy, Angel, DS9, Farscape and Firefly (I still wanna see the movie again!). I have danced with furries, bought bishonen fantasy naughty books, and I own Dark Shadows CDs. I read both science fiction and fantasy, though probably more SF over all; I will take good writing, characters, and ideas wherever I can find them. I have just started attending the occasional Bay Area Sci. Fic. Assoc. (BASFA) meetings; it is a coming home. I notice though that fandom needs new blood (RJ, I really liked your post on the graying of fandom).
This is fun. :-)