timebinding, posts by tag: intro - LiveJournal

Introduction on the first day of a writing class:

Me: "I'm a promiscuous reader.

Instructor: "You mean omnivorous."

Me: "No, I don't."

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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. :-)

It all started when I was very young. By age 6, I knew and loved Star Wars, Star Trek (in reruns), The Incredible Hulk, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, Jason of Star Command[1], Robin Hood, and Zorro. Then I learned to read. From Dr. Suess, I graduated to Matthew Looney's Voyage to the Earth, then Alice in Wonderland, then the Oz books, then one day my mother loaned me her copy of The Hobbit, saying "I guess you're old enough to read this now," and from that point I was hooked. My parents were "fans" but not "fen": They would always (and still do) watch any SF movie that came out, and they'd even read some of it, but they've never gone to a con, and almost certainly never wil. But they never discouraged my love of SF and fantasy, except a little bit when I turned 10 and started playing Dungeons & Dragons[2].

I was first introduced to the concept of fandom when I was in my early teens and one of my uncles gave me a copy of Richard Purtill's Murdercon for Christmas. I knew then that fandom was something I wanted to be a part of. My first con was the 1991 CoastCon, in Biloxi, Mississippi. Since that time I've attended a couple of dozen cons, and would have attended more except for the demands of marriage and parenthood[3]. Ten years ago, around the time of my first son's birth, I discovered APAs, and for years these served as my fannish outlet. As my son grew older and was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome[4], I had even less time for fanac and gafiated, becoming just a reader of the stuff. Then a couple of years ago I discovered efanzines.com and my fannish aspirations were reawakened. I have since published a couple of fanzines[5] and am, after moving cross-country this past June[6], have been slowly getting acquainted with the local fannish community, which is larger and more active than anything I've ever experienced before, and making plans to start going to cons again.

I'm a fairly omnivoracious reader. My favorite authors inside the genre include Asimov, Heinlein, Tolkein, Anne McCaffrey, Manly Wade Wellman, Mercedes Lackey, Laurell Hamilton, and too many others to list. My favorite authors outside the genre include Ellis Peters, Agatha Christie, Sharon Keye Penman, Judith Merkle Riley, and whoever wrote "Pull tab to open." I'm trained as a historian, currently working as a technical writer, and start library school next month.

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[1] A particular favorite of mine, because he was the only person on TV who shared my name.
[2] Which just happened to be during one of the big "D&D scares of the early 80s. Fortunately, they were open-minded and I was able to show them that it wasn't dangerous.
[3] My wife and I eloped on my 19th birthday and have been married 13 years now. We have two son, ages 10 and 1.
[4] A form of high-functioning autism.
[5] Available here.
[6] From New Orleans to Minneapolis.

Allo allo allo. Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, a/k/a sturgeonslawyer, and also known at various times as Dan Oakes, net.roach, Evelyn (A Modified Dog), TPC Badger, and various others of which I'm too lazy to think at the moment. I rather expect that some old rasfw/rasfr friends may pop up here ... certainly hope so.

Active SF/F reader since before I knew what SF was: as a gradeschooler I associated "science fiction" with "scary stuff," and didn't want to read that, but was at the same time reading the juveniles of Silverberg, Del Rey, Leinster, and suchlike. Eventually I realized that there were more books by these people in the section labelled "science fiction," discovered Norton and Heinlein there, and the rest was inevitable.

First fanac: starting a club at my high school in 1973. We eventually published three very pretentious issues of an offset fanzine, fiction and fannish stuff combined, and the club continued after I left, so I guess that was a success.

First con: Discon 2, in 1974. My main accomplishments there were getting cussed out by Harlan Ellison (for being the 2,846th person to ask him that day when The Last DV was coming out), and spending so much money in the dealers' room that I didn't have food money or cabfare to the airport. Since I didn't know about con parties, food was a real problem; fortunately, I'd prebought banquet tickets, and someone at the table with me volunteered to take me to the airport. My travelling friend, Bufo, had the same problem, and tried to sell some unused camera film ... Forry Ackerman saw him doing this and lent him $20 on the spur of the moment. A total stranger: that's the kind of guy Forry was. (I make it sound like he's dead. Ummm, he isn't, is he?)

I've never been a very regular con attender, mostly because I have problems with crowds. I'd rather watch most movies on my TV than go to a theater, that kind of thing? But I've been very active in online fandom since ... well, let's just say I remember when sf-lovers was email only.

Worst fan experience: I had a leg injury the year of Confrancisco and could only attend one day. I picked Sunday, figuring on watching the Hugo ceremony. When I arrived, I found that the concom had made me the moderator of a panel on Saturday and had neglected to tell me. (And it was a panel I could really have sunk my teeth into!) For the rest of the day, I kept running into people who asked me where the heck I'd been... One result was that I didn't bother attending Conjose at all, and felt rotten about it afterwards.

I note with pleasure that a lot of classic fanstuff has made it to the Web, including things like The Enchanted Duplicator. Is there any hope for The Capture? Perhaps as a Powerpoint or Flash...?

...or The torturous path to fandom

My parents are both (retired) teachers. My mom's masters thesis was on the remedial teaching of reading. My dad's undergrad degree was in secondary education-English.

Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was their (particularly my father's) intro to the idea that SF movies could be great cinema.

We grew up with a lot of books.

A lot of science fiction books.

We watched TV science fiction, but my dad had no stomach for the cheesy crap like Lost in Space or My Favorite Martian (which were running in syndication on independent UHF stations).

And, when we went to the movies, it was mostly science fiction movies.

But we were (by many standards) in the middle of nowhere. A bookstore or two, a nice public library, but not much else. The three network affiliates and 2 UHF channels (my parents refused to pay for cable). A 90 mile drive down to Milwaukee might get us to a SF convention, but not being there, we didn't know about anything besides the occasional Creation Con being advertised on late-night UHF, and, of course, GenCon.

So in the late 80's I went off to college, and blew it mightily.

But shortly after that (and a tech-school degree later), the SCA infiltrated my hometown, and a friend who had just graduated (in English, not surprisingly) came back from St. Olaf with tales of SCA activities there, so we started going. SCA lead to costuming, post-revels and filk, SCA-filk led to SF&F filk, and SF&F filk led me to MilwAPA, and MilwAPA led me to MiniCon 28. It was a roller-coaster 6 months. I quit my job (which I hated), moved to Milwaukee and decided to go back to college (and not screw up as badly).

I spent a few years attending conventions, spending time behind a dealers' table, reading voraciously (a second-shift job baby-sitting computer equipment made that easy), watching no television (a second-shift job made that easy) and just generally having a good time. Went to my first Worldcon (ConAdian in Winnipeg). Made it to GenCon on Dream Park's nickel because of my involvement in a live-action gaming group. Didn't finish the college degree, but didn't get thrown out that time.

Then the big changes came.

Fandom got me a good job. One of my fannish card (sheepshead) buddies needed a second body to do the legwork on an IT contract, and I parlayed that into a real career.

I did two seasons of Ren Faire, first working for a merchant and then as an actor, and I discovered I hated acting.

Costume-Con came to St. Louis, and I met a wonderful fellow-geek (a physics researcher who is into SF and costuming) and a year later moved to San Jose, California.

Worldcon came to Chicago, and because I knew the right people, I found myself a program participant there. Once a panelist, always a panelist.

Worldcon came to San Jose, and I became more involved with many of the regular volunteers. K and I hosted "The Costumers' Suite," an unofficial hospitality suite for folks involved in costume, and launched our bid for Costume-Con 26 in 2008.

And finally, last year, because of our regular participation at BayCon, and for throwing fabulous parties there, we were invited to be Fan Guests of Honor. My parents came out from Wisconsin for the convention. Their first convention.

It all comes around eventually.

Welcome to timebinding! A place for fans of many --if not all-- fandoms to come together and get to know each other.

For the introductory post from yourhumble and obedient moderator let me say that my fannish interests are the science fiction stories of Robert A. Heinlein, Steven Brust, Spider Robinson (the early years), Lois McMAster Bujold, Randall Garrett, and the collaboration of Frederick Phl and Cyril Kornbluth (among others). I love Joss Whedon's Firefly and Serenity, comic books, some American-adapted manga (Adam Warren's Dirty Pair in particular), the first two Star Wars movies (Episodes III and IV), Star Trek original series, Star Trek DS9, Doctor Who, and classic Warner Bros. animation. I've been involved in science fiction convention fandom since 1985, including running art shows, art auctioneering, and performing with SpaceTime Theater out of the Chicago area.

*pant*pant* All that on one breath.

I'm not saying this to impress anyone, just to show that I've got a variety of interests and I'm hoping timebinding can be a place where folks can meet and share their stories and their love of their particular fannish interests without devolving into a game of "my fandom is better than yours."

So, welcome! Pull up a chair and make yourself at home! What sort of things tickle your fannish fancy?