On Sept. 8, 2006, science fiction celebrated a momentous birthday: Star Trek was 40 years old!

Although Sci Fi Studios' mandate covers speculative fiction entertainment from Asimov to Z!, like all good children we honor our parentage. And Sci Fi Studios is, to a large extent, a child of Star Trek and certainly a child of Star Trek fandom.

The campaign to bring Star Trek back to the small screen by TrekUnited and the Save Enterprise campaign was inspired by the letter-writing campaign that had saved the original series (TOS) in 1968. In fact, it has often been pointed out that this period of fan creativity, as evidenced by the proliferation of fan films for example, appears to parallel that which followed the cancellation of Star Trek in 1969.

Is this a fair analogy? I had the opportunity last month to ask this question of author Jacqueline Lichtenberg who has roots that go way back in Star Trek fandom to 1969, when it was one of the major influences on Sime~Gen Inc., which she co-founded with Jean Lorrah. Around 1970 she was contributing fiction in Spockanalia and T-Negative, the very first Trekzines (as told in Joan Marie Verba's excellent ebook, "Boldly Writing") and in 1975 her co-authored book on Star Trek fandom Star Trek Lives! was one of the formative influences in the foundation of the Star Trek Welcommittee, the pre-Internet volunteer info center for mushrooming Trek fandom.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg: Actually, I founded the Star Trek Welcommittee a few months before Star Trek Lives! came out because I knew the Bantam paperback would generate huge amounts of mail, and I wanted to establish an address where that mail could be answered.  The idea of a fan not being answered because I had no time just made me berserk!

 

I called the mail answering organization "Welcommittee" after the N3F (National Fantasy Fan Federation) Welcommittee that had given me my first introduction to fandom.  After my father bought our first typewriter and taught me to type, (I was in 7th grade) I wrote an indignant letter to AMAZING STORIES, one of the three leading SF magazines on the stands at the time, lambasting them for their poor and misleading story illustrations. To this day inaccurate illustration is one of my hobbyhorses!

 

In response to my impassioned tirade, I got more than 10 welcome letters from members of the N3F Welcommittee and that changed my life and directed me into the path toward becoming a professional SF writer. Today, simegen.com hosts the N3F domain (n3f.org) and fandom now burgeons online.

 

Star Trek Welcommittee didn't have the person-power to deluge each new fan with many letters, so we structured it so that each new person would get an answer from either someone geographically close to them or someone expert in the questions they were asking.  We also invented a few welcome publications, such as the roster of Star Trek fanzines that made it easy to find and order 'zines, and the convention listing.

Alan: The current hiatus in professional production of Star Trek and the recent explosion of Star Trek fan films has been likened to the period after the cancellation of the Original Series and the blossoming of fan fiction that followed. As someone who was there -- indeed a published authority on the subject! -- can you see any parallels?

Jacqueline: Ronald D. Moore of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica fame mentioned that similarity in his blog and even mentioned my name, the exchange is posted on my homepage under Comments on the Intimate Adventure genre.

 

There are several points of glaring dissimilarity between this era of hiatus and that era of cancellation.

 

At that time, science fiction in general was considered kiddie literature, never to be taken any more seriously than Dr. Seuss.  It was ridiculous.  It was puerile.  It was beneath contempt and never, ever, to be considered beside such glorious literature as Moby Dick, The Play, or War and Peace.

 

Star Trek's barely viable three-year run was considered proof positive that science fiction was worthy of all the derision traditionally heaped upon it.  Nobody in their right mind watched such trash.  In fact, nobody did, which is why Star Trek failed.  (They didn't know about college dorms filled with avid viewers!)

 

Then of course came the upwelling of Star Trek fanzines,a new phenomenon in science fiction fandom; prior to Star Trek fanzines, SF  zines did not publish fiction -- or if they did, it was just high-spirited humor in the form of very, very bad fiction.  Star Trek zines attempted to fill the void left by cancellation.

 

That spawned the conventions -- writers and readers of zines wanting to get together. The first New York convention was a backyard gathering and from the success of the first big conventions came the idea, "We can make them give it back to us!"

 

And THERE is the main similarity with today's situation -- fans have had a taste of power, and won't take no for an answer.  Back then, fans knew they had no chance whatsoever to get Trek back -- so they set out to change the whole world so that they would have a chance.  And they did it.  Today, the world has been changed and fans have every reason to believe they can make Hollywood march to their drumbeat!

 

Indeed, the plans of fans have gotten bolder and bolder.  The online zines and blogs and lists and other means of posting fiction are thriving.  As Sondra Marshak, Joan Winston and I pointed out in Star Trek Lives!, very often fans write at a professional level - but can't sell for a profit only because of copyright issues.

 

So now, as Alan pointed out, we have fan-made films, and items like Trekkies and Trekkies 2 (which I'm in!), and we have a broad-based optimism that Trek will come back, better than ever.

 

Another significant difference between now and then:  Today, science fiction and fantasy are widely accepted and there are a large number of very good TV shows and films.  Fans aren't utterly starved for any form of entertainment that grabs at the mind and imagination.  There's plenty out there now -- but when Trek was first cancelled, there was literally nothing else of that kind to be had in the TV or film media.  There were books and animation -- but no live-actor drama that was real sf.

 

Today we have something to do while waiting. We now have Sci Fi Studios, an Internet-based, fan-friendly zone where new sf/f for film and TV can be spawned with fan-based input.

Therein, perhaps lies the difference.

Modern fans have options open to them that were only in their infancy, if they existed at all, in the ‘60s -- and not just in terms of technology. We can build on the innovations created by that previous generation of Star Trek fans. Conventions, play-by-email gaming, fan fiction, filk-these can all be seen as the direct predecessors of the game mods, virtual series, fan films and audio dramas.

The next step is for the entertainment industry to reach out and involve fans in the creative process of making the sci-fi that will be the next generation of movie and TV franchises.

The next step is Sci Fi Studios!