Looking back many years,I can remember two wonderful nights spent sleeping under my mother-in-law's dining room table with my husband while we copied video tapes of a long defunct British TV show, whose name most people wouldn't recognize if they heard it. A very kind friend had loaned us her tapes while we were in town - thus the marathon session so that we could be near enough to the VCRs to quickly switch tapes when necessary. In many ways, the experience was like those wonderful nights of exhaustion and exhileration when you stay up working on a deadline.

I'm a Fan. I don't wear funny costumes, and I do put in my time keeping up with current events but, still, I am a fan. I have a life that has been immeasurably richened by fandom, and there's no better life that I could imagine. I found fandom while watching reruns of Star Trek in New York. An ad mentioned a convention, and the next morning found me on a train into the city. That day I was "born again" and would never see the world in quite the same way again.

Though I started in Star Trek, I quickly learned the joys of obsession over many other TV shows. Rather than a science fiction fan, I'd consider myself a media fan. I love reading Sherlock Holmes, but I love more to see Jeremy Brett playing him. Fans obsess over most any show, and they work at understanding their subject with the enthusiasm and critical review of any Shakespearean scholar.

STAR TREK:
Star Trek
Star Trek Links
Trek Slash LiveJournal Community
Star Trek TOS LiveJournal Community

THE PROFESSIONALS:
Bodie and Doyle Photos - The Professionals
Episode Guide - The Professionals
The Professionals
Professionals LiveJournal Community
DVDs - Region 2

BLAKES SEVEN:
Episode Guide - Blake's 7
Judith Proctor's Blakes 7 Site
Blakes 7 Cult TV
Paul Darrow Fan Club
DVDs - Region 2

CALLAN:
Episode Guide - Callan
Edward Woodward
DVDs - Region 2

DR. WHO:
Episode Guide - Dr. Who
Outpost Gallifrey
Brief History of Time Travel
Image Archive
DVDs - Region 2

FOREVER KNIGHT:
FK Freaks LiveJournal Community
First Unofficial
Cyberpursuits

SHERLOCK HOLMES
Cox and Co LiveJournal Community
221B Baker St LiveJournal Community
Sherlock Holmes on the Web
Sherlock Holmes Museum
Text of the Canon
Sherlock Holmes Society of London
Sheryl's Jeremy Brett Page

MISCELLANEOUS:
Episode Guides - Get Smart
Adventures of Hiram Holliday
More TV Links

It's hard to enumerate the blessings of fandom, there are so many. But I'll start with the people. They come from every occupation imaginable. A lawyer from Philadelphia who did pro bono work to protect people locked away in warehouses. A doctor who moved to Alaska to treat rural patients. A specialist in the intricacies of computerized color printing. A day care specialist who followed her dream into computer operations. An archeologist talking of remote digs. A New York City branch librarian. Dedicated teachers on the high school and college levels. The president of my entire professional computer organization, as well as computer people spilling everywhere. Mostly women, some men, but all of them joyfully sharing together their encitement and their imaginations.

Conventions are the places where we get together. Conventions can range from mammoth megaevents, like the Science Fiction Worldcon, to events that draw attendees from the low thousands to barely a hundred dedicated friends. The joy of these events is that you're guaranteed to meet people who share your passion for TV shows.

Many cons are put on by professional organizations as money makers, almost always highlighting famous guests. While these will draw in a large attendance, they don't always have what keeps the dedicated fans happy.

Fan sponsored cons can have famous guests, and these are usually well organized events that can interest the whole family. Some cons are pointed toward the active fans - the writers, the arts, the song writers - and these will frequently include workshops.

Most of the conventions are on an annual cycle, so if you hear of one near you, you can pretty well guess to keep your eyes open about the same time the next year.
Science Fiction Conventions
Worldcons
Science Fiction Conventions
Upcoming Conventions

Most of us were sucked in by the frustration of unanswered questions.

Spock is deep into his blood fever to get married. He tells Captain Kirk that he has to mate or die. But what if he hadn't been already engaged when the blood fever hit?

Hmmmm. Take that problem off to gnaw on for awhile!

The solution? Fanzines. Private publications written by fans to answer questions just like that. When you couldn't squeeze a single drop more out of the 79 recorded episodes, there were hundreds of volumes of fan-written stories to keep the excitement coming. The mailbox became the single point of life's focus. (Yes, that was hyperbole and, no, I'm not running for president.) Although fanzines range from better writing than the shows to purely embarrassing, there were always the review publications to guide you to the best work.

In terms of content, fans write in the universe of a large number of TV shows, and even of some books. Some are of general interest, some are adult, and some are slash, that is, adult stories about two male characters written almost exclusively by women.

The jump from reading to writing was the leap that changed everything. With a three page story written in 2 hours on the effect of Kirk's death on Spock (mother had died not long before and I was still screaming in my head), I became a fan writer. That next day I carried the story with me and showed it to a friend beside me while we waited on a convention line. She burst out crying. Someone else wanted to see the story and, from then on, you could follow its progress by the crying people it left in its wake.
Fan Stories
Orion Press
Mary Sues
Fanact Fan History
General Fanfiction
Blakes 7 Fanzines
Powerplay - Blakes 7
Aquitar Files: Blakes 7
Link List for Fanzines

Art is a big part of the fan world. Conventions frequently host art auctions, and even in the smaller conventions, some pieces go into the hundreds of dollars. Especially portraits of characters in the newest shows to capture fans' imaginations. For a general science fiction con like Worldcon, you can be talking in the thousands. Fanzines are almost always illustrated, and the originals of the illos will also sometimes show up in the convention auctions.

As with the writing, some of the art work makes you want to turn away quickly, but the best of it is simply shattering in its beauty.
Arleen Geller
Vulcans
Gayle Feyrer
Suzan Lovett

Did I mention that sociologist fans analyzing other fans have discovered that we're as highly educated and skilled as we are obsessed?

Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture (Studies in Culture and Communication)
Henry Jenkins, Routledge, New York and London, ISBN: 0415905729, June 1992.

Enterprising Women
Camille Bacon-Smith, ISBN: 0415044472, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1992.

Where No Man Has Gone Before : Women and Science Fiction
edited by Lucie Armitt, ISBN: 0415044472, Routledge, New York and London, 1991.

A favorite attraction at many conventions is filking, folk singing off by only a single letter, though rarely off the key. Filkers get to be as famous in fandom as writers and artists. You'd be hard pressed to find a professional singer as good as Julia Ecklar. She's an all-around artist who has also published a professional Star Trek novel, The Kobayashi Maru.
Elfquest Filk Song List
Computer songs and poems
Filk Book Index
Leslie Fish's Filk Songs
Filk Music

I just discovered a site where a friend I found in video editing has written about my music videos. I'm stunned, but I had to share it. Paul Campanis is a multimedia artist in the style of the early beat poets. One of the most fascinating people I've ever met!

Many stories later, and an award for Best Novel!!, I discovered literary music videos. Out was the writing, in was video editing. By the time I was done, I was putting on a weekly TV show of song videos on local cable, running video workshops, teaching friends in marathon video making sessions, giving interviews for books, lecturing at the MIT Media Lab, winning awards, writing papers on non-linear video editing, consulting to research groups going multi-media, making professional videos as part of my living, and having Writers and Artists in Hollywood trying to sell 2 of my movie scripts, and another agent trying to sell a Forever Knight script.

I joke and say that I can edit in my sleep, but I suspect that it's not far from the truth. I've developed a feel for timing and rhythm that makes my fingers itch. Especially when watching poorly edited material. I took a one week workshop in Maine on Scene Editing from Ralph Rosenblum, the editor of The Pawnbroker, when I came out of IBM Research on early retirement, and was at peace with my editing on that type of source material by the end of the week. A good feeling, when I think back on my work at the beginning of the week!

A gentleman I met at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention was impressed with my white paper on non-linear editing, and set up a series of visits for me in Hollywood. The most exciting visit was one to an editing suite in which a current movie was being put together. The director and editor talked to me for a short while, then left me in the hands of the assistant editor, giving me permission to take xerox copies of the paperwork that flowed in and out through the process.

It was an absolutely fascinating experience, but I was given pause when learning that the assistant editor was just about to edit what would be only his 2nd scene after what I remember as 3 or 4 years as an assistant editor. It is still the case that Hollywood nepotism requires bringing into the field people without intrinsic skills. In order to overcome that barrier, a long union apprencticeship serves to slowly force those needed skills onto the apprentice. I wonder if, instead, they should be encouraged to make music videos.

As of today, I've made over 300 song videos. The people who have volunteered to act as copy centers for my work have agreed to do it for cost, and not for profit. The ones currently available are shown below.
Literary Song Videos
A Static Example
List of 431 Songs