Weekend Assignment #328: Writing to Writers (Mostly)

Fan Mail? Yes, I've written fan mail. So glad you asked!

Weekend Assignment #328: Fan Letters

How about a lighter topic this week? Let's talk about FAN LETTERS. I have never personally written one, because the one time I attempted to, it came off, well, sounding kinda weird! LOL. Apparently I have NO talent for them at all! Nope. Nope. Nope. But how about you? Have you ever written a successful FAN LETTER? If so, tell us about your experience. Did you hear back from the celebrity? Was it a positive experience? Tell us all about it.

Extra Credit: Write a one paragraph FAN LETTER to your favorite celebrity.

I suppose most people who write fan letters address them to actors, but that hasn't been my pattern:

• I wrote to the Laugh-In tv series as a whole circa 1969 when I was 12 years old, and got a few photos and a contract in return (for joke submissions to a spin-off game show, Letters to Laugh-In). I think I asked for autographs from "everyone involved." "Everyone," based on the response, was pretty much just Gary Owens. I've long since lost that photo, and doubt it was really autographed. But I still have the contract!
• When Wayne Rogers announced he was leaving M*A*S*H on the grounds that his character Trapper John was not being given equal prominence with Alan Alda's Hawkeye, I wrote and tried to talk him out of this, citing several episodes that centered on Trapper. I don't think I ever heard back.
• In 1975, as editor of a local Star Trek zine and, more importantly, because he was my favorite writer at the time, I wrote to Harlan Ellison, author of the Star Trek story "The City on the Edge of Forever" as well as a slew of highly-imaginative, award-winning short stories. He replied promptly, with a letter that I mislaid a few decades ago but which may yet turn up. I wrote to Harlan a second time, asking permission to publish his prior letter in 2-5YM. He gave permission, advised me on securing speaking engagements at Syracuse University and the folly of living in Los Angeles without a car, and closed with "I don't have time for correspondence. Please." I still have that letter. I've met him a number of times since those two pieces of mail, first when he spoke at Syracuse University (imagine that!) and we took him out to dinner, later when John and I met at the Clarion Writer's Workshop where Harlan was teaching, and most recently when he was given the SFWA Grand Master Award in Tempe, AZ a few years ago. He's a fascinating and maddening person, and my small acquaintance with him began with two fan letters from a recent high school graduate.
• In July, 1986, after reading Ellis Weiner's excellent novelization of the flawed-but-fun film Howard the Duck, John and I wrote to praise the book and to ask whether he was Steve Gerber (creator of the Howard character) writing under a pseudonym. We got an appreciative and funny reply in return, which I still have in my autographs binder. Weiner now writes funny stuff on Huffington Post, among other venues.
• About the same time as the Weiner letter, I wrote to artist and editor Dick Giordano, then in charge of DC Comics, objecting to the jettisoning of decades of story continuity in order to "reboot" the stories of Superman and other major characters. His form letter reply had a long, individualized postscript, defending the decision on the basis of sales, but doing so in a fairly gracious way. All these years later, I still think the short-term gain in sales was not worth what DC did to its characters in that era and since. I concede that it can be hard to keep the stories "fresh" after 50 years or longer, but I don't think in helps to press a reset button every few years and simply start over. How many origin stories does one character need?
• Also in 1986, I wrote to writer Madeleine L'Engle because I was having theological and literary difficulty with her use of Noah and his family in her most recent book about the Murry family, Many Waters. As it happened, her husband had just died of cancer, but she added a postscript to a form letter about her bereavement, explaining briefly that there was nothing wrong with using the Ark "myth," as she called it, in a fantasy novel, and quoting Karl Barth: "I take the Bible much too seriously to take it literally." Heady stuff! 
• 1986 was the year that John and I tried to write for a living rather than hold down conventional jobs, which perhaps explains why so many of the entries on this list are from that year. I also wrote to writer Damon Knight that summer, but that was more of a business letter. So was my letter to Martin Milner, requesting clarification on a few questions I had been reluctant to ask when we interviewed him that earlier in the year.

In the early 2000s I wrote to Madeleine L'Engle a few more times, offering her condolences on the death of her son and telling her about the website I maintained about her books. I also sent some photos to Harlan Ellison at his request in 2005 so he could make copies of them. But that's about it for snail mail to celebrities. My most recent contacts with writers I admired have been online. After the publication of the original and revised editions of The Writer's Tale by Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook, I wrote to Ben Cook via Facebook and got a nice reply each time. And just in the past week or two I wrote to another Doctor Who Magazine journalist, Andrew Pixley, for a truly pleasant and informative swapping of ideas and anecdotes about the history of fan research about the show. Good stuff!

I always wanted to send a letter to Thurl Ravenscroft, the basso profundo behind the song You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch, the character Tony the Tiger, and, for more important to me, a long list of Disney shows and attractions. He died of cancer a few years ago, but I still have a cheap Tony costume I intended to get autographed. Which reminds me: I did get around to writing to Fess Parker in the early 2000s, and got an autograph back. He's dead now as well.

Another writer whose work I love is also on the short list of people who died before I got around to writing to them. Every time a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide book came out, I inevitably started writing a letter to him in my head, and occasionally onto a computer drive. But I never quite managed to say anything cogent enough, witty enough, or interesting enough to make it worth sending.

Finally, I've never written a fan letter to any of the actors who played the Doctor on Doctor Who, unless you count a brief by-mail interview with Colin Baker. I've interviewed four of these actors, but no fan mail. Yet for years I've been writing a letter to David Tennant in my head, on the grounds that he was my favorite Doctor, the best actor of the lot, and by all accounts a nice man. The urgency to get this letter out of my head and over the the BBC has faded considerably this year, because his successor in the role, Matt Smith, is so outstanding as the Doctor that he threatens to take over the top spot in my affections. With that in mind, here is my fake but heartfelt letter to Matt Smith for the Extra Credit:

Dear Mr. Smith:

As an American who has been a Doctor Who fan since 1988 and interviewed four of your predecessors in the role, I never expected David Tennant to become "my Doctor," which he did over the course of his tenure. I expected even less for you to win me over completely in the first minutes of "The Eleventh Hour" this past spring. You had me from the moment you popped out of the crashed TARDIS and asked, "Can I have an apple?" Your Doctor is youthful and ancient, funny and sorrowful, brilliant and clueless, and always a joy to watch. How do you manage to look and act over 900 years old, when you yourself have not yet hit the tender age of 30? I just can't figure it out. What I do understand is that you are truly amazing in this role, which you were seemingly born to play. If forced to choose a favorite Doctor today I strongly suspect I'd choose yours, and your performance as well. May you have a long and happy tenancy in that ancient, brand new blue box!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #326: Camp Among the Stars

It's taken me all week to figure out my response to Weekend Assignment #326: Off To Camp:

Weekend Assignment #326: Off To Camp


Guess what? You have been offered the chance to be the keynote speaker at a world famous fantasy camp! Great! Tell us what kind of camp it is, and what makes you such an expert!


Extra Credit: Create a special logo for the Fantasy Camp you are speaking at! :) Let's get a little visually creative!

Okay, then here's my logo. "Among the Stars" would be a fantasy camp for an audience that doesn't really need one: sf and fantasy fandom. The reason fans of sf and fantasy books, tv and movies don't normally need a camp is that we already have something that serves basically the same purpose, namely sf conventions.

But let's play this out. How would a fantasy camp for sf geeks be different from a ComicCon, and Worldcon, a Gallifrey One or any number of other conventions? It would be much smaller and more intimate, with more of the one-on-one opportunities that are a challenge for conventions to arrange, if they try at all. In most cases, if you want to chat with an sf author, or a guest star from your favorite episode of your second-favorite tv show, you basically have three choices. You can stand in an autograph line for half an hour or more in exchange for a minute or so of personal contact, or pay extra for a banquet or brunch, or approach the writer or actor in the hotel bar. A few cons manage to do better than this, but the whole point of a fantasy and sf fantasy camp would be to do much better. Attendees would spend much more than a con-goer would, in order to offset the economies of scale. The result would be more genuine interaction between fan and professional, but under controlled conditions. The professional would offer acting or writing workshops, or allow the fan to direct a scene, conduct an interview or even design a book cover.


John Levene (Sgt. Benton on Doctor Who) poses with an issue of 
TARDIS Time Lore, for which we interviewed him more than once.

So what would my role be in such an event? I would introduce a workshop in how to interview actors and other creative professionals. Over the years I've interviewed many actors, writers, and producers, a few directors, a costume designer, and I forget who else. My usual approach was generally to start with a very general question and move in from there. We always had a list of decent questions prepared, but the trick was to listen to the answers and follow the flow of the conversation, while still getting to topics people would want to read about. I'm not the world's greatest interviewer, but I'm fairly good at it, and I have some idea of the pitfalls. The last thing you want to do when interviewing someone is to bore or annoy them by fumbling for words or asking something the interviewee doesn't know or care about. (I'll never forget William Shatner's answer to some fan's technical question about dilithium crystals at an early Star Trek convention. "They're green," Shatner said. "And they make the ship go." How much more did the actor need to know about this fictional power source?)

Gee, I'm kind of sorry now that this Among the Stars camp doesn't actually exist!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #289: Quitting Time

If you like, you can attribute the lateness of this entry to my being sick with a cold that seems to be getting worse instead of better. Be that as it may, let's get started:

Weekend Assignment: #289: Sooner or later, we all quit something that was once important to us: a job, school, a club, an addiction, a relationship, and probably other things I haven't thought of. Tell us about something you quit, and why you did so.

Extra Credit: Did you ever regret your decision?

There was a period in the early 1990s when I was working full time and also editing several fanzines at once: TARDIS Time Lore, The Observer, The Hologram and the compilation of a serial I'd written (Paradox: Two Doctors in Time) into a single volume. I was getting stressed out and burned out, but I didn't see a way out. Julie B kindly took over The Hologram, and the fan novella was a one-time project, so those weren't a major problem. But the two club newsletters, one for our local Doctor Who club, the other for our international Quantum Leap club, were not so easily disposed of. I had a somewhat misplaced pride of ownership and a heavy emotional investment in both zines, and worried that they couldn't go on without my frequent all-nighters, writing and editing. There didn't seems to be anyone in the wings to do the work instead, maintaining the quality of the final product. Oh, yeah, I had hubris to spare.

Now, I don't remember the exact order of events, which zine I quit editing first. But I think I stepped down from TARDIS Time Lore first. Over the next several years three other editors were elected by the club. One never edited anything, another managed to produce one issue before quitting over club politics, and one produced several issues, usually with covers that overshot the "fair use" principle in copyright law by quite a bit. Still, the zine did survive for several years without me in charge.

My most ambitious fanzine cover ever!

As for The Observer, I was so stressed out about it at one point that I mentioned it to my doctor at the time, the non-HMO D.O. who helped me with my weight (very successfully, for a while) and my allergies (ditto). Oh, and for a herniated disc. He practically ordered me to give up editing the zine, but that didn't even sound like an option to me. I think I may have cried a little, I was so upset.

But later that day, I talked it over with John, and contacted Margaret from the fan club. I soon learned that Sharon Major was willing and able to take over editing The Observer. Well over a decade later, she's still doing it. I've contributed the occasional article, but mostly not in recent years. I feel a little guilty about that, but not enough to do more.

Do I regret it? Do I miss it? Well, I'm kind of sorry that the Who club and its zine ran out of steam by 2000, but no, I don't really regret giving up all that work. I could not have saved the club, not with Doctor Who off local tv at the time and many of our members having moved away. My editing the zine would not have helped one bit.

As for The Observer, there's no way I could have kept my dedication and interest going all these years, as Sharon clearly has. The newsletter is in good hands, and I'm glad. I don't have to worry about it. If and when Sharon in turn quits, The Observer will find a new editor or it won't. If it doesn't, it's still had a good run, four times as long as the tv series that inspired it. I am content.

What about you? Have you found yourself in a position where you felt you had to quit something? Tell us about it, either in your own blog or in the comments below. Next weekend I'll highlight your responses, thus:

For Weekend Assignment #288: Columbus and his Day, I asked for your opinion of Columbus Day. Here are excerpts from the responses:

Cheryl B. said in comments:

I stopped by your blog to verify that you were still hosting your Friday "theme day".

In case you aren't sure why I would do that, please first go here: http://thehousethatlovebuilt.xanga.com/712911712/today--/

and then read this one:
http://thehousethatlovebuilt.xanga.com/712911311/sept-theme-days/

I see that you still are, so I shall leave you on the lists :-D

Should you wish to contact me for any reason, feel free to do so via: pink bunnies (at) sbc global (dot) net

THANKS!!!
Cheryl B.

Florinda said...

I can't remember when I last lived anywhere that observed Columbus Day, to be honest. School is in session locally, and it turns out that even the banks will be open today, although I'm not sure about the post office and government offices. Therefore, I've almost forgotten that it is a holiday. And I can't prove it, but even in places where it's observed, I suspect not much thought is really given to why it's a holiday or what it means; it's just another three-day weekend (and, in some cities, maybe an excuse for a parade).

Julie said...

I'm not inclined to believe this is a good reason for a national holiday. Yet, I'm not too keen on the idea of tossing out a replacement holiday. In these times fraught with division, it seems a safe bet that such a discussion would turn into an all-out brawl.

Mike said....

Yes, I think it still does merit a holiday. Sure, he wasn't a perfect man, but we do owe a lot to him. If someone else had discovered it, would things be different? We we be the same nation we are today? Who knows, a lot happened from the first time he came this way and the time we actually became a nation. (That was in 1776 in case you weren't sure). But, since he is regarded as the man who discovered America, we should celebrate his day. It only makes sense.

Thanks, all!

Here are the guidelines if you'd like to participate in the Weekend Assignment:

1. Please post your entry no later than Friday, October 30th at 6 PM. (You can also post your response in the comments thread, but a blog entry is better. )
   
2. Please mention the Weekend Assignment in your blog post, and include a link back to this entry.
3. Please come back here after you've posted, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below.
4. Visiting other participants' entries is strongly encouraged!
5. I'm always looking for topic ideas. Please email me at mavarin2 on gmail.com if there's a Weekend Assignment theme you'd like to see. If I use your idea, you will be credited as that week's "guest professor."

I'll try to get my next entry up tomorrow. *Cough cough!*

Karen

Weekend Assignment #270: Magic Makeover

Yes, I know, I'm about 24 hours out from my old schedule. But I worked today, and had a time consuming project on Facebook, and took the dog to the vet, and had computer problems, and...well, that's it for Friday, but Thursday night I did CPA review assignments until 1:30 AM and then collapsed into bed.

So. I'm delighted to say that a few people have finally come up with "guest professor" topics. I need to juggle and tweak them a bit to avoid them being too close in theme or scheduling to similar Weekend Assignments, but it's still a big help! And yes, still want more topic ideas to add to the mix.

Meanwhile, though, let's go with a topic idea of mine that I've had shelved for a while:

Weekend Assignment #270: You've been given the magical opportunity to change just one thing about yourself, instantly and painlessly. There is no going back; whatever change you make is permanent, aside from normal aging. What would you change - or would you choose to stand pat? (Please note that this is a change to yourself, not the world around you. Also, I'm disallowing weight loss, because it's just too obvious.)

Extra Credit: If you could change two things, what would the second thing be?

I think the reason I've been sitting on this idea is that it asks you to implicitly criticize yourself, which can be a bit of a downer. But let's try to have fun with this, shall we?

Now, let's see. I don't care about my age, my graying hair, my big feet, my need to wear glasses or my lack of a gall bladder. It would be nice to ditch my allergies, but is that big enough a thing to go for? Perhaps I'd be better off magically erasing a fault of mine, such as messiness or mild shyness or being oversensitive to criticism.

But you know what? In theory, I can do something about personality quirks, at least enough to cope. Indeed, I am coping. I can be braver. I can do dishes. I can do what I need to do.

Allergies, though. I've been suffering from allergies since I was a small child. I was tested for horses and ragweed and lots of other things when I was in fourth grade, and came up positive for nearly all of them. In junior high school I was once "caught" taking an Allerest, something I didn't know was against the rules. Cats give me asthma. I was awakened this morning by allergies, and I'm sitting her with nasal congestion right now. There is currently no medication I know of that makes a dent in my symptoms unless I double or triple the dosage.

Yeah, allergies. Let's go with that. And the second thing? Well, it would be nice, at the decidedly post-adolescent age of 52, to finally get over my acne.

How about you? What would you tweak about yourself it you had the chance? Tell us about it! Write it up in your blog, and please remember to include a link back to this entry. Then leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week with the results. Here, meanwhile, is last week's results:

For Weekend Assignment #269: Good Sports, I asked for your interactions with parades. Here are excerpts from the two replies:

Julie said...

I enjoy sports, and I watch politics like a contact sport. But this is about organized games. No political jokes this time around.

I like football - both soccer and US football. Just last week I picked up a Manchester United shirt. Yes, I'm a ManU fan. There goes half my readership! ;-)

Paul said...

Like any sport or activity, curling has developed its own unique terminology (as touched upon in the previous installment). The terms, out-turn and in-turn are used to describe which direction a curler turns the handle when delivering a rock. On an out-turn, the handle of the rock is turned out from the body of the thrower, and an in-turn is turned in towards the body of the thrower. Of course, that means the terms refer to different directions of spin depending on whether the thrower is right or left-handed. For a righty, the out-turn revolves counter-clockwise, and the in-turn, clockwise. For a lefty it is the opposite. [This is part of Paul's series The ABCs of Curling]

Florinda said...

I was raised on Major League baseball, but most of the games I've attended in my life have been in the minors. During my first few years living in Memphis, the city was home to a AA franchise, and in 1998, the Memphis Redbirdsbegan playing in AutoZone Park as the AAA affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals. My son has a July birthday which usually falls somewhere around the All-Star break, and even if we couldn't do it on the day itself, his preferred place to celebrate while he was growing up was always the ballpark, and we were always glad to take him.

Mike said...

I don't think I could be called a sports fan. I don't plan my weekends around sporting events on TV, though that could be due to the fact I work a lot of weekends. But still, I wouldn't do it anyway. I never envisioned myself growing up to be the guy who never gets dressed on a Sunday because there are too many football games to watch. Instead, I don't get dressed because I'm too lazy and want to watch Fletch for the 3,000th time in comfort.

Mike adds in his comment...

And Paul, if you see mine, I'm sorry. I mentioned curling in mine All in jest of course.

I'm still dangerously low on "guest professor" suggestions for these Weekend Assignments, so I ask again: please, please, please, email me some new ones. Thanks!

Karen

All Those Years Ago

The year was 1991. Or maybe 1990. One of our new fan clubs, the United Whovians of Tucson, had done a panel at TusCon, and afterward someone came up to me with a tractor feed printout of messages about Doctor Who. They were off a Usenet newsgroup. I got friends to explain about the Internet, but at the time it didn't seem all that easy for a non-techie to cope with. Months laters a Leaper (Quantum Leap fan) mentioned a "neat service" called Prodigy in a letter to me, sort of like CompuServe only cheaper. John got me the Prodigy software for Christmas. Somewhere in there, a Whovian named Tom ran a local bbs (online bulletin board service) for our club, where we could chat online with each other - but only if Tom had the server up and running at the time.

But Prodigy was national, maybe international. It belonged to Sears, believe it or not. My new modem connected to it over the phone every night at a blistering 2400 baud, and showed short messages on a monochrome screen. There was no long term storage, and posts would drop off the service in 3 to 8 days or so, depending on how busy that particular message board was. The original software had no copy or paste functions and no uploading or downloading. Obviously there were no photos, just text. Eventually a third party app came along for my Mac SE that enabled me to finally save messages or paste in canned text, such as info on our other club, Project Quantum Leap, and my FAQ, Common Questions About Quantum Leap. Email cost 25 cents per message, and did not initially go beyond the confines of Prodigy itself.

Oddly enough, I don't remember following Doctor Who on the P* boards. My main interests there were QL (which appeared just above the "RUSH" section of the TV-radio boards; it took me a while to learn that Rush was a person's first name, and about half an hour after that to learn that I opposed everything he stood for) and HG, or H2G2, or, to give it its full name, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

HG was the really fun area on Prodigy in those days. The service did not allow screen names, aliases or handles, but the HG "froods" merrily adopted handles in the texts of their postings, becoming characters, creatures and even objects from the Hitchhiker's book, radio show, tv series, LPs, audio tapes and printed bath towel. Sara G. was the Cricket Ball, Jim R. was the Voice of the Book, Sarah K. was Lord the Cat, Lesley H. was the Dolphins, and so on. We also had an Arthur and a Zaphod, of course. As for me, I bucked the trend and did my best to change my handle with every single posting, based on the concept that I, like the Universe in Douglas Adams' books, was bizarrely inexplicable. Or something. Going off-topic was against the rules, but such was the zany nature of the HG board that we sometimes made a point of being as off-topic as possible, in the funniest possible way.

I also entrusted my Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book, already signed by one of the HG actors, to one of the froods so he could get Douglas Adams to sign it for me at a public appearance. I never got the book back, and I no longer remember who the irresponsible frood was who failed to return it.

Twenty years ago, we were interviewing actors like John Levene in L.A.

It was all a very long time ago. A year later, Prodigy raised its rates without improving its service much, and everyone started migrating to the new killer app, America Online. In my offline life, I was editing fanzines for both the Doctor Who and Quantum Leap clubs, and making a few trips to Los Angeles each year for conventions, interviews with actors and writers, and to buy scripts and photos. I met some of the online people, including Julie B., at an early Quantum Leap screening for fans, and subsequently at three conventions held in metro L.A. But Quantum Leap was canceled in 1993. I eventually passed on the editing of The Observer to Sharon Major, and of TARDIS Time Lore to several successors before the Doctor Who club folded in 2000, five years before the show returned to television.

It's been months since I've watched a Quantum Leap episode, although I have the complete run on both DVD and videotape. A Doctor Who DVD, on the other hand, is currently on pause in the next room. The first actor I ever interviewed that played the Doctor, Jon Pertwee, has been dead for a while now. I probably haven't seen Julie B. in person in over a decade, although we're in frequent touch online. And of course, the landscape of the Internet itself is utterly different now, except in some of its essential purposes: communication, to the world and peer to peer.

The reason I'm waxing all nostalgic and wistful tonight about the days of Prodigy and those early cons is that two things happened today that brought home how long ago it was, this wonderful, technologically backward, utterly irreproducible era of my life.

First, I got a friend request today on Facebook from Lesley H. It took me about 30 seconds to place the name. Seventeen years ago, she was a teenager on the HG boards, better known as the Dolphins. Plural. Now she's a lawyer. She was as weirded out about me calling her Dolphins as I was that she's a lawyer.

Twenty years ago this weekend,
I turned on the tv and saw this scene.

Second, I got email tonight from Julie, conveying greetings from an actor I interviewed repeatedly for The Observer. Richard Herd is one of those working actors that you see everywhere but may not know by name. He was Captain Galaxy and Ziggy the Miner on Quantum Leap, George's boss on Seinfeld, an Admiral and a Klingon on various series of Star Trek, and so on. I like him a lot. Richard and I exchanged greetings tonight through the kind auspices of Julie, who is at the first Quantum Leap convention in a decade or so. It's the 20th anniversary convention, in fact. Twenty years ago this weekend, the show premiered on NBC, and took over a good chunk of my life for several years.

I didn't even remember about the anniversary, or that the convention was this weekend, until Julie emailed me tonight. Now I wish desperately I was there, seeing those fans and friends again, the actors, writers and directors I interviewed nearly 20 years ago, and the wonderful land of Hollywood where the con is taking place. But I can't. Just can't. Having been unemployed all this time, I'd be selfish and mad to spend money on that now. But I want it, at least as badly as I wanted to go to Gallifrey One last month and meet one of the producers of the revived version of Doctor Who.

Ah, well. At least I have a color screen to type this on, and copy and paste, and this posting won't age off some not-quite-internet sometime next week. And an email to Julie won't cost me 25 cents. I guess it will have to do.

Karen

The Squee Factor

Rose is back - but the rest of the news is bad for the Doctor and friends

Squee - verb, noun. To express fannish delight, especially by squealing; also refers to the expression itself and the feeling that engenders it.

Saturday's penultimate Series Four episode of Doctor Who, which will air several weeks from now on SciFi in the United States, is a rather squeeful one, in that it reunites a number of characters, brings in characters previously seen only in the spinoff shows, and brings back a major villain not seen on the show since the late 1980s. There's another fannish term being applied here, because the episode pushes all of fandom's buttons with its continuity references, beloved characters and mysteries solved, even as it sets up a major, major cliffhanger, and several only-slightly-less-major ones. The term sounds rather rude to me, so I refuse to use it.

Nevertheless, it's true that fans have gone into meltdown about the episode over the past several days, and no, I'm not going to tell you what the fuss is about. The Doctor Who Forum had its highest-ever influx of visitors the day it aired, which overloaded the Forum's servers; much the same thing also happened on at least two other fan sites. The episode is pulling a 5 out of 5 rating from about 75% of fans, which places it at #5 in fan appreciation out of the 54 episodes since 2005.

What's really interesting, though, is that all this fan squee is part of a huge reaction to the episode from the general public in the UK. It was the most-watched show of the day, and had an audience appreciation index (AI) rating of 91, the highest in the history of the series, and "one of the highest figures ever achieved for a mainstream television programme." Newspaper columnists all over the UK are speculating wildly about how the cliffhanger is to be resolved, and marveling that such a scene could exist without the information leaking in advance. Dedicated followers of set reports and YouTube spectator videos of location filming were aware of the scene that leads up to the cliffhanger, but the cliffhanger itself was on a closed set, and fan speculation about it apparently didn't reach the press until the episode aired. Even press preview copies of the episode were missing the show's last five minutes.

I've read reports of children needing reassurance, of wives taken to their beds to cry over what seems to be happening (probably an exaggeration), of co-workers accosting known fans demanding news or clarification. It is, I suppose, the biggest example of national interest in a television cliffhanger since "Who shot J.R," much bigger than the parody cliffhanger "Who shot Mr. Burns?"

For every ten squee-ers in fandom, however, there's at least one sourpuss who disapproves of the episode, the writer and the way the show is going, and confidently predicts that any minute now, the general public will catch on to how dreadful it all is, and the show will lose its viewers and be canceled again. These are fans of the show, mind you, but usually they're the ones who only like a few episodes from the modern era, and prefer the glory days of 19--, when xxx was the Doctor. One has to feel kind of sorry for these counterfactual spoilsports, who rush to label most episodes as "dreadful tosh," with bad acting and "no plot," and claim that this nonexistent plot is resolved by deux ex machina or a "reset button." Occasionally they have a point, but generally it's wildly overstated.

There are also, of course, perfectly reasonable people who dislike any given episode, and can clearly and logically explain their viewpoint. I should also mention, because I seem to have been unclear in originally posting this, that there are lots and lots of longtime fans who love the show's revival, and appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of the series across every era. The truly vitriolic grumps are a loud but tiny minority.

Sad to say, however, people at both ends of the squee scale tend to believe, and to state publicly, that anyone who holds the opposing view lacks critical faculties, and is probably rude to boot. People who love the episode tell the haters they don't deserve to watch the show. The haters reply that they've been watching the show for umpty-ump years, have joined the fan clubs and bought the merchandise, and know how good Doctor Who can be, if only that dreadful RTD would go away. Russell T Davies, who is preparing to turn the show over to fan favorite Steven Moffat, is the man who brought the show back after 16 years and made it more popular than ever. He's also the man who wrote the episode that all Britain is talking about this week. But there's no denying that some elements of his writing rub certain fans the wrong way. (There may be modern converts to the show who have an anti-RTD attitude, but I haven't noticed as much criticism from that quarter.)

Some of you folks have been involved in other fandoms, I'm guessing, for House and Star Trek and Buffy and who knows what else. I've gotta ask: is this level of fan frenzy and critical dichotomy a general thing, or specific to Doctor Who?

Karen

P.S. Yes, I still have a cold! *cough cough!*

I Remember Fanzines

Today Julie sent me a heads-up email that two blogs - one of them from radio station WFMU - had pictured one or more of the Quantum Leap fanzines/newsletters I edited long ago. It turns out that io9 snagged the picture of The Observer #4 from WFMU's Beware of the Blog, which in turn snagged my photos, more-or-less uncredited, from a 2006 Outpost entry. No big deal; WFMU did include a link to the original article. The other blog did not, and so far has not "approved" my comment to their entry. Apparently a discussion of mild Star Wars fan porn meets their standards of information and amusement value, while my musings on the history of fanzines and the technology of making them did not. Or maybe no human has yet reviewed my application to be a commenter. Yeah, that must be it.

So I'll rant to you folks instead.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about 1973, I read about the existence of something called Star Trek fanzines in a couple of books by David Gerrold, most notably The World of Star Trek. In November or December of that year I put together my own zine, 2-5YM, which was short for Second Five-Year Mission, something we Trekkies all longed for back then. That five page ditto led to my meeting my friend d, a young English teacher who later became a librarian. Soon we merged with STAR Syracuse, the local Trek club. We continued to publish 2-5YM until 1977, by which time it was published by offset press, if I recall correctly. At least a few issues in between were done by mimeo, typed for us by a little old lady in Fayetteville.

The Observer #1, late 1990

After I met my future husband at the Clarion '77 writers' workshop, and STAR Syracuse morphed into a Dungeons and Dragons group at Syracuse University, I never expected to edit another fanzine. But by March 1990 I found myself writing fan fiction, a crossover serial involving the Doctor (from Doctor Who) and Sam Beckett (from Quantum Leap) and a cast of dozens. That month I found my way into a new local Who club, later called United Whovians of Tucson, and was elected editor of its fanzine, TARDIS Time Lore, between pledge breaks at KUAT when I was out of the room. In August 1990 we asked permission to start a Quantum Leap fan club. The first membership cards for Project Quantum Leap were issued on Thanksgiving of that year, and the first issue of The Observer followed shortly thereafter. It was written in MS Word (3.0 I think) for Mac, and laid out in PageMaker, with pasteup involving photocopied art by Sherlock. It predated AOL and the World Wide Web, but not by much. By the time I turned The Observer over to Sharon Major to edit, Quantum Leap had a lively online community, PhotoShop was de rigeur, and PageMaker was passé.

I could go on about this, pointing out that fanzines existed as far back as the 1950s, which makes it silly to refer to a 1990s zine as "early." I could track the evolution of fandom as it moved online, if I wanted to make the effort of researching it properly, and note the technological changes along the way. But I won't, not tonight anyway. 'Cause as I researched this entry, I happened across a listing of myself at something called ZoomInfo.com, and got sidetracked for two hours. Somehow they cobbled together an old business card of mine (or something) and one of my online bios, and ended up with a listing for Karen Christine Funk, an employee of Worldwide Travel. Two problems with this: I haven't been Karen Funk since 1979, and I haven't worked at Worldwide Travel since 2005.

In trying to correct that info, I found I couldn't "claim" the listing as myself because it required either an email address for me at Worldwide Travel, an email address at Syracuse University, where I was a student long before email existed, or a credit card number issued to Karen Funk. So I emailed through a contact page instead. Along the way I discovered that I've been almost as lax as they were in listing up-to-date info on myself online. My home page, last updated in 2006, implied I was still at First Magnus, although I didn't name the company. They folded in August 2007, of course. And my bio page, last updated in 2004, had me still at Worldwide Travel, and still going to school! No wonder the Zoom folks didn't get it right! So I spent an hour or two updating three of my personal web pages.

See, all those technological enhancements don't help much if we don't use them!

Karen

Do Spoilers Spoil?

I couldn't think of a metaphor to tie this to the entry's subject.

Think of your all-time favorite ongoing series. I don't care what it is - could be a series of novels, a tv show, a series of movies, any kind of fiction issued over a period of months or (more likely) years. You've watched or read everything that's been released so far. Heck, you've practically memorized it. Now you're waiting for the next installment. It's still months away. Or maybe there's a whole series that starts up soon. Either way, you're starting to get antsy.

Now suppose someone offers you a copy of the script or manuscript ahead of time, something that will tell you more or less what happens at the very end, but won't give you the whole experience. Or maybe you know of a website where lucky fans of Your Favorite Thing Ever are reporting their knowledge of what they've seen, secret revelations the world isn't supposed to know about until June at least.

Do you read it, or do you stay well away to avoid spoiling the full impact of the work when it's properly released, in all its multimedia glory? Or do you nibble at the edges of the forbidden knowledge, trying to pick up a few hints without ruining whatever big surprises are in store?

What I've just described above are called "spoilers." And I'm deeply ambivalent about them.

Some of my Quantum Leap scripts

Back in the early 1990s, my friends and I would go to Los Angeles a few times a year, making the pilgrimage from Tucson to attend Gallifrey One and the Quantum Leap conventions, visit Universal Studios yet again, and buy scripts and photos at the Hollywood memorabilia shops. During these trips we always stopped by the office of Belisarius Productions, makers of Quantum Leap, and interviewed whoever we could, usually writer-producers on staff. Another time, two of us were on the Universal lot, watching the actual filming, taking a few pictures and chatting with extras.

In those days the security wasn't all that tight for scripts from upcoming episodes. Nothing was watermarked with the name of the person, or kept carefully out of sight. Sometimes we would be given a script outright, sometimes we would find one lying around somewhere, and sometimes we bought one in a shop. Usually they were from past episodes, or just "sides," a few script pages reproduced for use in auditions of guest cast. Several times, though, we had an entire script in hand for something that would be on tv in a week or two, or possibly later. The most memorable case was when we ended up with the script for the last-ever episode, "Mirror Image," about two or three months before air date.

These days when something like that happens, there's a good chance someone will scan it and put it online immediately, never mind the legalities. We didn't do that. For one thing, the technology wasn't quite there yet in February 1993. For another, it would have been a breach of trust.

But we could read it. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

I know I read "Private Dancer" before it aired, and one or more of the "Trilogy" scripts, and at least one other episode. I didn't regret it. I can't remember whether I held off on "Mirror Image." It was an astonishing episode, and I don't recall the effect being diminished by my having the script. Perhaps I only read a few pages ahead of time.

It was all a long time ago, and I forget the details.

The reason I mention all this tonight is that four times in the past week, I've learned details online about the last episode of this year's series of Doctor Who.*

• Someone reported the names on the guest cast trailers, on location for the season finale.
• Later he and other fans witnessed and photographed what looked like the last scene of the season, except for some final cliffhanger.
  
• A few days later, someone else posted a rundown of what has been announced in magazines, mentioned in interviews or observed on location about the entire 2008 series. It was meant to be safely tucked away in a "Spoilers" thread, which I don't read, but the person accidentally posted it in the set report thread, which I do. It was so detailed that I read it for a full hour, unable to stop myself.
• And today, yet another person photographed, at a distance, bits of filming and setup for two truly iconic scenes from the series finale, including another, very different "final" scene. It probably takes place before the other final scene, but that doesn't lessen its impact. One of the fan photos is my new desktop photo.

Yet funnily enough, as much as the fans have learned and disseminated about the show's super-secret series finale for 2008, we all agree that it adds up to more questions than answers. We're sure of the major guest stars, returning characters, returning villain (courtesy of a catalog of upcoming licensed toys!), and one important location. We know it all follows on from an episode in which the Doctor barely appears, if at all. We even know a line or two of dialogue. And yet we still have no clear idea how it all fits together, what exactly is going to happen and why. Which is as it should be.

My question is this: should I now stay firmly out of that set report thread for the next three months, to avoid learning any possible answers to my many questions?

Would you?

Karen

*I should explain that the nomenclature of British tv is different from U.S. tv. Each season of Doctor Who from 2005 in is technically called a "series." The 2008 episodes are called Series Four of "New Who." It doesn't mean the end of the show, however. In 2009 there will be four specials, and in 2010 a new full series - which is more of a commitment to the future than the BBC has given any other franchise.

Introvert's Lament

Some of the writerly guests at Gallifrey One this year

There's a line in the Christmas 2007 Doctor Who special, "Voyage of the Damned," in which the Doctor offers the opinion that taking a cruise "on your own" doesn't "quite work." As someone whose only cruise was a three day one taken with my mom, I think that's probably about right in most cases. In fact, I would extend the observation to science fiction and sf media conventions, with the same basic exception as in the cruise example.

You see, in both cases it depends on the kind of person who is attending the group activity alone. I imagine that if you're a fearless extrovert, adept at making friends everywhere you go, solo cons and cruises are no problem. I've seen people this weekend (well, a few of them) who can walk up to almost anyone and strike up a successful conversation. Such people, I'm reasonably certain, will be fine in situations like this.

And I have no doubt that people make friends at these things; I've done it myself a number of times over the years. By and large, though, nearly everyone at this convention is either here with someone else or a celebrity with a handler, friends and hangers-on. I'm here alone, and that makes it harder. I've had a good time, met a lot of nice people, taken pictures, looked at merchandise, gained insights and generally been entertained - but it would have all been much better with one or more close friends at my side. In the early days of Gallifrey One, I used to drive out here with Tracy and Teresa, Dimitra and sometimes Sherlock. Now one is dead, two live far away and one has fallen on hard times. And I miss them, darn it, the younger, healthier, Tucson-based versions of them. Sherlock lives in Texas, but at least she used to visit Tucson occasionally when the twins were here.

Still, despite my shyness in person, I haven't been completely isolated socially. I've asked questions in panel discussions, chatted with some of the writers, had a long conversation with someone's mother about travel and her plush Mickey Mouse collection (no, really!), and chatted with other fans about Doctor Who "shipping" (factions in favor of one romantic pairing or another, coupled with antipathy toward rival characters), the casting of Hitchhiker's Guide characters in different media, and hatred of the character Dawn in Buffy fandom. But today, when I wasn't in an overflow crowd at a live DVD commentary, a Sylvester McCoy interview or some other event, I've been at loose ends, wandering around looking for something to connect with. In the hall, people hung around chatting with friends. In the con suite, people ate bologna and watched a show about people who survived serious accidents. In the lobby, just outside the hotel bar, groupings of chairs and tables held an ever-changing assortment of celebrities and fans, with the celebrities chatting to each other as fans looked on. Sometimes fans were part of the main conversation, but mostly only if they were personal acquaintances one of more of the celebrities present. These conversations were almost inevitably punctuated by people going to the bar and bringing back another round.

If you're at a convention with a friend or family member, you're automatically not pathetic (by fandom standards) or lonely or bored. Even if the programming of the moment consists of a screening of That Awful Show, a panel discussion with the Second Actor From the Left, an autograph session with nonfiction writers you've never heard of and a retrospective slideshow on the history of athletic shoes in science fiction, you have someone to talk to about something more interesting, perhaps with three to five other fans joining in along the way. But when you're there alone, it's trickier. Does that person you know casually from past conventions want you hanging around all the time, just because you're on a first name basis? Probably not. Is it permissible to hang around at the fringes of the crowd surrounding your favorite actor? In some cases, the answer is yes, but if you stay at the fringes you probably won't hear much of the conversation, much less contribute to it. And if you hang around one celebrity all weekend I imagine that you'll seem a little creepy.

I'm on a first name basis with one person from Phoenix and two from L.A., and I've met a number of the celebrities several times over the years. I've interviewed Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, who starred in the show in the last 1980s; but it was over a decade ago and they're exceedingly unlikely to remember. A few of the writers remember that I wrote those trading cards in the mid-1990s, and one more remembers the comment I left on his blog about the Lennon-McCartney dynamic. But none of that gives me a license to hang out with them, beyond the non-intrusive, limited contact that is the norm here.

And yet...

Other fans can and do have conversations, with the celebrities and with each other, beyond what I've managed so far. Yes, they have their support groups of friends and family members and the excuse of past acquaintance; some of them have been coming to this thing nearly every year since 1990, and even many of the celebs have been here three times or more. Even so, in trying to strike a balance between too intrusive and too unobtrusive, I'm pretty sure I'm well into the latter category. I've done well in some one-to-one situations, but overall I think I rate a D+ for social interaction this weekend.

I'll have to see what I can do tomorrow to raise that grade.

Karen

MPS Cover Me

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a picture of something you've made. Pottery, cookies, a drawing or painting, a poem or a pipe cleaner stick man -- it's all good, it just has to have been made by you. Show off your creativity.

First of all, John Scalzi, Carly, Steven, Pat and I want you to know you've put us in a bit of a pickle with this one. Compare your topic with the one announced this past Thursday for the next Round Robin Photo Challenge, entries to be posted on Wednesday, November 1st:

Pat (Deslily) author of the journal, "Here There And Everywhere 2nd Edition," has chosen "The Creative Side Of You" as our theme for the challenge.... Show off your creative side, by posting photos of anything you have created from scratch.

See? Pretty much the same thing, isn't it? You've kinda stolen our thunder here.

Of course we'll forgive you if you plug the Round Robin Photo Challenges. We've being doing these for a year and a half, and you haven't mentioned them yet, perhaps because we didn't ask! Well, we're asking now - nicely, even. Pretty please, beloved Blogfather? Hey, you can even be a Robin yourself if you want to!

While our favorite Campbell Award winner is mulling that over, let's get on with posting a few pictures of things I made. These are three issues of The Observer, the Quantum Leap fanzine / newsletter I used to edit. I designed all of these covers (and many others), wrote much of the stuff inside and edited the rest.


This first cover doesn't look like much, but it's from the first issue of the zine, back around Christmas 1990. It's also an almost exact replica of the cover of a report issued to members of a Senate Committee deciding the fate of Project Quantum Leap in the second season premiere episode, "Honeymoon Express."


This cover is from the fourth issue. I didn't take the photo, and I certainly didn't create or design one of the premiere news magazines of all time. But I did design this parody of their distinctive covers. It refers to a line of dialogue in the pilot episode, in which Al tells amnesiac Sam Beckett that "Time Magazine even called you 'the next Einstein.'" I sent a framed copy of this to the show's production office, back in the day.



Now we come to the best cover I ever did, certainly the most ambitious and labor-intensive. Back in 1993 I did have access to PhotoShop, unlike now, and worked on a Mac. On the other hand, it was 1993, a long time ago in terms of technology. I replaced every face, every object on the cover of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with someone or something Leapish. I had trouble photographing the glossy cover well, but you get the idea. Click on the photos for much larger versions of the Observer 9 (Number nine, number nine) cover.


The four Beatles in the center are QL creator Donald P. Bellisario, stars Dean Stockwell and Scott Bakula, and writer/co-executive producer Deborah Pratt. The four waxwork Beatles to the left have been replaced by the four founders of Project Quantum Leap the club. The rest of the cover has guest stars, writers, producers, fans, a crew T-shirt, Dean Stockell's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a Panavision camera. And Look! Teresa Murray's holding a copy of Observer 4 in her waxwork hand!

If you'd like to join in on the Round Robin topic, we'll be delighted to have you! Please see the Round Robin blog for details. The posting date for entries about "The Creative Side Of You" is Wednesday, November 1st.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Photos, memes, Creative, Fanzines, Round Robin Photo, Monday Photo Shoot, Scalzi, Quantum Leap