"42 – The Enterprise can only be in action for five years."
So over the weekend, I had an old customer of mine bring in a box of magazines to sell…mostly it was Savage Sword of Conans that had seen better days, and combining their conditions with the fact that we’ve recently bought several Conan collections, and were thus stocked to the gills with barbarian funnies, I unfortunately had to tell this gentleman that we couldn’t use them. However, there were a couple non-Conan mags in the box that I decided I couldn’t live without:
Yes, the actual title of this magazine was indeed All About Star Trek Fan Clubs. Both these issues (#2 and #3) were released in 1977, and edited by comics veteran Tony Tallarico. Despite the name, the actual amount of space devoted to Star Trek Fan Clubs was minimal, with a couple pages of listings (“The Association for the Propagation of Trekkism,” “The Harcourt Fenton Mudd Android Society of America,” “Science Fiction Club of The Cosmos”) and some short features devoted to fan art and fan profiles. The rest of it is typical Star Trek fanzine type stuff, with convention reports, news and rumors, as well as actor profiles and photos. My favorite actor profile is probably “Shatner’s Biorhythms:”
“If you know about this science (not astrology) you know it measures the three basic rhythms of one’s life from birth to any day of life.
“Beginning with Shatner’s day of birth (Sunday March 22, 1931) we can discover through biorhythmic calculations that Shatner was at his intellectual peak, but at his lowest physical and emotional cycle on the day Star Trek rehersals originally began (April 7, 1965).”
The article ends with this caveat:
“It is difficult to figure in the biorhythms of the other Star Trek actors since exact birthdates are not always known. Some of the stars will tell their ‘sign,’ but not the year of their birth.”
What can I tell you. It was the ’70s.
Other features include a photo tour of the Smithsonian, with a special focus on its display of an 11-foot U.S.S. Enterprise model from the show, a couple poems written by Nichelle “Uhura” Nichols (with fan illustrations), a gallery of fan art of Vulcan wildlife, and a long list of Star Trek facts, a few of which follow:
“7 – Itaka is Sulu’s first name.”
“84 – The funniest episode was ‘The Trouble with Tribbles.'”
“87 – There are such things as Spock ears that can be purchased.”
“131 – The phaser beams shot on the show are done by animation.”
“134 – Romulans look like Vulcans.”
It’s not all Star Trek, however…one amusing article presents excerpts from reviews of 2001: A Space Odyssey (“Such movies as 2001 may be no more than trash in the latest, up-to-the-minute guises, using ‘artistic techniques’ to give trash the look of art” – Pauline Kael).
The thing I like most about fanzines, both the comic book fanzines I normally collect as well as these Star Trek ‘zines I bought on a whim, is the snapshots they provide of fandom’s concerns and obsessions from a particular time. And that’s the advantage the print medium has over something like internet message boards or weblogs…unless I print out and widely distribute hard copies of my website, some kid interested in comics thirty years down the line isn’t likely to come across a copy of “Progressive Ruin” in a dusty box of beat-up magazines. I know there are still plenty of print ‘zines out there, but I can’t shake the feeling that Wizard is going to end up representing the current state of comic fandom to future generations.
Okay, I didn’t mean to depress myself, there…cheer me up, Casual Spock:
