Well, obviously, I don't, so there we go.
FACT TREK—The Off-Center Seat: 55 Years of Myth Making
- Thread starter Maurice
- Start date
One indication of the lack of cross pollination between the scientific/technical community and the fanac community can be found in the fanzines of the time. The folks who produce the 'zines, which were the backbone of the SF community back then, were by and large not engaged in scientific/technical activities. Indeed, more often than not, they were writers with aspirations of becoming pro writers.
These are the folks Ellison tapped, not NASA, nor Trek fan clubs (which did not quite exist yet). So when determining what a letter campaign could have produced, we have to look at the capabilities of the fanac community. Again, the biggest event the fanac community was able to put together had fewer than 1000 people... at a time when the cost to attend was only three bucks!
Granted, air travel was more expensive back then, and hotels cost money for folks staying overnight, but Tricon was accessible to a lot of fandom for reasonably cheap. It's hard to conceive there were hundreds of thousands of silent SF fans who refused to submit to fanzines or attend conventions, but would write letters to NBC at the drop of a hat.
Exactly, but for the first wave!
Still, that's highly suggestive. I think we can accept that the second wave of letters was likely to have been bigger than the first, and it was "only" 100,000+, not nearly 1,000,000.
So, this would set an upper bound on the first wave, which was almost certainly much lower than 100,000.
Thanks, @Maurice!
Yes. We note that Werner didn’t specify individual letters or wires [telegrams], so it’s possible some of these were signatures on petitions. He also doesn’t indicate if this was the total received by NBC itself, or if that figure includes letters and wires reported by network affiliates. But in whatever case, that’s about as an official acknowledgement of the campaign as we’ve ever seen, even if the figure is 10x lower than the “million” claim.
I meant more as a goal for people to reach.
You might like this one:
https://www.fanac.org/fanzines/Rally/Rally14-04.html?
I was just excited that @alchemist dropped that "smoking gun" in my lap re NBC.
But what you shared is great as well. I wonder if anyone's ever done a thorough analysis of fanzine response to Trek from Tricon–the show's cancellation.
I don't know about analysis, but I've been reading every fanzine "as it comes out" and I've got a trove of Trekzines, too, so by 1969, I'll have a very good holistic sense on the issue. Right now, as you saw in Rally, the big news is SAVE TREK followed by TREK IS SAVED (with a bit of TREK, who needs it?) Fun fact: John Boston's name frequently gets mentioned in Rally as he's a BNF from Kentucky. He is currently (2022) a monthly contributor to the Journey, on the Amazing beat, mostly.
Vulcanalia, the first Trekzine, comes out this month (in 1967) and is interesting as it has a lot of Spock background that has not made it to the show, including details on Vulcan itself. It apparently came from Nimoy himself, so perhaps it's from the first edition of the writer's guide.
Also, NBC would not have been the only destination for the letters. Juanita Coulson in Yandro was urging folks to write to the advertisers, local stations, etc. as well. So the number of letters may actually be much higher than 100,000 but spread amongst many destinations.
So the next question is: did Bjo and the gang direct the campaign at a specific place or was it scattershot like the Committee's effort?
(and we still don't have an answer to the first question: did NBC or anyone ever acknowledge the impact of the first campaign.)
I missed this bit, sorry. I don't know that the first campaign was smaller than the second, but I suspect it was because:
1) We mostly hear about the second one.
2) NBC acknowledged the second one.
3) The first campaign only lasted a month and had limited reach.
By the way, mostly unrelated, but speaking of the primary occupation of fan writers, I just made my fifth professional science fiction short story sale! When I started Galactic Journey, I was adamant that I would make it into the business as I felt I didn't have the right to appraise other writers' works unless I was out there, too.
I know two books and five stories is fairly small potatoes as far as pro writing goes, but everyone's gotta start somewhere!
Congratulations!
Any names for these books - so I can look them up. If you're allowed to mention them online here.