Stuck in the Dealer's Room with Me (apologies to Stealer's Wheel)

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At BabelCon '81, as in many cons, I sold stuff in the Dealers' Room. At '81, I shared my table with my friend Ed Porter, who can be seen in his Battlestar Galactica Colonial Warrior outfit.

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Many times I'd wear a Trek costume, and as you can see, I wasn't the only one.

The gal with the bagpipe and also in the STTMP Engineering outfit was named called Sunny, if I recall. She could actually PLAY that thing.

At a Saturday night room party where I was present with Sunny, writer C J Cherryh, Jimmy Doohan, and others, she had her bagpipe (in its case) and Mr D agreed to autograph it for her. Now, as I said last week, this was before STII's release, and SOMETHING was in the wind as far as "a big thing happening" in the movie, but we didn't know what.

Mr D wouldn't tell us anything either, but he DID write on Sunny's bagpipe case, along with his name, the words "a sombre tone," which meant a lot more after we saw STII and knew Spock had snuffed it, joined the choir eternal, was an ex-Vulcan.

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As is apparent, on Saturday morning I shaved off my mustache, the better to wear Vulcan eyebrows and ears for the Saturday evening Costume Contest.

Am I the only would-be Vulcan to actually trim his eyebrows and glue on the clippings to make the Vulcan angled eyebrow?

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Sometimes, gals just came by to say hi and have their picture taken. No problems with that!

Starting tomorrow: Did somebody say McDonald's STAR TREK Meals?

BabelCon '81

In 1980, members of STAR OKC decided to throw a "big" con. It was called BabelCon '81 and we had a big guest, Mr James Doohan himself.

This was after STII had wrapped, but before its release. Rumors were flying that something *BIG* was going to happen, but nobody really knew what. We didn't know, anyway. This was in the olden times when the most recent TREK news was presented by Entertainment Tonight, which concerned itself with entertainment and not transexual anorexic foreign adoptees announcing plastic surgery.

So, Jimmy Doohan came to OKC and met a pack of starstruck kids. We took him out to eat on Thursday night before the con, when he happily posed for pictures with any gal on his lap, but especially my sweet Joyce (remember, my lady of the golden needle?)

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Nerdy kids that we were, after he signed nearly everyone's STAR OKC T-shirts, we decided we all had to autograph one for him. And he actually put it on! For a minute.

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(By the way, this minimalist T-shirt design was created by Yours truly.)

On Monday, some photos from BabelCon '81 featuring TREK costumes, back when you had to MAKE THEM YOURSELVES.

Doesn't My Wife Make Great Costumes?

In the blue outfit, I'm a smirking Vulcan with an unsufferable eyebrow.

In the red STII outfit, I'm challenging my wife to a wrestling match (or at least hoping to).

For the blue STTMP outfit, we went to the local fabric store and found a pattern for a 2-piece outfit that was close, at least in the sketches on the front.

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We found some doubleknit material that was pretty darn close in color, and voila. With an "invisible" zipper up the back of the neck and an elastic waistband, I was good to go.

The shirt patch was bought. The wrist communicator was a cut-up plastic car cupholder with a cutout to show some chrome plastic model car parts. The Perscan "belt buckle" is a plastic audio-cassette box with more strips of a cassette box painted silver and glued on. The silver dial in the Perscan "Belt Buckle" is the grooved screw-on cap of a tube of Testor's model cement.

The dear wife of mine sewed two slots in the front, so that the elastic strap velcroed to the Perscan "Belt Buckle" could be underneath the shirt except where holding the buckle. Since the cassette box making up the buckle was hollow, I had a place for a con badge inside, perhaps. But since she also sewed "non-patterned" pockets into the pants, I could just use them for my car keys.

(The wrist communicator and the Perscan Belt Buckle are visible in the photo from yesterday's post.)

The STII outfit was just a pair of boots and turned-under elasticized legged-pants. I had a white turtle-necked shirt whose collar was turned down and vertically stictched for that "trapunto" look.

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The jacket -- ah, the jacket! Back to the pattern store to find the closest match. Then for dear Joyce to make the thing, with the right lining for the turn-down flap, and velco to hold it shut, with gold and red trim to finish it off.

I found a circular belt buckle and made a plastic Starfleet "arrow", glued it on, and spray-painted the thing gold.

Boy, my dear Joyce does great work, eh?

Yes, You Must Look at Old Photos

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One of the many promos for STTMP was a mail-in premium for punch-out cardboard ships from the movie. On a 4-way armature styled to look like spacedock in texture, we have five ships. The Enterprise hangs from the center, and the other four ships are the Klingon Bird of Prey wasted at tne film's opening, the Vulcan shuttle Spock arrived in, an Enterprise shuttlecraft, and a Work Bee used in the Enterprise's refit.

The set is still hanging from the ceiling, but (like, me, alas!) a little saggier than when new.

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In another photo I'm making a silly Vulcan salute while standing next to an STTMP poster and the Enterprise model from the movie.

In the last photo I'm in front of a nifty mylar sTTMP poster in the lovely costume created by She Who Is My Wife. PS Was I ever that young?

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Next time, some Con photos of Trek people that I cornered.

Autographs, We Got Some

I figure I'm not doing too bad considering I don't go anywhere.

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These are all instances where THEY came to ME.

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I wonder if Mr Nimoy noticed the "Book Rack" stamp visible through the back of the front page of his I Am Not Spock. In other words, "No royalties, Mr Nimoy."

Or to my town, anyway.

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This is the "collectable" printing of the STII Fotonovel.

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The Unknown Collector's Item

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Film buff Richard J Anobile, who had edited frame-blowup movie books for Casablanca, Frankenstein, and other, did the Fotonovel treatment for STTMP and STAR TREK II: The Wrath of Khan. The Motion Picture's book had pages in color, but Khan's pages were black-and-white.

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The earliest printing of the STII "Photostory" had an interesting misprint. Some pages were out of order. One one page, McCoy discovers the bodies hanging upside down in the Regula One Station.

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On the flip side of the same page, instead of Kirk lowering the bodies, we have from much later in the film, Khan talking to Kirk, who's been marooned inside the asteroid.

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Someone wrote to Starlog (I think it was) to complain, and the publication responded that Pocket had corrected the misprint. However, after correction, the reprint wasn't relabeled as a Second Printing.

Me? My mercenary brain said, "Collectible!" So I bought multiple incorrect copies as I found them, and sold them for $10 or so per pop.

Once again, the page with Khan on the flip side is the wrong one.

April Fools, Mr Roddenberry!

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At the Premiere of Star Trek The Motion Picture, my wife and I met Ed and Kathy Porter, who coincidentally lived five blocks away. Ed and I crafted many a silly, ne'er-do-well thing, including writing a pseudo-news story concerning him and me guest-starring in the sequel to ST:TMP.

To show off and maybe get a reply, I sent the two "articles" and a letter to Gene Roddenberry at Paramount.

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Imagine my surprise to get a reply. Yeah, it was a form letter, but also "personalized."

BabelCon 1 in 1980

In summer 1980 I found out about a STAR TREK convention at the Southgate Inn in OKC. I went, and signed up for the weekend.

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It was run by people from S.T.A.R. OKC, that's the Oklahoma City chapter of the Star Trek Association for Revival. Or it was. Until the club gave up the ghost about 5 years ago, it was one of only TWO of the original S.T.A.R. clubs left -- the other was in Texas.

Here is my badge and a newspaper photo taken at the costume thingie Saturday night. In keeping with the episode "Journey to babel," this was called the "Ambassadors' Ball."

Being a proper Vulcan, I didn't eat any meat off the buffet.

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Left to right: That's me; Bog Higgs as the Alien from the movie of that name; and Leta Walker as "Man Trap" 's salt vampire. In front is a guy named Gary as a Jawa.

My character, Commander Selik, is from a STAR TREK novel, Fields of Attraction, that I wrote about 40-60 pages of, and plotted out completely, took place immediately after Kirk said "Thataway" at the end of STTMP. It involved Sarek's funeral on Vulcan, a second Federation starship whose Vulcan second officer was preparing a mutiny against his human captain, a First Contact with a new race, and everybody's engines not bein' able to take any mooorrrrre.

On Real Photo Paper

My friend Melinda found these three pix while moving. She gave them to me. I give them to you.

from "Where No Man Has Gone Before"

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a posed studio shot, some time after "Charlie X" made 3-D chess popular:

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from "Spock's Brain":

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When You're First in Color Television, There's Got to Be a Reason.

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If memory serves, this ad appeared in a 1967 issue of Newsweek. The original has another full-page ad on the back, with no date showing.

Notice that the "middle" scene, the one on a "planet" set, is from "Man Trap," the first aired episode.

See you next time, and howdy boy to Frederick! Visit his Star Trek Scrapbook blog! The link is to the right in the Links list.

And the Winners Are ...

As you can see, the Number One winner was my pal Larry Nemecek, future author of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, among other nifty tomes.

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But I came in Number Two (I tried harder?). Notice the artistic underlining.

And for prizes, I got a STTMP poster, and this cool-beans belt buckle, only slightly the worse for nearly thirty years' worth of wear ...

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Next week, let's Trek into the 1980s!

Take the STTMP Quiz!

Remember when there were TWO Oklahoma City "general" newspapers? In December 1979 the Oklahoma Journal (the paper that's NOT still in business) ran a STAR TREK quiz, to help drum up publicity for STAR TREK: The Motion Picture.

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Oh boy! Trivia! Trekkies (yes, Trekkies) unite!

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My answers ran to three typewritten pages.

Tomorrow, the winners!

Newsweek and George Takei

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In 1972, Newsweek magazine figured out that the fans were keeping Star Trek alive.

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In 1978, George Takei came to the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Music Hall along with a few episodes and a blooper reel or two. I helped him set up his autograph card table.

TV Guide, March 1972 - Grokking Mr. Spock

(Pardon the Scotch Tape)

More tomorrow!

Welome to STAR TREK Month!

This May 2009 I'll be sharing scraps from multiple scrapbooks of growing up with Star Trek.

I was a few weeks away from my 10th birthday when Star Trek premiered on NBC in September, 1966.

This entry is an article from Popular Science's December, 1967 issue.

Fiction About UFOs and Other Mysteries

If you read a lot of Dean Koontz, you may have noticed that sometimes he will put a preface or an endnote to his books saying that such-and-such piece of technology, used in his story, actually exists or is under development. In other words, the story is made up, but the mind-control or the super-zap-gun or what-have-you are reality-based.

Mr Koontz doesn't say that he is using fiction to shed light on true secrets, as that Con Man Dan Brown does, but that idea of "exposing" something by calling it fiction has been around for a long time. Citizen Kane, anyone?

Similarly, there have been more than a few fictionalized layouts of various writers' take on UFOs or little green guys or cattle mutilations, etc.

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Sometimes the story is so cosmic it's silly, as in Walter Ernsting's The Day the Gods Died. Of course, being based on Erich von Daniken's ideas, silly is the name of the game.

Other times, as in Deborah Deutschman's Signals, or John Dalton's The Cattle Mutilators, it's a researcher who delves too deep into Things No Man Is Meant to Know.

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Or, as in Richard Steinberg's Nobody's Safe, an innocent schmoe takes one step too far and ends up in a puddle of secrets (kind of like Dean Koontz sometimes after all). Of course, in Nobody's Safe, the "innocent" main character is actually a master thief. But he steals something and witnesses something that eventually lands him in a place where these little guys eat lots of strawberry ice cream. You dig?

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Picoverse, by Robert Metzger -- A Review

If you want to read an interesting story about alternate universes, spacetime, and physics/relativity paired with human failures and hopes, this is a good read.

This 2002 novel chronicles attempts to crunch spacetime using a supercomputer named a Sonomak, in a project at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

When something goes a little wrong -- Dr Frankenstein, I presume? -- and a miniaturized creation -- a Picoverse -- is created, then things get interesting.

In Picoverse (the story) we have the creation and visiting of different alternate worlds, created by the misfiring of plasma injectors into magnetic fields (or something). Each universe is created as an exact duplicate of ours, up until the moment of divergence.

These worlds' scale (physical and temporal) are smaller in relation to ours, so, as in Theodore Sturgeon's classic tale "Microcosmic God," whole generations might pass in a picoverse in the course of a conversation on our plane.

But it's the tales of the characters, and their passages into various worlds, and interactions with their alternate selves and with other people, that make Picoverse so much fun and moving and insightful.

Metzger shows insights into many facets of the human character, including some we don't like to acknowledge -- pettiness, jealousy, selfishness, outright self-righteous justification. But the people in Picoverse also try to help themselves and others. They have loves and selfless motives and self-sacrifice.

Sometimes these polarities of human behavior are even shown in the same character, at different times.

Picoverse is a fun book, not an easy read if you're not up on physics (as I am not), but loaded with ideas and observations and people who make you want to know what will happen next to them.

His Lordship, Clark Kent!

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Here we have the oldest comic I own, Action 106, cover-dated March 1947. Its cover story is "His Lordship, Clark Kent."

The cover illo (by Wayne Boring?) is a bit of a cheat. Because Superman himself doesn't become a British lord, only good ol' CK.

Check out the humorous splash page for the story. Clark and Lois stand in a drawing room with Superman sneaking in through a secret panel. Above the fireplace is a painting of the happy/tragic faces of Greek drama, along with Clark's and Superman's faces. The Superman face is winking at us.

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The first page depicts a Brit appearing at the Daily Planet, and the second page sinks the hook: Clark Kent is the long-lost Bertram, hereditary Baron of Edgestream.






Dazzled by the prospects of such a story for his paper, Perry demands that Clark cross the Big Pond and report on the outcome.

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On the top of the next page, as Clark boards a cross-Atlantic plane, the narrative takes on a strange resonance for me: "Clark cannot be sure he is not a long-lost British noble - for he knows only that he was an orphan reared by a kindly couple who found him."





In other words, in 1947, Superman did not know that he came from Krypton!

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In a deathbed meeting with the dying Baron Edgestream, Clark finds he has been drawn into a family quarrel with wide implications. The old man knows that Clark isn't the heir, but he has selected the Planet reporter in place of the next in line, a scoundrel named Julian Fyffe.



Soon Clark investigates the family archives and discovers a long-hidden photo of the real Bertram as a babe, revealing a star-shaped birthmark on the boy's shoulder.

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Time passes, and Clark learns of his vast holdings, including a series of coal mines. When Clark and others take a tour of the mines to investigate their alleged unsafeness, guess what!



That scoundrel Julian, having failed in several previous attempts on the life of "His Lordship, Clark Kent," goes for broke, dynamiting the mine and burying Clark, Lois, and several miners, including Eddie Pike, the miner who's been the most active agitator for mine safety.


Who, we discover, has a certain star-shaped birthmark on his shoulder.




Yep, the baddies confess, and the real Bertie becomes Lord of the Manor, while Superman builds new, safe housing for the workers.

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Well, it's a typical 1940s Suprman tale, with a lot of silliness yet with some real social issues -- does rank make one man more important than another?


I think not. What do you think?