Ruth Berman

Name:	Ruth Berman
Alias(es):
Type:
Fandoms:	Star Trek: TOS, Tolkien
Communities:
Other:
URL:	Her website
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Ruth being welcomed aboard! Front cover of the tribute issue of T-Negative. Art by Bill Anderson

Ruth Berman is a Star Trek: TOS fanzine writer, editor and publisher. Among her fanzines: T-Negative, Masiform D and Inside Star Trek. Her work also appeared in the commercially produced Star Trek: The New Voyages.

"She became active in fandom in the mid 1950s when she was high school student... by the end of that decade, she was writing for fanzines, and had attended her first convention, the 1959 Detention. In 1960, as part of her.... speech class at the University [High School] of Minnesota, she produced a one-act play of a Gordon Dickson story, '[Zeepsday.]' In the late 1950s, she and two other co-editors had published the fanzine "All Mimsy" under the pseudonym of `George Karg'... in 1967, Ruth and her sister Jean started a fanzine they titled "Nous"; when Jean dropped out after the 4th issue in 1969, Ruth changed the title to "No", since it was now only 'half of us.'"

From her bio page: "Ruth was one of the founding members of The Rivendell Group. She was at our first meeting, back in December of '73 or so, along with David Lenander and Margaret Howes, and others who no longer attend. She was also a founding member of Minn-Stf, the local Minnesota Science Fiction Society, and lots of other activities and groups. This page serves primarily as an introduction to some of Ruth's activities (basically in the article below, and in the bibliography) and a linking place to the many files that she's contributed to these pages."

She also writes that: "I have also had various science fiction and fantasy works published in many professional magazines and anthologies, and a novel, "Bradamant's Quest." My work also includes a lot of poems, and articles on fantasy and on children's fiction (and editing three books, "The Kerlan Awards," of the speeches by the recipients of the Kerlan Award in Children's Literature," "Sissajig and Other Surprises" a collection of writings by Ruth Plumly Thompson, who was L. Frank Baum's successor in writing the Oz books, and "Dear Poppa," a collection of the WWII family correspondence). I am not, however, the Ruth Berman (confusingly, also from Minnesota) who writes books on natural history for young readers, or the Ruth Berman in Israel who is a linguist."

In 1973, Ruth was nominated for the first John W. Campbell Award for the Best New Science Fiction Writer.

In 2004, she received the Minnesota Fantasy Award at the Fall 2004 Arcana, a convention of the Dark Fantastic.

Citations of Fannish and Academic Works

• All Mimsy
• Pantopon
• The Middle-Earth Songbook
• Nous
• No
• Rime Royal
• The SH-sf Fanthology
• T-Negative
• Minara Nova