Star Trek Lives! - Fanlore

Star Trek Lives! (1975) (subtitled "Personal Notes and Anecdotes") is a book by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston, documenting Star Trek's popularity and the rise of Star Trek fandom--the letter writing campaign, the early conventions, fanacs like cosplay, filk, zines and fanfiction--up until that point.

Contents

The book attempts to explain Star Trek's appeal by naming and explaining a number of 'Effects": the Discovery Effect, the Tailored Effect, the Spock Charisma Effect, the Optimism Effect, and the Goal Effect.

• The Discovery Effect:
• The Tailored Effect:
• The Spock Charisma Effect:
• The Optimism Effect:
• T he Goal Effect:

Possibly its most famous chapter is Chapter 9: Do-It-Yourself Star Trek--The Fan Fiction, which in celebrating fan fiction had the possibly unintentional effect of introducing fanfic to the mass market audience of the paperback. (Many people have said that this was their first introduction to the idea of Star Trek fan fiction.) The blurb for this chapter on the table of contents asks questions and explores ideas still discussed in fandom today, to wit:

Why fan fiction?...Why so many female writers of Star Trek fiction?...Pervasive themes of Star Trek fiction--with extensive quotes...Star Trek as school for writers.

The Connection to Star Trek Lives! by Jacqueline Lichtenberg.

The Trek Connnection by Jacqueline Lichtenberg.

Reviews and Impact

The book was reviewed by Gary McGrath in Ergo (an Objectivist-Libertarian weekly published at MIT) in 1975:

"The subject of Star Trek Lives! is the response of the fans to the series. The discussion of this response includes much which is of interest only to the hard-core Star Trek fan (the process of organizing a convention, amateur fiction about the show's characters, etc.); but what is of greater importance is the analysis of the various "Tailored Effects" which contribute to the program's unique appeal. Each of these effects, according to the authors, excites a strong degree of interest within a particular group of viewers, providing in combination an enthusiastic audience large enough to support a television show. The "Tailored Effect" technique is the opposite of the usual approach to television programming, which seeks not to generate enthusiasm but merely to avoid hostility. The result is that while Star Trek did not have an overwhelmingly large audience, it had an audience whose enthusiasm has outlived the show. ^[1]

References

1. ↑ McGrath review, 1975