Time Enough (Star Trek: TOS story by Lelamarie S. Kreidler)

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Star Trek TOS Fanfiction
Title: Time Enough
Author(s): Lelamarie S. Kreidler
Date(s): 1969
Length: 14 pages (in Spockanalia)
Genre: het
Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series
External Links: online here

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Time Enough is a het Star Trek: TOS story by Lelamarie S. Kreidler that is in Spockanalia #4. It was written when Star Trek was still on the air.

"Time Enough" is notable for two reasons:

First, it is the first fan-published relationship story featuring Spock. It concerns Spock's next pon farr and how he seeks out and mates with Lian Jameson, a part-Vulcan woman who is the head of the ship's Alien Research section. The two part amicably without bonding or any form of commitment when she is called back to Vulcan.

Second, "Time Enough" is the first fan-published writing to use double slash marks // to enclose telepathic dialogue. Using // around telepathic dialogue in fan fic appears to be a custom of early Star Trek fanfic.

At the time, telepathic dialogue in science fiction used italics or, as in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, ("italicized parenthetical quotes"). Since fanzines were produced on typewriters, the use of italics was impractical. Lorrah was apparently concerned that simple ("parenthetical quotes") would not be understood.

Lelamarie S. Kreidler, the author of "Time Enough" had this explanation at the beginning of her story: "[The time of this story is the future indefinite. The girl involved is, like Spock, a Terran-Vulcan hybrid, although her mother was of Vulcan and her father was a former Star Fleet officer living on Vulcan. To indicate communication from mind to mind, which is common among Vulcans, I have used the slash symbols instead of quotation marks. Thus, //...//, instead of "...", to show that the dialogue is not spoken aloud. L.S.K]."

In Boldly Writing, Verba wrote:

Years later, Jean Lorrah, in her first solo professional novel, also used such marks to distinguish spoken dialogue from telepathic dialogue. When I asked her why she used this indicator without explanation, saying that readers of her books who were not also fanzine readers might not understand this, she replied it was a commonly-known indicator, and that she thought no explanation was necessary.

Some Sample Art

Reactions and Reviews

The editors anticipated heavy backlash for "Time Enough" in Spockanalia #4 and "The Alternate" in "Spockanalia" #3:

We've been told that a couple of the items in Spockanalia #3 are embarrassing, dirty, or downright trashy. If we've embarrassed you, we are sincerely sorry. The recurrence of the theme of sex isn't surprising. Sex is a recurrent theme of life. The recurrence of the theme of sex involving Spock is also unsurprising. We Star Trek femmefans find him attractive and highly masculine. Some of us are articulate, and the result is predictable (and even logical.)

If anyone is seriously concerned.,.psychiatrists regard such feelings as perfectly normal (if they are non-obsessive) and artistic endeavour as a healthy outlet.

Perhaps some of our readers are too accustomed to the tradition, in popular literature, of the male protagonist being aroused by the presence of attractive women. When they find that women write it the other way around, they find it strange. We, the editors of Spockanalia, try our best to print only material which we consider well-written, interesting to us, and written within our format. We do not choose to limit ourselves by eliminating one effective segment of our submissions.

References