Alphan Biographies

Related terms:	Shared Universe
See also:	ITOWverse, Zapzine, Forever Knight Wars, Mary Sue, Self-Insertion, Role-Playing Game, Original Character
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Alphan Biographies was a Space:1999 activity that took place in the pages of the zine Command Center.

A similar fanac was The Cast of Ride Forever.

Its Start

This activity began as a Topic of the Month in the May/June 1979 issue of Command Center.

[Judy M]... suggests that members write in and give a brief biography of themselves as if they were Alphans living on Moonbase. What section would you be in? Why did you decide to ask for assignment to Alpha in the first place? How do you get along with the senior officers?

Changing Narratives

The activity started off as fairly rote and followed a formula: the fan described him or herself and then gave opinions on the main canon characters.

As the newsletters progressed, these entries became much more like a story, always told in the first person.

As time went on, the "line" between the characters and the fan who wrote them became blurred; the early letters made it clear they were playing a game and had a formal introduction, such as "Here's my Alphan Biography." Later letters simply started in on the story, sometimes making it difficult to determine were the character started and ended.

It was in March/April 1980 newsletter when a fan first took Alphan Biographies in a new direction: "Here's something no has had yet! Here is my list of how I get along with people on Alpha who have written biographies into MMA (Excuse me. Gotta dig out the back issues of the MMA newsletter.)" This fan goes on to incorporated fans' characters into the line-up, along with canon characters. It was also in the fifth issue that it was assumed that the name of the character described was also the name of the fan.

In the May/June 1980 issue, canon characters are pretty much dropped, and the back-and-forth narrative is focused almost entirely on the self-insertion characters; fans are now interacting with each other's characters with short stories, shout-outs, quips, flirting, teasing, and jokes. One fan says she "loves this twist."

The November/December 1980 includes a statement by a fan who says her "twisted alter egos" have "shown up in stories, and therefore doesn't use my name. [My character] appeared in Currents issue II, and will probably show up there again."

The First Biography

The first letter was by Kathy Lynn Higley in the July/August 1979 Command Center. She was the only "player." An excerpt:

Although to the unsuspecting eye I appear to be an evil-tempered, foul-mouthed, twenty-four year old female pipehanger at Electric Boat (they build the nation's submarines--!'m currently incarcerated in the bowels of a Trident sub, but only bodily; my mind is elsewhere, as the following shows...) in reality, I am a trusted member of Moonbase Alpha's reconnaissance section. As co-pilot of Eagle Twelve, I don't have a heckuva lot to do (as anyone who's watched the show knows—it's always Eagle One, Two, Three, Four, Six, or whatever that get to go out into the unknown. Just as well—lei THEM get their tailfeathers shot off!) but I've become a heckuva darts player (No offense to you Alan fans, but we female pilots tend to use an 3X10 glossy of the M.C.P, for a target. Nice guy, but he tends to think a woman's place is anywhere but in an Eagle cockpit) and I'm a runner-up in the mumbley-peg finals. And why did I ask for assignment on Alpha? I wish the heck I knew. See, I'd just complete my pilot training course the night before our first official briefing/assignment session, so, natch, I and my fellow graduates went out and did a bit of »ahem* discreet celebrating. The next morning I awoke with a colossal hangover and a tatoo of a hula girl on a" portion of my anatomy which I STILL can't figure out how I got...and so wasn't in the best of spirits at the briefing. In fact, at one point the need to visit the little girl's room overcame me to such an extreme I was forced to raise my hand to ask for permission to attend to my very urgent needs. Imagine my surprise when two-thirds of the rest of the room raised their hands at the same time! I remember blurrily thinking "Gee, an awful lot of people have to go at the same time," as I hurriedly left the room, but imagine my horror when several people came up to ma in the restroom to congratulate me on my upcoming assignment to Moonbase Alpha! I was hoping to be stationed in Hawaii! Anyway, that's the story behind my being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And how do I get along with the senior officers of Alpha? I think I'll answer that by taking each officer one at a time and giving you my impressions of them...

Some Early Examples

The first letters followed the original format: they were a brief description of each "player" and included that character's opinions of the canon crew members. There was no interaction between created characters.

Some examples:

For the most part, I'm shy and somewhat quiet. I'm loud, crash, and overly aggressive in most situations where females are involved, but this is just a cover for my extreme naivete towards than. I get along better with my books than I get along with people. I read mostly junk but I sometimes get into the occasional 'intellectual' book or article. I've had light training in most areas of science (physics, biology, chemistry, earth science, astronomy, and basic electronics) but I received most of my training in the area of computers. I was under Kane's training for a while, but then I moved on to programming computers on Eagles so I'm working under Alan Carter right now. I am single, twenty, and I haven't dated a single time in almost three years. No close friends. I had the choice of a paperpushing job on Earth or assignment to Alpha. I thought a few months on Alpha would be just the sort of thing I needed to learn how to get along with people. My opinions of Alpha's senior officers!

• Commander Koenig: A man I would like to know better. But he is much too busy. A father figure. A man of superior intellect, insight, and inner strength.
• Dr. Russel: A sweet, kind woman. Someone to whom I've spoken many times about my personal problems.
• Victor Bergman: One of the few people who could talk about things I had no understanding of whatsoever. A wonderful man.
• Alan Carter: A tyrant to work for. He was the only guy who tried to help me meet girs. But when I told him that I would rather read an old copy of "Trek to the Stars" than meet a 'bombshell' from Hydroponics, he gave up. Don't blame him.
• Sandra Benes: I never really cared for Sahn. Sensitive, but unattractive to me.
• Maya: I've had a crush on May from the moment she stepped off the Eagle that brought her to Alpha. I always did seem to worship from afar. The only problem is, you can't worship from very 'afar' on the same moonbase.

To most of my fellow Alphans, I am fair tempered, and loaded with a dry sense of humor, and usually tripping over something. I am in Security, Weapons Division. I am the guy that takes care of all the Alpha's guns and defense systems. Yes, Virginia, I am the idiot that takes care of your stun gun. If it doesn't work, I correct it. I am also in charge of the big laser batters outside of Alpha.... And now for the 64 dollar question, what do I think of the command personnel:

• Commander Koenig: He is okay, but as I said earlier, he sure is hard on the equipment.
• Dr. Russel: She is a nice lady, but she can be rough when it comes to giving a physical. She takes care of her stun gun, though.
• Sandra Benes: I just love her to death. I once told her that a big spider was on her shoulder; she screamed and nearly passed out. Of course, I had to give her mouth-to-mouth... She has a tendency to knock her stun gun out of alignment. I would replace her whole gun, [if she] just gave me a bat of those eyes...

I'm what you call a jack-of-all-trades. I came up here originally as an information specialist (read: junior programmer), but it seems as though everytime some new specialty opens up my name is at the top of the roster. This means that I know how to do many things, from tend my roommate's still to breadboarding communication circuitry, but I do noe of them well enough to be called an excerpt.

I've been here... let's rephrase that. I had been here eighteen months when we began our involuntary tour or the universe. My mom (never knew my father, he was killed when I was three) worked for the Starwalker Group, a thinktank that many of her college friends had helped organize. So from the time I could walk all I heard was how the future of man lay in space. The Group foresaw the Mad War in time to get us all to hidden camps before the bottom fell out; I spent that year in the middle of Northwear Territory trying to keep up with my studies and act as a part-time security guard. Mom took a bullet in the shoulder one night when she was watching a weird-looking ship in the sky instead of the hillside ahead of us, but she recovered. I always figured the ship was one of ours, but now I wonder sometimes... When things settled down a bit, Mom took a job with R&R (Reconstruction & Relocation) Department of the new world government and I entered Space Academy prep school at the age of thirteen. By 1993, I'd earned an advanced degree in computer science... along with upteen other people. I had to wait five years before an opening came up on Alpha. What do I look like? We'll, I'm 5.10, tall, skinny, not beautiful, not ugly. I look a lot like my mom, except my hair is black and not dark brown and my face isn't quite so square. What am I like? Louder than I mean to be and a little awkward. I don't have many friends, but the ones I do have are warm and close. Since between us my roommate 'Laina and I have the biggest library on Alpha, we don't lack for company if we want it. And what do I think of my fellow Alphans?

• The Commander: for the first year I thought he was weird, or possibly a robot. I realize now that during that first year we were all acting strangely, all in shock... I knew he was human when he borrowed a copy of 'Laina's copies of the "Lensman" series and told me he'd see Star Wars five times when it first came out in the '70s. I do wonder how that serial would have turned out if the Mad Year hadn't intervened. So does he. *Sigh*...

A Late Example

[Catherine Conrad]: All right, I didn't want to bring this up, but it looks like I've have to. We have some discipline problems on Alpha. So what else is new, you ask? This is different. I'm talking specifically about the general conduct at my recent beauty contest. You probably won't get in trouble, 'cause Koenig drank so much of Bergmans' brandy before the contest to 'loosen up' he doesn't remember a thing that happened. But I'm still mad! Now, then, I'll start off with Charmain Chester. Honey, I was shocked at you! You seemed so nice! She drank ten gallons of Tony's beer and got very drunk--but that's just the tip of the iceberg. When Tony came out to do a—perfectly modest--striptease, Charmain stood up in her chair and sang, "God Bless America". She even saluted him! His face grew as read as the tomato sauce on his pasta. Mare Fitzgerald, bless the poor soul, tried to get her to sit down, but got a mug of cold beer in her face for all her efforts. And Amelia Rodgers even misbehaved. She sat down with ten of her precious mice in her lap. One of 'em got away and went up on the stage. Kevin Peterson was modelling his bikini for the Swimsuit Competition when it scurried by. He squealed 1n fright and tripped over Vernon Wells' cleverly outstretched foot. Then he fell Into the orchestra pit, right on top of Victor "Maestro" Bergman. I'm not even going to say what Kathi Lynn Higley did when Alan Carter came out in hie swim trunks—oh, they were the cutest little white things with little blue fishies on the--*Ahem* Well, it'll suffice to say she did something horrible. And Mary Bloemker--I can't believe you! She had taken in twice as much beer as Kathi and Charmain combined. When the fellas came out for the Evening Wear Competition, she burst into a raucous rendition of "A Pretty Girl 1s Like a Melody" that dangerously rattled windows all over the base and was loud enough to give the Boston Opera a run for their money. (Ednote: Moi?? Sorry, kid, I was in my quarters with the flu at the time. Musta been Maya. MaryB) I hope every one of you will apologize! To Kathi Lynn Higley: Okay, okay, okay! Shut up already. Why did you have to blab all over the base that I was once a world-champion mud-wrestler? I thought for sure that no one would speak to me. But girls have got to 'sow their wild oats', too, y'know!... I just went out on a date with Steen Pederson, our resident dentist. I want to warn you girls about him. What they say about European men doesn't necessarily follow with Steen. After we ate a candlelit dinner, he leaned toward me and I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead, he pulled my lips back and said, "You've got the most beautiful bicuspids I've ever seen!" *sigh* And then later, when he showed me to the door, he said, "I hope I can see you and your lovely molars again sometime." Heavy sigh*

Other Fandoms

The "Alphan Biographies" sometimes included other fandoms though they were not crossovers between Space:1999 but a completely separate activity. Some fandoms featured: Battlestar Galactica, UFO, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Star Trek, Buck Rogers, and The Man from Atlantis.

"Twisted Bios"

At first, the Alphan bios were fairly "serious." Sometime around the second year, a fan sent in a "twisted bio," a bio that was humorous and over-the-top, not unlike a crack fanwork. After that, some fans stuck with the original premise and some fans gravitated towards the silly.

Mary Sues

One fan wrote: "I wish to inform all readers that, regardless of what anyone may say, I am in no way similar to the fictional Alphan in this biography. I'm much weirder."

Fan Reaction

Some fans said it was their favorite part of the newsletter, and the number of entries may illustrate that.

At least one fan found them boring and overwhelming.

One fan writes: "I'm intrigued with your idea of the Alphan biographies. You're logical about it, too: every member of the Moonbase MMA starts out as a lieutenant under Alan Carter, because just about everyone on Alpha in Space:1999 know how to fly an Eagle. Some of the biographies in the May/June Command Center are serious, some wild, and I think it's a way of familiarizing Alpha.

A bit of backlash begins to show up in early 1981. The January/February 1981 issue has a letter by a fan who says "these various bios are really neat, even though I still think we should draw the line somehow." Another fan writes that "you won't get my Alphan bio and no "twisted bio" either, because I think both ideas were very good in the beginning, and always provided enjoyable, funny reading, but now it begins to get a little worn out. Also, there must be other ways to ensure continual mention in CC's... Evil tongues would say that I'm not able to write an Alphan bio, except in the form of blueprints."

In the May/June 1981, a fan writes: "Sorry if I offended "us bio writers"! Let me elaborate a bit on my previous letter. I wanted to point out that there's been too much emphasis on the bios in the last ishs of CC and that there should be room fro all kinds of interest... without having having to offer a really humorous bio (almost) every two months. Take into account that it's not all members who feel that they can stand up to this standard, and therefore may feel discouraged from contributing....I don't ignore the positive aspects of the bios, the communication and the friendship: in my opinion that communication is the key word in fandom."

Number of Entries/Players

• July/August 1979 = 1
• Sept/Oct 1979 = 4
• Nov/Dec 1979 = 4 (including a BSG bio)
• Jan/Feb 1980 = 9 (including two BSG bios)
• Mar/April 1980 = 5
• May/June 1980 = 4 (includes a Star Trek bio)
• July/Aug 1980 = 6 (includes a Star Trek bio, a Star Wars bio, and one of an Alphan dentist!)
• Sept/Oct 1980 = 6 (includes a Seaview bio)
• Nov/Dec 1980 = 5 (includes a Seaview bio and a UFO bio)
• January/February 1981 = 7 (includes a Buck Rogers bio, Man from Atlantis bio)
• May/June 1981 = 5
• July/August 1981 = 6