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Gennie Summers

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Fan
Name: Gennie Summers
Alias(es): K'Zhen, Admiral K'Zhen, K'Zhen Zu-Merz, K'zhen, DaHar Master K'Zhen epetai-Zu-Merz
Type: artist
Fandoms: Star Trek: TOS, Star Trek: TNG, Battlestar Galactica (1978), Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian, Doctor Who, Man from UNCLE
Communities:
Other:
URL:
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Gennie Summers was a prolific gen artist and occasional writer.

Her main fandoms were Star Trek and Star Wars. She was very much a Klingon fan.

In 1989, her Star Trek: TNG art won a FanQ Award.

Gennie Summers
Shakespeare on the cover of an issue of HolQeD, quarterly journal of the Klingon Language Institute, the art is dated 1994

Some of her art was used as covers for HolQeD, quarterly journal of the Klingon Language Institute.

Summers was introduced to fandom in 1973 when she read a newspaper that supplied the names of several fans, one of them being Jacqueline Lichtenberg. Summers wrote Lichtenberg and was sent the address of the STW. [1]

In 2009, Gennie and a new Star Trek artist exchanged emails discussing their love of Star Trek art. In those letters, Gennie explained:

I am an 84-year old woman who wanted to be a professional artist, but never made it too far. I never got all the professional training I should have. Drawing and writing became a life-long hobby. During the 50's I wrote and drew illos for 404 science-fiction stories, some of which I am now posting on the Internet, along with other art I've done. ... I was first inspired to become an artist by the old Flash Gordon strip, by Alex Raymond. He also inspired the fantasy/sci-fi in me. [2]

In 1998, Sue Frank wrote:

Gennie was with Star Trek from the start, and, in a sense, anticipated it in her own life. Here's the cool part -- she's still here, playing hard. [3]

Gennie passed away May 25, 2010. [4]

Conventions

Gennie was "was a self-described hermit who was not likely to come to any of our out-of-Missouri conventions," said a fan in 1998.[5] [6]

But she must have gone to at least one major con. In 2019, a fan described discovering that his copy of Star Trek Concordance Color Book used to below to Gennie, and that there were three personalized autographs in it: one from David Gerrold (who made what must have been an all too common error with her first name), D.C. Fontana, and Gene Roddenberry. This con may have been a Star Trek Lives! con, Equicon, or perhaps one of the Schuster Cons.

Read more at The Concordance Color Book — and three fantastic surprise autographs; archive link (June 12, 2019)

  • Concordancegennie-1.jpg
  • Concordancegennie-2.jpg

A 1990 Fannish Autobiography

I was born with a pen in my hand and a good imagination. At least they were waiting to be developed.

Flash Gordon came to our local newspaper when I was 9 years old, and that kindled the spark. I began an adventure strip, and continued doing so through my teen years.

As an old-timer, I remember such things as SPACE PATROL and CAPTAIN VIDEO from the '50s. When Star Trek debuted in 1966, I was there, and have been a fan ever since.

I didn't get in touch with fandom until 1973, though I knew there were other fans. I just didn't know how to find them. When I did, a new world opened up.

I'd never made it as a professional artist; I'm self-taught. But through fandom, I can share with others what I create, and enjoy their creations in turn.

These days, I'm into role-playing games, which take up a great deal of my time. I devote much time to my computer, a Commodore 128D. I'd love to hear from any other Commodore 64 or 138 users.

I recently joined the Klingon Strike Force, and am having lots of fun with that sub-group of fandom.

It's a great life. [7]

A 1999 Biography

Gennieklingoncostume.jpg

Gennie is an expert gamer-by-mail who keeps the KSF's round-robins lively with invention. Going much further back, to the early seventies, though, she has been a mainstay of Star Trek fandom in general, ever ready to contribute her art to the dozens of amateur publications that sprang up in tribute to the show. (She is one of the rare fannish artists who will draw you a whole page full of figures complete with hands and feet (!), capable of expressing most any action or emotion you need to complement a story. She is a zine-editor's dream come to life.)

My first through-the-mail encounter with Gennie came in 1989, after I visited Linda Slusher in Ohio. Linda showed me several of her own Klingon stories illustrated by Gennie in zines like the Rondeaus' Clipper Trade Ship and Roberta Rogow's GRIP, and gave me her address when I admitted that I was eager to get involved with Klingon zining myself.

Starting with the first issue of Agonizer, Gennie decorated every one of my Klingon projects with fierce warriors, and imaginatively garbed (and some exquisitely "un-garbed") females. She crafted portraits of fannish Klingons on request. She collaborated with both writers and other artists when invited, always there to support another's fannish fun.

[...]

... days before we were to head off to the Klingon Year Games in the summer of '98, Kadak and I drove the hour to Cassville and had a day with Gennie that fulfilled all my hopes and brought surprises too. Gennie is short, zoftig, with curly gray hair and the smile you'd expect. She showed me her collections of drawings, a lifetime's fannish industry. She let me browse through her zine collection of close to a dozen cartons full of the amateur books, most of them the paper cover, 11 X 8 " format which fans make to celebrate their loves. Gennie's were all "comps", the free copies fannish publishers send to their contributors by way of thanks. They ranged in date from the seventies to the present. Most were Star Trek-related, but there were plenty of Star Wars and "multi-media" projects as well.

[...]

The zines by themselves were a treasure trove, a monument to Gennie's not-for-money-but-for love productiveness. But I soon got distracted by the collection of artifacts arranged on shelves in the little zine closet. There was a box full of metal insignia, a military looking cap, a pile of the colored images of handsome space captains, intimidating alien opponents and an assortment of rocketships, and planets, all conceived and hand-crafted by Gennie. I was intrigued by a couple of scrap pages crammed with notes about what sounded like the components of a rocket command console-to be built of transistors, bulbs, bells, and wires. A "little red handbook", mimeoed in purple, with rules for conduct within the SPACEFLEET Club looked to date from the 'fifties, long before Star Trek ever appeared.

When I asked Gennie about these things, she explained that she had indeed started SPACEFLEET almost 40 years ago when she lived with parents in Omaha. She must always have been pretty and friendly, but she says she never wanted to marry. She was happy to stay with her parents, her Dad, who ran a gas station, and her Mom who kept house. She loved the space operas on radio and TV. When she had time away from her mundane jobs.... she turned her energy to converting a small outbuilding on her family's property into a wrap-around spaceship console. She developed the idea of SPACEFLEET and invited the neighborhood kids to get involved.

At one time, she had close to two dozen young cadets enrolled (They look six to fifteen-ish in the photos with the deckled edges. All were welcome.). She found her Dad's old Merchant Marine training manual and adapted the rifle drill for her junior recruits. She has pictures of herself, a female cousin and a cadre of children in full dress SPACEFLEET garb, all her own handiwork, practicing with wooden guns; photos also of the winking, blinking buzzing console which covered the walls of the shack's interior-a wonderland effect she and her cohorts never stopped tweaking, a mosaic built of magpie glitter, buttons, hub caps, handles, even the gleaming fender of an old Ford. It includes a viewscreen into which her portraits, landscapes and prop drawings (the very ones I had found in the zine closet) could be slid, made to coordinate with the unfolding of adventure scripts she prepared for special meetings of the club.

The club was a neighborhood glory for over a decade. One set of parents came to visit to make sure Gennie wasn't some kind of pedophile weirdo. She's not a pedophile (I needed to say that, didn't I?????). Weird, she admits to, but she's wise and knows that kids are definitely the best company for the kind of play she has always enjoyed most -- fantasy role playing.

Another time, a building inspector from town came to satisfy himself that "headquarters" wouldn't fall in around their heads. He officiously instructed Gennie to keep people from climbing around on the roof. When his own kid became a loyal member of SPACEFLEET (and he himself was impressed with the strong Christian values which Gennie judiciously expressed as an epilogue in the handbook), he became a supporter too. (Gennie's Jewish cadet didn't mind the Jesus-y window dressing.)

When Gennie's folks became ill, she moved with them to the small house in Cassville, Missouri, now well known as KSF Headquarters. The SPACEFLEET console was dismantled to make the move with her. [8] [9]

A 1981 Dust-Up in "Clipper Trade Ship"

Summers wrote a letter of comment to The Clipper Trade Ship #31 defending the Moral Majority's actions and statements regarding television:

Somebody has to do something about the smut and pornography that has entrenched itself in TV programing in the guise of "creativity.... the 'danger' of their movement has been greatly exaggerated.... Better be concerned about the decaying standards of decency which allows the pornographic minds of some writers to poison otherwise god programs with their filthy ideas 'til people of good taste can on longer partake without severe indigestion.

There are some rebuttals in The Clipper Trade Ship #32 and The Clipper Trade Ship #33/34.

Zines

Sample Art

1970s

1983

1984

1985

1986

  • from The Clipper Trade Ship #50, by Melody Rondeau and Gennie -- "I got a real kick out of Gennie's cover, a nice salute to all of the myriad fandoms, with a nod to several of my favorites i.e. the little fire lizard holding a balloon, the Elfquest lady, Pigs in Space, the Tom Baker incarnation of Dr. Who... I'm not sure how I liked the gold-tone logo yet. It seems to fade in and out, but that might be a product of the balloon background. I'll reserve judgement on this until next issue." The editor responded: "The logo was -- thankfully -- just for the fiftieth issue. It turned out better than it was supposed to, but still, the extra cost & effort isn't worth it to do anytime in the near future! The cover was another experiment that worked better. Melody pencilled the work, and Gennie inked it." [13]

    from The Clipper Trade Ship #50, by Melody Rondeau and Gennie -- "I got a real kick out of Gennie's cover, a nice salute to all of the myriad fandoms, with a nod to several of my favorites i.e. the little fire lizard holding a balloon, the Elfquest lady, Pigs in Space, the Tom Baker incarnation of Dr. Who... I'm not sure how I liked the gold-tone logo yet. It seems to fade in and out, but that might be a product of the balloon background. I'll reserve judgement on this until next issue." The editor responded: "The logo was -- thankfully -- just for the fiftieth issue. It turned out better than it was supposed to, but still, the extra cost & effort isn't worth it to do anytime in the near future! The cover was another experiment that worked better. Melody pencilled the work, and Gennie inked it." [13]

  • from Grip #24

    from Grip #24

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

Fan Comments

Gennie joined my Klingon fanclub way back and grew to become one of my most senior officers. She helped to create much of what the fanclub was all about, promoting the correspondence, the role-playing, starting all kinds of projects. I wrote her often and she wrote back. Over the years, her correspondence with me took on more of the leadership role than as the participatory role but she fit that role well. When I left the fanclub, it was with a heavy heart that I no longer communicated with Gennie and now, well, that silence is compounded. As her health waned, I tried to provide her with many memories of our great times together in our mailings and I will never, ever forget Gennie. Tho I never met her, I grew to think of her as a best friend and confidant. I am very saddened at her having passed but her contributions to fandom as well as the many friendships she created or helped fashion will remain true and strong for many years to come. She was and still is a presence to honor. With great respects to her extended family.... David Christensen [15]

Gennie, as a young kid, I was the paperboy that delivered the paper to your dad's service station at 52nd & Ames in Omaha. I remember being in your space ship at your house. To me, at the time, it was a dream come true. Rest in Peace, Gennie. [16]

References

  1. ^ from Who's Who in Star Trek Fandom
  2. ^ The complete exchange can be read here, Archived version
  3. ^ comments by Sue Frank; archive link
  4. ^ from obit
  5. ^ A fan remembers her with A Superb Warrior has died--Salute her with me!; original cite: klingonspace.net; archive link. Originally printed in a 1999 issue of Mindscanner.
  6. ^ also here
  7. ^ from the zine Distasis #1
  8. ^ A fan remembers her with A Superb Warrior has died--Salute her with me!; original cite: klingonspace.net; archive link. Originally printed in a 1999 issue of Mindscanner.
  9. ^ also here
  10. ^ Yes, "Pictoral" is spelled that way.
  11. ^ from The Clipper Trade Ship #46
  12. ^ from a letter of comment in The Clipper Trade Ship #47
  13. ^ from an LoC in "The Clipper Trade Ship" #51
  14. ^ bruinhilda.tumblr, February 6, 2016
  15. ^ by Thought-Master Keel K'Ta-ri / David Christensen (retired Thought-Admiral) One of many messages left on the Funeral Home Guest Book, also posted here; archive link
  16. ^ Dan Convery, comment at Find a Grave (June 2015)
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