Maria and George Papadeas

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Fan
Name: Maria and George Papadeas
Alias(es):
Type:
Fandoms: Star Trek, Lost in Space
Communities:
Other: Photon Printers, Photon Productions, Official Star Trek Club of Australia
URL:
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Maria & George Papadeas are two fans, husband and wife, who were heavily involved both in Australian Star Trek and Lost in Space fandom, as well as being influential in the confluence of fandom, profit, and tangling with The Powers That Be, much of it controversial.

By 1992, the long-running club Astrex, and [editorship of] its bimonthly newsletter, Data, were in the hands of George & Maria Papadeas of Photon Productions. That club's focus became increasingly multimedia - and much less Star Trek - once the Papadeas' licensed Official Star Trek Club of Australia launched in 1993.[1] Previously, George had served on the Astrex committee as Meeting Coordinator and Maria as club Librarian.

In the Thick of Licensing, Fandom and Profit, and the Viacom/Paramount Crackdown

In 2004, Ian McLean commented about the effect of the 1995 Viacom Crackdown, TPTB, and Australian fandom, and one of the roles George & Maria had in it:

We actually had an ASTREX meeting, well a committee meeting, where we talked about, what… well I was a little worried about that somebody could come in and open up an official club from under our noses, and suddenly we would be told we had to shut down because we weren’t official, right? And everybody said, “Well, that’s just Ian worrying in advance [about the club being shut down]“, and all this sort of stuff… including George and Maria Papadeas saying, “Ah, well, you know, there’s no need to worry about that kind of thing, or whatever.” Now, whether that meeting planted the seed in their minds, or whether they’d already been working on it themselves, I don’t know. And we probably never will know. But… the next time Richard Arnold came for a convention, we pounced on him. And we said "We’re really scared that this guy wants to open an official club in Australia" and Richard said "It won’t ever happen"... The next thing you knew, there really was a group organizing to become an official fan club that was likely to happen. And then, all of a sudden, the next issue of the American one had been slightly reworded that they were no longer the official fan club for the world, but they were the American one, and now suddenly we heard that there was a British one, and there was suddenly a Canadian one, and of course, then, George and Maria announced they were the Australian one. [2]

front cover of the issue that celebrates the 150 mark of the zine The Captain's Log , published in 1990. The cover art is by Maria Papadeas.

Fanac

They founded the con Holodiction (1992-2003).

Maria

Maria is extensively quoted in a research article, "Enterprise Education" by Peter Appelbaum & Noel Gough in Australian Education Researcher 29 (2) 2002: pp 131-144 [3]

Australians love this show. Our fan club is comparable in numbers to the US even though we have a fraction of the population. I tend to think it’s because Star Trek is very optimistic and Australia is a positive kind of place. We don’t dwell on doom and most of us believe we will have a good tomorrow. Star Trek always has a very good tomorrow... One of the great joys of my life is looking around a convention I’ve organised and seeing Klingons talking to Vulcans, Ferengi, even to humans. Friendships and marriages are being forged. I helped to create it and I can’t tell you how good that makes me feel... A lot of people think Star Trek fans are nerds, which is a shame. What is sad, too, is that people who like the show but who aren’t fanatical avoid conventions because they think they are full of weirdos. It’s not true. I should know, I’ve been organising conventions for almost ten years. The people who go are very nice, socially acceptable individuals. They’re not computer nerds, they’re not bookworms, they’re not building bombs under the bed. They’re just ordinary people whose imagination has been captured by a remarkable TV show. [4]

George

  • The 1996 Star Trek Diary [Australian edition], edited by George Papadeas, 1995

  • The 1997 Star Trek Diary [Australian edition], edited by George Papadeas, 1996

References

  1. ^ National Library Of Australia, Archived version
  2. ^ from Interview with Ian McLean
  3. ^ ResearchGate
  4. ^ from "Lifelines", an interview with Maria Papadeas by journalist Helen O'Neill, The Australian Magazine (August 4-5), pp. 11-12
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