Karen B (Starsky & Hutch and Professionals slash fan)
| Fan | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Karen B (named used here on Fanlore) |
| Alias(es): | |
| Type: | writing, concom, the library |
| Fandoms: | S&H, LOTR, Mission: Impossible (TV), The Professionals |
| Communities: | |
| Other: | ZebraCon |
| URL: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Karen B was a hugely involved fan since 1975.
Karen was the editor of United Federation of Planets Newsletter beginning in 1976.
A very early Starsky & Hutch fan, she was definitely a BNF of the fandom. She edited the Starsky & Hutch slash zine Code 7 from 1981 to 1986.
She ran ZebraCon, first as a Starsky & Hutch con, and then as S&H fandom started to ebb, as a cops and robbers con with an emphasis on Starsky & Hutch and The Professionals. The con was yearly for the first 10+ years, and then went to every-other year until its last year, 2007. The con gave out awards, the Huggy Awards, to the best Starsky & Hutch and Professionals stories and zines.
She was the Guest of Honor at CopCon in 1983.
Karen was also a hugely influential fan in The Professionals fandom. At some point in the 1980s, Karen collected together the stories of The Professionals Circuit into a circulating library, and started offering subscriptions, probably based on the earlier Circuit Library in the U.K., Sara S. In the early 1990s, the U.S. library had over 1,000 stories. You could order up to 10 stories at a time once a month. It cost $12 a year to join, plus mailing fees both ways. Karen had a group of volunteers in Chicago who met a couple of times a month to go through all of the returning library packages and file the stories, and then fill all of the outgoing packages. The library lasted for almost 20 years, until enough fans were online that it was easier to get stories off of the web, rather than through the mail. (See The Professionals Circuit for more.)