Linda Terrell

Fan
Name:	Linda Terrell
Alias(es):	London Bates
Type:
Fandoms:	Blake's 7, Star Trek, The Professionals, Doctor Who, Quantum Leap, Little Big Man, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Knight Rider
Communities:
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Linda Terrell was a fan writer, fan artists, organizer, con-goer.

One of her pseuds was "London Bates," and she connected the two names in 1992 in the letterzine The Neutral Arbiter.

She was one of the big personalities in The Blake's 7 War, both with the name Terrell, as well as her pseud, London Bates.

Terrell published Federation Archives, a letterzine for the fan info service The Lost Seska, as well as nine issues of the Pros letterzine, Short Circuit.

Her writing and characterizations when writing as "London Bates" tended to invoke strong opinions. The Blake's 7 story Nearly Beloved's one example. Terrell herself was quite aware of this, and in 1990 commented:

At last! Someone who puts it as plain as dirt why we like/read/write slash - yeh...lust. The erotic descriptions of men in heat...passion at full throttle...strength and animal beauty. Pant, pant (or, is that woof! woof!). Ironic, 'cause when I wrote B/A that way in B7, people were shocked. But, by gosh and by golly they still read London Bates!

The Blake's 7 Wars

Linda Terrell/London Bates was a player in the The Blake's 7 Wars.

Two things kicked problems into high gear. One fan who went by London Bates, with an enormous mailing list, sent out a mailing "Other fans are behaving badly" message. A lot of the people received it who had no clue what had been going on. Another actor [Paul Darrow] who was most involved also sent out a letter. People felt compelled to say something. Slash was still under the table compared to now.

Zine Contributions

Adventure... Plus | Airwaves | Airwaves Blake's 7 Special | Backtrack | Be Gentle With Us | Below the Surface | Blake, Rabble and Roll | Brit Shriek! | British Takeaway | Chalk and Cheese | The Chronicles | Chronicles Annual | Dial S | Down and Unsafe | ΞΕΝΟΦΟΝ | E-Man-Uelle | Espresso | The Faces of Time | Federation Archives | Forbidden Zone | Frak | Free for All | From the Notebook of Sarah Jane | Green Eggs and Ham | The Hols of CI5 | Homosapien | Interface | Liberator Fantasies | The Lost Seska | Magnificent Seven | Mélange | Morbius | Multiverse | The Neutral Arbiter | Oracle | The Other Side | Perihelion | Powerplay | Rassilon's Star | Return of the 7 | Short Circuit | Something... Unfriendly | Southern Comfort | Southern Seven | Space Oddity | Standard by Several | Starship Britannica | Those Who Favor Fire Time Log | Touched | Travelling Companion | The Unique Touch | Westering Boundaries | What You Fancy | Zeta Minor

Parodies and Mentions in Other Fanworks

London Bates was a BNF with such a recognizable style that she and her stories were mentioned in other fanworks. Some examples:

• Little Orphan Alpha by Ann Wortham & Leah Rosenthal in The Bizarro Zine #3 (1990)
• What I Did for Love by Madelyn Darring & Coral Court in Southern Comfort #7.5 (1994)

Unknown Date

It's well written, as are all the stories in the zine, but it definitely belongs in the London Bates category of Superstud Blake stories, in which Blake is the one who is so desirable that everyone wants him.

The description of the battered-but-attractive body is suggestive of London Bates.

I find myself warming to London Bates's writing when she's at her least ambitious and most playful...

[comments on the story Intermezzo in B]: (Se/Tr) (B/C, A/J) Good god, a het story by London Bates. Seems to head in the direction of A/B (which I would have preferred) but then lurches towards het, and I go to sleep... Typical London Bates unmistakable prose in the sex scene: pulsating towers (incidentally, since this is a het story, we here find out that the feminine of "tower" is "vault") and multiple orgasms all over the place. And what on earth does "burying her lips with a passion he'd almost forgotten he was capable of" mean? I'm sorry, I'm generally frankly incapable of appreciating this writer's work, I just seem to have a blind spot for her.

1993

And London Bates, regardless of what she's like in real life is high on my list [of favorites], too. I can't help it, I LOVE those stories in The Other Side.

1995

When it came to B7, I didn't automatically think "slash 'em" --- until I read London Bates' stories. I was writing hetero stories for it at the time, and we were putting out Blake's Seven: The Other Side... and London sent a "care parcel". Well, I nearly did myself a terrible injury.... I started to read these stories... propped them up on all sorts of things, wriggled, squirmed around and laughed... and laughed and giggled and blushed. And eventually wrote my own.

1996

London Bates, where the whole universe seems to exist as a place for everyone to have incredible soul-shattering sex and passionate romances with everyone else. Everyone is the most seductive person in the universe, or nearly, like a chessboard (I did type "cheeseboard!) that's all gone to queens.

2006

Achieved a succes-de-scandale when she started to write for the early B7 fandom, though god knows why as her attempts to be filthy generally miss the mark. Her prose style makes my flesh crawl; Bryn Lantry can strike 'poetic' dead-centre, while London Bates generally overshoots by a mile and hits 'purple'. The first thing one notices are the nouns: rather romance-novel terminology like 'take' for 'fuck' and 'manhood' for 'cock', and it reads as if she's got a book of 101 useful euphemisms for the male organ. She also uses 'tower' for the penis and 'vault' for the vagina, which adds an unintentionally architectural tone to her work. She also likes describing semen as 'cool-warm', and I still haven't entirely figured out what she means by that. There is also a somewhat, ah, creative attitude to metaphor. I am still trying (unsuccessfully) to forget the line, "Those orgasms etched my teeth and I want more" (she's another 'male multiple-orgasm' fan). Then one notices the characterisation. These are stories where Blake is impressively, unbelievably virile and strong, and everybody else falls at his feet in ecstasies of submissiveness. The other characters don't convince me either.