Net.startrek

Newsgroup
Name:	Net.startrek
Date(s):	1982-?
Moderator:	Roger Noe
Type:	discussion and fic
Fandom:	Star Trek
URL:
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In 1982, Net.startrek, a usenet group, was created by Roger Noe.

"Net.startrek" was an early name for Usenet.

Some History

Roger Noe was the force behind creating a group just for discussing Star Trek, and thus was created net.startrek (July 1982), which later was renamed rec.arts.startrek during "The Great Renaming" (December 1986).

When it became clear that a single group was becoming too much to sort through for useful information, rec.arts.startrek.info was voted on and created in the first part of February 1990, moderated by Jim Griffith.

In the spring of 1991, people got tired of seeing large parodies, scripts, artwork, etc in r.a.s, and there was a proposal to create a new group called rec.arts.startrek.creative. There was some controversy over copyrights (that apparently didn't matter if the same postings showed up in r.a.s) so the vote was abandoned. During the proposal and vote, someone created alt.startrek.creative, which serves the purpose, except that it is unmoderated, and only about half the sites actually carry the group.

At the end of 1991 a vote was taken to split the main group into four components (tech, fandom, current, and misc) which passed by a landslide. The groups were created early in January 1992.

In early 1993, with the high volume of posts that came with the coming of "Deep Space Nine", came two CFVs, one for r.a.s.reviews (a moderated group

for the subset of misc and current that are objective reviews), and r.a.s.characters for discussion of the characters. The reviews group passed in early March 1993 with Mike Shappe as moderator.

Early Star Trek Fanfic

Fans of Star Trek began posting their fan fiction at "Net.startrek."

Usenet gained more exposure in 1984 with a presentation by Alice Greene. In June, Greene showed Star Trek fans net.startrek and explained some of the advantages to using this medium for fannish communications.

Archives from net.startrek during that period show that discussion of slash, referenced as K&S was posted to the group, along with advertisements for various Star Trek fanzines.

An example of the climate of the time and slash: The following is a post to net.startrek from August 1985:

Aug 14 1985, 7:09 pm

Newsgroups: net.startrek

From: [email protected]

Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 19:09:00 EDT

Subject: Re: Requested information on K/S

Feminists who are interested in erotica written by women for women should find themselves very able to "stomach" K/S. They should check out the rave review of K/S written by SF feminist author Joanna Russ in a fanzine namec NOME, "Another Addict Raves about K/S." Natrually there is a spectrum of material-from mild to X-rated, from well-written to total trash. This material is widely circulated, but not "Published" in the ordinary, or profit-making sense, and is in fact underground material of great interest to the participants - the writers, readers and editors. Unfortunately, attention paid to K/S for its feminist importance, may be damaging to fandom as a whole, if Paramount gets too interested in it. Starsky/Hutch and Star Wars fandoms were severely restricted by paranoid producers. Joanna has refused to supply the names of K/S editors and writers to the editors of Penthouse FORUM -- but FORUM is interested. As for the writers involved, writing fan material is wonderful fun, and may just provide the impetus for writers to break into publication, as a number of fan writers have. While it is true that REAL SF writers look ascance at Trek as formula fiction, the first item of importance to most aspiring writers is GETTING PUBLISHED. Trek is a "hungry" market.