Roberta Rogow

Fan
Name:	Roberta Rogow
Alias(es):
Type:	Fan Writer, Fanzine Editor, Filker
Fandoms:	Star Trek, Blake's 7, Darkover, multimedia
Communities:
Other:
URL:	Rogow's Filks WayBack Link, Roberta Rogow's Bibliography on Fantastic Fiction, Roberta Rogow Wiki Bio
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Alive and Filking (2006)

Roberta Rogow is a fan writer, filker, poet, and fanzine editor in several different fandoms.

She became involved in science fiction and media fandom in 1973, and was active for many years.

Her stories were published in a number of fanzines, including Academy Chronicles, Laff Trek II: The Wrath of Dijon, Beyond Orion, Happy Tails, The Compleat Dirtie Nellie and many others. She edited the multimedia fanzine Grip.

Rogow is also very well-known for her creation of Trexindex, an index of early Star Trek fanzines. The zines she collected for this fanwork were sent to the Paterson Fanzine Library, where Rogow had started a fan club in 1976 called Memory Alpha Star Trek Club.

Her filk lyrics were published in zines such as Rec-Room Rhymes and Sing a Song of Trekkin'. As a filker, she was often partnered with Gregory Baker; for instance, she sang his filk, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Me (mp3 of Rogow singing.) She also published the Filkindex, a filk resource zine. Rogow was a member of APA-Filk. Rogow was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame on April 20, 2013.

Rogow was a member of Memory Beta and Vulcan Irregulars.

She is also a children's librarian, and a professionally published writer with several mystery novels, short stories, and a non-fiction book Futurespeak: A Fan's Guide to the Language of Science Fiction.

Rogow was the winner of the most humorous costume award at the 1974 International Star Trek Con where she was dressed as a Vaal Worshipper, six months after the crew of the Enterprise had visited her planet; Rogow was six months pregnant at the time.

Interview

• Media Fandom Oral History Project Interview with Roberta Rogow (2017)

Meta

• A Trekker's Con-Fessions (1977)
• Editor (1988 New Yorker article about zines) (1988)
• Having Fun with Fanzines (1992)
• Whose Characters Are They Anyway? (1992)
• The Crime of Character Rape (1992)

Publication Contributor

Blake's 7

5th Season | Powerplay

Darkover

Bitter Honeymoon and Other Stories: The Amorous Adventures of Dyan Ardais | Contes di Cottman IV | Jumeaux | Moon Phases | Starstone

Filk

Alive and Filking | The Bastard Children of Argo | The Filker Strikes Back | Filkindex | Loose Notes | No Sheep Aloud | One Filk, Two Filk, Old Filk, New Filk | People and Places | Rec-Room Rhymes | Recycled Rogow | Recycled Rogow | Recycled Rogow | Rogow and Co. | Sing a Song of Trekkin' | Stave the Wails | The Trek Goes On | The Westerfilk Collection

Harry & Johnny

A Face in the Crowd | A Little Past, A Little Future | Spring Fling | Timeline

Indiana Jones

Facets | Field Studies | Well of the Souls

Misc.

Above & Below's Dreamscapes | Beyond | Cityspeak: The Special Edition | Cops and Robbers and Spies...Oh, My! | Cutters Goose | Diverse Dimensions | Edge of the Vth | The Eyes Have It! | Fantazy | Fresh Beaver Tails | Ladyhawke: A Medieval Journal | Lions and Tigers and Zines, Oh My! | Median | Miami Vice Collected Stories | Outlands Chronicles | Paladin | Protocols | Pushin' the Odds | Rerun | Shuriken | Southern Comfort | Time Warp | The U.N.C.L.E. Special

Star Trek

1001 Trek Tales | Abode of Strife Academy Chronicles | Alnitah | Atavachron | Antithesis | Avatar | Beyond Orion | The Cage | The Clipper Trade Ship | Communications Console | The Compleat Dirtie Nellie | Enterprise Reprise | Everything But the Kitchen Sink | Fesarius | Generation Gap | Grip | Guardian | In a Different Reality | Kraith Collected | Laff Trek | Masiform D | A Matter of Honor | Mélange | Moonbeam | Nexus | The Ninth Quadrant | Obsc'zine | Pastak | Pastaklan Vesla | Saurian Brandy Digest | Spectrum | Starfleet Annals | Star Trek Magazine | Sardonac | Time Warp | Tetrumbriant | TrexIndex | Vault of Tomorrow | Warped Space

Star Wars

Against the Sith | Pegasus | Showcase Presents the Alternate Universes of Star Wars

Westerns

Ghost Riders | Happy Tails | Wide Open Spaces

An Outspoken Opponent of Slash

Some early fannish commentary by Rogow: two filks -- The Editor's Dilemma: Kiss by Feyrer (1980) and Mucho Macho?, or A PROTEST SONG (1980).

Captain's Log #6 (February 1982) has a LoC by Roberta Rogow in which she derides a popular zine series and its content:

...My (zine) table [at a con] was right next to the one selling Nome (one of the K/S things) - a couple of girls picked up Nome and it was all I could do to keep my mouth shut! Later they insisted on returning it & getting their money back - and then I sold them a Trek index, pointing out that they could avoid much embarassment by those zines listed under "Kirk/Spock Relationship." By the way, they then bought "Captain's Log," which I told them was "Straight Trek, in every sense of the word!" that is, good adventure stories set on board the Big E... [R.G. Pollet, editor of "Captain's Log" added a diplomatic comment]: I sincerely hope no one liking Nome or K/S is offended by that, Ms. Rogow only mentioned it to me because it had something to do with C.L. and I ran it for that reason- There are well writen stories dealing with K/S, but many people don't like it, simply because it is KS, as some readers don't like action/adventure stories, or parodies. It also shows how helpful Robeta's Trek Indexes can be. Ed.)

In the editorial to Grip #23 (1986), Rogow, editor of the Trekindex, described having been loudly opposed to 'the premise' back in the beginning:

I’ve made some judgements in the past, and I have revised my opinions about a number of things. And this is as good a place as any to talk about them.... There is the K/S Premise, which is that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are 'more than Just Good Friends'. I've been pretty vocal about this for a number of years, and I've gathered a remarkable batch of feudists en route. I refuse to believe for one minute that 'our" Captain Kirk will do anything to put his career in jeopardy, and 'our' Spock isn't going to have a sexual relationship for any reason but propagation of the species, however…I've read a few "alternate' K/S stories that make a little more sense, and are not as involved with the mechanics of the relationship as they are with the emotions. So…another qualified revision of opinion.

Rogow was the subject of a two-page article in the New Yorker for December 12, 1988 in which she described slash books as "basically harmless" and "girlish romantic fantasy" substituting James Kirk for the usual romance novel heroine. However, she also said that slash was "threatening the zine universe" because it ignored basic characterization: Spock is sexually active only once every seven years, so that "when you ignore a rule like that, it seems to me you're not writing literature any more." See The 1988 "New Yorker" Article.

In 1993, she remained still vocal in her opposition to slash. At the 1993 Worldcon, for instance, she helped staff Bill Hupe's fanzine table. She refused to handle any money for the sale of slash zines and refused to sell gen zines to fans who had expressed interest in slash zines.

Rogow herself wrote slash in 1984 and 1986 in the H/J Dirty Harry universe: Timeline and Mixed Media

A fan in 2008 described some incidents at conventions:

Kathy Resch said that there used to be a woman named Roberta who was the self-proclaimed "keeper of Trek morality" and when she went to cons, lectured everyone not to go near any table that sold K/S zines. Of course practically everyone she spoke to asked her to point out those tables and when she did, they headed over to them to buy the zines.

Her Beginning in Fandom

I got involved in this madness in 1973, I had watched STAR TREK since its first season, but I hadn't known about Fandom, or Conventions, or fanzines until I ran into a fellow-librarian at a Library Conference, who was also involved in one of the first convention committees. She told me about conventions. I went, I saw, and I was hooked on fanzines... and when I saw a flyer from someone soliciting stories, I sat down and wrote one. Here, at last, was an outlet for something that I had been doing all my life (ever since I picked up a crayon at age 5 and scrawled my name). I found a whole new world of friends Out There; they read my stories and wrote to me telling me what they liked and what they didn't, and how to make things better. The next step, of course, was to edit my own fanzine. Even as far back as 1978, there seemed to be a higher and higher standard for writers of fanzines to shoot for. Where could a beginner begin? Grip was my answer to that question, and it still is, seven years and twenty issues later.

The 1988 "New Yorker" Article: "Editor"

Roberta Rogow was the subject of a two-page article in the December 12, 1988 edition of "The New Yorker." See Editor (1988 New Yorker article about zines).

Rogow wrote about this interview in APA-Filk #41 in February 1989:

Creation Con, Thanksgiving, New York was a zoo... and along comes a character with a notebook who says he's from THE NEW YORKER, and he's heard about fanzines... could I tell him about them? I bent his ear for the next two hours (missed Gates McFadden explaining why she got kicked off ST:TNG)... and thought to myself, Oh gee! Maybe they'll use this thing. Just being interviewed was kicky enough...

Until the next week, when I got another call from THE NEW YORKER. Could I verify a few facts? Which I did... and when they got to the subject of K/S, I steered them to Leslie Fish. Let HER explain it!

And that is why, in the "Talk of the Town" section of THE NEW YORKER for December 12, 1988, there is a lengthy article on MOI! Modesty (and money) forbids me to reproduce it here, but most people seem to think it wasn't too bad. At least it didn't make me sound like a twit!

Some excerpts from the article:

[Rogow] goes regularly to the cons, which have a heavy concentration of Trekkies, but does so with mixed feelings. She regards herself not as a Trekkie but as a Trekker, and often has to explain to twelve-year-olds the difference between her enthusiasm for "Star Trek" and their enthusiasm for "Star Trek." Most zine writers and editors are women, Ms. Rogow said as she sat behind her table. "Women could get involved in 'Star Trek.' They played a much larger role there than in any other series. After all, with Lieutenant Uhura, there was a woman on the bridge. Nowadays, young women say to me, 'O.K., but all she ever got to say was "Captain, I've lost contact with Star Fleet" or "Captain, contact with Star Fleet has been restored!" But in 1966 just to have a woman in contact with Star Fleet at all was a breakthrough. When 'Star Trek' was cancelled, in '69, all of us were lost. There were so many plot lines that were never resolved. So we began story trees, working our way up from premises and situations that had been left hanging in the show, and the zines eventually had a universe of their own. In 1977 came the second revolution—a whole new universe to play with. The story goes that the minute the first clips of 'Star Wars' were shown at the cons, fans started writing stories. Then came Indiana Jones, and that opened up other new worlds for writers. Anyway, it was around then, what with all those universes to play with, that I took up the cross-universe story, which is my forte and what I'm famous for. Cross-universe involves taking characters from one universe and mixing them with the characters from another. The crew of the Enterprise has an encounter with Han Solo in hyperspace. Or Darth Vader travels in time and meets Karen Allen. But you have to do it consistently. For instance, Indiana Jones is presumably a historical figure, alive at a particular time. So it's best to cross him with figures from the same time period. A friend and I wrote a story -- it's a classic, if I say so myself -- where he was careering across North Africa with Noel Coward.

[An eleven-year old boy] reached out for a zine at the back of the table. On its cover were a drawing (an "illo" in zine jargon) of Mr. Spock stripped to the waist and the legend "Spock Enslaved".

Ms. Rogow snatched it out of the boys had. "Get out of here! Go away!" she ordered. "That is not for the young."

She sighed, and said "Spock Enslaved" is an erotic zine. It's not really a slash book, but it's part of the same movement, which is threatening the zine universe. You see, in 1976 a story called "Shelter" was published in a zine called Warped Space. It was written by Leslie Fish. It's about Kirk and Spock. They on an uninhabited planet, they're trapped, they're in a cave, and well, there you go. There were others, and the thing took off. Spock and the Captain, Spock and the Doctor, The Doctor and Scotty. But they're mostly about Spock seducing Captain Kirk -- that's whey they're called "K/S," or slash, zines. The slash books are basically harmless. People think that they are gay pornography, but they're not. They are written by women, for women. They're really Harlequin romances within the conventions of "Star Trek." Instead of having a name like Angelique, and a heaving bosom, the heroine just happens to be an admiral for Star Fleet. It's still the same girlish romantic fantasy. What the girls forget, though -- and this drives me into ferocious arguments -- is that Spock is sexually active only once every seven years. I've been arguing this one out for the last decade. That is clear -- that is unmistakable. He may be a gay Vulcan. He may be a straight Vulcan. I'm open-minded on that. But the one certain thing we know about all Vulcans' sex life is that they are sexually active once every seven years. When you ignore a rule like that, it seems to me you're not writing literature any more.

Filks (as writer)

Lyrics of one of her early filk songs from SWIL Filkbook issue #1: [1]

An Exile's Lament Fandom: Darkover

Music: "Hard, Ain't It Hard?"

They asked me when I joined the Spaceforce,
The planet where I'd like to be sent;
I said "Any planet but Cottman Four,"
I'll give you three guesses where I went.

CHORUS: Oh it's hard, ain't it hard, yes it's hard
To be where you never want to be;
And it's hard, yes it's hard, for a Spaceforce Guard
To be where you can never get free.

The winter winds on this planet
Blow snow six feet against the door;
One day a year the snow melts off,
And that's when it's spring on Cottman Four.

The people that live on this planet
Are mean and superstitious as they come.
They don't read or write, they just want to fight --
It's not that they're ignorant, they're dumb!

The Darkover men love to argue,
Each carries a wicked-looking knife;
You'd better watch your mouth and you'd better watch your face,
A word or a look can cost your life.

Now you take a Darkover woman -- please!
She's either a virgin or a hen,
Unless she's a bloomin' Free Amazon,
And they're more ferocious than the men!

One day my tour will be over,
I'll see the Bloody Sun never more;
I'll find me a nice warm spot in Hell,

And say "Kiss off!" to Cottman Four!