The 1977 S.T.A.R. Open Letter by Sharon
| Open Letter | |
|---|---|
| Title: | the letter does not have a formal title |
| From: | Star Trek: TOS fans |
| Addressed To: | Sharon Ferraro Short |
| Date(s): | the letter was written August 23, 1977, and printed in September 1977 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The 1977 S.T.A.R. Letter by Sharon is an open letter by Sharon Ferraro Short.
It was printed in Spectrum #34 in September 1977 in response to that zine's editor asking in the previous issue about the defunct Star Trek: TOS organization, S.T.A.R., the zine Nova rumored to be on the horizon, and stating that the WSA was investigating the club regarding monies owed to fans.
The editor of "Spectrum" printed the letter in full because he felt it was an important letter and needed to be seen by all fans.
For context, see Certain events have occurred within S.T.A.R. Central for the last 6 months that deserve to be aired., a 1974 open letter.
Some Topics Discussed
- S.T.A.R. and why it failed
- two fairly disastrous cons: OurCon and the second Starcon
- two proposed zines, one that was ultimately never published (Nova) and (KalaMenagerie, a humorous primer by Paula Smith, with illos by Phil Foglio that became part of Menagerie #17 in 1981)
The Letter
From the question in the last issue, I feel that a clarification is necessary. And it is a comparatively long story.
STAR — The Star Trek Association for Revival — was founded by a group of friends/fans in Detroit, Michigan in the month following the first NY ST Con. It grew with astonishing speed and ended up 2 years later having had up to 5,000 members/subscribers (to Starborne the newsletter) and inadvertently sponsoring a fiasco convention at Cobo Hall [1]. The group was founded by, basically, a group of college friends — their education had been continuing all along and one by one, they went into careers and further education; where there had originally been nearly a dozen members of the STAR Central Committee, there were only 2 by 1975 — the clubs' numbers had grown in reciprocal to the committee's numbers. There was more work to be done and fewer people to do it. The newsletter missed a couple of issues — special offers of memorabilia advertised by STAR/Central in the newsletter were not filled — mail was allowed to pile up unanswered. Paula Smith and I were in Kalamazoo and involved to a minor degree in the publicity for OurCon (Michigan State University, May 1975). We knew that OurCon had purchased a good chunk of advertising in Star Borne. We also knew without help, Star-Borne would not be out before the convention — mail and organizational help were needed at STAR HQ in Detroit. One drizzly weekend in late March, we set out for Detroit via bus. We ended up in the basement, sorting mail up to eight months old, processing orders and filling SASEs with out of date Star Bornes. At the end of the weekend we were exhausted and felt as though we had gotten STAR on its feet a little better. Needless to say, the Star Borne did not get out before the convention and there has not been an issue since then.
Encouraged by Bjo Trimble and other fen, we tried to find a solution — a way to fulfill all the subscriptions without bankrupting either ourselves or boojums Press...and maybe raising enough money to pay for the project in the long run. (FYI—The STAR Central committee members in their work for the group activities, have each spent upwards of $1,000 of their own money and all the money sent to STAR was used for STAR.) We had hoped to save the newsletter, but that turned out to be impossible. In September of 1975, we (The Bastas, Paula Smith, myself, Bjo Trimble and others) decided that a possible solution was the production of a super zine, something that would be a special item that all the subscribers (or most anyway) to Star Borne would be willing to accept as fulfillment of their subscription. We would send the copies of the zine to subscribers automatically for no additional cost and print enough that the extra copies would pay for the free copies. All we needed was a complete list of current "owed something" subscribers. We finally got it nearly a year later. Meanwhile, Bjo and others began assembling art and writing — from Austin, Ellison, Gerrold, and any others. Phil Foglio illustrated Paula's new Primer (The KalaMenagerie) and by the end of 1976, it was ready — typed and laid out ready to print — it had been scratched as a project of STAR — we couldn't do it for a lot of reasons. It was decided that it would be produced anyway and profits donated to a charity — preferably fannish. Bjo Trimble had volunteered to have it printed in Los Angeles and finally, this summer 1977, it has been shipped to LA. Hopefully by the end of the year NOVA will be available to fans at conventions and possibly through the mail. That is where it stands now. I hope it explains a little.
Sincerely, Sharon Ferraro Short, August 23, 1977
Fan Comments
References
- ^ Cobo Hall is now TCF Center
- ^ from M.J. Fisher in Spectrum #35 (January 1978)