The Things to Be

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Title:	The Things to Be
Creator:	Joel Davis
Date(s):	January 1979
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Topic:	fans turning pro, original fiction, fanfic
External Links:
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The Things to Be is an essay by Joel Davis in Odyssey #3, published in 1979.

first page

In it, Davis objected to fans "turning pro" in the sense of accepting fees for appearing at conventions just like the professional actors, writers and producers, something that he felt was ruining the sub-culture of fandom.

Fans "Turning Pro"

Davis observed the elevated, Big Name Fan status of particular fan authors such as Jacqueline Lichtenberg, whose Kraith series had an overpowering effect on Star Trek fandom in the 1970s and had co-written Star Trek Lives! with Joan Winston, Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. Marshak and Culbreath were among the first fans to have professionally published Star Trek fan novels. They had two fanfiction anthologies in 1976 and 1978, and a biography of William Shatner in 1979. There certainly were fans who regarded these works as canon, especially when Lichtenberg stated that Gene Roddenberry had copies of Kraith and encouraged his staff to read it as they worked on Star Trek: The Motion Picture and other projects.

Excerpts

A unique phenomenon has been occuring [sic] in fandom lately. A lot of 'our' people are making it into the pro ranks. Either in writing, as artists, or what-have-you. That's fine and I congratulate them. I'm trying to make it as a pro writer myself and I'd like to think that they wish me well, also.

But lately, also, these same people have been guests at ST cons and paid fees, just like the actors, writers, producers, etc., of the original series. Again. I congratulate them and don't hold that against them. So what's all the shouting about? I object to these people being touted as if they were professionals in the world of Star Trek. They are not. For the most part, they are people just like you and I, who have been lucky and talented enough to make it out there. That's fine. But they are not professionals in Star Trek. They are professionals in science fiction, yes. but not in Star Trek, Even those who have had stories published in the "New Voyages" books or anything like that. It's paid for and given professional publication, but unless it was sold to Gene Roddenberry and his production staff, then it is not "real" Star Trek.

Yet at cons, these people are touted as being Star Trek pros. I wouldn't object at all if the cons advertised these people as Fan Guests or some such. It's been done before and it's true. They have a reason for wanting these people as guests, because they've made good in a field that's tangent to Star Trek,, science fiction. Or is it the other way around? No matter. But instead, they say that these people are simply Guests. Lumping them in with GR, Shatner, Nimoy, Gerrold and all the rest. This is not right!

I put the major blame here on the cons. These are mainly pro cons that do this and I don't expect them to know any better. But a portion of the blame can also be laid at the feet of [these "pro fans"]. They should know better. They should know that they never sold a story outline or a teleplay to Star Trek, yet they allow themselves to be advertised as Star Trek pros. This is false advertising.

And still another portion of the blame can be laid at the feet of fandom as a whole. There is a terrible inertia building up and it's continuing and increasing every day. It allows this sort of thing to happen and even flourish. Yet why is it that nobody has ever said anything about it? Noninvolvement? Or just a wish that "they made it and I can too and I want my piece of the pie when I get there"? Is that it? I don't know.

I do know that it bothers me to see fandom this way. I am slowly getting, out of fandom for just this reason. I intend to keep my friends in fandom, if they're still speaking to me after this, but I no longer care if the movie is made, I no longer care if such and such a fanzine comes out schedule or at all, and I no longer care if cons survive or not.

You know what's happened, don't you? Even if all of you out there reading this agreed with me and told all your friends and they all agreed with me and so on down the line, until we had all of fandom thinking, the way I've said I think in this article and we all went to work to change it, it couldn't happen. It's too late. We've made our bed and now we've got to lie in it or get out of it and leave the dirty linen behind. I choose the latter course. What really hurts me is the fact that it got to this point. It never should have. We were supposed to be the dreamers, the ones who saw what was going on around them, saw through the cheating and lying and pure hyperbole, right to the core truth, because we dreamed the dream of science fiction and Star Trek and we believed in a better future and the goodness of man and so one.

Forget it! We've destroyed ourselves and now all we can do is lie back and give the appearance of a living, breathing subculture, while all around us, the death knell sounds.... Mark my words, friends. It's coming.

And there's nothing you can do to stop it.

I'm sorry.

Fan Comments

To round off the zine, Joel Davis has two rather jaundiced and poorly written essays of opinion, one against Cons featuring as GoH writers who began in Trek and moved on to paid sf, and the other against homosexual porn in Trekfic .

His style comes across as petulant scolding rather than reasoned and thoughtful, and these excerpts are unlikely to change many minds on either topic.