User:Tribble
| Name/s: | Tribble, Helen McCarthy Lotta Jung |
| Fandom/s: | Star Trek, Doctor Who, The Avengers (TV), UFO, Supermarionation, Arthur of the Britons, True Blood, Sherlock Holmes, anime, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Torchwood, Cyber City Oedo 808 The Man From U.N.C.L.E. |
| You can find me at: | [1]
[3] |
| On Fanlore: | My contributions / email me |
I'm a writer, researcher, editor, designer and poet with a really bad needlework habit and a passion for fashion dolls. Professionally, I've published 10 nonfiction books and one short story, hopefully the first of many. I love to read, and I've been an sf&f fan for as long as I can remember.
I talk a lot, and have huge amounts of energy (a friend once told me I'd perfect if I only came with an off switch) but I like to listen too. I love debating ideas, sharing stories and humour. I have the attention span of a particularly ditzy goldfish but when I get interested in something new I just can't help following it up, and I've met so many wonderful, fascinating people through my adventures in fandom.
I'm not very technosavvy and I don't have much time so I am strange to forums and wikis (though addicted to Twitter.) I was so pleased to find Fanlore via an old Trek friend, otherwise I might never have run across it.
I live in London with my partner of 31 years and an epic book and toy collection. Don't try to convince me the TARDIS doesn't exist - our house is actually smaller than our stuff. Now if we could just work out the equations so we can replicate it...
Fannish History
A few months after the BBC started showing Star Trek on British TV, in July 1969, a woman named Audrey Baker got a letter in the Radio Times (and maybe in other papers too) asking Star Trek fans who'd like to join a club to write to her. I joined and really enjoyed writing to other fans. When the first British Star Trek convention was organised by Jenny and Terry Elson's Star Trek Action Group, I went along and had a wonderful time.
Under my birthname, Helen McCarthy, I was active in conrunning, writing fanfic and illustrating the work of others. I loved making art for Jenny Elson's zine Angry Sunset and helped to illustrate the early issues of Alnitah, and many others. I also drew the pictures for my own single-story zine The Dragon Banner and did quite a lot of newsletter illustrations. Sadly I no longer have copies of these, as my fanzine archive disappeared when we moved house. I was an enthusiastic costume designer, maker and model, and helped to start the Galactic Fashion Shows which were a much-loved feature of early UK Trek conventions.
In 1974 I moved down to London for work and started going to a science fiction evening class run by scholar Philip Strick and novelist Chris Priest at the City Lit. This led me to the world of SF conventions. (At the time these were not very female-friendly or media-fan-friendly but as more and more of us started going there we all realised that people who read books also watch films and TV, and vice versa.) I got involved in sf convention fancy dress, zines, conrunning and art shows.
One of my happiest memories is providing all the artwork, both filthy and clean, for the charity fanzine Spock In Manacles by Lotta Bottle. When SIM spun off SPOCK IN MANACLES: The Rock Opera, premiered at Beccon in 1985, I was in the cast, wearing black leather thigh boots and something see-through on top.
i had a lot of fun with convention costuming. I particularly remember a convention skit where a cast of about 30 presented an epic battle between comicbook superheroes and superheroines for GOH Harry Harrison and a confused but amused audience. At the 1990 Worldcon in Den Haag I was part of the Triple Goddess group that opened the Masquerade and won an award.
In 1981 I started going out with my partner Steve, a Supermarionation fan. With my friend Barbara Kitson (now Edwards) and others we helped to start up the Gerry Anderson Appreciation Society, Fanderson. I was involved in conrunning, zines, newsletters and costume with Fanderson and chaired the Club for a couple of years before stepping down. Barbara and I also wrote a novel, Random Factors, an alternate version of the live-action Gerry Anderson series UFO. It was planned as the first in a trilogy, but Barbara was distracted by a different kind of production - two stunning children instead of two more UFO books.
Steve and I were Atlanta Shore and Troy Tempest at Fanderson 82, our only costume appearance together at a convention. Around the same time I played Emma Peel as the Queen of Sin from the Avengers Hellfire Club episode at a convention - one of the most enjoyable costumes I ever made, and fun to wear.
Steve introduced me to Japanese animation, which became the gateway to fulfilling my lifelong ambition to be a published author. We ran Britain's first anime convention programme at the 1990 Eastercon, founded Britain's first anime newsletter that summer, and started a professional magazine the following year.
During the 1990s, before broadband Internet became widespread, a lively UK anime club and newsletter scene flourished. I loved reading the work of new writers and encouraging new artists through our magazine. It folded in 1996 but by then a number of fans had begun or established professional careers - among them writers, artists, designers, publishers and distributors.
Life and family concerns have occupied most of my time lately, but, in my 43rd year as an active fan, I was thrilled to have joined the Fanlore community. I'm looking forward to sharing more adventures in the years to come.
Current Favorites
Captain Jack and Captain Jack is my current cross-series favourite, and I'm playing around with the idea of crashing them into another established pair to see what happens.
On Fanlore
I want to explore and enjoy the work of others.
I'd like to look more closely at the lost eras of British fannish history, before we could archive everything online and keep our closets from bulging! I'd also love to recover some of my own lost fanfic and artwork.
I would like to contribute to better understanding between fans who make transformative works and the artists and writers whose work we use. Being both poacher and gamekeeper myself, I know how hard it is for anyone to make a living from their creativity and how much it hurts when your work is used without your consent.
There are arguments to be made for the truly transformative, especially when it is truly non-commercial, but individuals within the community don't always help the cause. (I blogged earlier this year about a young fan artist who was selling prints ripped off a popular game character, complaining when her work was used for profit without her consent...)
This is a highly contentious issue but I think most of us would agree that we should cherish and respect each other's creativity. So I hope to be able to help in the process of bringing about a better system for fair sharing.
Miscellaneous
It's nice to be here. As my dear friend Jonathan Waite wrote in his beautiful filk "Sam's Song" [4], it took me too many years to come, but I'm where I wanted to be.