Where Are They Now: Carol Frisbie

Meta
Title:	Where Are They Now: Carol Frisbie
Creator:	Linda Frankel
Date(s):	1989
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Topic:
External Links:
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Where Are They Now: Carol Frisbie is a 1989 essay by Linda Frankel. The subject is fanwriter Carol Frisbie.

It was published in On the Double #11 and is part of a series "of articles about people who used to be prominent in K/S fandom, but are no longer active." The very short-lived series was popular. One fan said: "I loved the "Where Are They Now" article. MORE, MORE, MORE! If they know we miss them, maybe they'll come back!"

Some Topics Discussed

• Classic Trek vs Star Trek: TNG
• a mention of Thrust and Nightvisions
• the sense of wonder that was Star Trek

The Essay

K/S was still embryonic when Carol Frisbie first pubbed THRUST, and many of those who are reading this today hadn't heard of K/S when NIGHTVISIONS, which Carol co-wrote with Susan K. James, appeared. There is no doubt that she can be considered one of our founders.

I asked Carol what she is doing now, and she said that she still at tends a few cons a year, remaining on the fringes of fandom. She has an abiding love of Trek, and Trek fandom was a really significant experience in her life, but she feels that she's said everything that she needed to say on the themes in Trek that interested her. "Star Trek fandom was and is a phenomenon that couldn't be duplicated for any of us, and I miss the passion and intensity of the early years. Still, there's an end, or at least a lessening, to everything."

Carol and Susan James have some plans to write together again, but it won't be a fannish project. Since she feels she has exhausted Trek and isn't interested in any other fandom, any writing Carol does will necessarily deal with her own subjects and concepts. She especially wants to encourage Susan James to write more because she is so very talented.

Carol continues to read K/S. She thinks that Kirk and Spock are "a perfectly viable and inspiring couple". It's true that some of the excitement has diminished. There's material that is unoriginal and stories that deliver nothing but sex. On the other hand, some of the writers who remain in K/S from the early days have matured and grown in skill. She particularly admires [ Gayle F ] and will read anything she writes.

Carol also had critical statements to make about TNG. She noted that newer fans tended to be more accepting of the new series, but that the old line Trek fans like herself would rather stick with Classic ST. Like Classic Coke, nothing else is quite the same. Carol said that she had wanted TNG to be good, but none of the characters "could light a match next to the flame of Kirk's fiery nature, or the dignity and soulfulness of Spock's". She finds TNG dull and uninspired. No one would ever describe Classic ST in such terms.

What motivates Carol is not conservationism, but a desire to preserve the sense of wonder that motivated Trek fandom from its inception. All forms of Treklit, whether they are K/S or gen rely on that sense of wonder. Without it, none of us would be here.

We imbibe from the cup of wonder that old fans, like Carol Frisbie, have passed on to us. May it never run dry.