Science fiction was not cool when I was in high school, but I grew up watching Star Trek in its original outing. I recall my older brother trying to explain to me just how big the Enterprise was to hold all those people,
I cofounded the Canadian Trekkies Association when I was in high school. At the time, there was only 1 Star Trek, and we hoped there would be a movie one day. We got ourselves listed in the Trekkie fan bible, and suddenly we had people from across Canada writing to us, wanting to join our community.
So aside from writing letters back, we decided we had to do something more. Since my best friend’s family owned a printery we decided to create our very own fanzine, cleverly called “Canektion” (from Canadian Trekkies Association).
Back in the day fanzines were created on typewriters and gestetner machines . Electric typewriters were pretty new. Pocket calculators were the leading edge of tech. There were no personal computers, almost no self publishing, no Internet (at least not open to the public) and we had no idea what we were getting into as publishers.
We created most of our own content, and invited our trekkies to contribute material, and they did. We were allowed to do it ourselves after hours, but we had never done it before, so we did have a few problems, but it still looked far more like a professional publication than anything I had ever seen.
In our first issue, we had asked our members from across Canada to share their Star Trek top ten list. And if memory serves, the number one episode on everybody’s list, “The Trouble With Tribbles” but the next best episode, the one favored by older Trekkies was undoubtedly this one, the timeless “City on the Edge of Forever.”
Stone knives and bearskins, eh?
