together into a magazine, and mail it to the members.
The fanfic clubs created a hybrid of the APA. They started up newsletters where each member would write a section and mail it to the editor. Dues would not only cover the cost of mailing the newsletter but also the copying cost. The editor was often the person with access to some type of cheap duplicating machine.
Up to 1984, I was totally ignorant of most of fandom. That summer, though, my friend June Drexler Robertson turned to me and said, âYour family has a large farm, doesnât it?â
My reaction was probably the same as yours is now. What? Huh?
June had joined a Pern fanfic club. She didnât have to explain Pern to me; I had all of Anneâs books. It was âfanfic clubâ that I needed explained. It turned out that all around the world, fans of Anneâs were finding each other and creating clubs where they could live on Pern via shared fiction.
Sharing, however, meant that not everyone could be a queen rider that could hear all dragons. (Yes, almost every new member had to be told that they couldnât hear all the dragons nor that they could automatically be a queen rider; otherwise, the weyr would have been fifty queen riders and two or three very happy but exhausted bronze riders.) Since fictional leadership somehow overruled common sense, it turned out that for a club to function, the people who ran the club had to take up the key positions. The Weyrleader, Senior Queen, and Weyrsinger went to the people that created the club, covered costs when dues fell short, scoured conventions for new members, collected material for the newsletters, copied them, and mailed them. That way a member wouldnât be telling the âclub officersâ that they could buck the system because âthe Weyrwoman said I could.â
Every new member was encouraged to think beyond Lessa to create a different kind of character, often to fill a gap in the weyr. Journeyman harper was the favorite second choice. Once a talented author took over a craft and their story appeared in the newsletter, other members would drift toward that choice. Woodcrafting became popular in our club after Melissa Crandall took over the weyrâs woodshop and wrote sections so vivid you could nearly smell the sawdust.
Another overlap of fiction and reality was the location of the club. The clubs were fiercely territorial despite the fact that technology made it difficult if not impossible to coordinate the fictional worlds. Once a club laid claim to a weyr or a hold, they would defend it from other clubs using it as their home. I think that it came from the fact that different clubs would come up with slight variations on the world, and they didnât want to be confused with other clubs with a radically different spin on Pern.
Ista Weyr was the first fan club with its leadership based in New Orleans. Fort Weyr was a close second. When all the northern weyrs were taken, the Southern Continent was divvied up into wholly fan-created slices. After that, new clubs decided to move forward in time. Fort Weyr Tenth Pass was a totally different beast than Fort Weyr Ninth Pass.
While the initial meeting of members had been at conventions (because there was no internet to provide a way to find each other otherwise), the clubs began to hold Gathers. My friend June was looking for a campground for the third annual Gather of her club and remembered that my family had a farm with a large open field perfect for camping.
We had thirty-some people that summer of 1984. I was twenty-one, fresh out of college, still desperate to be a writer, but unsure how actually to go about it. I was skeptical of this whole âfan clubâ idea, but the members all shared my love of science fiction. They had Anneâs book memorized. They had made giant papier-mâché eggs with little statues of dragons inside for candidates to impress. (They crack like gunshots when you smash them
The fanfic clubs created a hybrid of the APA. They started up newsletters where each member would write a section and mail it to the editor. Dues would not only cover the cost of mailing the newsletter but also the copying cost. The editor was often the person with access to some type of cheap duplicating machine.
Up to 1984, I was totally ignorant of most of fandom. That summer, though, my friend June Drexler Robertson turned to me and said, âYour family has a large farm, doesnât it?â
My reaction was probably the same as yours is now. What? Huh?
June had joined a Pern fanfic club. She didnât have to explain Pern to me; I had all of Anneâs books. It was âfanfic clubâ that I needed explained. It turned out that all around the world, fans of Anneâs were finding each other and creating clubs where they could live on Pern via shared fiction.
Sharing, however, meant that not everyone could be a queen rider that could hear all dragons. (Yes, almost every new member had to be told that they couldnât hear all the dragons nor that they could automatically be a queen rider; otherwise, the weyr would have been fifty queen riders and two or three very happy but exhausted bronze riders.) Since fictional leadership somehow overruled common sense, it turned out that for a club to function, the people who ran the club had to take up the key positions. The Weyrleader, Senior Queen, and Weyrsinger went to the people that created the club, covered costs when dues fell short, scoured conventions for new members, collected material for the newsletters, copied them, and mailed them. That way a member wouldnât be telling the âclub officersâ that they could buck the system because âthe Weyrwoman said I could.â
Every new member was encouraged to think beyond Lessa to create a different kind of character, often to fill a gap in the weyr. Journeyman harper was the favorite second choice. Once a talented author took over a craft and their story appeared in the newsletter, other members would drift toward that choice. Woodcrafting became popular in our club after Melissa Crandall took over the weyrâs woodshop and wrote sections so vivid you could nearly smell the sawdust.
Another overlap of fiction and reality was the location of the club. The clubs were fiercely territorial despite the fact that technology made it difficult if not impossible to coordinate the fictional worlds. Once a club laid claim to a weyr or a hold, they would defend it from other clubs using it as their home. I think that it came from the fact that different clubs would come up with slight variations on the world, and they didnât want to be confused with other clubs with a radically different spin on Pern.
Ista Weyr was the first fan club with its leadership based in New Orleans. Fort Weyr was a close second. When all the northern weyrs were taken, the Southern Continent was divvied up into wholly fan-created slices. After that, new clubs decided to move forward in time. Fort Weyr Tenth Pass was a totally different beast than Fort Weyr Ninth Pass.
While the initial meeting of members had been at conventions (because there was no internet to provide a way to find each other otherwise), the clubs began to hold Gathers. My friend June was looking for a campground for the third annual Gather of her club and remembered that my family had a farm with a large open field perfect for camping.
We had thirty-some people that summer of 1984. I was twenty-one, fresh out of college, still desperate to be a writer, but unsure how actually to go about it. I was skeptical of this whole âfan clubâ idea, but the members all shared my love of science fiction. They had Anneâs book memorized. They had made giant papier-mâché eggs with little statues of dragons inside for candidates to impress. (They crack like gunshots when you smash them
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