SF Universe

Tag: Star Trek: TOS

  • Happy 49th Birthday, Star Trek!

      Tonight marks the 49th Anniversary of the first screening of the classic Star Trek: TOS on US television, with the airing of \”The Man Trap\” on Thursday, September 8, 1966. Due to some strange network mental gymnastics, they managed to air this one, which should have actually been the FIFTH episode, first, and they…

  • Leonard Nimoy (1931 – 2015)

    [T]he news of Leonard Nimoy\’s death yesterday has had a strong impact on me in a way that the vast majority of celebrity deaths usually don\’t. When I woke up yesterday morning and saw the news for the first time online, it was like a kick in the gut. I spent the entire day stunned,…

  • Leonard Nimoy, RIP.

    [I] rarely keep up with the celebrity news, so I got a real shock when I read some terrible news on Dayton Ward\’s excellent blog a wee while ago. I\’m sitting here stunned, in tears. I\’m gutted. Totally gutted. Leonard Nimoy is dead. I keep saying it to myself over and over again, but I…

  • The Age of Innocence – \”Sensawunda\” and the Older Science Fiction Fan

    Older sci-fi/SF fans (or \”fen\”, to give them their correct title), almost all have an incredibly developed Sense of Wonder, more often referred to in the SF world as \”sensawunda\”, that wide-eyed innocence and boundless enthusiasm, that willingness to see beyond the mundane world around us and embrace the infinite potential and possibilities of the…

  • Sci-Fi on Television (Part 1)

    I\’m a big fan of sci-fi on television, which I almost always refer to by its \”proper\” name, telefantasy. The 1950s-1990s were, in my opinion, the Golden Age of telefantasy, and the first real telefantasy started about a decade or so before my birth (in December 1960), when Captain Video and His Video Rangers first…

  • Nostalgia Collecting – Old UK Comics and Annuals

    [T]hey say that nostalgia is the narcotic of the over-forties. I\’m almost fifty-three, and I can definitely admit that it\’s particularly true of me. I\’ve always been a very nostalgic person, always fascinated by the past, even back when I was a kid. So pretty much my entire life, I\’ve been on a quest to…

  • Early Star Trek – How The Original Series Might Have Been

    History is totally in the blood for me. I\’m a hardcore history buff, and I\’m fascinated by history of any kind. I majored in history at university, and I\’m a history teacher by trade, although I packed it in very early on (almost thirty years ago) to become a DJ (more fun than teaching, and…

  • Fanzines – Creative Genius at the Grass Roots (Part Three)

    In my previous two posts, I\’ve talked about my general experiences with, and thoughts on, fanzines. Now I\’ll share a few more specific thoughts about the actual zines that I\’ve come across over the years. The earliest zines that I collected date from the 1970s and early 1980s, and were mostly based around SF literature…

  • In the Beginning… My Earliest Days on the Internet (Part One)

    I\’ve been online for a long time now, almost twenty years, in fact. My love affair with the internet started when I first came online on Christmas morning, December 1995, and has continued ever since. I can now barely remember what life was like before the internet, and it\’s so much part of my daily…

  • It’s a Geek\’s Life… (Part Two)

    The Golden Years – Geek Nirvana During the Seventies [T]he start of our teenage years is the sweet spot for the vast majority of us, particularly geeks, the beginning of what is probably the most fondly remembered period of our lives. It\’s long enough ago that most of our memories are fond, rosy ones, but…