I had a local science fiction/space exploration club since 1970, and we did the usual club things: monthly meetings; outings such as picnics, visits to science museums, etc., as well as Halloween parties, Christmas parties, and other events.
From 1977 through 1980, things got more dramatic, or what I called the “turbulent years.”
In 1977, a girl joined our club who sold cosmetics and tried to use the club to increase sales. After she tried to push her products too much, and after a few warnings to her, we voted her out. This was the first time we had to vote someone out.
In 1978, we had a new member who proved to be too full of himself to the point of making other members feel uncomfortable. I warned him a few times about it, but to no avail, so we voted him out as well.
However, unlike the woman from the previous year, he didn’t leave the club quietly after we paid him back his dues. He instead wrote to different sources about our club, and I started receiving letters from different people and groups in science fiction. Somebody even sent a copy of his letter that showed his lack of English 101.
Later the letters stopped after I had to write a letter explaining my point-of-view. I photocopied the letter and sent it to the people who wrote to me. Then, I received some letters and cards of sympathy from many of those same people, but his letters stopped.
For 1979, I have been writing for a few years to a person who ran a Star Trek (ST) correspondence club after I joined that club. I told him about my club.
Later, I met him at a ST convention (con). He seamed nice at first. Then when he treated me to lunch, he made a pass at me. When I turned him down, he had the nerve to ask me why I turned him down. After I told him that I didn’t go to the con for that activity, he asked me why did I think he treated me to lunch!
This place was a fast food burger joint. So I paid him back the $5 dollars my lunch cost, and he took the money.|
I went back to the ST con where he later spotted me, paid me back my $5 and apologized to me.
I saw him a few more times when he visited near where I lived and at another ST con. During those times he proved to be a bigger jerk with my friends and me.
He only started his club for his own personal gain and even suggested that my club should be a chapter of his club. (I did put this to a vote to my club, but I wasn’t surprised when my club voted against it. We were a general science fiction/space exploration club, while his was a ST club.)
By the end of 1979, he sent a letter with a list of members who were no longer assets to his club, and I wasn’t surprised to see my name on there. I didn’t care because I was leaving his club anyway, but I noticed that one of the people on the list was the person that we voted out of our club the year before. This was the same person who was full of himself.
Then about a month later, I received a copy of the letter that this former member of both mine and the correspondence club wrote about the correspondence ST club. It had the same lack of English 101 in it, but the only difference was that he didn’t sign his name. He kept it anonymous but it didn’t fool me or some other people he wrote to the year before about my club.
Anyway, the worst year was 1980, but I have to back up on the story a bit because back in December 1979 ST: The Motion Picture premiered, and the officers of my club and I started recruiting for new members. I had a list of local people who had been in touch with the ST Welcommittee, and the Welcommittee gave me a list of those people.
Because I looked for the easy way to do things, I preferred to phone people if I could get their phone number. (If I couldn’t, I’d write to them.) Then I saw a number under Joe S. When I called and asked for him, a woman said. “I’m his wife! What do you want with him?”
| Therefore, I stated my business, and she replied, “You should be talking to me. I don’t know why his name is listed.”
After I assured her that I’ll ask for her in the future, she told me about her life in ST fandom and about being kicked out of a ST club. Then she went on blasting that club and especially about a member named Pat. She then said that she would show up at my meeting with her friend Bridget. Later she went on to say how stupid her friend was.
I know that I should have seen red flags, but at that time I was just dismissed from that correspondence ST club, and I felt a bit of sympathy for her even if I thought she spoke a bit harshly about her friend.
When she and her friend showed up at a meeting, she explained that she was always suspicious whenever a woman asked for her husband. She then told us more about her being thrown out of that ST club and also about Pat.
As she went to more meetings, she invited more and more people who seemed to be more into media science fiction and fantasy, and in the future they and she would like to turn the club into a business. She said that most of them and her wanted to have dealers tables at cons and sell by mail order. Of course, she tended to monopolize the meetings when she could, and put her friend, Bridget, down at the meetings that Bridget didn’t attend.
By Summer, Carol, one of my members, and I had lunch and she warned me about this person, Gina, and that maybe I should get in touch with the people who ran the club that Gina got kicked out of.
I informed Carol that those people in that club didn’t have to tell me anything if they didn’t want to, but Carol said it was worth a try.
These two people were Tina and Mary. So one night I phoned them. Tina was out but Mary talked to me.
After I explained why I was calling, Mary told me that Gina was voted out of the club: not thrown out of the club. Mary said that Gina tended to monopolize conversations, and if people didn’t agree with most of what she said, her favorite comment was, “You are not as broad minded about this as me.”
Mary then mentioned that the main purpose of the club was putting together fanzines, and Gina submitted some artwork and poetry.
However, if someone suggested a single change on Gina's work, she took offense and would withdraw her submissions. Mary said that Gina was especially nasty to a member named Pat. It got so bad that the only members that got along with Gina were Tina and her (Mary).
So the club had a meeting without Pat and Gina.
According to Mary, Pat got along with everybody but Gina. Meanwhile Gina only got along with two people. So guess who got voted out?
Mary and Tina were aware that Gina was talking about their club, but they didn’t know the extent of it until I phoned that night.
Finally, Mary warned me to be careful when dealing with Gina.
Later, I got a letter from Tina saying that she was sorry to hear about Gina knocking her (Tina’s) club, but she was also glad I phoned and got the other side of the story.
Nevertheless, when I told Carol about what I heard regarding Gina, Carol suggested that we keep it to ourselves. I didn’t know what made Carol change her mind, but for the moment I heeded her advice.
At the next meeting, Gina was just as loud, complaining, and monopolizing things as before. So after the meeting, the officers and I suggested that we should break away and have our meetings at Maureen’s house in Philadelphia because most of the older members (pre-Gina) lived on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. This way, with her own club, Gina and her friends could be free to run their business and have a mostly media science fiction and fantasy club.
We wrote up our new club agenda and presented it at the next club meeting, and I’m glad we made copies of this idea because we couldn’t get much in the way of words to Gina. So we left that meeting at Carol’s house—and so did many of the other original members. As one of the original members explained “This is supposed to be a hobby. We have enough business at our jobs.” Plus, our club mostly covered many kinds of science fiction and space exploration—not just media science fiction, and not any fantasy.
Since 1981, our club met in Philadelphia for a few years. Later, in the mid-1980s, many of us went our separate ways, and others took over the club in a peaceful way: like I had hoped to get in 1980, but didn’t. I am still friends with the members of this club to this very day.
