Legacy Volume 4
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Legacy Volume 4 Contact Jenna at
kszines@aol.com if you want to order two, three, or four zines to obtain a
price.
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Want to read some of the zine before you decide whether to buy it? Sort of like
picking up a book in the bookstore and flipping through the pages, it's a good
way to discover if this zine is the right one for you. Just click on the links
below to be transported into the special K/S world created by that particular
author….
ON
THE EDGE by Patricia Roe
T’HY’LA
by Diegina
STORM
by Anna S. Greener
ARTICLES (A SAMPLE)
ZINES: 1991 TO 1995 PUBLISHER BY PUBLISHER by Jenna Sinclair
THE INTERNET: SLASHCITY: HOSTING K/S ONLINE by Lyrastar
CONVENTIONS: ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? PUTTING ON A K/S CONVENTION
From On the
Edge by Patricia Roe
Organia was just another backwater planet, caught in the crossfire of a conflict
between the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets. The starship
Enterprise had orders to prevent the Klingons from using the planet as a base
and the captain and first officer transported down to offer the inhabitants
Federation protection. A Klingon occupational force had established itself with
ease, facing no opposition whatsoever from the curiously disinterested
inhabitants and Kirk and Spock were forced to pose as Organian citizens to avoid
capture. But Military Governor Kor was suspicious of a “Vulcan trader’s”
presence and Spock was subjected to the mindsifter to find out if he was who he
said.
Spock had been able to resist the probe and was released, but Kor had not
exaggerated in his graphic description of the effects of the mindsifter. Later,
as Kirk outlined his plans to sabotage the munitions depot that night, Spock
stumbled on the uneven stone steps leading up from the Organian street. Kirk
reflexively reached out to help him.
“Spock! Are you all right?” Only then did he notice with alarm how pale and
strained the Vulcan’s face was. “You need to rest, my friend,” he said softly,
and looked from side to side around the archways and covered areas leading off
from the top of the steps, searching for a refuge.
“I assure you, I am unharmed….”
But the Vulcan’s feeble attempt at offering reassurance was unconvincing even to
himself, and made absolutely no impression on Kirk.
“Am I going to have to make that an order, mister?”
The gentle smile in the concerned eyes tugged at something indefinable deep
within Spock, an occurrence he was experiencing quite often of late. The human
was still holding him, he noticed, and that fact, as well as the actual touch,
comforted him more than he cared to admit. He nodded in acquiescence.
“A period of respite would be welcome,” he conceded, and Kirk grinned, at last
releasing his arm with an unconscious squeeze. That also was becoming a frequent
occurrence, Spock thought.
They found an unused room, little more than a storage area, littered with torn,
dirty sacks, the remains of their contents scattered about the stony floor. Kirk
wrinkled his nose at the unpleasant odour of rotting vegetables, and gathered
some of the sacks into a heap in one corner.
He helped Spock as he sank down onto the makeshift bed without protest, and
grinned affectionately. “It’s not much, but it’s home!”
“Yes, Jim,” Spock murmured almost inaudibly.
Such were the effects of the mindsifter that he drifted off into exhausted sleep
almost immediately, his last thought being that “home” was quite simply anywhere
that he and Jim were together.
Kirk stood watching his friend; it was not like Spock to give in to his
ministrations without protest, and he was worried. No, it was more than that—another
emotion was at play here.
He turned away for a moment, then crossed to the chest-height barred window on
the far wall, and looked down into the street below. Dusk was settling and there
were only a few peasants left on the street now, hurrying back to their homes as
curfew approached. The distinctive guttural sound of Klingon voices wafted up
from the tavern across the street, and he felt a twist of anger at what these
creatures had done to this peaceful society. And what they had done to Spock.
From T’hy’la by
Diegina
Outside, it was raining. But that was nothing unusual for this region in October.
The ambient temperature was quite pleasant, almost fifteen degrees Celsius, but
a man had to be properly clothed, not to mention a certain Vulcan.
Kirk and Spock were sitting at a bench on the porch of their rented log cabin,
watching the rain falling down on the surrounding forest, listening to its
gentle whispers and breathing its pleasant humid scent.
A sharp long whistle sounded from the cabin, disturbing the quiet peace of
nature. Kirk hurried inside. After a while he returned with two steaming mugs.
One contained his coffee and the other was filled with Spock’s favorite herbal
tea.
“Here you are,” he handed it to the Vulcan, who accepted it gratefully.
“Jim, I have checked the weather forecast for this region for the following week.
It is…” he searched for a not so emotional expression for ‘miserable’, “less
than optimistic.”
Kirk smiled. “Do you mean it will be cold, cloudy, raining and windy?”
“More or less,” he agreed. “Such weather does not allow us to accomplish our
plans without being wet and muddy all the time.”
“Oh, c’mon, Spock! Haven’t you got a small amount of woodsman’s spirit in you?”
A raised eyebrow was the answer. “Woodsman’s spirit? I have spent most of my
life on either a spaceship or a planet where there were neither woods nor
forests. But even if that were not so, I could hardly possess a spirit, not to
mention its part. But if you consider the word ‘spirit’ as a synonym of ‘katra’,
or—”
“No, I don’t,” Kirk cut in. A heartbeat later he realized Spock was teasing him.
Actually, he didn’t, because Vulcans never teased. He decided to return to the
previous topic. “It seems we’re going nowhere today. It’s going to get dark soon.
But tomorrow, if it isn’t raining too much, we could take a look around here. I
know a few places where deer go to feed. I hope it hasn’t changed since my last
visit.”
Spock had nothing to say about it. Most of the behavior of Terran wood animals
that lived in temperate zones were unknown to him. Maybe that was one of the
reasons why he had agreed to this recreation—to improve his knowledge by direct
observation. But for now it seemed he would be more acquainted with the calming,
almost hypnotic influences of the whispering rain, tree crowns, and falling
leaves.
After a long moment he looked at Jim sitting next to him, who was evidently
almost completely calmed by them. His legs were stretched out, the mug with
still more than half of the coffee rested in his lap, his head bent backward,
and he leaned against the wall of the cabin, eyes closed. At first sight it
seemed he had fallen asleep, but Spock knew by the rhythm of Jim’s breath that
he was just resting. He decided to not disturb him. Quietly he stood up and went
into the cabin. He would use the time slightly more productively. Yesterday, a
small packet had been delivered to him, and he still had had no time to open it.
He pulled the packet out of his baggage, and returned to the porch; there was
better light there.
At first, Kirk didn’t pay too much attention to the rustle beside him. But
later, he gave into his curiosity and looked at Spock to see what was going on.
His glance fell down to a book hardcovered in dark-brown leather with a golden
font. Then he saw Spock’s eyebrow climbing up to the heights.
“T’hy’la?” He was confused by the title of the book.
“Oh, God!! So that crazy dame sent it to you, too!”
From Storm by Anna S. Greener
It’s hot...so hot that I wish I could crawl out of my skin like a snake. My
hair has been cut very short and all I am wearing is a pair of old, blue
shorts, but sweat is still rolling down my face and stinging my eyes and
making the backs of my legs stick to the porch swing.
Gray Gram is inside, in the kitchen, baking cookies. It’s even hotter in there.
I hope she doesn’t melt. I asked if I could help her, but she said that baking
cookies was women’s work, so now I’m out here, waiting.
The swing is big enough for two, but I am all alone. A long time ago, before I
was born, my father painted the swing green. Some of his green paint is
peeling; underneath you can see other colors—gray and white and pink. In some
places you can see right down to the bare wood. When I stand up, there will be
little bits of paint stuck all over my legs. If Gray Gram sees them she’ll
make me take a bath. But that’s all right: the water will feel all cool and
nice and after I’m done with my bath I’ll eat supper with Gray Gram and then
I’ll go to my room and pick out a book. I have a lot of books—old books, real
books. They belonged to Gray Gram’s mother. I’ll lie on my bed, reading, until
Gray Gram says it’s time to sleep. Then I’ll turn out the lights and think
very hard about what I’ve just read so that I’ll dream about it when I fall
asleep. I like to read and I like to dream.
I stretch out my legs until my bare toes touch the porch floor, and then I
give the swing a push, making it sway back and forth. I wish my legs were
longer. If they were, it would be easier to make the swing go.
One day last year when Gray Gram was over at our neighbor’s house, my brother
showed me how to make the swing really fly. You stand up and stretch out your
arms and grab hold of the chains, and then you pump your knees up and down. If
you work at this long and hard enough, you and the swing will go up so high
that you will almost touch the porch ceiling. For just a second, you will feel
as if you are stuck up there, as if you are not moving at all. Then down you
will come, right back to the place where you started. But you won’t stop there.
You and the swing will keep on going, zooming backward until you shoot out
over the porch railing, scaring the chickens that are pecking around in the
yard below you. Then comes the best part of the ride, when you swing forward
again, with the wind stinging your face, making your eyes water. It’s hard to
breathe when that happens, and your stomach feels all funny too, the way it
does when you’re in one of those turbolifts they have in the city.
That’s where my brother is now—in the city, at school. He’s staying there this
summer. He told Gray Gram that he wanted to take extra classes so he could
learn more about plants and animals, and I guess that was the truth because he
does love plants and animals. But I know that he had another reason. I know
that he stayed at school because he doesn’t like it when Gray Gram yells at
him.
When she yells at him, I don’t like it either. It makes me feel sad. But I
wouldn’t mind listening to the yelling if it meant my brother could be here
with me. I miss him, and I miss the things we do when we’re together. I want,
right now, to stand up and grab the chains and pump my knees until the old
swing creaks and groans, soaring higher and higher. Flying like that would
make me feel a lot better. But Gray Gram doesn’t like it when I make the swing
go that high, and I don’t want her to yell at me the way she yells at my
brother. I want her to be happy. So I just keep swaying back and forth, barely
moving through the hot, still air. But while I am swaying I pretend that my
brother is here with me, that we are flying on the swing together, that the
ceiling is zooming up at us and the scared chickens are running around beneath
our feet and the wind is stinging our eyes and our stomachs are flip-flopping
and we are both laughing so hard that our sides are starting to hurt.
I play this game of pretending until I hear Gray Gram’s footsteps coming
closer and closer. I can always tell when she’s walking because she wears loud
shoes. I hear her clomping through the house and then the screen door opens
and she comes out onto the porch.
All of a sudden I feel so sad I want to cry. I feel as if Gray Gram is not
really here at all, as if she went away a long time ago, far away, even
farther than Mom and Dad—too far to ever come back. I want to jump up and hug
her, but I’m afraid that if I touch her she’ll disappear. I guess that’s silly.
Gray Gram isn’t going to disappear. She’s standing right in front of me,
holding our afternoon snack on a tray. Her face is pink from the heat; she’s
wearing a blue dress that matches her eyes and a white apron that matches her
hair. She looks all cheery and nice—there is nothing gray about her. “Gray
Gram” is just a name my brother gave her when he was a baby. He couldn’t say
“Great,” so he called her “Gray” instead.
“Hello, Bear,” Gray Gram says and then she smiles at me and I feel happy and I
don’t mind so much that my brother isn’t here. She sets the tray on the table
by the swing, then leans down to touch my damp face. Her skin is rough, but I
like the way it feels. “You’re so hot,” she says. “This is bad weather—tornado
weather. But I have something that will cool you off.” She pours lemonade into
a glass and hands it to me.
“Mom says you should get shields, and then you wouldn’t have to worry about
tornadoes,” I say.
Gray Gram’s face darkens. “Shields,” she says, spitting out the word as if it
made a bad taste in her mouth. “I don’t need them and I don’t want them.
Storms make you stronger. Our family has weathered plenty of them and come out
the other side all the better for it.”
She hands me a big, round, white cookie, still warm from the oven. There’s a
little girl’s face painted on it in icing. The little girl has blue eyes, pink
lips, and curly yellow hair. I take a big bite of the cookie. It tastes all
sweet and buttery in my mouth.
“How do storms make us better?” I ask.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she says.
I chew up my bite of cookie, drink some of my lemonade, and ask again. “The
storms—how do they make us better?”
“By testing us,” she says.
“You mean like the tests they give in school?”
She pours herself a glass of lemonade and sits down beside me. “The tests they
give in school are important, but I was talking about a different kind of
test. When something bad happens to you—like a storm or an illness—that’s when
you find out what you’re really made of. That’s when you learn what matters to
you most and whether you have the strength to fight for it. Without that sort
of test, you can never really get to know yourself. Your great-grandfather
used to say that a life that’s too comfortable is the hardest life of all. Do
you understand, Bear?”
I think I do, sort of, but I can’t say “yes” because my mouth is full again,
so I just nod at her and keep on chewing.
“Are you afraid of the storms?” she asks me.
I shake my head.
“Then why do you want shields?”
“I don’t know,” I say, shrugging. “To please Mom, I guess. She’s wanted
shields ever since that time when we had the bad storm and the wind blew the
roof off the chicken coop and the lightning cracked the old oak tree right in
half.”
Talking about Mom makes me feel sad.
“You miss your father and mother, don’t you?” Gray Gram asks.
“Yes,” I say. “They’re not coming home for a long time. Not for the whole
summer, or the fall. They won’t even be here for Christmas.”
“I know,” she says, putting her arm around me. “And I’m sorry about that. But
your brother will be home for Christmas.”
“That’s a long time from now.”
“Well, I’m here right now and I won’t leave you.”
“I won’t leave you either. I love you, Gray Gram.”
“And I love you, Bear,” she says.
After that, we sit there together without saying anything at all. We both
drink our lemonade, and I take more bites from my cookie. I keep drinking and
eating until my glass is empty and the little yellow-haired girl is all chewed
up and swallowed.
“You shouldn’t eat so fast,” Gray Gram says. She sets her own half-full glass
back on the table, then takes my empty glass and places it beside hers,
managing all the while to keep her arm around my shoulders. Her skin feels hot
and sweaty against my neck, but I don’t mind.
We stay that way for a long time, watching the air go all golden around us as
the sun sinks lower in the sky. I think about how the sun is a star, and that
makes me think of all the other stars. “I wonder what it’s like out there,
where Mom and Dad are,” I say. “I wonder where they are right now—exactly, I
mean.”
Gray Gram doesn’t say anything at all. She just starts to hum, way back in her
throat. It’s an old tune, one of her favorites—a hymn from long ago, before
the Last War. Her feet, in their clompy shoes, push against the floor, gently
rocking the swing. I sit there beside her, thinking about my parents while my
eyelids get heavier and heavier.
“Lie down, Bear,” Gray Gram says.
I curl up on my side with my head in her lap. She strokes her fingers through
the short spikes of my hair. It feels nice. I have to fight to stay awake. I
don’t want to take a nap—naps are for babies. But Gray Gram’s lap is soft, and
the swing is moving back and forth, back and forth, matching the rhythm of her
humming, and soon my eyes just won’t stay open....
¤¤¤¤
The first thing I’m aware of when I wake up is a soft, reassuring hum. For a
moment, I think that I’m still lying on that old swing with my head pillowed
on my great-grandmother’s lap and the sound of her voice in my ears. Then I
realize that no human voice could make the sound I am hearing; it’s the drone
of a warp drive—the song of a starship. My starship. The Enterprise.
I open my eyes and see that I’m in sickbay. The lights are dimmed. That means
it’s gamma shift. I don’t remember how I got here. My head is pounding and I
can feel the tickling pressure of an IV pack against the inside of my left
elbow. What the devil has happened to me?
From Zines: 1991 to 1995 Publisher by Publisher by Jenna Sinclair
During the years from 1991 to 1995, one hundred and twenty-one K/S zines were
published. This is an approximate figure, because sometimes it’s a little
difficult to know how to categorize a zine. I mean, is “Thief” by DVS a zine
even though it was published as a stand-alone long story? And what about Off
the Wall 1 and Too, and Twilight Trek 2, all of which have mixed gen and K/S
offerings, but are published by a K/S publisher? So, take these figures with a
grain of salt. But as an old boyfriend of mine used to say, “It’s close enough
for government work.”
Of those one hundred and twenty-one zines, the majority of them were published
by editors/publishers/presses that had lots of experience in presenting K/S to
fans. Here’s the breakdown:
PUBLISHER # OF ZINES 1991-95
Daphne G. 2
Emily Adams 3
Firetrine 8
Jumping Dik-Bat Press 1
Kathleen Resch 9
Marian Flanders & Emily Adams 6
Merry Men Press 32
Mkashef Enterprises 5
Pon Farr Press 19
Village Press 2
Wendy R. 9
Sub-total: 96
Everybody Else: 25
Total: 121 zines
The rest of the 25 K/S zines from that five year period were published by
individuals, or presses that concentrated on other types of fan literature, or
presses that published infrequently. For example, Dorothy Laoang brought out
Amazing Grace 2 in 1992, her only zine during that five year period, but she
also gave fandom Amazing Grace 3 in 1996, and Amazing Grace Special Edition:
The Best of the ‘Net in 1998, and Amazing Grace 4 in 2000.
I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the more active
publishers from 1991 to 1995. Let’s start with Merry Men Press.
From
The Internet: Slashcity: Hosting K/S Online by Lyrastar
“Oh, give me a home, where the Kirk and Spock roam….”
Where does K/S go when it goes online? Everything has to be somewhere, right?
Where is it between your monitor and your printer?
Yes, it goes to some ultimate computer not in the sky, but right here on earth
with laws and regulations, where copyright owners monitor for improper use.
Even now that K/Sers and Paramount have settled into a comfortable accord, the
owners of servers hosting Web sites may not know what is fair game to present
on a fan site. It was not uncommon, and depending on the host and their terms
of service, it still isn’t, for a Web host to refuse to maintain derivative
material or adult content. Having had personal experience with K/S site
deletion in 2005, your humble Internet editor can assure you that it is still
a concern.
This is what Robin S., of SlashCity Web hosting, has to say, “Hosts follow a
delete first policy when it comes to most complaints, be they about copyright
infringement, prohibited adult material, or other prohibited or questionable
material. Most hosts provide their services to large numbers of clients and
rely on volume for their income. They don’t have the staff or the inclination
to investigate complaints for validity. One or two sites a month lost to
possibly prohibited content is not a big deal to them, and they’d rather lose
a few customers here and there rather than take the time and expense to have
staff look into claims.”
From Conventions: Are You Out of Your Mind? Putting on a K/S Convention
Not everyone has been lucky enough to attend a K/S or even a Star Trek
convention, but those who have might wonder at the motivations of those who
come up with the idea to make a K/S convention happen. So the Legacy editors
thought it might be interesting to interview four intrepid fans who hosted K/S
conventions, in an attempt to get a feel for what those cons were like. Please
welcome: Dovya Blacque, who was one of three who hosted the two
Koon-ut-Cali-Cons; Liz W., who put on three K/S Connections; Rosemary W., who
has hosted eight Closet Cons so far; and Jenna Sinclair, who put on three
KiScons.
Why did you decide to host a convention?
DOVYA: Because we were certifiably insane. All I remember is sitting
around one night and the subject of doing a con coming up. Then the perfect
name for the con was suggested and we just went forward with it. Alexis had
run conventions in the early 1970s when she lived in Miami. Natasha had run
local San Diego high school Trek club cons in the 1970s. I was an utter
innocent. Really. Seriously, I’d never run a con before.
LIZ: I decided to do it because I wanted to go to a K/S con in the UK—totally
selfish. If I wanted to go, then I had to run it myself, as no one else was
doing so at the time. I also ran it because I wanted to know how much interest
in K/S there was in the UK. I discussed it a lot with my two best UK K/S
buddies and they were supportive. Even though we could count the K/S fans in
the UK that we knew of on the fingers of one hand, we decided to see who would
come out the woodwork. Besides which, I had seen the film of Wayne’s World and
what is it he says? “If you build it, they will come”—well they did! I didn’t
know I could do it—but I figured if other people could, so could I. I knew
about the nitty gritty from helping with Red Rose Cons, and I had a good model
for my ideal K/S con from visiting Jenna’s KiScon in the US.
ROSEMARY: In 1987 no one had run a K/S con before and from people we
met at “official” cons, we knew there was a ‘market’ for a K/S con. K/S had
been ‘going’ in the UK since the beginning and some of the earliest K/S was
written in the UK. Janet H. had run a writers’ workshop in 1982, which was
eagerly attended and was predominantly K/S. She decided for technical reasons
not to run another and so that left a gap!
JENNA: I was flying home from Shore Leave, happy that I’d had such a
good time, that it had worked so well, but sad that I wouldn’t be seeing these
people again for a whole year. I was also a little frustrated that there
hadn’t been even more interaction among the K/S crowd: I could never get
enough conversation or enough company with such wonderful people I’d met
through K/S fandom.
So…. I distinctly remember the moment on the airplane, sitting there and
asking myself: why couldn’t there be an all-K/S convention? And why couldn’t I
be the one to make it happen? I knew there had been all-K/S cons in the past.
I’d heard about the IDICons, the CaliCons. And most importantly…. I’d attended
one Closet Con, was going to be flying to another one soon.
I think that was really the most important element: I’d seen what Rosemary did
with her convention. I knew it was possible to put it together, and I had seen
the nuts and bolts of it. She put on a great gathering! If I hadn’t actually
attended Closet, I doubt very much that I would have had the courage to ever
attempt a KiScon, but I had a very excellent example in front of me for
encouragement.
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