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Sci-Fi

Co-Creator of the First Star Trek Convention Has Died (file770.com) 26

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shared this report from the Hugo award-winning science fiction fanzine File 770: North Bellmore, New York fan Elyse Rosenstein, 69, died suddenly on February 20th. She had been undergoing rehabilitation after suffering a broken leg. At the time of her death, she was a retired secondary school science teacher. With Joyce Yasner, Joan Winston, Linda Deneroff and Devra Langsam, she organized the very first Star Trek convention, held in New York City in 1972. The convention was not only the very first media convention, it was also the biggest science fiction convention to date by a considerable margin...

At the time, Star Trek fans were often looked down on by many science fiction fans, who were more into books and magazines than TV shows. The pair hoped that a convention specifically geared towards Star Trek would do a lot to bring fans together. The rest, as they say, is fan history....

Elyse Rosenstein had a BS in physics and math, and an MS in physics, and taught science for more than two decades. She was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Long Island Physics Teachers Association...

She was nicknamed "The Screaming Yellow Zonker" by Isaac Asimov.

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Co-Creator of the First Star Trek Convention Has Died

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  • But my father thought it was stupid
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday February 22, 2020 @01:45PM (#59754728)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday February 22, 2020 @02:17PM (#59754788) Homepage Journal

    Which was largely manufactured by critics and backlash to critics. I started reading sci-fi in the early 70s while people were still talking about it. It wasn't just Star Trek; there was a lot of critical bile directed at Golden Age Campbellian authors, like Damon Knight's infamous savaging of A.E. Van Vogt.

    The thing is, it was really a pretty shallow controversy. Most fans appreciated the craft and sophistication that writers like Harlan Ellison brought to science fiction, but they never stopped reading and enjoying the Good Old Stuff. You'd have to be dense not to recognize that Damon Knight was a more skillful writer than A.E. Van Vogt, but that doesn't mean you have to like everything Knight wrote and hate everything Van Vogt wrote.

    Some people are suckers for controversy. If someone announces a turd fight they can't help themselves; they've got to pick a side and start throwing shit at people for enjoying the wrong things. Star Trek fans were particularly vulnerable. Not every episode of TOS was exactly a work of genius, so there was plenty of ammo, and the whole Otaku phenomenon didn't even have a name yet, it was just weird.

    • I know “New Wave” was a style of alternative rock from the past century... but I’m guessing that’s not what you’re referring to.

      • most "new waves" are referring to the french film movement [wikipedia.org], either directly or indirectly, and with varying degrees of fidelity. similar to the french film movement, the science fiction new wave [wikipedia.org] adopted experimental styles, an awareness of social issues, and a partial rejection of what was considered "hard" science fiction.

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        Both take their name from iconoclastic 1950s French "New Wave" cinema. New Wave sci-fi is one of those terms that people use to oversimplify a whole bunch of trends happening at the same time, consequently writers who really didn't see eye to eye with each other get lumped into the same category (e.g. Joanna Russ and Ursula Le Guin).

        Any great story transcends its own time. People trace the roots of New Wave back to Alfred Bester's *The Stars My Destination*, but that is story people will still be reading a

    • The urge to ostracize males in the lower quartile is strong in humans and takes many forms. We know in our bones that they're unfit people must be cast out, but we do not know why.
  • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

    She was nicknamed "The Screaming Yellow Zonker" by Isaac Asimov.

    Seems like an odd way to end the summary. Would have been nice to get a sentence or two explanation of the nickname.

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