Robyn Russell
I got an unexpected e-mail last Friday titled, "I'm Visiting Toronto- Alert the Media!". Now, in a year where Toronto is hosting both the Science Fiction WorldCon in August and The Gathering of The Fellowship in December such a letter in my e-mail would not be too unusual. What was unusual was who the letter was from. It seems that after knowing each other for twenty years Robyn Russell and I are going to have a chance to finally meet face-to-face in December.
So, who is Robyn Russell? Let's go back some twenty years, no, wait, let's go back thirty...
I discovered "Star Trek" when I was 13. My family had just moved from the small town of Dunnville to the city of Hamilton, so maybe it's because we suddenly had new TV channels, maybe it was because I was shy making new friends or maybe it was because I was just discovering written science fiction in a big way, but I connected with Trek in a way I've never connected with a TV series before or since. Naturally, being the early 70's, there was only one Trek series, but I watched those episodes again and again and I read all the Trek books and novels religiously. Though I knew that ST was becoming an increasing fan phenomenon around the world, that was something I was pretty much separate from. I didn't have any friends who liked Star Trek and it was a hobby I pretty much kept to myself through high school because it was considered "weird".
Not having any Trekker friends and being in a world (gasp!) where the Internet didn't yet put me a mouse click away from kindred spirits I looked farther afield for fellow Star Trek fans. I started buying Star Trek magasines and eventually discovered fanzines, books of Trek stories and poetry lovingly created by fans and sold through the mail from their homes. One fanzine I read regularly was "Universal Translator", which was pretty much a catalogue for other fans to advertise the fanzines they had for sale.
"Universal Translator" also had a letter column and people often wrote looking for fellow fans to start up penpal friendships. One of those people was Robyn Russell. It must have been around 1982, when I was still in university, because Robyn wrote to "Universal Translator" saying she was looking for a penpal who liked the character of Saavik from the new Trek movie, "The Wrath of Khan". Well, I had loved "The Wrath of Khan" and it still holds the record for the movie I saw the most times in the theatre, eight times ("Fellowship of The Ring" would tie that record in 2002). I had also really been intrigued by Kirstie Alley's portrayal of Saavik, as well as Vonda McIntyre's portrayal of the character in her novelization.
So, I sent a letter off to Robyn. To show how poor my geography was, when I addressed the envelope to "Fairbanks, AK." I thought the letter was going to Arkansas :). It was only few weeks later when Robyn's first reply came back to me that I realized my new penpal was in Alaska. Robyn and I hit it off right away and we started zipping letters back and forth between Fairbanks and Toronto, where I was going to teacher's college. The correspondance also followed me to Markham, where I lived during my first year of teaching. We'd exchange gifts and photographs and long, long letters. Robyn helped run a Star Trek club in Alaska and she edited a fanzine of her own, so sometimes I would submit songs and poetry to her.
During my first year of teaching getting a fat letter from Robyn was always an event. Again, it was an adjustment year in my life, being that I'd just moved to Markham to start teaching and I didn't know many people and I wasn't socializing much. It was always fun to sit with one of Robyn's letters and scribble pages back to her in reply. For a couple of years we exchanged letters every month or two. We'd often talk about how cool it would be if I could visit Fairbanks or if Robyn could visit Toronto, but that never happened.
As such correspondences often do, our letters got less and less frequent after a few years, but we did end up in touch again a few years ago on-line and we caught up on our lives again. It's been a few years, though, since we wrote last.
It was great, then, to get a letter from Robyn last week. Seems Robyn and a friend had decided to come to Toronto this December to attend "The Gathering of the Fellowship" (which is interesting because I always remember Robyn as my Star Trek penpal and I don't remember us talking Tolkien much). Anyway, she went to the main Gathering website to get information and it was there she learned that Urban Tapestry is going to be performing at the con. Looking at Debbie's UT cartoons on the website she said, "Hey, I -recognize- that red-haired Elf!" :).
Which leads us back to her last e-mail to me, "I'm visiting Toronto- Alert the media!". I'm totally delighted :). It will be great to finally meet Robyn after all these years. The Gathering was already building up to be one of the coolest events of the year and this meeting will just be icing on the cake.
Robyn, my old friend, it should be an event to remember!
So, who is Robyn Russell? Let's go back some twenty years, no, wait, let's go back thirty...
I discovered "Star Trek" when I was 13. My family had just moved from the small town of Dunnville to the city of Hamilton, so maybe it's because we suddenly had new TV channels, maybe it was because I was shy making new friends or maybe it was because I was just discovering written science fiction in a big way, but I connected with Trek in a way I've never connected with a TV series before or since. Naturally, being the early 70's, there was only one Trek series, but I watched those episodes again and again and I read all the Trek books and novels religiously. Though I knew that ST was becoming an increasing fan phenomenon around the world, that was something I was pretty much separate from. I didn't have any friends who liked Star Trek and it was a hobby I pretty much kept to myself through high school because it was considered "weird".
Not having any Trekker friends and being in a world (gasp!) where the Internet didn't yet put me a mouse click away from kindred spirits I looked farther afield for fellow Star Trek fans. I started buying Star Trek magasines and eventually discovered fanzines, books of Trek stories and poetry lovingly created by fans and sold through the mail from their homes. One fanzine I read regularly was "Universal Translator", which was pretty much a catalogue for other fans to advertise the fanzines they had for sale.
"Universal Translator" also had a letter column and people often wrote looking for fellow fans to start up penpal friendships. One of those people was Robyn Russell. It must have been around 1982, when I was still in university, because Robyn wrote to "Universal Translator" saying she was looking for a penpal who liked the character of Saavik from the new Trek movie, "The Wrath of Khan". Well, I had loved "The Wrath of Khan" and it still holds the record for the movie I saw the most times in the theatre, eight times ("Fellowship of The Ring" would tie that record in 2002). I had also really been intrigued by Kirstie Alley's portrayal of Saavik, as well as Vonda McIntyre's portrayal of the character in her novelization.
So, I sent a letter off to Robyn. To show how poor my geography was, when I addressed the envelope to "Fairbanks, AK." I thought the letter was going to Arkansas :). It was only few weeks later when Robyn's first reply came back to me that I realized my new penpal was in Alaska. Robyn and I hit it off right away and we started zipping letters back and forth between Fairbanks and Toronto, where I was going to teacher's college. The correspondance also followed me to Markham, where I lived during my first year of teaching. We'd exchange gifts and photographs and long, long letters. Robyn helped run a Star Trek club in Alaska and she edited a fanzine of her own, so sometimes I would submit songs and poetry to her.
During my first year of teaching getting a fat letter from Robyn was always an event. Again, it was an adjustment year in my life, being that I'd just moved to Markham to start teaching and I didn't know many people and I wasn't socializing much. It was always fun to sit with one of Robyn's letters and scribble pages back to her in reply. For a couple of years we exchanged letters every month or two. We'd often talk about how cool it would be if I could visit Fairbanks or if Robyn could visit Toronto, but that never happened.
As such correspondences often do, our letters got less and less frequent after a few years, but we did end up in touch again a few years ago on-line and we caught up on our lives again. It's been a few years, though, since we wrote last.
It was great, then, to get a letter from Robyn last week. Seems Robyn and a friend had decided to come to Toronto this December to attend "The Gathering of the Fellowship" (which is interesting because I always remember Robyn as my Star Trek penpal and I don't remember us talking Tolkien much). Anyway, she went to the main Gathering website to get information and it was there she learned that Urban Tapestry is going to be performing at the con. Looking at Debbie's UT cartoons on the website she said, "Hey, I -recognize- that red-haired Elf!" :).
Which leads us back to her last e-mail to me, "I'm visiting Toronto- Alert the media!". I'm totally delighted :). It will be great to finally meet Robyn after all these years. The Gathering was already building up to be one of the coolest events of the year and this meeting will just be icing on the cake.
Robyn, my old friend, it should be an event to remember!