Fifteen Years
by Michael Lee

Today is a day that I wanted to note somewhere for myself, at least. I consider that I first "joined" fandom fifteen years ago today, when I gathered with a group of people at Brookdale Mall that I had been talking to on a BBS -- you know, what you used your modem for before the Internet. Most of us hadn't met before that day, and we had all thought it might be fun to have a Doctor Who fan club (which we eventually called The Whoniversity). I wrote about my experiences there five or so years ago on my own site, and really, that's still a fair recollection from the Doctor Who side, so I won't really review that here.

So what does fandom mean to me?

Well, it's a chance to have a social network of people that share some common interests, obviously. A sort of Geek Optimists Club. It means that I know people I can talk to about this week's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or how excited I am that Grant Morrison will be writing X-Men, or how I really should get around to reading that copy of The Doomsday Book I got for Christmas.

And one of the reasons I also like "organized" fandom is, that in this age of the Internet, where I can have on-line discussions about all of those subjects all the time, it also means that I can have face-to-face conversations with as well. With fandom, I've had reasons to make trips to Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago. And there are lots of other places (hello London) that I'd like to go to even more because of the people I know through fandom.

I've been working on this website for over a year now. And to some extent, it's one of least face-to-face parts of the whole fandom thing. And I don't do much to put together all of the events that take up so many other people's time. But in the modern era, it's a way that someone can come find a group of people that get together every month to see a movie on the big screen that you haven't seen before. Or the various conventions that I go to every year, each different in its own way -- Gallifrey One, a chance for me to get together with Doctor Who fans from around the world, Minicon, which I plan to attend this year as a member for the first time in its current incarnation, Marscon, where I had a good time last year, and expect to spend the last weekend of my twenties there this year. And of course, CONvergence, which has become my home convention over the last two years.

There's a lot of hassle in fandom at times -- at times, we get worked up in various political games between factions, where one group has to pick up blue badges, and another group picks up green badges. But that's just like life in general, and really, it's important to keep a sense of fun about it all. That's why we're there, to have fun. It's easy to forget sometimes, I know from my own experiences.

Science Fiction fandom has been a part of my life for half of it now, to some extent. It's provided the situations for some of my closest friendships and fondest memories over the years, and I hope that can continue for a whole lot more.

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Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Michael Lee stepped into the MISFITS Website and vanished .... He woke to find himself trapped on the Internet, facing pages that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change the MISFITS Website for the better. His only guide on this journey is Professor Maxwell Misfittle, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Mike can see and hear. And so Mr. Lee finds himself leaping from site to site, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. Michael previously wrote a review of Dungeons and Dragons.