The History as it Seemed
A Brief History of Life, the Universe, and Everything (or at least the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Co-operative)
Chapter 1
It was a dark and stormy night. The dragons had been fed their pure of thought, word, and deed real virgin substitute; the long range space scout was parked snugly in the garage; and I was hunkered down in my ivory tower looking out from the foot of Mount Aurora. Nothing much was moving out in the flashing mystery of the lightning, so I logged onto the internet.
I had recently traversed the Great Waste (that god-awful strip of land known as I-10 and 1-25 between San Antonio and Denver), and had been inspired to write. And so I had. I wrote two stories of earth-shaking import (or so I thought). But I had no one with whom I might share them. I surround myself with mighty warriors who prefer the blade to the pen, as we all must do in these dark days in our own ways, and though these men and women are fierce, they often do not have the -- how shall we say? -- sensitivity to appreciate great genius. So what I was looking for in that magic medium was a place where I might meet in the ether with other great minds such as myself.
What I observed from my perusal was a lot of personal sites with people's collections of pictures, articles, games, and lists about science fiction and fantasy writers, but I did not see any place that was just for great minds to come together and share their thoughts and ideas. Then, as if it were whispered from the heavens, or perhaps it was feed back from the baby monitor, I heard the calling, "If you build it, they will come."
"You want me to build an existential baseball stadium in a cornfield?" I replied, not living up to my normal level of genius.
"No, dumb ass. A web site for writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Call it a 'Co-Op'. Build it 42 kilobytes by 13 kilobytes. Post it on the web. Submit it to all the search engines on the net that you can find."
"Okay," I said. What else do you say to a disembodied whisper that sounds like Andrew Dice Clay reading King James?
It was September, in the one thousand nine hundred and ninety sixth year of the Christian God, I don't recollect the exact date, was when I posted the site, with a link to "My Sister," one of the earth shaking stories I mentioned above. And so the Co-Op was born. And the whispering voice saw that this was good. I know because he told me so.
At this point, I could say the rest is all history, but that is ostensibly why you are here.
The mighty Jeff Clinton was one of the first to come, with his story, "A Reign of Tears". The membership grew name by name across the country and quickly across known space.
During this time, we were communicating with cyber stone carved tablets -- that is to say we used a compiled list of addresses, rather than a listserv. Until Mark Grant, mysterious lord of the Web, deigned to give us access to his listserv powers. And the whispering voice saw that this was good.
The membership desired a periodic contest to inspire, and so was created, "The Challenge." And the whispering voice saw that this was good.
Then in the summer of the one thousand nine hundred and ninety seventh year of the Christian God, it was decided that the Membership needed a cooperative writing project. The ever-changing, ever-enlightening Kaolin Fire Stockinger began to host "Co-Op World". A world predicated on capitalism and ethnic strife run rampant, with humanity struggling to conquer both inner and outer space, and with a new voice calling from the heavens to come and play. And the whispering voice saw that this was especially good, liking the resemblance to himself.
And still the Membership was not satisfied. They needed more. And so we created the "Rising Star Awards," to recognize the best story in each category for the year. And the whispering voice saw that this too was good.
But then there was the summer of discontent. I was ordered to relocate the Ivory tower to the Hidden Valley along the Eastern Sea. The dragons were caged, the scout was boxed, the great scrolls rolled, and the flag lowered from the foot of Mount Aurora. From a tiny hovel I tried to keep up the fight, to keep the great Work alive, but I found myself slipping, misplacing more submissions than I normally did, and one night as I typed by the dim burning light, the voice came again. In resounding tones of regal command he said, "You suck. Give it up."
So I did.
And it was good. For I saw that there is a season for giving, a season for sharing, turn, turn, turn. Two years was enough. I handed the flag of leadership through the ether to Kaolin Fire Stockinger, the ever-changing, ever-enlightening, so that he might carry on with the Great Work which I had begun. It was time for me to return to doing what I had started out to do -- writing. And it was time for fresh blood to take over, and do everything right that I had done wrong.
So it is on a night not so dark and stormy that I write this, our story. The dragons have free run of the basement once again, the scout has to settle for a carport for now (it draws the neighbors attention, so my wife has asked me to move it behind the house), and I am still unpacking the Ivory Tower -- the boxes of scrolls and other mysterious things are not quite emptied and stowed yet -- as I sign off as editor, leaving the next chapter to be written by a new hand.
26 Sep 1998
Chapter 2
The site was moved from http://members.aol.com/starrun (AOL? Blecch!) to a server in Berkeley, that were offering to give a shell account for $5 a month. Their rates have gone up since then, but I bought a lot of time ahead, in preparation for that. The look was cleaned up, made easier to read, and a little more oranized and distributed. The basic color scheme was retained, but mutated all around. A contest was had for a logo, and a large fat and bright one it wound up being, splatted right on top of everything else. It was a very homey and friendly page.
Looking at the work I had ahead of me if I was going to do all this by hand, I shuddered. Nothing doing. I'm a programmer, not a stenographer. So, I set about automating the crucible and the archives. Eventually the challenge pages as well followed suit, and just for measure I used the same code to handle links. Of course, there was a large initial investment, but I think in the end it was worth it. Especially because I was going to have to move everything, and redesign it all once again. That would have been almost impossible without everything running itself as it was.
The co-op fell heavily into a rhythm of apathy. Two members more than any others came forth and roared and clashed and fought the bounds of three months of silence followed by weeks of flame wars. Out of this strife, a new vision was born. Professionalism. A desire to expand and gather more members... a new name, that would include any genre of fiction. "imaginaries.org" came into being, neck-in-neck with but fighting out starrun.org and binarystar.org.
Kaolin looked around and saw that too little programming had been done lately, and too little of an understanding of sockets was had. Thus, a Java chatroom was born.... supposedly for the purpose of hosting realtime discussions and workshops. That may happen, eventually, but it's at the very least a good place to meet your fellow writers and get to know them a little better.
Also in an effort to drum up more and better critiques, a 'critwindow' was thrust unto the page, allowing simultaneous reading of story and writing of crit. Gimmicky and simplistic, but highly effective.
With the domain name, a new server was chosen -- run by a friend of Kaolin's, who had way too much space and didn't mind giving it away. A new look came into being, doing it's damnedest to be horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and above all... professional. It needed to really appeal to a larger audience of writers, drag them in, get them to join, and even more, get them to participate. Several days straight were spent on this task. *shudder* Best not to think on that.
The search engines have been sought ought and stuffed. We are seeking new blood. Are you it?
29 Jan 2000