And just for the record: I would tend to agree that Harlan Ellison’s over-the-top anger, even to this day, over the re-writes of “City On the Edge of Forever” has long since gotten pretty tedious, even as I come around to his view that the aired version (much as I still love it) was seriously watered-down from his original script. But Norman Spinrad would be the first to tell you you’re wrong regarding Ellison’s talents. However you regard him as a person–I’d say he’s a mixed bag, just like the rest of us–his place as one of SF’s most honored and revered writers is secure, and rightfully so.

…No, this time the budget restrictions imposed on Gene, Bob, Herb, Matt and the rest of the team actually worked in their favor on this one. “Cement Windsock” it may be, but it’s become an icon of just how well you can create something on a cheap budget and have it become one of the more memorable icons of science fiction. While Norm’s argument that CGI should have allowed for his vision to look(**) has some validity, while you can get away with doing a matte showing the place of Koon ut Kal-i-Fee 300′ feet in the air, or showing us what the Orion attack ship looked like, or even having a Gorn blink, those weren’t as drastic a change as making the DDM look like what Norm wanted all along. That sort of change would have been way too drastic for even the most accepting fans to tolerate.

Oh, and for the record: Norm has whined nowhere nearly as bad as Li’l Harlie has – remind me to tell the “Jellybean” story sometime just to show how much of a dick he is – but because DDMR is out, his stories about the “Cement Windsock” have become incessantly repeated, and that’s what’s causing the concern. Norm *IS* a superior writer *and* person to the Midget with a Big Mouth, and nobody wants to see him lower himself to that sort of spilt milk crying.

(*) That, in itself is problematic, as that much neutronium would have a significant gravitational field. But that’s another nit to pick.

(**) And that vision, based on the one or two concept napkins I’ve seen in years past, was actually more closer to V’Ger.

OK, but I choose to take the estimate with a grain of salt.
I assume it was probably just an impromptu ‘guesstimate’,
anyway. No harm in that!

If 850+ fans attended Worldcons in 1952, 1956, and in
1966 (just before ST premiered), one can surely imagine
that there were more than 5000 ‘real SF fans’ out there
(i.e., of course there were many people who didn’t attend
the cons but nonetheless took enough interest in SF lit to
qualify as ‘real fans’).

According to the (admittedly unreliable) Worldcon attendance
numbers, attendance jumped after 1966 but climbed rather slowly
(see post #21 above for a link to the Worldcon attendance list).
Just to play around with the “5000″ number in that context:
Estimated Worldcon attendance didn’t approach 5000 until
1978 (4700) and 1980 (5850). (After Star Wars.). ;-)

BTW, when “Doctor Who” (UK) premiered in late 1963,
it quickly drew six million viewers plus;
hitting 10 million in January 1964, and 13 million a year later.
If we are willing to call that show “science fiction”, we
must admit that it had more than 5000 fans. (Before Star Trek.)

Anyway … Trek made some contribution to SF fandom.
Just how much of a contribution it actually made to
actual sales and readership of quality SF literature,
is of course debatable …

Disclaimer:
Excuse my presumptions. I know very little about SF.
I’m just a googling nobody.

As I said, if the “5000″ figure was just a guesstimate,
I see no harm in that. I doubt it was meant as a hard
estimate, but if it was, there’s no harm in that either.

I thank Mr. Spinrad for his commentary, and for his
contributions to SF. Now I’m off to buy a couple of his books …

http://www.dragoncon.org/history.php

If you folks can find old issues of Starlog from the early/mid-70’s, there’s a lot of history…Gerrold and Bjo Trimble had columns, and for awhile there was a monthly “Star Trek Movie Report” that featured scoops and photos from the first film. Of course, now we have the Internet to spoil everything, but back then I couldn’t wait for each issue every month and see what was going on.

Also, I’ll never forget my utter glee as a kid in school when NASA named the first shuttle Enterprise, I sure felt vindicated as an early Trekker :D My friends became interested in the show after that and we’d all watch it after school.

And finally…anyone remember a show called “Sci-Fi Buzz” that Sci-Fi Channel had when it first launched? It featured a roundtable discussion that had famous SF authors and so forth. I remember Ellison being on there but only saw a few episodes of that before that show got canned.

For comparison, here are this season’s Nielsen ratings so far…

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,272|||season,00.html

Note that the top show, Fox’s ratings juggernaut American Idol, has been averaging around a 19 rating, while the rest of the top 20 shows are in the 9-13 rating range.

Note also that in 1967, 20 million people was 10% of the entire U.S. population (which was just under 200 million then, compared to 300 million today).

Pretty amazing.

#15 (Clinton) wrote: > “I think Mr. Spinrad was … referring
to those people that tended to go to events like WorldCon ….”

#17 (Larryn75) wrote: > “… that ‘5.000 fans’ remark
… meant active, con-going fans.”

Your comments got me curious about the Worldcon attendance figures.
http://www.nesfa.org/data/LL/TheLongList.html
200 attended the first con in 1939. Some of the high points:
1952: 870 — 1956: 850 — 1966: 850 (just before ST premiered) –
1967: 1500 — 1974: 3587 — 1978: 4700 — 1980: 5850 — 1984: 8365.
Hit the link to see the complete list.

From the cautionary notes for that page:
“The available data is very incomplete and imprecise
and many of these numbers are probably substantially in error.”