Contact was a creature of its time, a Star Trek fanzine which focused specifically on the friendship between two characters: the intrepid Captain James T. Kirk and his First Officer, the alien Spock. Today we have fanfiction archives where stories live forever, where fandoms live forever, and where even the most obscure TV show, film, comic book or novel is immortalized in a very special way: by its fans trying to add to its fictional universe. Add to that that we no have DVD and Blu-Ray, Netflix and Hulu… we can watch just about any show or movie anytime we want to. And there’s now a glut of new shows and movies made to cater to an audience which likes Science Fiction, Fantasy and adventure.

In 1975 it just wasn’t so. Syndicated re-runs, badly edited to fit more commercials, were the best you could hope for if you wanted to see your favorite program. No TV show had come back from the dead or been remade as yet (except for Perry Mason, and that clearly didn’t take.) There was no Internet to distribute the labors of love which resulted from writers and artists being inspired by their favorite shows. And so fans turned to Fanzines, photocopied, mimeographed, (the really high-end ones were offset printed!), hand-lettered with prestype, paid for with checks and money orders and sent through the U.S. Mail.

Contact was the brainchild of two sisters: Beverly J. Volker and Nancy Kippax. There were eight regular issues, two Christmas specials and a few novels included in its output. All stories focused on Kirk and Spock, with a fair dose of McCoy for them as liked such things. Most had graphic Hurt / Comfort themes. It sold in higher numbers than most of the small press books published in 2012 ever will.

Bev left us in 2003. Nancy in 2008. It is our hope that Contact, or at least its spirit of creativity, will live forever.

This site is an archive and a tribute to Contact, to Bev and Nancy, and to the many, many creative people who contributed to it over the years. It’s a tribute to Fandom. It’s a tribute to Friendship. It’s a tribute to Family. Above all else, Bev and Nancy and their “Contact Crowd” were our family. Literally, in the case of this author, for Bev was the mother of my wife and the grandmother to my sons. In the coming days, you’ll see the stories and artwork from Contact, as well as supplemental material, appear on these web pages.

Until then, if you have memories of Contact, Bev or Nancy, or materials to contribute, please contact (pun intended) me at swilson1965_at_verizon.net. (Obviously, replace the “_at_” with an “@”. Just fighting spam there.

–Steven H. Wilson
September, 2012

A note on copyright: If you are one of the writers and artists featured herein, we understand that you granted Bev and Nancy rights to publish your work a long time ago. Neither you nor they likely anticipated electronic publishing at the time. We are reproducing your work here for archival purposes because we believe you made a significant contribution to Fandom by participating in this project all those years ago. But you own the copyright to your works! If you do not want them featured on this site, please let us know and we will immediately remove them. We hope that you, like us, will see the value in sharing these works with new generations.