Fan timeline
See a complete list of conventions, fan clubs and newsletters and fanzines, convention books and other publications.
- 1976
- Spring 1976: Steve Eramo starts his Alpha Newsletter.
- Spring 1976: Mary Hartery and Mary Bloemker start the fan club Main Mission Alpha.
- July 1976: Cosmoconnection fanzine published by Mona Delitsky. The first Space: 1999 fanzine, it also contained Star Trek fiction. Four more fanzines were published, the last in 1980.
- Nick Tate is invited to the University of Maryland August Party convention, a Star Trek convention (by Hartery and Bloemker, who are involved in the organisation). Photos
- 9-10 October 1976: Carole Abbs invites Nick Tate to Terracon, a Star Trek convention in Leeds. Tate agrees that Abbs will run his fan club, the British Nick Tate Club. The first newsletter was produced in Spring 1977. Since 1978 it was run by Eileen Skidmore and Phyl Proctor. Skidmore died in 2014; the last newsletter was in 2015, after 39 years.
- October 1976: Main Mission Alpha newsletter renamed as "Command Center". It becomes a "letterzine", based on letters between fans (the print equivalent of an email group or a bulletin board).
- December 1976: ComLoC newsletter published by Chuck Raue (LoC or "Letters of Comment" is a fandom term for feedback letters, hence the punning title). This is another letterzine.
- December 1976: Ted Hruschak and Dan Pallotta at Cleveland State University start a "Save 1999" campaign, to urge fans to write to ITC to continue making Space: 1999.
- 1977
- The National Save 1999 Alliance club is formed, in order to organise a convention in 1978. President is Jeff Jones, committee includes Hruschak, Delitsky, Raue and John and Kathy Von Kamp.
- The UK children's comic Look-In mistakenly listed the Star Trek club Omicorn as a Space: 1999 fan club. After several hundred enquiries, president Tracy Cooke added a Space: 1999 section to the newsletter. Dallas Hadaway took over editorship of the section in 1979. The club was the second largest Star Trek club in Britain, with over 500 members. Pressure of work caused it to close at the end of 1980. A fanzine devoted to Space: 1999 called Moonquest was published in 1979.
- 1978
- 27-29 July, Columbus, Ohio- the first Space: 1999 convention, organised by the National Save: 1999 Alliance. 800 fans attended. Photos, convention book
- The club Alpha Society is formed by Mona Delitsky, Ted Hruschak and Dan Pallotta. Two of the leaders had been involved in the 1978 convention, but disagreed with the others (the Alliance, see below). The club attempts to organise another convention for 1979 in New York. It didn't materialise, and neither did another in 1980. Three quarters of the membership were lost in 1980 and the club closed. The short lived quarterly newsletter was called Alpha News Service.
- In September, the National Save: 1999 Alliance launches a new newsletter, "Main Computer", and a new president, Mare Fitzgerald. The Alliance now has 1800 members. There were seven newsletters a year with an annual convention in July (six a year from 1983). Fitzgerald left to run the Prentis Hancock Fan Club from 1979 to 1982; later Alliance presidents were the Von Kamps from 1979 and Rosie Badgett from 1985. Membership declines rapidly in the 1980s.
- 1981
- 27-29 March, Leeds, UK. Fanderson, the first Gerry Anderson convention, is run by Helen McCarthy and Pamela Barnes. They start the Gerry Anderson fan club of the same name.
- The Official Landau Bain Fan Association (LBFA) is formed by Debbie Phares and Terry Sue Bowers. The quarterly newsletters, initially named Mission: 1999, then the Landau-Bain Concordance. In 1993, after the Landaus divorced, the club split into two, the Martin Landau Aficionados, and the Barbara Bain International, with bimonthly newsletters, produced by Bowers. The clubs finally closed in 2005, after 14 years.
- 1982
- July/August, Springfield, Massachusetts. SpaceCon V, the fifth US convention. An ambitious convention with the first display of original models in the US, it caused a disastrous overspend. With declining fan interest, later conventions were smaller, with several "relaxacons".
- 1988
- After the first series is repeated on French television in 1987, and second series is shown for the first time in France, the French Club Cosmos 1999 is formed, with the newsletter "Aigle" (Eagle). It organises several conventions. In 2000 it is renamed "Destination Alpha" and the newsletter becomes "A la Derive" (Breakaway). It closes in 2004. More
- 1990
- Bob Wood forms the club Academy Alpha, quickly renamed Alpha League. The newsletter (originally Whispers In The Grove, briefly the Guardian, then Commlock) was quarterly. Editors included Erwin Stank and Warren Friedrich. The last newsletter was number 20, in February 1995.
- In the UK, the convention Alphacon is organised by Fanderson. In 1991, Fanderson produced a video documentary with interviews at the convention. Fanderson becomes increasingly professional in quality of it's merchandise, newsletters ("FAB" is introduced in 1991) and the conventions.
- 1993
- January. Nick Sayer starts an email discussion list, Online Alpha. In 1997 Marcy Kulic took over and moved it to a new server; in 2000 it moved again, with new owners Phil Merkel and Anthony DiPietro. The list popularity has ranged from 200 to over 500 subscribers from all over the world. It declined rapidly after 2010, due to the decline of the yahoo platform and the rise of social networks.
- November. Some photos are added to an FTP site in Sweden (ftp.sunet.se), the first 1999 photos on the internet.
- 1995
- Nick Sayer creates the first Space 1999 website ("this page really needs to be seen with netscape v1.1 or better."). It is a single page on his server (kfu.com), with low-res jpgs from the series titles (linked, rather than displayed), 3 wav files of theme music, and links to the mailing list.
- 1996
- David Welle starts a website, Space: 1999 Metaforms. It was originally titled "Some Space: 1999 Information", and took the name "Metaforms" in 1997. In 1999 it joined space1999.net.
- Marcy Kulic starts a website, the Cyber Museum. It accepts submissions from other fans, and grows quickly (around 550 pages). The address was http://space1999.net. In 1999, a number of other sites moved together to this address.
- Fanderson launches the Space: 1999 documentary, a professional quality 100 minute video.
- December. Robert Ruiz opens his own website, the Cybrary. With a strong design and organisation, it becomes one of the biggest websites (around 1300 pages). The site closed in January 2001.
- In Italy, the fanzine "Shadows on the Moon" starts. There are 10 issues, before in 1999 the Moonbase 99 fan club starts.
- 1998
- In April, Martin Willey opened the Space: 1999 Catacombs website. In 1999 it moved to the space1999.net domain, with a number of other sites. It grows quickly (around 4200 pages).
- Fanderson releases Space: 1999 Original Television Soundtrack, a double CD of Barry Gray music. Later, an edited version was released commercially by Silva Screen. It is followed by a Wadsworth double CD in 2000 (also released by Silva commercially). There were expanded versions in 2014 and 2016.
- 1999
- January. Italian fan club Moonbase 99 formed by Giuliano Frattini, Marco Ciroi and Stefano Guizzardi, covering both UFO and Space: 1999. It published the fanzines, "Shadows 1999" and "Shadows Speciale" (8 special editions). There were also conventions in Italy, starting in 2000. The club ended at the end of 2006, as fans moved online.
- The Breakaway convention in September 1999 in Los Angeles. The short film Message From Moonbase Alpha was created especially for this convention. Formally the last Alliance convention, it inspired a further large convention in New York in 2000, with smaller events in later years.
- Current
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