There are times when you go through boxes of stuff you haven’t seen in years, but have been lugging around with you from place to place to place, hoping to lighten the load for the next time you hit the road or the streets.
Sometimes, the items you find make you wonder what changed… was it the things you loved, or was it perhaps just you?
So I came across a few ancient scifi related things while in spring cleaning mode, mostly papers or flyers but also the occasional trinket, all related to the old SciFi Channel.
First, I remember picking up a handful of these flyers when I saw them. I can’t recall exactly if I was at EveCon in Alexandria VA, or PhilCon in Philadelphia, but it had to be one of those, given the dates I was most likely to have spotted them…
Included with those flyers were applications for the Sci-Fi Fan Alliance, which I absolutely have no memory or details about…
Last but not least, a promotional pen light, that still flashes the updated version of the old Sci Fi Channel logo when the button is pressed.
I also know that I have some other cool old school BSG and B5 trinkets around here somewhere, but those may have to wait for another archaeological dig through dusty old boxes. Now if only I knew what to do with those old Xena: Warrior Princess magazines…
Finding cultural artifacts that are taken for granted, short lifespan or throwaway, will soon be tricky. Paper, plastic, metal, wood, and other materials will outlast files.
I have boxes of “Stuff” from my Washington DC days. Most is not as cool as those SciFi channel papers. Maybe I should go down to the scary basement and open a closet door.
A lot of my Babylon 5 collectibles are paper-based (the entire UK and US run of the official magazine, for instance). I think I also still have a metric ton of postcards and mini posters for Serenity, because we went to about 3-4 preview screenings… holy cow, that Serenity stuff is 10 years old now.
That said, I have a lot of stuff from my college days that I wouldn’t even know how to begin to search for info about. Most of it’s been in boxes for years, scary, but not as scary as your basement 🙂
Wow. I was too busy to go to fun events; prescreen, film festivals. I was booth x at early tech shows or walking the floor hunting down chips/new EPOM, free software, .etc.. Stuff from Digital Research, Pre-Microsoft-Rules-Or-Go-Away, UCSD Pascal, and others. Had bags of try it floppies and flyers and assembly/linkers/libs — before C language and real tools.
I have no clue where any of it is. Bet Digital Research BIOS internal code (PL-1) semi-hardcover bound is in basement. Most folk never heard that Gary pissed off Bill, then Bill Gates declared that company irrelevant.
(laugh) Now that I feel 100 yr old. Books, MM: Sci-fi of all kinds in banker boxes. Some complete series 1st edn. I scream when the book gets new cover art because Big Publishing thinks folks will think it is a new story or something. OHNO! ebooks can’t be saved in boxes — I will not go down that rabbit hole ’cause I’m hooked on audio books.
Saved letters (paper) from authors and should write a letter or two — not email, tweet, FaceBook, vidchat.
Sounds like I should end with “Slash Rant” 🙂