I Was a Mail-Order Alien Bride

I was a teenage Spock stalker. We’re talking pre-Internet, when the best you could do with your obsession was join some mail-order Starfleet Command chapter and collect glossy black and white headshots of the guy. Maybe I should put it this way: I was a mail-order Spock bride. I wished. The whole Pon Far mating season played marvelously to a teenage girl’s fluctuating hormones. To be The One who might penetrate the man’s oh-so-logical armor of restraint. To be The One who made his half-human green blood run hot.

Yes, these are the earliest roots, the tiny tendrils deep in the soil, of my penchant for sci-fi romance. Not Kirk, not Scottie, not even Jean Luc Picard, who didn’t come along until I was in college. Spock—he was the man.

And then let’s flip forward a few pages in my Book of Nerd, and you’ll find me watching a relatively unknown and under-appreciated sci-fi television show, Roswell. Spock had been dethroned by a dreamy eyed alien named Max Evans, and I wanted to be his Liz Parker. I had children, a successful business, a wonderful husband, but that show put me under its spell. I didn’t collect headshots, but nevertheless I know that plenty of people (most especially my husband!) would say I became obsessed.

But the ultimate Hunky Guy in Space of the 2000’s just might be Farscape’s John Crichton. What is it with me and placing bets on a series that is doomed for cancellation? At least we live in the era of the box set, not the glossy black and white headshot.

Dreaming up strong, sexy, heroic alien men comes naturally to me at this point. Maybe somewhere in my consciousness there’s a permanent bulletin board, covered in fluttering Police cutouts, Duran Duran snapshots—and right in the center, like a bull’s eye, stands a black-and-white glossy photograph of Spock. Then again, maybe I really am a mail order Spock Bride.