The news today about the four Star Trek stamps for the 50th anniversary next year is welcome, fun news. I love the crisp look by designers The Heads of State, though with a definite Prime TOS tilt to them… which is, after all, appropriate for the 1966 anniversary. I didn't see a first day of issue listed anywhere, yet, but… Sept. 8, anyone?
And somehow, it is SO perfect that the sight of beaming, a Vulcan salute, the Big E and the delta shield patch with warp stars … should all be emblazoned with FOREVER in all caps.
(Yes, I know that the unending label is about the postage rate. Still, it's awesome.)
We've come a long way since the USPS finally recognized Star Trek with a stamp, albeit through the backdoor via the 1960s edition of the "Celebrate the Century" millenium-looking decade by decade special stamp sheets, in 1999 (at right). It was a hoot to deal with helping announce the release of that issue in the old Communicator as the official source. Of course, nowadays the Postral Service is hip to giving pop-culturists (and promotion-cooperative media) exactly the nostalgia they crave on a dwindling communication art form.
What's almost forgotten now is that Bill Kraft, a stamp collector from Sauk Rapids, Minn., led a lonely, 17-year petition campaign for a Star Trek stamp all through the '70s, '80s and into the '90s to help that along—i.e., on paper with stamps!—way before The Big Bang Theory and the geek revolution made it mainstream. As both a Trek fan and a stamp collector, *I* was a party to that petition as well… and I'm so glad Bill shared the celebrity support letters and the saga of that effort in his book, Maybe We Should Get God to Write a Letter…. still available on Amazon.
"I'm assuming it is in conjunction with Trek's 50th anniversary. I didn't even have to campaign this time."
We do still have our Star Trek campaigns to wage, Bill. It's just that commemorative stamps are not one of them!
1 comment:
Perhaps I don't get around quite as much as I like to think but this is news to me. As a matter of fact, it's great news!! I'll definitely be in line for several books. I feel the stamps are every bit as special as the space shuttle Enterprise.
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