{"id":5612,"date":"2026-04-12T13:40:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T20:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5612"},"modified":"2026-04-12T13:40:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T20:40:57","slug":"general-technics-50th-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5612","title":{"rendered":"General Technics’ 50th Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GTBlinkieBadge2-500Wide\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fifty years and some months ago, I got together with a few of my friends in the science fiction fan community, and we started a\u2026what? Club? Fanzine? A gathering of techie nerds?<\/p>\n

Yes. All of the above, and then some. With me as the fanzine editor. I created a zine called PyroTechnics, with its first (undated) issue appearing in late winter or early spring 1976. I worked for Xerox at the time, and that helped, since I was given free rein of the many copiers\/duplicators at the downtown Xerox Chicago offices, where I ran off the newsletters.<\/p>\n

A lot of those early years\u2019 activities have gotten a little fuzzy in my head, but we were (mostly) a midwest phenomenon, and we attended midwestern conventions like Windycon, Chambanacon, Capricon, and doubtless others. Several of us traveled to Kansas City for the 1976 Worldcon, where I (and doubtless some of the others) stood in line to shake hands with Robert A. Heinlein, who was pro GOH that year. We stole the name \u201cGeneral Technics\u201d from John Brunner\u2019s 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar<\/em>. I sometimes wonder if he knew about us, given the lack of Internet in the 1970s. (Brunner died in 1995, when the Internet was just getting out of second gear.) It wasn\u2019t cold-hearted theft; we were honoring an excellent novel that wasn\u2019t ishy-squishy New Wave.<\/p>\n

Us, we wanted hard SF and lots of it. We talked about tech, we built things from blinkies to robots to much else, had fun, and wrote it up for Pyro. By 1979 we had almost a hundred members. I paid a GT member to assemble an S100 8080 CP\/M machine for me in 1980, and used it for ten years. As time went on, subgroups within GT published issues of PyroTechnics themselves, with my enthusiastic blessing. I may not have all the issues that ever were, and I think my part of it faded out as Carol and I went bopping around the country while I chased jobs. I still keep in touch with a few members, though at least one of my best GT friends (and best friends generally ), George Ewing, left this world back in 2010.<\/p>\n

Things got quiet for a long time. Then some time back, I was sent a kit by 2DKits<\/a>, care of GTer physicist Bill Higgins. It was a blinkie name badge kit celebrating 50 years of General Technics, with a PIC processor and lots of LEDs. I finally finished it this afternoon, and it almost brought a tear to my eye. Fifty years, wow.<\/p>\n

GT still exists, though I may or may not still be a member. We\u2019ll have to see about that. As I like to say, friendship is the cornerstone of the human spirit. Time to rekindle that GT spirit if I can. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years and some months ago, I got together with a few of my friends in the science fiction fan community, and we started a\u2026what? Club? Fanzine? A gathering of techie nerds? Yes. All of the above, and then some. With me as the fanzine editor. I created a zine called PyroTechnics, with its first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-noneoftheabove"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5613,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5612\/revisions\/5613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}