Anne Worth



I was at the first meeting of Chimera. Of course, Chimera was merely a renaming of the old UNC Science Fiction Club. But that club was nearly dead when I arrived in 1981 (3 members, 2 of which were not students anymore!). Robert Hurt and Danny Reid put together the new incarnation. I think from my perspective that the coming together of Chimera involved many different factors. First there was the fact that it was an advertised new club. But we also met in different places:
1. Hinton James and Morrison both had spontaneously-forming groups of people who gathered to watch Doctor Who every evening at 6:00 in one of the TV lounges. This started about concurrently with Chimera's formation, so it helped the group coalesce. A lot of the first generation Chimeroids met in Hinton James - me, Carolyn, Toni.
2. The SPS (Society of Physics Students) room in Phillips hall eventually contained most of the same people that were in Chimera. I think the "second generation" of Chimeroids were mostly found here, people like Larry and Kenny.
3. There was also a lot of overlap between Chimera and Di-Phi. Again, mostly "second generation" people. People like Rick, Diane, John Jaynes.
I think that the first generation of Chimeroids were the closest friends. We formed a very tightly-knit nucleus of the group. We called ourselves "the Family" - shades of the Mafia, right? This group included Danny, Robert, Carolyn, Chuck Andrews, Toni Carter, Sara Lewis, Jack Brown, myself, and some other folk. You probably don't recognize some of those names because they more or less dropped out of Chimera a long time ago. Chuck should be given credit for the Chimera name, though, which he suggested during a brainstorming session. Some of them still live in the Chapel Hill area. I think the moment at which I felt we were a real "group" was a very corny-sounding, science-fiction-geeky thing -- but at the time very moving. We were all at a pizza joint and Carolyn turned to me and said she felt that we were like sisters and she quoted from Stranger in a Strange Land, saying "share water."
We went everywhere in groups of no less than 10, mobbing restaurants and movies. We wanted to move into a rented house together after that first year. In spring of 1982, we organized this very carefully: each of us wrote a letter describing his or herself, and these were copied and collated to be sent to the parents of the prospective housemates. Since some of us were quite young, we predicted (correctly) that there would be some resistance to co-ed living. Unfortunately, the plan bogged down when Carolyn's parents said absolutely not. They were very against the idea of co-ed living. Since we couldn't imagine doing this without her, we gave up the idea and most of us stayed in the dorms. But we went on a great camping trip to the NC mountains that fall and had one of the most fun times of my life. We discussed what we would do after leaving Carolina, and there was talk of starting a commune, but at that point reality was starting to set in.
During the spring semester of 1983, we started drifting apart. In general, we couldn't sustain the closeness -- it was almost like being in love with 10 people at the same time.
The second generation of Chimeroids starting coming in, Joyce, Boyd, Rick and Diane. Although our personal little group was not as close, Chimera was a healthier club for it. I think that new people felt excluded when confronted by the Family! We were able to plan and pull off ChimeraCon 1, which was a very small 1-day affair with a pot-luck dinner. It was great fun.

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