[B5JMS] rallying the troops

[b5jms at mail.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu]

Folks, I'm sure you've seen by now JMS's reply to an announcement of the
cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise.  Here's a crucial snippet:

> From: jmsatb5 at aol.com
> Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 08:25:46 +0000 (UTC)
> Lines: 138
[...]
> So here's the deal, folks.  If you want to see a new Trek series that's
> true to Gene's original creation, helmed by myself and Bryce, with
> challenging stories, contemporary themes, solid extrapolation, and the
> infusion of some of our best and brightest SF prose writers, then you
> need to let the folks at Paramount know that.  If the 48% of the 18,000
> folks who voted at scifi.com sent those sentiments to
> Paramount...there'd be a new series in the works tomorrow.
> 
> I don't need the work, I have plenty of stuff on my plate through 2007
> in TV, film and comics, so that's not an issue.  But I'd set it all
> aside for one shot at doing Trek right, and I know Bryce feels the
> same.
> 
> If you want this to happen...it's up to the Trek and B5 fans to make it
> so.
> 
> The rest I leave to the quiet turning of your considered conscience.
> 
> J. Michael Straczynski

I fully expect there to be an organized letter-writing campaign to
Paramount.  Personally, I think this is the best chance we have to see JMS's
high-quality B5-like sci-fi work show up on TV again.  I would like to ask
everyone two things:

1. If you hear of a letter-writing campaign or two, please email info about
   it to me (URLs, whatever).  It's important to have specific names and
   surface-mail addresses of Paramount people to send this to; sample text
   for such letters are good too.

   If you hear of a Web-based campaign, let me know too.  Those are also
   useful to have.

2. When you hear of such campaigns, please take the few minutes it takes to
   sign up, and write *real* printed paper letters, signed by hand, and sent
   to Paramount (printed letters carry much more weight than emails).  The
   few minutes it will take you to write those letters will more than pay
   for itself by the numerous hours of great programming JMS can give us.

Sincerely,
Erez Zadok (B5JMS list creator and maintainer in lurk :-)