We don't want to give you the impression that we didn't enjoy making this zine: we had to endure countless hours in front of the TV watching 'V' (to make sure we got the characters right, you understand), the primary episodes being 'Reflections in Terror' and 'The Conversion'.  What dedication!  What sacrifice!  Then there were the rolls and rolls of telepics to be taken for our artist (bless you, Tricia, though we'll get to the 'people whose feet we have to kiss' section later).  All in all, you can see that we endured much hardship...

You probably don't want to know the motivation behind writing 150 pages of pure 'Tyler' (or perhaps you can guess well enough), but we're kind mystified about it ourselves, so we'd like to try and explain it.   It started with 'Second Time Around', a completely pre-meditated attempt to draw out some of the personality and background of Tyler that was implied in the series, but never fully explored.  This seems to be the motivation for a good 90% of amateur fiction -- when you are presented with a few, tantalizing glimpses of character, then told that your character has been 'written out' because some dope of a scriptwriter (how dare they claim it!) couldn't handle all the inter-relationships, and has indeed been written out without the details you wanted being explained, you naturally jump up and down and scream for more.  TV stations are notoriously deaf in this respect, and not every SF fan gets a McNair/Anderson survey sheet on which to take out their grievances, so one turns to a pen and a notebook with a 'OK, I'll do it myself' attitude, or in our case, keyboard and printer.  'Changeling' seemed the natural progression from 'Second Time Around', and 'Celebrations' was a mildly gratuitous indulgence on our part...  If you are still confused as to our motivations for this tome, welcome to the club.  We're thinking of offering a prize for the first person who can write to us and tell us why we did it!

The inevitable acknowledgements are for support and understanding, whether it be moral, financial or simply coerced, and are as follows:  Yvonne Hintz, for meticulous proof-reading and constructive comments along the way; Craig Hollins, our gallant one-handed printer; Tricia Ostwald, for such superb artwork in the face of threat, bribery and beseechment; Sue Clarke, for printing our covers; Sue Plewright, for coming up with some very apposite 'you are receiving this zine because' one-liners; and to all those marvellous people who Paid In Advance... wonderful souls, we couldn't have done it without you.

A word of acknowledgement would not be out of place for the greatest motivation of all behind this zine:  Michael Ironside.  If we had any doubts about finishing the stories, or if we had any doubts about producing a zine based almost purely on one character, one look at the conversion sequence solved them all.  More than once the project nearly ground to a halt, and we have Starlog to thank for pictures of a (*gasp*) smiling 'Ham Tyler', which kick-started a jaded engine and got a blocked author back on track.  (The cold showers interrupted only slightly).  We also have Michael Ironside to thank for the heated debates sparked by his accent... we've since identified every Canadian actor by the pronunciation of their 'ou' sounds (such as the 'about' in "I care abuhwt this lizard!" and 'out' as in 'Uhwt of the War Zone')!

Lastly, we hope you have as much fun reading this as we did producing it:  feedback is always welcome, and you can be reassured that, even if this introduction indicates otherwise, we are relatively normal people who will not bite, salivate or otherwise disgrace themselves if you wish to contact us.

Yours in fandom,

Narrelle M. Harris and VJ Wurth

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