I had a TV set up to show Sliders episodes. The interesting thing was watching people pass by our table. When they saw the TV they would be transfixed by what was on the screen even if they were just walking past and not even slowing (which indicated they didn’t recognize what was on the screen). I noticed this especially with kids. Kids could NOT help watching the TV as they passed. But even adults were trapped by the images on the screen until they had walked past it. I’ve never seen a more literal example of the power of moving images on a TV screen.

Anyway, the other two ways I enticed people over was a clock (because there are few large clocks on the walls and a lot of people didn’t want to wear watches with their uniforms) and a bowl of candy (Jolly Ranchers and mini Snickers).

Here are the numbers from two full days of running the fan table plus a third day of leaving out the handouts and remaining fan fiction. (we got hosed on the time though because despite what the website told us, fan tables could only remain open until 7pm each night.) In addition, I had Sliders website flyers and schedule flyers on four other free handout tables. I know how many copies of those two I made so I calculated how many taken by how many I had left after I went around the last day and collected the remainder.

Sliders Petition Signatures: 218

Number of Sliders website flyers taken: 117

Number of Sliders schedule flyers taken: 200

Number of fan fiction printouts taken (all writers): 28

Number of Sliders Soundtracks taken: 21 (I still have five left if anyone is interested in one. I only gave them to the really enthusiastic fans since I had a limited number)

Number of people who stopped for candy but didn’t sign petition: 5,000,000,000 (give or take a few)

Number of people who liked the first couple seasons but refused to sign because the last three sucked: 18 (unofficial count)

Number of people who had never seen the show but took a flyer and promised to check it out: At least 14


It was cool meeting MSZ. He was selling autographed copies of “World Killer” so I mentioned that outrageous hair Quinn had. He told me that JOC loved that wig and still has it. I felt no surprise at this.

It was a lot of fun. There are a million things I would change to improve the presentation and have more impact. I wish this had occurred to me earlier and that I could have involved WrongArturo. More time would have also allowed me to be more prepared.

But I’m already planning to do this again next year if Sliders does come out on DVD. If the first season is released on DVD, for instance, our goal would be to promote it heavily to get loads of people to buy it so that TPTB would be encouraged to release the rest of the seasons. We couldn’t sell it from the table but we could promote the >:-# out of it! Also, with more lead time we could have CD send us a crate of his albums to sell from the table. That would have been great if we’d had the time to put that together.

Anyway, I’ll be mailing off the petition to the SF channel today. Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas, fiction, graphics, or any other kind of support!!!!