Compuserve IMPs - IMP Facts

To speak about "IMP facts" IMPlies many things, I suppose. But I asked the IMPs to share some memories and to help lighten the load on my creativity.

One of the facts of the IMPire was that it had access to professionally published writers through the Compuserve SF Lit Forum. One of those writers, Mike Resnik, agreed to be a mentor for the group. We only had to call him TGR (aka That Great Riter or something like that). Mike, in return, chatted with the IMPs and looked over the shoulders as they discussed techniques (he did not, as I recall, participate in any story crits or discussions so as to avoid possible conflicts of interest).

When I asked the IMPs how Mike became the group's mentor, Barb Galler-Smith told me: "Through Lyn Nicols. She met him on Genie and invited him." Hm. That was not quite as glamorous as I had hoped for an anecdote. However I do know that Mike occasionally met up with members of the IMPire at several conventions. IMPcriminating pictures of the social gatherings were once available on the Web.

Barb also told me that Lyn Nichols was the first IMP to make a professional sale when her "Gray Angel" appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Magazine "about 1994".

The IMPs made their mark in more than one way on Compuserve and throughout fandom. One sad anecdote was shared by Derek Paterson:

You do remember that the IMPs came into being because writers were facing a long wait, sometimes months, to take part in Sasha Miller and Roger MacBride Allen's most excellent Online Writers Workshop (OWW). Ironically towards the end, just before the OWW closed down due to lack of applicants, Sasha lamented that it was the IMPs who had killed interest in the OWW.