It's great being without a format on a non-profit radio station. I can do just about anything. Shows have included: Giving a massage on the radio, examining pi, shows done on location underwater and at the St. Paul Spaceport, playing seven covers of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and I get to air my musician friends.

The first show with Dave and other fen was September 19, 1979 (Year of our Moon Landing 10). It has always been weekly, but started off on Wednesdays, then Tuesdays and now Saturdays. For a while it was an hour long, but settled into a half-hour format over 10 years ago.

The whole month of September will be a restropective, and I hope many of the Shockwave Riders will drop by to say hello. The last show of the month, September 25, will be a special hour long program starting at 3:00, with Jerry rejoining the group for the event.

Shockwave was started by three programmers at KFAI, Charles E. Hamilton III, Everett Forte and Chris Dronen. At the time, the station was only a year old and was very small, broadcasting a 10-watt mono signal "exclusive to parts of South Mpls". After a few weeks of playing sf music, Chris and Everett came to a local con and asked if anyone was interested in helping out. The next week I and a few other fen showed up. Though Chris and Everett remained engineers for many years, they never produced another show.

Very quickly, Shockwave started developing a future history, with such things as the St. Paul Spaceport (78% of the former state of Wisconsin), Time In A Spraycan, Preconceptions: News of the Future, Top 11 Lists, and so on. Of course, what was the far future in 1980 is the forseeable future in 1995. You're Riding the Shockwave, the 1995 Minicon Stage Show adresses some of those issues.

The name Shockwave comes from John Brunner's book Shockwave Rider. Shockwave Riders are either of two groups. First, anyone listening to or participating in Shockwave is generically a Shockwave Rider. Second, Shockwave bits, especially early on, were often written by many people. A group of us would sit down and hash out a script. Those scripts are then credited to 'The Shockwave Riders". Often, an idea that came up or was developed by one or more of the extremely talented and clever people in the group was then assigned to or appropriated by one person who wrote the final script. And the performers would often add their own ideas, which were used. Those scripts are generally credited to The Writer and The Shockwave Riders.

I would hazard that the majority of material during Shockwave's first two years was generated by this process. Much of the writing since has built on or updated our future history.

There were a lot of people involved, mostly Mpls sf fen. Here is a list of the major contributers from the first few years, from memory. Please forgive any ommissions.

Kate Worley, Brian Westley, Jerry Stearns, Will Shetterly, Laramie Sasseville, Dave Romm, Barney Neufeld, Curtis Hoffmann, Everett Forte, Chris Dronen, Kara Dalkey, David Cummer, Emma Bull, John Bartelt. In addition, important contributors and/or actors included Jon Singer, Michael Butler, Steve Brust, Matthew Tepper and the staff of KFAI.

Note: Kara, Steve, Emma, Will, Curtis and Kate have gone on to be novelists/publishers/comic writers/musicians in the ensuing time period. You should immediately go out and buy multiple copies of all their books/comics/CDs and give them to all your friends and even people you don't like that much.

The first few months worth were recorded off the air by Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet and/or Mitch Thornhill. Any of the live broadcasts which survive are owed to those early fans of the show. Pretty much everything that was taped beforehand still exists on tape, though of dubious quality after 20 years.

I'm attempting to transfer as much information onto CD as is worthwhile. But even a third generation transfer is going to show signs of age. I've been attempting to clean up some of the tapes for the CDs, but it's slow going and the original recording equipment was iffy at best. We were a 10 watt mono station and at the time our home equipment was okay. There's only so much cleaning up with is possible.

At the moment, the legal situation is iffy at best. KFAI has all the proper licenses and we can play anything over the air. But the net is a different animal. I've talked to the station about what their license covers, and they are, quite properly, being cautious. There are essentially no laws covering music on the internet specifically, which is why the MP3 folk are causing headaches, but we want to be proper and keep all our friends. I don't want to slight any of the artists and musicians. Anything we write is ours, but the problem is the music. As much as possible, the skits have original music behind them, often by local musicians including Nate Bucklin and David Emerson. Most of the early skethes and parodies do not. We're a non-profit group and our parodies are covered by Fair Use. I'm working under the assumption that we're okay with the background music to parodies, such as Food Wars, and shorter bits used as references. But many of the broadcast shows contain full cuts of music, and we're not going to put them on the net until we're sure everyone is happy.

So the short answer is that you are unlikely to hear the regular broadcast shows on the net, but some of our archival material is being made available, space permitting, on my audio site and Brian's site.

The live shows were engineered by Chris, Everett and/or Dave for most of the run of Shockwave, with Jerry handling many of the shows before branching off to his own show, at which point Dave retook the reins. Shockwave Rider Liz Kingsbury engineered several shows.

For the most part, the writers served as directors of their own productions. Because of the multitalented nature of the group, the distinctions between 'producer' and 'engineer' and 'director' tended to disappear. The engineering and/or proctuction was handled primarily by Chris and/or Everett for the first few years, and then by Dave or Jerry in later years.

There were exceptions, as people did their own projects. The original version of "The Secret Life of Wally Mitter" is an example.

Many of the early group works were done in Limited Radiomation. We would gather at Jerry Stearns' appartment (where his reel-to-reel recorder was), hash out the script, figure out the music and sound effects, and then do them real time. Anyone who wasn't in the scene was drafted to cue the record or bang on the effects generators. If we blew the scene, we'd rewind the tape and do it over. "The Waiting On Line Show" is a good example of that.

Chris Dronen, as Chief Engineer of the station, had access to professional equipment. Some of our best sounding bits were engineered by him, for example 'Spindizzy'. Everett Forte, as Producer and eventually Station Manager was usually on hand and was invaluable both on the air, during Live Stage Shows and for produced skits.

Most of the Shockwave Riders are also associated with Minicon and the Minnesota Science Fiction Society. From the beginning, Dave urged that Shockwave do skits at the con. Our first Live Stage Show was at Not Anokon II in the fall of 1980, a nifty collection of stuff for a small audience, produced by Dave and Jerry and engineered by Chris and Everett. The first Minicon Live Stage Show followed on Easter weekend of 1981. Jerry went so far as to volunteer to be Programming Chair just to make sure it happened. Everyone contributed, and Chris and Everett engineered.

For the 1990 Minicon, I wrote a year-by-year accound of the Minicon Live Stage Shows. I may add that to the FAQ at some point. You can read the article. I wrote for the 1995 Minicon Program Book

Dave Romm is the producer. Brian Westley, who has memorized pi to 20 places, Doug Friauf who reviews sf movies, are regular Shockwave Riders. Jerry Stearns branched off to his own show, Sound Affects, which leads into Shockwave, and sometimes sticks around to help out. Many of the people mentioned earlier have gone on to other projects, such as novels, comics, or radio producer. But there are a large number of people who are available for projects such as the Live Stage Shows or major productions.

Funny you should ask. The first few versions of this FAQ were primarily descriptions of the tapes available. I have now separated that list into a different file. Click here for the Distribution Tape List. The available tapes are constantly being changed as I drop some and add new stuff. My latest project is to digitally remaster Shockwave material. I can even burn CDs. I can make copies of anything I have on tape, but they're Special Requests.