For the “Star Trek’’ faithful, it was a historic event. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the series, showed up. So did science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, not to mention fans dressed as Klingons, tribbles and Bele from the planet Cheron. NASA delivered a scaled-down lunar module and a spacesuit.

It was January 1972, and the first “Star Trek” convention was under way in a rented ballroom at the Statler Hilton in Manhattan. The organizers had expected a crowd of about 500. In the end, more than 3,000 fans turned up, so many that by the final day of the event registrars were issuing ID cards made from torn scraps of wrapping paper. For fans of the series, the convention marked the moment when a diaspora became a nation.

And it made a subculture celebrity of Joan Winston, who played a leading role in creating the event and went on to achieve a second-order fame as one of world’s most avid “Star Trek’’ fans. She died of Alzheimer’s disease Sept. 11 at age 77, her cousin Steven Rosenfeld said. She lived in Manhattan.

“I would put her in the category of legend,’’ said Dennis Rayburn, a columnist for roddenberry.com, a Web site of the production company owned by Roddenberry’s son, Eugene. “She is right up there with Bjo.’’

For “Star Trek’’ devotees, the comparison requires no clarification. Betty Jo Trimble, or Bjo (pronounced Beejoe), won immortality in the “Star Trek’’ universe by leading the campaign to keep the series on the air when word got out that NBC planned to cancel it.

Winston earned the love of “Star Trek’’ fans everywhere by helping to orchestrate an afterlife for the series beyond the television set — initially by organizing conventions and persuading stars from the series to attend, later by appearing at the conventions as a star in her own right, a superfan whose undying devotion inspired awe among “Star Trek’’ devotees.

Her unstinting efforts for the cause were chronicled in “Star Trek Lives’’ (1975), which she wrote with Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Sondra Marshak, and “The Making of the Trek Conventions’’ (1977). She also edited “Startoons’’ (1979), a book of science fiction cartoons; wrote fiction using the “Star Trek’’ characters; and, moving with the times, edited Number One, a fanzine devoted to First Officer William T. Riker, a character on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.’’

A passionate fan of science fiction, she went into deep space when the Starship Enterprise set off on its voyage on Sept. 8, 1966. When the campaign to keep the series on the air took off, she picketed NBC. She sent story ideas to Gene Roddenberry. In 1968 she pulled strings to attend the shooting of a “Star Trek’’ episode — the last one, as it turned out.