fans

When I was starting out as a writer, I never expected to have fans. Sure, I wanted to sell my stuff to Asimov’s and Analog and F&SF someday. I wanted to publish novels and collections. But having fans, not so much. This was a curious lack of imagination on my part, because as a wannabe I was certainly a fan. I remember how awed I was when I first started going to cons and breathing the very same air as writers who had knocked my socks clean into the year 2284. Alas, I never met Theodore Sturgeon <physics.emory.edu/~weeks/sturgeon> or Cordwainer Smith <cordwainer-smith.com> or Philip K. Dick <philipkdick.com> or Robert Heinlein <heinleinsociety.org>, although I did manage to clap eyes on some of them across crowded hotel lobbies.
But I have met some of the giants and I confess to having been reduced to a blithering fanboy when I first met Mr. Silverberg <majipoor.com> and Ms. LeGuin <rsulakleguin.com> and Mr. Malzberg <isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Barry_N._Malzberg> and Ms. Wilhelm <katewilhelm.com>. I know the feeling of having my tongue cleave to the top of my mouth after stammering, “The Left Hand of Darkness changed the way I write,” or “I think Dying Inside is a masterpiece.” Because compliments like that, even though heartfelt, are conversation stoppers. How can a writer possibly reply? These days I am myself sometimes croggled when fans—lovely, tongue-tied folks—come up to me and say that this story was the best thing I have ever written or that one helped lift them through a bad patch. Where am I supposed to go with that?
But I’ve gotten used to having fans—very much like having them, in fact. It’s fanfic that I’m still puzzling over.

fic

Fanfics, don’t you know, are stories written by fans in the worlds of their favorite TV series or movies or books. Although fanfic would seem to be a recent phenomenon, it is as old as fiction itself. Readers—or listeners, before stories were written—have been retelling tales since forever, often in the process “improving” them. Plots get revised, characters redeemed, settings remodeled. Sherlock Holmes in twenty-first century London? Done! <pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece /sherlock/series1.html> Frankenstein meets Mary Bennet from Pride and Prejudice? Nebula award! <www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/documents/Kessel-PrideAndPrometheus.pdf> Shakespeare <Shakespeare-online.com> wrote fanfic of Plutarch <livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch.htm>. Milton <luminarium.org/sevenlit/milton> wrote Bible fanfic. Okay, so I’m being polemical here, but bear with me. In a 2009 io9 interview <io9.com/5406069> fanfic fan Michael Chabon <michaelchabon.com> explains that fanfic is “. . . not simple (or even complex) imitation; it’s elaboration, infilling, transformation, a strategic redeployment of the tropes and figures of the source material/primary text.”
When artists borrow from other artists, we nod knowingly and call it influence. But when ordinary folks appropriate creative work for their particular use, those invested in the delivery of popular culture get defensive. They demean those who participate as inane, immature, unimaginative, and just a little out of control. This was especially true at the dawn of a fanfic revolution in the 1960s, when mass media began to present us with a variety of amazing source materials and improvements in mass communications made it possible for fans to spread their words far and wide. And in the beginning there were no fans more passionate than Trekkers. They had been promised a five year mission, but NBC gave them only three. The universe of Star Trek <startrek.com> practically begged for further exploration, so fans got busy. But some of the adventures that began to appear in smeary mimeographed ’zines did not always stick to the Star Trek bible; fans from different subcultures explored strange new worlds that gave Gene Roddenberry fits. Perhaps the most notorious fanfic was Kirk/Spock <beyonddreamspress.com/history.htm>, aka K/S, which gave rise to Slash <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_fiction>. Slash fiction depicts fictional characters of the same sex in romantic or sexual situations. While all fanfic was not then nor is now slash, gender politics have made this a hot button topic, since it gives ammunition to those who would criticize all fanfic for twisting or even undermining the intentions of the original creators.
But so what? Just how far do the rights of the original creators extend? And who will speak for them? The writers who scripted the series? The actors who delivered the lines? More likely it is the corporations that have earned huge profits from the properties. Because make no mistake, while there is surely fanfic of all stripes based on the works of J.K. Rowling <jkrowling.com> and Neil Gaiman <neilgaiman.com> and Rick Riordan <rickriordan.com>, most fanfic is media related. Certainly there are serious legal issues swirling around fanfic. Some of it can be considered parody, but which? What is fair use? And since fanfic writers traditionally give their work away, what harm is actually being done? There are those who would answer it makes no difference that fanfic is free; it’s a violation of copyright law. Yes, but Fanfiction.net <fanfiction.net> is huge and it is but one of a number of fanfic sites. Who is going to chase down every fanfic writer in the world? What good would sanctions do? For more on these matters, check out the excellent discussion at the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse <chillingeffects.org/fanfic>.

writers

Although I suppose I have a stake in the legal debate over fanfic, it doesn’t much interest me. What does get my attention is the prejudice against fanfic, especially when I detect small-mindedness in my own artistic sensibility. Who am I to look down my nose at these writers when I published a fanfic novel back in the day?
Anyone trying to understand fanfic and the reasons why it is so popular needs to consult the work of Henry Jenkins <henryjenkins.org>, who calls his blog “Confessions of an Aca-Fan.” Henry has taken it as his “personal challenge to find a way to break cultural theory out of the academic bookstore ghetto and open up a larger space to talk about the media that matters to us from a consumer’s point of view.” He has thought deeply about fanfic and his eye-opening 1988 essay Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten <web.mit.edu/course/21/21l.432/www/readings/star%20trek%20rerun.pdf> is must reading. Consider:
“Fandom is a vehicle for marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a fashion that serves different interests.” Later he makes the point that fan writers and readers are almost all female: “For some women, trapped within low paying jobs or within the socially isolated sphere of homemaker, participation within a national, or international, network of fans grants a degree of dignity and respect otherwise lacking. For others, fandom offers a training ground for the development of professional skills and an outlet for creative impulses constrained by their workday lives.” And the attitudes of fanfic writers to their source materials foreshadow attitudes of the Google Generation: “. . . fan writers suggest the need to redefine the politics of reading, to view textual property not as the exclusive domain of textual producers but as open to repossession by textual consumers.”

fanfic to pro

I asked my friend Sandra McDonald <homepage.mac.com/samcdonald> to give me a quick tour of fanfic. Sandra is a well-established author; her Outback Stars trilogy was published by Tor and “The Monsters of Morgan Island” appeared in these pages in June of 2009. Her most recent book is a short story collection, Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories. Like several other pros, Naomi Novick <temeraire.org> and Mercedes Lackey <mercedeslackey.com>, for example, she has written fanfic under a pseudonym.
That her fanfic production has dropped as her career as a published writer has progressed is not surprising. “I had written a novel but I was also writing fan fiction. You get an enormous amount of feedback and enthusiasm. For me it was a hobby that turned out to be really beneficial because people were helping me get better.” I wondered if most fanfic writers don’t aspire to be published. “Fan fiction is about sharing your love of something. It’s a hobby, a way to get your squee on. It has a built in community of readers who love the characters as much as you do. Some fan fiction writers want to be published novelists or short story writers. Some don’t. They’ll write a hundred thousand word story—but not for money. They don’t want a book. They do it because they love the characters and they want to share them with other people who love the characters. It’s a mistake to think that fanfic writers want to write ‘real’ fiction. Many of them are happy to never ever deal with editors, agents, publishers. That’s not their goal.”
What’s going on in fanfic today? “You have all these subgenres. You have domestic stories where your favorite characters settle down in suburbia. You have the male pregnancy stories, which some people get skeevy about. But what is important to many women? Pregnancies, babies, kids. They write stories about characters living happily ever after. They write pornography because there isn’t a lot of women’s pornography on the shelves of B&N. I think fan fiction is under appreciated because it’s mostly written by women for women about women’s concerns. And we know that women’s writing in general is the subject of derision.”
So is there fanfic based on her work? “I don’t know of any,” she says. “I would be really excited if someone did write some, but I wouldn’t read it. I want to keep a barrier between how I think of the characters and how other people interpret them.” She tells potential fans, “Have fun, do whatever you want, slash ’em, burn ’em, whatever you want. I’ll just stay over here in my corner.”

exit

Alas, Sandra, there is no fanfic based on my stuff either—as far as I know. So it’s easy for me to pontificate about how tolerant I would be if there were. I’ve come a long way in my attitude toward fanfic, but I don’t know what I’d make of a story that really took my work to extremes. I probably wouldn’t read it, although I’d be sorely tempted to peek. But since lots of my work is available under a Creative Commons license <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0>, any fan with the will can have her way with my stories.
So go ahead. Feel free to put me to the test!

Copyright © 2011 James Patrick Kelly