My Paradox Sherlock has his admirers and his detractors, but I’ve been very clear since the series took an edgier turn that he isn’t a role model. He’s just a very screwed-up fellow who can still love and be loved in return. A few people were livid over the gay shamming scene, partly because I didn’t warn them in advance, but that’s okay and legitimate and we talked it through. My Sherlock is simply demisexual, so he doesn’t see himself as being gay. He sees himself as loving John. Which is why later, when he rather adores Irene, I think his statement that he’s not exactly gay and might have had sex with a woman if presented with the right one comes to full completion. A few people wanted to see him as a queer advocate, and he’s in fact a lunatic. So they were destined for disappointment. They were destined for more disappointment at the climax of “Entirely Covered in Your Invisible Name” when they wanted him to be a nice, harmless sociopath and he isn’t. But it’s fiction; it’s not a guide to life any more than Lolita is. Then there was the great BDSM kerfuffle, which squicked some people, but I’m kinky, so . . . it is what it is.
The fandom fame is something I try to downplay as much as possible by talking as little about myself as I can and only posting fic when it exists—I’m no arbiter of taste, and I don’t step into arguments or fandom drama very often. I read, I write, I lurk. I admire others from afar. This interview is something of an aberration for me.
Sherlock has difficulty with ethics. John is “good at” right from wrong—but not always where Sherlock is concerned. Do you ever feel similarly torn about the ethics of what you are representing? Or have people challenged you on the ethics of representing an ethically challenged but ethically conscious (even ethically obsessed) relationship?
Yes and no. Yes, people have told me or have mentioned in rec lists that the relationship is borderline abusive and absolutely dysfunctional. I agree with those people. And yes, people have gotten into conversations with me about the ethics of portraying that. But I also get a ton of correspondence from people who like that it’s morally complicated, that no one is wholly innocent or wholly unforgiveable, that these are utterly screwy people who still deserve love. All my stories are about love. If the love wasn’t there, if it was just Sherlock threatening to kill his partner or John calling himself one of Sherlock’s “things” or any of the other completely unhealthy aspects of the stories, I can’t imagine anyone would read them. And Sherlock, for all his terrible faults, is well-intentioned, and I think that John can work with that.
Why do you prefer posting online to publishing traditionally?
Because the stories aren’t for readers, they’re for me and my noisy, noisy head, and then when people happen to read them and enjoy them or even come away feeling a bit better, that’s a completely unexpected bonus. Charging money for them would be like having heart surgery and then billing the doctor for the privilege of working on me. Sometimes I need to write these mad tales in order to get rid of all the muck in my chest, and I’d never dream of charging anyone money for the results. That’s the reason I allow adaptations of the Paradox ’verse without having to ask my permission as well . . . the same reason you can podfic anything I write as wordstrings or Katie Forsythe, or print it on a T-shirt, or translate it or what you will, and without my knowledge (though I’d love the link, if it comes to that). I already accomplished the therapy by writing the fic, and it was written for selfish reasons. Then I put it online and it belongs to everyone; take it or leave it as you will.
This isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate my readers, on the contrary. I adore my readers. They bring me great joy. But I, Katherine of various LJ names, didn’t expect them. They are a perennial happy surprise.
Are your stories ever influenced by community response? Do you have pre-readers?
No, and no. Because again, they’re for me and what I need. I think one of the unintended side effects of that isolation is that it’s made me rather fearless regarding both style and substance. I’m not frightened of showing Sherlock and John in a bad light, and I’m not nervous about trying stylistic tricks that might not work. On the other hand, if I did have a beta, my scribblings would certainly be less riddled with typos.
I find your fic incredibly intense. I wonder if writing Sherlock this way brings the mind of the writer uncomfortably close to the madness described. Does that ever happen?
To an enormous extent, these people are loco because I am loco. For instance, I am a very highly functioning addict, and so is the Holmes over in my canon worlds. Now, no, I’m not a sociopath nor a genius nor a synesthete nor a solider with PTSD. But I am a nutcase, and my brain runs on multiple tracks with no off switch. I write to scrape ugly feelings off my chest, and then I put them on the internet and run away. Writing someone who’s still madder than I am on the continuum, really madder by far, seems to be good for my mental health. Which is why I write them this way. They are little catharses wrapped in a bow.
Usually your universes are very distinct (the way the men refer to each other as “friends” was one commonality I saw). Do you ever intend for your ACD-verse to bleed into the Sherlock-verse? Do you see these verses as connected?
They don’t bleed on purpose. I have three versions of Holmes, essentially (my Watsons tend to vary less). First, the classic prickly gent from the canon stories, the way he’s always been slashed—aloof, can’t express emotion, loves Watson desperately but works it obliquely, about as good at relationships as a steamed head of cabbage. Next, the Holmes in my Love collection, who was conceived as niceboyfriend!Holmes after I’d been writing the prickly gent for too long and thought, What if I’m giving this guy a bad rap? And then Sherlock, who is madder than a bag of ferrets.
But I think at heart, in their heart of hearts, Sherlock and John and Holmes and Watson are friends first. I’m a slasher, so they’re also banging, but it’s about this massive, uncontainable love they have for each other, so yes . . . I think they’re always friends. That part bleeds over from story to story because that’s what draws me to them in the first place. They’re the best set of friends I’ve ever seen.
part two
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF MEDIA FANDOM
An Illustrative Narrative of Technology,
Continuity, and Change
Science Fiction, Star Trek, and the Birth of Media Fandom
Here we learn what it means to be a fan. Our hero, Jophan, is woken to a new life by his discovery of fanzines. He moves through a symbolic landscape populated by people with symbolic names, in search of “The Enchanted Duplicator,” with which he will be able to publish the perfect fanzine and become a True Fan. Eventually our Everyfan survives technical difficulties, his own inexperience, harsh criticism, and over-kind praise, and becomes a True Fan when he knows himself, when he can automatically give back to others what he has received.
—Andy Sawyer, of “The Enchanted Duplicator”
FANFICTION IS FUELED by relationships, and it fuels relationships. It creates them. When fanwriting was predominantly a solitary activity, the primary relationships were between writer and source, and then writer and story. Family magazines similar to those created by the young Brontë children were not uncommon, but they did not circulate widely, as reproduction was a matter of hand copying. As the twentieth century progressed, fans—primarily of Sherlock Holmes or, alternatively, science fiction—found they might join societies, receive and contribute to journals, and, eventually, make their own small publications, or zines. In the case of Sherlock Holmes, some critic-fans published pastiche, as we’ve seen, but most early fanzine writing was critical and historical in nature. In science fiction fandoms, zines were dominated by commentary—and published writers often took part as well. Many professionals also counted themselves as fans or began as fan writers before going on to publish professionally.
Before the 1960s, fanfiction as a term (or rather “fan fiction,” with a space) designated original fiction by amateur writers published in fanzines. It was many years before fanfiction in th
e sense of stories based on existing worlds and characters began to fill science fiction zines (although there are anecdotal stories of such zines being produced and circulated on a very small scale). Nonetheless, the importance of zine culture to the development of fanfiction as it exists today cannot be overemphasized. Zine publication may not sound as sexy as coming up with the Kirk/Spock erotica that eventually gave birth to, for one thing, the contemporary genre of male birth fic (they didn’t mean to), but when you talk to early science fiction fans, even early media fans, what they want to talk about are zines: writing content to ensure they could get their hands on copies. The tactile experience of the hand-made objects. The high prices they were sometimes willing to pay. Making them. Stapling them. The collating parties. The potlucks. I have heard these stories many times over now, both from those who left fandom after the rise of the internet and those who embrace internet culture wholeheartedly. Zines were the first step in creating fan-produced culture; as soon as fans had the means of production, they produced.
At first, fandom culture and its zines—in early days, called amateur magazines—were almost entirely male-dominated. What zines meant, and what fanfiction meant, changed as fandom sources shifted from print (literary) to media-based interests. Fanwriting culture also changed in response to technology, which increasingly allowed fanwriting to reach more readers, just as broadcast television ultimately reached more fans—at least more fans simultaneously—than print could. Some of this culture looks familiar, but some elements would be surprising to many active in fandoms today.
As is especially apparent in today’s larger fandoms, there can be a good deal of discontent about BNFs growing too big for their britches. I’ve seen incredible anger expressed toward fans who fancy themselves “real writers” or “real artists” or otherwise put themselves on a par with the creators of the fandom’s source. In 1950s science fiction communities, though, writers often were active fans. Ray Bradbury, for example, was a lifelong fanboy; he wrote to artists and authors he admired for autographs throughout his career—long after he became not just a writer but a global public institution in his own right. In her essay here, Jacqueline Lichtenberg details interacting from a young age with the writers she was reading through letters of comment in zines, and later continuing to use those letters columns to receive communication from her own fans. In earlier days, science fiction fandom as a whole could seem less like us (fans) v. them (creators/rightsholders) and more like us (science fiction world) v. them (“mundanes” or nonfans).
So it’s here that we start our highly selective history of media fandom and its fanfiction: with a different definition of fanfiction and an earlier set of fans, as well as the Star Trek fanfiction fandom, long considered the first modern fic-writing group, that emerged from it.
Andy Sawyer, librarian of the Science Fiction Foundation Collection at the University of Liverpool Library, science fiction scholar, teacher, editor, and fan, relates a forgotten era and entirely different meaning for “fan fiction,” one that dates from 1950s Ireland.
Enormous fandom controversies today arise around both Real Person Fic (RPF, or fanfiction based on real people rather than characters) and Big Name Fans (BNFs). Such conflicts are fictionalized in the Sherlock fic “The Theory of Narrative Causality” and they resurface as topics throughout this volume. Yet in a largely forgotten element of fanfiction history, one that introduces the specificity of local fandom culture to an emerging international zine exchange, we see that some of the earliest science fiction fanfiction was essentially RPF of BNFs—and was received unscathed and scandal-free.
The internet has done away with many of the distinctive local cultures that arose around particular fandoms in particular places. This group preserved some of itself for us, in fictionalized form, in science fiction zines that were circulated throughout the UK and America.
Fables of Irish Fandom
Fan Fiction in the 1950s and ’60s
Andy Sawyer
For much of the history of science fiction fandom, fan fiction did not represent fiction set in the universe of a fan’s favorite book/TV series/film. Rather, it was either fiction written by fans and published in fanzines (as opposed to that by professional writers published in professional magazines) or fiction about fans and fandom, written as a joke for the people who were made gentle fun of. One of the greatest exponents of this was John Berry, whose “Fables of Irish Fandom” were published in a number of British and American fanzines between 1954 and 1965, and reprinted in five volumes by British fan Ken Cheslin between 1998 and 1999.18 Eventually publishing around sixty of these “Fables,” Berry described the lives of Northern Ireland’s Belfast group, in a kind of soap opera of fannish lives.
Archie Mercer, a British science fiction fan who wrote his own fiction (Meadows of Fantasy) in which lightly disguised members of fandom appear, once wrote to Berry, telling him, “When he started to read my Irish Fandom Stories, everything seemed to be perfectly orderly and rational, yet when he’d finished reading the articles, he felt he had been transported into a fantasy world, but he had been unable to finger the transition” (“Down Memory Lain”19). Berry, a prolific writer,20 was a member of the fan group that centered around Walter (“Walt”) and Madeline Willis in the 1950s. His accounts started as a joke, one that was sometimes carried too far; Berry also noted that “the lead players became rather irritated by my frequent revelations.” They remain an affectionate and amusing picture of a subculture and individuals still revered by certain sections of British fandom. Through Berry’s stories, fans in the rest of Britain and America got to know the “Belfast Group.” But this knowledge was built upon the way fans know one another, an acquaintance that differed from the usual ways in which people know their friends. Communication here was rarely in person—attendance at science fiction conventions was relatively infrequent for many fans—and usually through the exchange of fanzines. Berry’s fables allowed you to feel that you were part of the group.
The context within which Berry was writing is best put by him, in his 1958 story “Star Struck.”21 Here, he talks of “the fundamental facets of a true science fiction fan.” He continues: “I had considered myself pretty well indoctrinated in all the basic necessities . . . nurtured on THE ENCHANTED DUPLICATOR . . . a concentrated course of QUANDRY, OOPSLA and SLANT . . . followed by high pressure appreciation of GRUE . . . reading ASTOUNDING, GALAXY, etc . . . mad about the pro’s . . . STURGEON, BLISH, BRADBURY, WHITE and SHAW, etc . . .”22 When Berry started reading science fiction in the late-1940s “golden age,” American magazines were central (it was not until after the war that British magazines such as New Worlds, Nebula, and Authentic offered science fiction to fans in the United Kingdom). Astounding, established in 1930 and edited by John W. Campbell, was fundamental. Galaxy Science Fiction, founded in 1950 by H. L. Gold, was one of a number of magazines that successfully challenged Astounding during the 1950s. The American professional writers Berry name-checks—Theodore Sturgeon, James Blish, Ray Bradbury—were rooted in the magazines, but their novels appeared in book form on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the 1940s and ’50s. Two other names in that last list, James White and Bob Shaw, were fellow members of Irish Fandom who had gone on to become professionals in their own right, and whose work was just starting to be published during the early 1950s.
It is significant, however, that Berry begins his list of “fundamental facets of a true science fiction fan” with references to fanzines and fannish activity rather than actual science fiction. Quandry, Oopsla, Slant, and Grue were popular fanzines of the time, written by fans and distributed in return for trades of other fanzines, contributions, or letters of comment. In them, science fiction was often discussed but, increasingly, the focus was the activity of fandom itself. The defining document of this activity was The Enchanted Duplicator, a mock-epic allegory published by Walter Willis and Bob Shaw in 1954 as a mimeographed booklet.23
Here we learn what it means to be a fan. Our
hero, Jophan, is woken to a new life by his discovery of fanzines. He moves through a symbolic landscape populated by people with symbolic names, in search of “The Enchanted Duplicator,” with which he will be able to publish the perfect fanzine and become a True Fan. Eventually our Everyfan survives technical difficulties, his own inexperience, harsh criticism, and over-kind praise, and becomes a True Fan when he knows himself, when he can automatically give back to others what he has received.
Walter Willis, acknowledged leader of the Belfast Group and the main instigator of The Enchanted Duplicator, was, when John Berry got to know him, working for the Northern Ireland Civil Service. He was born in Belfast to a Protestant family who had moved from southern Ireland. Although its most violent times were to come, Northern Ireland was troubled by sectarian division between Protestant and Catholic communities, and Willis, who died in 1999, must have worked through some of the region’s most difficult years. He therefore kept his life as a civil servant separate from his life as a fan. Fandom was a hobby, and when it ceased being quite so fulfilling, or the pressures of daily life began to impinge, he scaled down. John Berry’s day job was in the police force, so similar pressures may have applied to him. Although he continued to correspond with individual fans, most of his fan activity was over by the mid-sixties. He died in 2011.
The Willises were SF readers—indeed, they told the story of how they met in a shop selling SF magazines24—but they were unaware of fandom until Walter discovered a US edition of Astounding in a secondhand bookshop, and realized that the British editions he had been reading were in fact heavily abridged. Above all, they lacked what made fandom possible: the letters column, where readers expressed opinions and through which (as postal addresses were usually printed) they could contact each other. By the end of 1948, Willis and White had issued their first fanzine, Slant, followed by thirty-six issues of Hyphen from 1952 to 1965. Apart from a regular column on fandom in Nebula from 1952 to 1959, a coauthored short story, a 1972 reprint of The Enchanted Duplicator in Amazing, and a book, The Improbable Irish (Ace, 1969, under the name Walter Bryan), virtually all of Willis’ writing appeared as amateur fanwriting.
Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World Page 9
