Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World

by Jamison, Anne

  When Star Trek was cancelled (the first time), Devra had the typical science fiction fan’s reaction, which I shared: “Oh, yeah? You and what army?”

  It was from that flood of outrage, shared with other experienced science fiction fans, that Devra started Spockanalia. It was supposed to be a “one shot” and had very little fiction. But demand exploded, people sent her stories, and she produced other issues. I did a typical fan essay for issue four called “Mr. Spock on Logic,” and through Spockanalia discovered Jean Lorrah, who would become a good friend and cowriter, via a contribution she also had made.

  Off in Minneapolis, Ruth Berman almost simultaneously had the same idea as Devra from the same outraged reaction and founded the famous fanzine T-Negative (after Spock’s blood type). As soon as I heard the title of the fanzine, I wrote a story for it (the first Kraith story)—and yes, at the time I expected it to be a one-shot, a single standalone story in a single standalone fanzine, and that’d be the end of it).

  All of this fan outrage stewing and brewing through those years—how dare they cancel Star Trek!—had found an outlet: fanzines.

  What became my book Star Trek Lives! started as a bewildered feeling and a sense of horror deep in my gut: “What if I’m missing a fanzine?!” They were springing up so fast, disappearing, and re-emerging edited by other people—it was confusing and there was no central source of information where you could be sure you weren’t missing something.

  So, afraid I might miss a zine, I circulated a sign-up sheet by snail mail, asking editors I knew to list zines they knew about that were not listed on the sheet, to mail the sheet to someone who hadn’t been on it, and to ask them to add what they knew.

  That would never work today, but that’s how fandom operated then. Today you find a blog or a wiki. Back then, it was not an innovative method of gathering information, just something I felt driven to do even though it put a lot of wear and tear on my typewriter.

  All the new fanzines springing up became interconnected because they published “letters of comment” (LoC for short) with the addresses of fans who wrote them. Fans wrote to each other, both directly and via fanzines’ letters columns about comments in previous issues, or about comments or stories published in other fanzines by different groups of people. When people started copying my zine sign-up sheets and looping them through groups I didn’t know about, but with my address as the ultimate destination, I found I had an ever-growing file of zines. I couldn’t afford to buy that many zines, so I wrote stories for them. Fannish tradition is that zines don’t pay for stories. Contribute a story or a letter of comment, you get a free copy. So I wrote a Kraith story or a LoC for every zine I found out about. That’s why Roberta was in my basement during that fateful collating party. I had them all.

  Having grown up in a journalistic family, I knew I was onto a news story as the number of zines exploded. I knew how to construct a newspaper story. Who. What. When. Where. Why. How many? I knew how many fanzines there were, and I could tally up the contributors, but the readers who bought zines but didn’t contribute couldn’t be counted. So I circulated (and asked zines to print) a questionnaire asking who/what/when of Star Trek fanzine readers. At that time, I just intended to write an article for my local newspaper, and was kind of thinking about taking a shot at the New York Times with it, because it seemed I was onto a really hot story. As questionnaires came back and the numbers of zines kept growing, I started to think not newspaper story, but book.

  I was still sizzling with the idea of a book about Star Trek fandom when I attended the very first Star Trek convention and happened across Gene Roddenberry standing in a hallway. I went up to him, stuck out my hand, and announced, “Hi! I’m Jacqueline Lichtenberg.” Of course, he didn’t know “who” that was, but he was nice anyway. He was probably still floating on the uproarious reception the crowd had given him when he’d spoken earlier.

  I told him about my questionnaire-circulating project and the results, and I proposed creating a Star Trek Welcommittee and a directory of fanzines. He seemed to think that was a good idea, so, emboldened, I told him that I proposed to collect the whole story of the advent of Star Trek fandom into a book, and asked if he’d write the foreword. He said yes. Then he knocked me over by giving me his home phone number. I had to promise not to tell anyone I had it, but he said to call him when I sold the book.

  I spent the next few years writing the book, but I also spent a lot of time during that period sitting at Gene Roddenberry’s feet (literally, with a tape recorder) in various hotel rooms around the country, interviewing him and various cast members and writers. So when I did call him to let him know we had a publication deal, he was not surprised.

  Around the time of that fateful collating party, in addition to writing and marketing short stories to science fiction magazines and anthologies and working on what became Star Trek Lives!, I was in the middle of two other projects: my Star Trek fanzine series, Kraith, and rewriting and trying to sell my original novel, House of Zeor.

  In addition to writing my own stories set in the Kraith series, I was also editing/managing fifty or so writers and artists who contributed to the Kraith mythos and issuing official numbers to the Kraith stories so they could be assembled into chronological order by readers who found them scattered among various zines. Rather than being a single author’s story, Kraith was a story framework based on Star Trek that I created, to which I invited others to add their own stories, having deliberately left defined “holes” to be filled. So organizing all the stories wasn’t an easy task. Kraith was published in a plethora of fanzines, often reprinted in other fanzines, and eventually collected by two fans I’d met in New York who lived in Michigan. They retyped (on stencils) everything (or all the stories we then knew about; additional unofficial ones later surfaced in England) from other fanzines or from blurry carbon copies for publication as a single volume, first on mimeo and then, after retyping, on offset press in 1,000- to 1,500-copy print runs.

  Kraith was the reason we were all there in my kitchen that day, talking about Star Trek and The World Wreckers and Kirk/Spock stories that weren’t yet known as slash, but that collating party led me to something that affected my life just as much as Star Trek had: Marion Zimmer Bradley’s home address.

  In response to my shouting about adding Darkover to Star Trek to get Kraith, that day, Devra summarily waved Darkover aside by saying something about what Marion had said at a Lunacon. I was like, “OH MY GOD, YOU KNOW MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY!!!” And she was like, *shrug*, “Who doesn’t?” I knew that via fandom, reader/fans regularly interacted with professional writers, but my legs still went weak. I had been reading Marion since college and my biggest ambition was to become as good a writer as she was.

  It was because of that conversation that Devra told Marion about me. Marion wrote me, so I typed a five-page, single-spaced letter analyzing what was “wrong” with The World Wreckers, but also what made it such an important book for me: the sexual relationship, and particularly chapter thirteen, where human and alien have alien sex. Only in science fiction fandom does that kind of chutzpah pay off; we started corresponding. Eventually, she asked me to send her the draft of House of Zeor I was working on.

  In the Sime~Gen universe of House of Zeor, humanity has mutated into Sime and Gen (there are no humans like you and me in that universe). Simes need life energy, selyn, from Gens in order to live. Yet just taking selyn often kills the Gens. “Channels” are a submutation of Simes who can take selyn from a Gen without killing him or her, then give it to other Simes. But all channels must engage in an intimate act with a Gen once a month—an act termed Transfer that is even more intimate than sex.

  In one scene in House of Zeor, in response to one of Marion’s notes, I inserted a caveat that there are no gay channels. It was not a world-building element added out of any sort of homophobia. All three mutations, Sime, Gen, and channel, come in male and female, and I’d written all except channels to have about the same perce
ntage of gay people as we have today. In Sime~Gen, being gay is not any sort of stigma or social issue. Also, thanks in large part to that collating party, I was gradually becoming fully aware of the K/S electricity vibrating through Star Trek fandom. I wouldn’t even have “revealed” the no-gay-channels rule in House of Zeor, except that, to make one of the scenes work, the explanation had to be included. But the no-gay-channels rule irked fans no end—which may have been a good thing. Irked fans produce fanfic like irritated oysters produce pearls.

  I distinguish Transfer in every detail from sexuality. It makes no difference to the characters if Transfer is male-female, male-male, or female-female. None whatsoever . . . to the characters. Readers? Another matter. Not everyone understood. But via science fiction fandom, there was a way for reader/fans to interact with professional writers, and so I got questions. After House of Zeor, all the Sime~Gen novels were written specifically as answers to the questions fans wrote to me and/or Jean Lorrah, my coauthor on multiple Sime~Gen novels. The first one we cowrote started life as an outline she wrote for a story for Sime~Gen zine Ambrov Zeor. She showed it to me at a Trek convention in Michigan, and I told her to work it up into a proposal and I’d try to sell it to Doubleday. She did. I did. A fan becoming my cowriter might seem strange to some, but it wasn’t odd to me. From participating in fandom and working on Star Trek Lives!, I was already used to thinking about the line between readers and writers as fluid.

  I believe this kind of communication with readers and responsiveness to them is what has allowed the Sime~Gen series to continue as long as it has. Today, one of the original Sime~Gen fanzines, Companion in Zeor, still accepts fiction for online publication, and there is an active group of RPG players producing fiction online; both are on simegen.com. With the advent of the Sime~Gen videogame, I expect reader input to story direction to become a much larger factor. But an interactive, community-oriented philosophy has long been a part of my vision for the Sime~Gen community, just as it was fundamental to the Kraith universe.

  Today, some TV shows provide interactive links you can read with a phone app, which take you to the show’s website for further insights, more story, and scenes providing additional background, texture, and depth. That is precisely what I envisioned as Star Trek fanzine writers began to fill in the gaps of aired Trek episodes, explain incongruities by adding characters, and flat-out contradict what the show’s writers intended. It takes more than one medium to tell one story. Each medium has its strength, so use them all. Fanfiction writers doing pastiches of so many TV shows has finally driven that point home for TV producers. I hope I’ve helped, but in any event this is the world I was born to live in.

  Why was I doing all this while raising kids? I had a vision of an interactive world where the writers and creators of TV shows and novels could hear and incorporate what viewers think and feel about the characters, where fiction creators get feedback from fiction consumers and all participate in the creation of the stories. I’m now living that vision and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s turning out.

  The Look of Fic: 1970s

  The editor’s preface and credits page of Star Trek fanfiction collection Kraith Collected, volume one. 1976 reprint of 1972 first edition. Individual stories were first printed in other zines.B

  A page from Star Trek fanfiction “Spock’s Argument” by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, from Kraith Collected, volume one. Illustration by Gordon Carleton.C

  Interlude: Growing Up Fic

  FANFICTION AS IT WORKS TODAY is not just stories written about other stories (as has always happened). Fanfiction is stories being written about the same other story, all at the same time. It is sharing these stories with increasing ease and speed and decreasing cost. Zines were the first step in creating this kind of writing culture.

  Fanfiction zine culture was taking off as the production costs of television and movies—the works that increasingly inspired fic—skyrocketed. For most fans, participating creatively in these mass media productions was a far less attainable dream than publishing a science fiction story had been for earlier fans. With the creation of the “originals” media fans loved thus firmly in the hands of the official producers, zines nonetheless let fans control the production and dissemination of their own work.

  Media fanfiction culture revolved and evolved around zines for a good twenty-five years, with the independent production techniques improving and the number of zines proliferating. As zine-writing cultures grew around large media franchises—Star Trek, Star Wars, Starsky and Hutch, and Beauty and the Beast all had extensive pre-internet fanfiction fandoms—the line between canon and “fanon” was increasingly experienced as one of media. Everyone—those with money and rights and credit and those without—was telling versions of stories and characters; they were just doing it in different ways.

  This era also marked the rise of another kind of para-writing linked to these vast media franchises: the tie-in novel. Not just fans but enormous corporations augmented, expanded, and slightly changed stories told on screen with stories told in print. Legally speaking, of course, these stories were sanctioned, commissioned, official. But creatively speaking—in the minds of the young people growing up reading them—was there a big difference between a Star Trek novelization a corporation put out, and one you might write yourself on your father’s Atari?

  This era also saw the explosion (on toy store shelves, in backyards using well-placed firecrackers) of the licensed tie-in toy. Every media franchise seemed to beg: play with our stories with these toys. Donny and Marie went to war against Han Solo and Cookie Monster in basements everywhere. What message did this entertainment corporation–generated atmosphere communicate to children as future creators? What did they hope these children would learn? It’s at the very least a very mixed message: You play with our stories with toys, which you pay for. Writers play with our stories on paper, which you also pay for. But don’t you play with our stories on paper, because that would be stealing.

  The message corporations were sending was hardly a consistent one, but then, fanfiction is always a story of consequences uncontrolled by rightsholders. The consistent messages that did seem to get through? More is better. The more the merrier. Mix and match.

  The Empire, of course, eventually struck back. It’s not as if rightsholders don’t try to control fan creativity. For a while Lucasfilm countenanced family-friendly fic, but not anything adult. By the time the internet rolled around, Lucasfilm was targeting independent fansites, doing its best to rein in the consequences its massive marketing had unleashed by focusing all fan activity on its own corporate websites. Cease-and-desist letters were not uncommon. Star Wars as an entity did not want other entities from other universes messing with its toys. George Lucas did not want anyone diluting the power of his original creation with any offensive, ridiculous-sounding creatures from other universes, or unconvincing love stories, or even—God forbid—changing elements of the original stories, distorting character arcs or iconic scenes. Because that would be awful. I am pretty sure plenty of Star Wars fans would have been happy to serve anyone who had tried to do any of those things with a cease-and-desist order.

  Similarly, late-1980s Beauty and the Beast fans, having rallied and campaigned to save the show in the old-fashioned phone and letter campaigns of the pre-internet days, were appalled when their show came back . . . different. The Powers That Be had killed the love plot—and the heroine. Some fans would have liked to send a cease-and-desist order, too (they didn’t have to, the series didn’t last long). Instead, they wrote more fic, telling the stories they wanted to hear. Some of them are still writing it. The CW tried to get into the act recently—but fans of the original series are largely not amused. Not all fic is successful, after all.

  Certainly, not all future writers and creators who grew up in this era went on to write fanfiction. Some put those toys away for good. Some of them (albeit a distinct minority) grew up to be Joss Whedon. Much like Rex Stout speculating on the parenta
ge of Lord Peter Wimsey, Whedon has spent some time considering the lineage of his own characters with relation to the culture of our youth: “If you are going to tell me that Han Solo isn’t the father of Malcolm Reynolds, then I am going to laugh and laugh and laugh . . . Kirk was also, I would say, Malcolm’s weird uncle.”

  Could I get a fic for that?

  As the writer and critic Ron Hogan recounts, growing up in the age of Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Wars, and their copiously merchandised afterlives gave children many different entry points into the stories that inspired them. Hogan did not go on to become a fiction writer (or hasn’t yet), but he did play an instrumental role in introducing literature to the internet by starting Beatrice.com as an author interview website back in 1995 after having seen an article about the early internet browser Netscape. Today, Hogan continues to celebrate “literary” and “genre” fiction in equal measure on the web; his latest project is a series of personalized reading recommendations from authors and booksellers called TheHandsell.com. Here, Hogan explains how a lifetime of unrestrained and unfiltered reading in this “mix and match” era helped shape his future critical projects.

  Literary Playtime

  Or, a Childhood Shaped by Fic

  Ron Hogan

  I.

  Star Wars (it was still just Star Wars then, no “new hope” attached) came out just before my seventh birthday. It’s the first film I remember seeing in the theaters more than once; my parents had just gotten separated, so it was easy enough for my little brother and me to convince first one, then the other, to take us. Maybe their separation—or, rather, an effort to keep us happy during the separation—also made it easier for us to acquire a substantial collection of Kenner action figures from the movie, as well as assorted land vehicles and space fighters and even the cutaway Death Star, with its basement-level “trash compactor” filled with bits of foam.