My name is Jill Bearup this is History
of Fanfiction part 3 and we made it to
the 20th century! Woo! In part 1 we discussed
the history of derivative works and
participative storytelling from Homer to
King Arthur (who, a viewer informs me, was not
just a character in English and French
poems and stories but also has quite the
history as a Welsh folk hero too. Arthur gets
around) And we talked about how stories
have been held in common rather than
owned by their authors for most of
history. In part 2 we discussed the history
of copyright and how we went from
everything being up for grabs, to no
precise copies of other people's books
but otherwise go wild, to the idea that
authors own not just their characters
and stories but the right to restrict
other people from using those characters
in a way they didn't like. But we also
said that the disapproval of authors has
never stopped participatory storytelling
before. And so to fan fiction and the
fanzine.
if you want to talk about fanfiction you
need to talk about fanzines. Fanzines are
fan-made not-for-profit magazines in
which people published essays, travelogues,
art and even occasionally fiction.
There are examples of amateur
not-for-profit magazines going back as
far as the 19th century but they became
particularly popular in the nineteen
thirties with the sci-fi community and
the formation of sci-fi APAs (that's Amateur
Press Associations). The first recorded
use of the term fanfiction was in 1939
when it appeared in Le Zombie fanzine. "and
Milt must be congratulated on the story.
It is definitely pro and not fan fiction."
Later examples would be somewhat less
pejorative in their use. In 1944's
Fancyclopedia fanfiction referred to
fiction containing fans or pros, now
referred to as RPF or real person
fanfiction. The Fancyclopedia
specifically stated that the term was
"sometimes improperly used to mean fan
science fiction that is ordinary fantasy
published in a fan magazine" but
definitions march on and so must we.
Fanzines were a big part of fan culture for
most of the 20th century but if you want
to talk about fanfiction specifically
(and we do) we should jump to the sixties,
the media fanzine, and Star Trek. Because
if you want to talk fic there's an
important question that needs to be
asked.
Sci-fi fandom and fanzine publication
was largely (though not exclusively) male
for the first few decades of its life. It
wasn't that there weren't any women
writing or indeed reading speculative
fiction, it's just they were pretty
outnumbered by the dudes. Most of the
sci-fi zines of the time were edited by men and
generally they didn't contain a lot of
fanfiction. But a lot of media fanzines
(that's zines based on TV shows like Star
Trek or the man from UNCLE) which started
to gain popularity in the sixties and
beyond were edited and produced by women
SpockaNAHlia (SpockaNAYLya?) SpockaNAHlia, the
first Star Trek only fanzine, had a
letter to editors in the third issue
from Gene Roddenberry himself which
stated "we have used all the extra copies
to make sure that every new writer and
anyone who makes decisions on show
policy have read your fanzine" and ST-Phile,
another fanzine which was also
edited by a woman, "Star Trek needs fans
like you." Media zines tended to be less
about fans and fandom and more about the
media proper and so they contained less in
the way of stuff about fans and more in
the way of stories (fanfiction) and
illustrations (fanart). Where my ladies at?
They're writing fanfic. Eighty-three
percent of Star Trek fan fiction authors
were female by 1970 and ninety percent
by 1973. One of the exceptions to this
gender ratio can be found in the Doctor
Who fandom where men tended to outnumber
women by about
three to one. And the Doctor Who fanzines
very often published fanfic including
some by Peter Capaldi who is now the
twelfth doctor, not to mention the stuff
from Steven Moffat the current showrunner
as well, there weren't so many women
producing content in the Doctor Who
fandom. Again that's not to say that
didn't exist just that they were
somewhat outnumbered. Regardless the
publication and sharing of fanfic among
like-minded people had taken off and it
was largely though not exclusively
women driving both supply and demand.
What kind of supply?
What kind of demand? Oh, all sorts.
including the kind where Spock and Kirk
get it on.
the Captain Kirk Mr. Spock relationship
is so old that its writers invented the
term slash. Not that people hadn't been
writing slash before it's just now it had a name.
Slash sounds quite violent to the
uninitiated but it basically means this
dude is attracted to this other dude
maybe mutual, depends.
this was represented in summaries as k / s
or Kirk / Spock, hence, slash. The / denoting
romantic or sexual relationship as
opposed to K&S which would denote friendship.
Femslash being ladies with ladies and het
being man-woman pairings, The first
fanzines dedicated solely to fic about
the Kirk Spock relationship started to
appear in the late seventies, though
people had of course been writing fic
about it for nigh on a decade at this
point. But no matter how racy the content
might get, Star Trek fanzines had very
little trouble. Not just because Star
Trek was off the air by the time slash
zines got big, but also because Gene
Roddenberry, as we have seen previously,
was a big fan of fandom. In an intro to a
book of Star Trek stories culled from
fanzines Roddenberry stated that Star Trek
fan works of all kinds were "the highest
compliment and the greatest repayment
that fans could ever give us." This
opinion was not universally shared.
Star Wars was a media game changer. When
it was first released in 1977 it was a
huge hit and quickly gained a massive
following. And that following included quite
a few Star Trek fans who were
well-versed in fanzine production. The
first Star Wars fanzines appeared a
month after Star Wars came out. A month.
And while the fanzine The Force was all
meta and art, Hyperspace did contain
some fanfic. Here's part of the 1977
letter from George Lucas to the editors:
"thank you for sending us a copy of the
fanzine Hyperspace. Right now we're
working on a policy about fanzines.
Basically a problem with copyrights has
to be resolved. Once that is accomplished
I'll be able to send a press kit with
photos and articles and biographies. I
hope that material will be of use."
You may be thinking if you're a fan in
the modern day that sending copies of
your fanzines to the creators of the
thing is deeply deeply weird and
uncomfortable to you. But you have to
remember that media fandom was quite
new at this point and so there wasn't
really an accepted way of doing things.
And also possibly Gene Roddenberry had
given people unrealistic expectations of
the niceness that could be expected.
The thing about Star Wars was that it
was the first film that really became a
franchise. Turns out that even if there's
not much money in ticket sales you can
make bank with merchandise including, of
course, the book spin-offs that would
become part of the Expanded Universe.
Does that sound like a nice way of saying
legal fanfic that you can actually get
paid for?
Yeah, and maybe that was part of the
reason that Lucasfilm had something of a
change of heart about fanzines.
Fast-forward to 1981 and a number of
zine publishers received a letter from
Lucasfilm telling them that "it will no
longer be safe for publishers such as
you to feel immune from enforcement
action by Lucasfilm" That may also be due
to two stories which made waves: the first
being The True Force which was published
in a Swedish scene in which Darth Vader
sexually tortures Han Solo
yeah... and a Han/Leia fic called Slow
Boat to Bespin which Lucasfilm
apparently considered x-rated. However it
should be noted that the publishers of
Slow Boat to Bespin had sent a copy
of it to Lucasfilm a year in advance to
ask for their permission. Again, it was a
different time. Anyway, the upshot of our
Star Wars saga is
that Lucasfilm banned pornographic fanworks
(no x-rated stuff you kids PG only,
because apparently we've never heard of
the r-rating) were generally leery about
fanzines and fandom as a whole and
generally contributed to a fandom where
if you wanted to read slash or explicit fic
then you had to know a lady who knew a
lady who could pass you a photocopy
underneath the convention table. After
all Lucasfilm was making money just fine
from their novels, you wouldn't want any
of this free stuff over which they have
no creative control to muddy the waters
now would you?
Not to mention that because Star Wars
with such a huge hit and because George
Lucas was not Gene Roddenberry Lucasfilm
didn't really see and need to let its
fans write fanfic to keep them happy.
After all they're gonna be fans anyway
right? Here's a quote from Jim Ward, VP of
Marketing at Lucasfilm in 2002, "we love
our fans. We want them to have fun. But if
in fact somebody is using our characters
to create a story unto itself
that's not in the spirit of what we
think fandom is about. Fandom is about
celebrating the story the way it is."
If relative newcomers to fandom wonder
about the "hide, hide the fanfic from the
powers that be!" attitude of some of the older
folks, it's because of things like this.
It took until the nineties for slash to
start appearing very gingerly in parts
of the Star Wars fandom again, but
you'll never stop the slashers. You'll
just drive them underground.
By the time the Phantom Menace came out
in 2001 though things were a bit
different.
Obi-Wan Qui-Gon took off like a
homoeroticism powered rocket but at this point
what was Lucasfilm going to do? The world
was a different place by then. Because,
you know, internet. And so it is to the
internet that we are headed in our next
episode.
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