Fanfic. Ack!

Dan Parmenter · 26 Jun 1998, 11:34 · from urth-v0015.mbox · original

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From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Subject: (urth) Fanfic.  Ack!
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 11:34:29
Message-ID: <urth-v0015-0026 at digest.urth.net>
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I for one would be kind of disappointed by the concept of Wolfe fan
fiction.  The fan fiction movement, while not without its merits
(anything that encourages people to take up creative writing can't be
a bad thing) has always struck me as one of the saddest parts about SF
fandom as a whole since it seems to emphasize characters as abstract
entities outside of an concept of authors.  This isn't surprsing in
the context of Star Trek where there was never any one original
"author", but for the concept to be applied to the work of a novelist,
it seems quite strange.  Of course if you call it a "literary
pastiche" then it's not mere fanfic and is thus limked to more
established literary forms; indeed, Wolfe himself has written at least
one Sherlock Holmes pastiche (most people have, it seems).

The amount of fanfic on the net never ceases to amaze me.  I do a lot
of searching on the web for my job and it's not unusual for the most
ordinary-seeming searches to turn up references to fanfic based on
some TV show or other.  Unbelievable!  Why don't people want to write
their own stories about their own characters?

D

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