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Fandom: going to the dogs since 1971
Jul. 12th, 2010 06:57 pmTo test out that whole "buying books for Kobo with Linux" business, I spent AU$0.99 and bought a book called Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History, 1967-1987 by Joan Marie Verber. It's taken me a while to get into it, and to be honest, if I'd paid more than five bucks for it, I might have felt a bit cheated, but I'm really starting to enjoy it.
It's basically a rough catalogue of zines, with corresponding commentaries on fannish trends and significant fics, cons and discussions, in the first two decades of Star Trek fandom's existence. This makes it quite frustrating, in that we really only get glimpses of things before we're whisked on to the next year's products.
However, these glimpses are great. Like, the rise of slash (the first recorded slash fic was in an adult-content zine, and it wasn't until the author confirmed it that people were actually certain it involved two men, let alone which two men) and the ensuing debate. And the rising numbers of horrid newbies who were only in it for the relationships and characters, and who didn't care about the science fiction, and they weren't watching the show properly! And then the K/S shippers started insisting that their ship was canon, so there were arguments, and then Gene Roddenberry threw a line into the novelisation of The Motion Picture that said Kirk and Spock couldn't possibly be lovers, so then it wasn't canon and you weren't allowed to ship it, only some people INSISTED on persisting, and a few said the line actually meant the exact opposite, and still more said it didn't even matter what Roddenberry said.
(Meanwhile, there was a series of zines about Uhura, and though it was generally agreed that they were quite good and all, very few people bothered to buy them.)
In 1976, there was an argument about zines warning for adult content, character death and violence. Warnings: common courtesy, or the harbinger of fandom's destruction? A couple of years later, zines dedicated to reviewing other zines started to appear, and that was even worse! "We're just writing fic for fun! How dare you criticise Mary Sue Brings Kirk And Spock Together Part 13?" versus "I really do think I have the right to tell you that commas don't work like that." And what to do about the growing problem of people who were also interested in Star Wars? It's the growing number of women, suggested some male fans, that has led to this emphasis on feelings and emotions and characterisation over good, hard SF. Only the old hard SF zines had mostly been written and edited by women. NOOOOO, GET THESE GIIIIIIIIIIIIRLS OUT OF OUR MAAAANLY FAAAANDOMMMM! And it is possible to hate The Motion Picture and still be a good fan? Is it unreasonable to drown Paramount in a deluge of protest mail on the rumour that Spock is going to be killed?
Really, it's a good thing that fandom has matured and moved on since those days.
My favourite bit, so far, is a mention of a woman who complained that The Motion Picture was the most obscene film she'd ever seen. Questioned, she said that all this talk of "penetrating the cloud" and so forth was not on.
Anyway, if you, too, want to share the lulz (and facepalm at all the bits where the book basically turns into grudgewank about those damn K/S fans), you can get it from a variety of ebook sources, but I would recommend grabbing the Kobo app, then reading it on your desktop.
It's basically a rough catalogue of zines, with corresponding commentaries on fannish trends and significant fics, cons and discussions, in the first two decades of Star Trek fandom's existence. This makes it quite frustrating, in that we really only get glimpses of things before we're whisked on to the next year's products.
However, these glimpses are great. Like, the rise of slash (the first recorded slash fic was in an adult-content zine, and it wasn't until the author confirmed it that people were actually certain it involved two men, let alone which two men) and the ensuing debate. And the rising numbers of horrid newbies who were only in it for the relationships and characters, and who didn't care about the science fiction, and they weren't watching the show properly! And then the K/S shippers started insisting that their ship was canon, so there were arguments, and then Gene Roddenberry threw a line into the novelisation of The Motion Picture that said Kirk and Spock couldn't possibly be lovers, so then it wasn't canon and you weren't allowed to ship it, only some people INSISTED on persisting, and a few said the line actually meant the exact opposite, and still more said it didn't even matter what Roddenberry said.
(Meanwhile, there was a series of zines about Uhura, and though it was generally agreed that they were quite good and all, very few people bothered to buy them.)
In 1976, there was an argument about zines warning for adult content, character death and violence. Warnings: common courtesy, or the harbinger of fandom's destruction? A couple of years later, zines dedicated to reviewing other zines started to appear, and that was even worse! "We're just writing fic for fun! How dare you criticise Mary Sue Brings Kirk And Spock Together Part 13?" versus "I really do think I have the right to tell you that commas don't work like that." And what to do about the growing problem of people who were also interested in Star Wars? It's the growing number of women, suggested some male fans, that has led to this emphasis on feelings and emotions and characterisation over good, hard SF. Only the old hard SF zines had mostly been written and edited by women. NOOOOO, GET THESE GIIIIIIIIIIIIRLS OUT OF OUR MAAAANLY FAAAANDOMMMM! And it is possible to hate The Motion Picture and still be a good fan? Is it unreasonable to drown Paramount in a deluge of protest mail on the rumour that Spock is going to be killed?
Really, it's a good thing that fandom has matured and moved on since those days.
My favourite bit, so far, is a mention of a woman who complained that The Motion Picture was the most obscene film she'd ever seen. Questioned, she said that all this talk of "penetrating the cloud" and so forth was not on.
Anyway, if you, too, want to share the lulz (and facepalm at all the bits where the book basically turns into grudgewank about those damn K/S fans), you can get it from a variety of ebook sources, but I would recommend grabbing the Kobo app, then reading it on your desktop.
