Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 03:34:00 -0400
From: Ted White <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re:  fanfiction
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

On 4/9/2010 8:26 PM, Tamar Lindsay wrote:

>  Ted White <twhite8 at cox.net> wrote
>
> > On 4/9/2010 6:57 PM, mark wrote:
> >
[...]
> >
> >> Still, nowhere *near* all fanfic is Trek.
> >
> > None of it was, originally, and none of it was what people call
> > that now.  Proper fanfiction was fiction *about* fans.  Some still
> > is.
>
>  Not being an old-time fan, the idea of writing fiction about real
>  people (or about personas worn temporarily by real people) seems
>  fraught with risk.  Even Tuckerizing could get tricky. How did
>  people avoid misunderstandings? Was it just that fandom was a very
>  small group when that was popular?

One needn't write about actual fans to write fiction about fans.  In
fiction we get to *make people up*.  The concept was to make use of
fannish situations.  However, some of us have written about real people
in fandom.  Check out my story in the final (Hugo-winning) issue of
SCIENCE-FICTION FIVE-YEARLY (posted on eFanzines).  The narrator is
entirely fictional (a detective), but the situation is semi-real, the
setting is NYC in the fall in 1961, and almost all the characters are
real and include S-FF-Y editor Lee Hoffman (the description of her
basement apartment is accurate), Harlan Ellison, and myself and my first
wife Sylvia (the description of our Village apartment is accurate).  In
fact, all the locales are accurate, including the apartment of the
(unnamed) Linda Solomon, at 95 Christopher.  The only one portrayed at
all unkindly (but accurately) is A.J. Budrys...and he's dead.   I wrote
it especially for Lee Hoffman to read, but she died before she had the
chance, unfortunately.  Anyway, no legal action is at all likely.

--Ted White