Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 09:46:05 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Re:  fanfiction
From: whitroth at 5-cent.us
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
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
<snip>
I can think of three pro/fanfic novels I have always enjoyed:
Kurland/Andersen/Waters' Butterfly Kid, Unicorn Girl, and Probability Pad.
Each author, respectively, is the hero of each book, and the other two are
sidekicks/co-heroes.

As an example from these, for those that haven't read any of them, is the
scene from Unicorn Girl: they were in a parking lot, out west, and
suddenly they've been BLIPped. They pick themselves up, look around, and
say, gravity's about the same, geologically speaking, it's about the same,
and the foliage looks normal. Ok, so either we've been transported a short
distance in time, or we're in a parallel world. Fine, how did we get here,
and what do we do about it?

A trufaanish response.

I still want one or two of the blue pills from Butterfly Kid, but Mike
Kurland tells me he can't find any of those he had left....

        mark