My goal is to explore the link between amateur fan fiction and books like Wide Sargasso Sea, the Flashman series, the long history of pastiches in Sherlock Holmes fandom, and The Aeneid, (which I noted in my brilliant but outdated dissertation, is perhaps the earliest piece of fan fiction). When I use the phrase “fan fiction” I’m thinking of the stories that used to appear in zines, moved to the Internet along with media fandom, and have now spread like kudzu across the World Wide Web. By “professional fan fiction” I mean books that continue or retell stories by other authors—this is explained further in other parts of the site. I don’t mean books that were originally written as fan fiction and latter published with character names changed to protect the publisher from copyright suits.
It’s my belief that the stories we tell ourselves comprise our culture; fan fiction is one of the ways we share our culture. Fan fiction, amateur and professional, is an aspect of a cultural practice that also includes film sequels, television spin-offs, and folk tales. Portions of this site were delivered at the April 2007 PCA/ACA National Conference as a paper titled “The Unnamed Genre: Professional Fan Fiction from The Aeneid to March.” The version you see here is considerably more colloquial. Some familiarity with fan fiction and fandom, especially media fandom, will be helpful.
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: List Parameters
Part 3: Doyle & Austen
Part 4: Fan Fiction Categories
Part 5: Annotations