1 year ago
136 Fandom is simply a catch-all word for assorted communities astir media. Fandom’s origins tin agelong backmost into past history, but present it truly comes to mean a radical of radical organizing astir a happening they like. For books, the past of fandom is agelong and varied.
More specifically, I specify fandom arsenic a participatory civilization that creates transformative enactment based connected the archetypal material. I fundamentally hold with Henry Jenkins’s explanation of fandom arsenic participatory civilization and however it creates caller media subjects. Contemporary fandoms are each implicit the place, from books to boybands to Minecraft YouTubers. The origins of bookish fandom supply a roadmap for however participatory civilization shapes the fandom astir the media.
The main unit of participatory civilization is writing. Fans constitute letters to the steadfast oregon the writer and letters backmost and distant to each other. With magazines and fanzines, fans could prosecute successful fandom sermon and instrumentality fabrication penning done the treatment sections. Book fandom sustains itself done the fans’ emotion of the written word, done treatment and transformative creation.
History of Early Fandom
Before BookTok and Bookstagram, determination were fan-hosted forums and websites, and LiveJournal accounts wherever radical posted their theories and headcanons and instrumentality fictions for discussion. Before that era, zines were a ascendant unit successful fandom exchange. These kinds of exchanges, particularly the written ones, person existed successful the speechmaking fandom abstraction for generations.
Photo by Bruno Martins connected UnsplashThe invention of the Gutenberg printing property successful 1450 changed the mode radical related to stories overall. Before the press, determination were 30,000 books successful each of Europe, and 50 years after, determination were much than 12 cardinal books. Reading became a communal happening that radical could bash alternatively of specialized skill.
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An aboriginal novella that inactive has an progressive fandom contiguous was the 1872 novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. It was a hugely fashionable caller successful the “sensation novel” genre. These types of melodramatic, thrilling novels were fashionable successful the 2nd of the 19th period successful England. Carmilla is the 1 that inactive inspires transformative instrumentality enactment today, astir precocious the Carmilla web series, movie, and its associated novel.
Carmilla predated Bram Stoker’s Dracula by astir 25 years, and supernatural monsters inactive garner large fandoms these days. Carmilla’s effects are inactive reverberating 2 and a fractional centuries later.
One of the aboriginal fandoms that radical constituent to is the detonation of enthusiasm astir the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, archetypal published successful The Strand Magazine in 1887. An important facet of fandom that continued with Holmes was fans penning letters arsenic if they were Holmes oregon Watson — decidedly an aboriginal precursor to instrumentality fiction.
Arthur Conan Doyle was overmuch little funny successful Holmes than helium was successful spirituality and fairies, truthful helium killed disconnected Sherlock Holmes successful The Final Problem successful 1893. The Strand Magazine mislaid 20,000 subscribers aft this story. Fans wrote letters to Doyle calling him a brute, and fans organized “Let’s Keep Holmes Alive” clubs. Doyle yet relented and wrote The Hound of the Baskerville in 1901 (set earlier Holmes died), and wrote different communicative successful 1903 that explained however Holmes survived the Reichenbach Fall.
Sci-Fi and the Establishment of Fan Conventions
In 1926, the subject fabrication mag Amazing Stories started circulating. Stories from celebrated authors similar H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allen Poe were included successful the archetypal issue, and the mag fundamentally defined the conception of genre publishing.
In The World of Science Fiction, 1926-1976: The History of a Subculture, Lester del Rey documents the Discussions conception of the Amazing Stories magazine, wherever fans could link and remark connected the stories backmost and forth. The communities astir genre fabrication kept increasing successful popularity and flourishing successful subcultures. Fan works that are indispensable to the participatory civilization of fandom besides became popular: “from the 1930s done the 1990s, bound and printed instrumentality fabrication was circulated, read, and discussed by galore societal communities successful subject fabrication (and fantasy) fandom.”
In 1939, the World Science Fiction Society hosted its archetypal WorldCon. This lawsuit present includes the Hugo Awards, the biggest SFF and fandom awards of the year. The Hugo Awards were named aft Hugo Gernsback, who founded the Amazing Stories magazine. The Hugos affirmed the legacies of galore sci-fi/fantasy writers, similar Octavia E. Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin.
It’s hard to understate however important WorldCon and the Hugo Awards are to SFF fandom. They observe the participatory civilization of fandom and gave awards to SFF books astatine a clip erstwhile genre fabrication was mostly dismissed by the literate world. Intra-community enactment is indispensable for a fandom with participatory culture. Conventions are besides a immense marker of fandom arsenic we cognize it today.
Star Trek and Fan Fiction-to-Books
Star Trek arsenic a tv amusement is simply a large turning constituent successful fandom history. Henry Jenkins identifies the Kirk/Spock vessel arsenic the birth of slash instrumentality fiction. Fans enactment unneurotic fanzines and exchanged instrumentality fabrication done the message to support up with each other.
The fanzines were large projects: determination were reprints of fan-favorite zines and hundreds of copies of immoderate of them. Star Trek fans were perpetually creating enactment that commented upon and transformed the archetypal series.
Because of this popularity, Star Trek novels became precise palmy arsenic well. They tackle everything from exploring Chekhov’s quality to processing the lore and inheritance of the aboriginal successful which Star Trek takes place. Authors of the Star Trek novels besides did the precise fannish happening of inserting themselves and their friends arsenic characters successful the novels.
Underground Fandom Participation
One publication fandom that doesn’t person a batch of written past is that of the queer pulp novel. Susan Stryker’s publication Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback documents the publishers that distributed these books: galore of them got their commencement successful cheery porn and “male physique” magazines. Like the Trekkie magazines, these magazines were those already successful the know.
Gay and lesbian pulp novels started to harvest up successful the United States successful the 1930s. In the 1960s, Greenleaf Press published Victor J. Banis’ The Man From C. A. M. P., which was a spy parody of the ace fashionable amusement The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The amusement besides had a notable fandom of devoted slash writers successful the 1960s. The uptick successful cheery pulp fabrication successful the 1960s was a mode for cheery men to enactment with each different and larn astir cheery beingness without needing to beryllium successful the nonstop location. It displayed the participatory civilization of fandom with a queer lens.
On the lesbian pulp fabrication side, The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (originally nether the sanction Claire Morgan) made waves for closeted queer women. It got the accepted salacious selling for a pulp novel, but fans wrote letters to “Claire Morgan” via her steadfast due to the fact that they felt the caller was a tender portrayal of beingness arsenic a queer pistillate successful the 1950s. Queer women could enactment successful queer civilization arsenic good done being fans of books.
The Ever-Evolving Book Fandom
Fandom astir books has lone sped up and rocketed successful value successful the amusement industry. With the wide array of books and their associated fandoms, accumulation companies are ever looking for contented to crook into movies and tv shows with built-in audiences.
Right now, publication fandoms person revived the value of the people book. I deliberation this is astir apt owed to the aesthetics of publication hauls connected Bookstagram, BookTube, and BookTok. It’s nicer to look astatine a stack of beautifully-designed covers alternatively of a video of idiosyncratic scrolling done an ereader.
Photo by Emily Rudolph connected Unsplash Book fandom close present is besides precise overmuch astir reifying the instrumentality work, which means supporting online, fan-created works truthful the authors tin get their enactment into accepted publishing. The emergence of works similar the After bid by Anna Todd, primitively a One Direction fanfic, and the larger acknowledgement from authors astir the satellite of instrumentality fabrication is what I’m referring to here. Twenty years ago, a fashionable writer similar Naomi Novik openly embracing instrumentality fiction would person been unthinkable.
Reifying fanworks done designation via publishing oregon the Hugo Awards was the indispensable extremity of instrumentality historians. The Star Trek fans who attempted to index each the Trekkie fanzines and instrumentality fabrication would person loved the fig of fans who person been capable to determination from instrumentality engagement to accepted people culture. Fan fabrication including the writer and their friends is besides ace communal these days, similar the writers of the Star Trek novels.
Queer fandom is besides a overmuch larger and much accepted portion of fandom successful general. You’re not needfully outing yourself by participating successful fandom, but determination are much and much queer books coming each twelvemonth for publication fans to sermon and signifier participatory civilization around. The runaway fandom for the Heartstopper webcomic, books, and tv amusement are a large example. That fandom besides recreates the fanzine civilization of the 1970s due to the fact that Alice Oseman includes fanworks successful their ongoing Heartstopper webcomic betwixt caller pages.
Fandom gatherings, fan fabrication writing and reading, and discussions astir the development of publication fandom volition ever beryllium blistery topics. There’s ever immoderate rhyming betwixt the past and contiguous successful fandom.
