Origins of Fanfic

[lady.nymphaea at faerielands.com]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Rosmerta" <tmayor at m...> wrote:
> ::looking around a little shyly; this is my first OT foray:: 
> 
> Any one of the apparently many for/against fanfic people willing to 
> offer up a definitive (or failing that, speculative) but apolitical 
> precie on the origins of fanfic? I'm just assuming it's a Net-
driven 
> phenomenon (or message-board driven, for those who remember pre-
> Internet PC communication) but perhaps not? And no, I'm not 
counting 
> the Aeneid here (as someone suggested on the main list); I think we 
> all know we're talking about something a little different.

It certainly isn't Net-driven; people have been writing Star Trek 
fanfic, for example, since the original series was out. Back then and 
even to this day, it was put out in paper self-published fanzines.

When I was in high school, one of my friends was working on an epic 
Star Trek fic. This was back in 1992 or so. It got passed around our 
group of friends a bit, but I don't know if she had put it into a 
zine or not.

Since I'm no expert on the history of fandom/fanfiction, I'll let 
some more informed people reply to that. The above is just my 
experience with fanfiction before I had even owned a computer.

Meril