Presenters
Abstract
A controversial topic in the world of fan fiction is writers who remake their fics into “regular” fiction. The most notorious example is E.L. James’s 50 Shades of Grey, a Twilight AU that was infamously remade into a best selling novel. More recently Anna Todd’s After, which began as a Harry Styles/One Dimension RPS, was transformed into a YA bestseller. But the history of doing this goes back to the late Seventies and Eighties, with many of the most notable Star Trek fics repurposed into mainstream sci-fi stories or even official Star Trek novels with all the slash elements removed (“having the serial numbers filed off”). My favorite of these published fanfics is a crossover of Star Trek and Here Come the Brides called Ishmael, written by a Mark Lenard (the connecting element between the two universes) fan, Barbara Hambly, and it is totally wacky. Hambly used her fan fiction to launch herself as a mainstream sci-fi and mystery writer.
I want to give a brief history of these kinds of fictional transformations, especially the problems inherent in publishing RPS or fics based on stories under copyright. I will then use as a case study an AU fic series from the Beatles RPS fandom in which John and Paul are lovers during the Roman Empire. The writer, a writing colleague and friend, is now on her third published erotic M/M novel using those stories as her base. Unless you knew the origins, you would never in a million years guess who the two main characters are supposed to be! But I know because I read the original fics over 10 years ago in the Beatles fandom. I believe this will make a very informative presentation.