Draft-History Section

The writing of fan fiction began in the science fiction community. It started as a way for science fiction fans to fulfill an emerging need in their community. Fans began to write their own stories featuring characters from a favorite science fiction novel in order to fill in the lulls that occurred in between new science fiction novels being published. This also happened with the television shows that they watched. Stories also flourished not just around science fiction novels and television series but, also around movies.

The writing of fan fiction has grown and changed over time. One of the more interesting developments occurred in the early 1970s and was started by several different women in various places in the United States, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada, all writing independently of one another (Salmon 71). This development was the creation of slash fan fiction. Slash fan fiction is fan fiction, written mostly by women and for women. The distinguishing characteristic of this type of fan fiction is that the romantic and/or sexual pairing in the stories takes place between two characters of the same gender. The term ‘slash’ is, “derived from the “/” placed between the characters’ initials to designate fan productions of a homoerotic nature,” for example Kirk/Spock, or K/S (Woledge, Decoding 235-236). These stories were first published in fanzines, or fan produced magazines, and sold at conventions. Slash was not embraced by all fans, according to Coppa, slash fanzines that sold at conventions were purchased literally from a box under the table. The invention of the internet was a major catalyst in the growth of both reading and writing fan fiction. Writers were able to use this technology to cheaply and easily publish and widely distribute their work. This pushed the different slash fandoms out into the mainstream and allowed fans to set up lists, sites, and archives dedicated specifically to slash pairings and stories, allow easy access to fan who wanted to read this fiction and made it easy for other fans to avoid. Slash had moved out of the box and onto the screen.