Words From the Bird2012-05-26T03:11:28ZFlamingoCopyright 2012, FlamingoSPHPBLOGThe History of Our Fandoman expert on the topic by any means, since I wasn't around during the
earliest days. We actually do have an expert on this topic, Katherine
L., who is active in fandom and is on some of the SH lists, and whenever
I need accurate info on who did what when, she's the lady who has the
answers. She recently helped me put together a talk on this topic that
I gave at the Cabrillo Con in Grand Rapids. It was a lot of fun to delve
into our history and go step by step into how it evolved.
To try to make this a quick and dirty history lesson, fandom, as we know
it today, started with science fiction literature fandom, which is known
as the "First Fandom", all the way back in the 1920's. These SF fans,
mostly young men, put together typed or mimeographed zines of stories,
book reviews, artwork and traded and sold them to each other. Many of
the writers of these zines eventually went on to professional
publication. Media fandom as we know it today really started with Star
Trek, the original series. Since SF fans already had SF zines as
examples, they produced zines of original Star Trek stories, especially
once the show went off the air. Star Trek fandom was HUGE -- very
organized and involved hundreds of thousands of fans, and huge cons, and
many of these fans were women which made it different from SF fandom
which was still largely male-dominated.
Most of the early SH fan writers came out of Star Trek fandom where they
already had been producing very excellently written and edited zines
with amazing artwork. There were certain kinds of fans, mostly women,
who were mostly interested in the relationship aspect of Trek fandom,
and in the hurt-comfort aspect of the relationships. Many of these fans
were drawn to SH due to the intense relationship, and the hurt-comfort
episodes. Many of the earliest writers can be found on the S&H Gen
Archive -- Teri White, who had written in Trek, and eventually became a
pro writer, was the first person to produce S&H stories that were put in
zines, and shortly after other Trek writers and zine producers came into
the fandom. At this point everything was gen, though Trek had already
produced the first slash stories and slash zines. (Trek invented slash,
which was known as K/S [for Kirk/Spock] and the "slash" represented the
virgule, the "/" between the initials.) So, it wasn't too long before
some of the writers started exploring a slash relationship between S&H.
Many of those first SH writers were Teri White, as I said, Connie
Faddis, Jan Lindner, Dargelos, Karen Brandle, and a number of writers
who've gone on to the pro ranks. You can find a lot of the early writers
in the S&H Gen & Slash Archive, but there are many more who can't be
found for archiving approval, or who don't wish to be archived. Early
slash writers were people like Alexis Rogers, Terri Beckett & Chris
Powers, Dargelos, Pamela Rose, Rosemary, Billie Phillips, Peruvian
Gypsy, Elizabeth Lowry, Cheryl M. and Lucy-- all of whom can be found on
the S&H Gen and S&H Slash Archives. There were others, as I said, who
are not yet archived and might never be, which is unfortunate.
Interestingly enough, we are actually producing more zines in this
fandom in recent years than in the early years. Of course, it is far
easier to produce a zine, labor wise, than it was back then, but many
fandoms are not internet-only, producing most of their fic online
exclusively. Yet S&H fandom still has a rich zine history, as well as a
strong online presence -- the best of both worlds!
Hope that's enough info for now on our history. I'd better stop before I
screw up too many facts.
Flamingo
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