Science Fiction and Fan Culture

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Science Fiction and Fan Culture

• Or, Do Professors Dream of Electric Sheep (and
  Hitchhikers and Players of Games)?

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A Brief History of Fan Culture

• Traditions of rewriting or writing back to
  literature/mythology/history, etc.
• SF fandom began with the letter columns in
  Amazing Stories
• The Science Fiction League, started by Hugo
  Gernsback in 1934, was the first SF fan club
• First SF conventions in the 1930s
• Term fanfiction first used c. 1965
• SF mailing lists began in the 1970s, in the
  infancy of the Internet
• Films about fandom in the 1990s-2000s e.g.
  Trekkies and Trekkies II Free Enterprise
  Fanboys Gibsons No Maps For These Territories

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• Some subcultures within SF fandom, based on their
  following of particular works
• Trekkies/Trekkers (Star Trek)
• Whovians (Doctor Who)
• X-Philes (The X-Files)
• Browncoats (Firefly/Serenity)
• and many others before and since
• Contributions to the popular image of SF fans
• Contributions to the academic study of SF

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Some Characteristics of SF Fan Culture

• Fanfiction writing new stories about existing
  characters/works/settings, etc.
• Fan comics (doujinshi in Japanese) and fan art
• Fan edits remixed and/or redubbed versions of
  films (most notably the second Star Wars series
  also fan-made anime/manga translations, etc.)
• Fanzines self-published, small-press, or online
  newsletters - e.g. The Banksoniain (about Banks),
  Mostly Harmless (Adams fan-club newsletter)
• Listservs, messageboards, newsgroups, etc.
• Conventions - combine academic, or semi-academic,
  conferences with more carnivalesque elements

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Fan Culture as Reader Response

• Interpretive community (Stanley Fish) meaning
  is determined/influenced by the community of
  readers who share similar approaches to the text
• John Fiske A text cannot be distanced from its
  uses and users
• Responses of authors/artists/producers to
  readers/viewers/listeners
• Popular/mass culture scale what is provided
  for the people (mass culture) vs. what is used by
  the people (popular culture)

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• Douglas Lanier What makes popular culture
  popular is how it is used, not necessarily the
  size of its audience, its mass reproduction, or
  its commerciality
• Even if the people dont directly create what is
  popular, they help to decide what is popular
• Reinterpretation of works to suit the audiences
  purposes
• Canon formation what is considered official?
  Can fan-produced works be considered official?
  Can works by the original author be considered
  unofficial?
• Textual fundamentalism (Brenda Weber)
  adherence to only one version of the text (e.g.
  print at the expense of films first in a series
  at the expense of sequels, etc.)

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• Fanboy/fangirl (otaku in Japanese)
  stereotypical image of the SF fan
• Attention to details often hyper-critical
• William Gibsons description the passionate
  obsessive, the information age's embodiment of
  the connoisseur, more concerned with the
  accumulation of data than of objects (he
  popularized the term otaku in Idoru)

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SF and Fanfiction

• The earliest organizations of fanfiction
  (including many commonly used terms) arose in the
  Star Trek fan community
• e.g. slashing (single-gender pairings of
  characters) Mary Sue (idealized authorial
  self-insertion author avatar is the
  non-derogatory term)
• Derivative works by authors other than the
  original can they be called fanfiction too?
  (e.g. K.W. Jeters sequels to Do Androids Dream?
  Eoin Colfers And Another Thing)

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• Douglas Lanier on fanfiction Writers of
  fanfiction take the characters, settings,
  plotlines, and motifs from established genres and
  imagine otherwise forbidden relationships between
  characters, encounters between different
  characters or fictional worlds...or plot
  possibilities never explored in the originals

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Some Purposes of Fanfiction

• Modern continuation of oral tradition/adaptation
  stories get told and retold, and can change in
  those retellings
• Retellings to suit the purposes of the new teller
  and his/her audience
• Fans provide for themselves what the original
  author cant, or wont, provide for them
• Bricolage taking pieces of established entities
  and making them your own
• Fanfiction as written and/or drawn forms of
  readers dreams?

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Why Fan Culture?

• Community-building venture, from Gernsbacks
  letter columns to present-day Internet groups
• Fandom as new religion, with its own rituals and
  even belief systems?
• Allows fans to feel a connection with the work
  and/or its creators
• Fandom Is A Way Of Life

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• Alexander von Thorn Science fiction fandom is
  the community of the literature of ideas...the
  culture in which new ideas emerge and grow before
  being released into society at large.

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Other Influences of SF Fan Culture

• Early users and popularizers of new technology,
  especially computers and the Internet
• Influenced the development of other appreciation
  societies and even support or activist groups
• The Hugo Awards are presented at the World
  Science Fiction Convention, one of the largest in
  North America
• Portrayal of fans and fan culture in SF itself
• Fans becoming professional writers in their own
  right, and inspiring their own fan communities
• Subject of academic studies e.g. Henry Jenkins,
  Textual Poachers Sam Moskowitz, The Immortal
  Storm
• Academia as fan culture fan culture as academia
  - how similar are they?

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Intergenerational FandomFrom an essay by Robert
Runteand a presentation by Robert Runte and
Douglas Barbour

• Many members of the first wave of fandom (c.
  1925-1965) regarded the new influx in the 1960s
  and 1970s as unwelcome intrusions others
  embraced the mainstream acceptance of SF/fantasy
• Each generation of fandom has different
  approaches to similar material
• The growth of the SF canon brought diversity to
  the fandom, but also reduced the shared
  literature aspects
• The paradoxes of fandom as SF and its fandom
  grow, the world of fan culture becomes
  splintered simultaneous acceptance and suspicion
  of new technology, new practices, etc.
• Ambivalence over trends in SF publication more
  and/or better?

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Science Fiction in Other MediaA Brief History
and Overview
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Early Developments

• c. 1895-1903 experimentation with special
  effects, often of a fantastic nature
• A Trip to the Moon (1903) by Georges Méliès - the
  first recognizable SF film, and first adaptation
  of SF literature into film
• Based in part on Jules Vernes From the Earth to
  the Moon and H.G. Wells The First Men in the Moon

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• Metropolis (1926) by Fritz Lang - early ancestor
  of cyberpunk (influenced Dick and Scott)
• Exemplified the social-commentary nature of early
  European SF films

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• Just Imagine (1930) first American SF film to be
  distributed by a major studio
• A musical, set in a future dystopia

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• SF serial films of the 1930s Flash Gordon and
  Buck Rogers
• Influenced much of the popular image of SF on
  film
• Early examples of adaptations of comic strips and
  radio plays to film and vice versa

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SF in Comic Books

• Especially popular in the golden age of comics
  (1930s-1950s) but has continued to the present
  day
• Comics and visual art lack the technical
  limitations of film, allowing for greater freedom
  of visual representation
• Superhero comics can be considered borderline SF
  too, esp. in explanations of the heroes powers
• Digital art in comics, beginning in the 1990s

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The Golden Age of SF Film

• Destination Moon (1950) by George Pal first SF
  film made in colour
• SF of the 1950s was characterized by advances in
  special effects, but still often of relatively
  low quality
• Influenced by the advances in military science
  and space exploration
• Ranged from optimistic to apocalyptic - themes
  that still continue

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SF on Television The Early Years

• First SF TV series was Captain Video (1949)
• Many early series were adventure programs meant
  for younger audiences
• Anthology series of the early 1960s, e.g. The
  Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, etc.
• Star Trek began in 1966

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Some Related Subgenres

• SF/horror dates back to Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll
  and Mr. Hyde, etc. themes include mad
  scientists, experiments gone awry, alien
  invasions, etc.
• SF/disaster films can be technological,
  biological, environmental, or extraterrestrial
• SF/mystery/suspense crimefighting technology,
  forensics investigations of the alien or
  paranormal - cf. Sawyer, Gibson, Murakami
• SF/comedy humorous treatments of SF themes - cf.
  Adams, Stephenson
• Superhero narratives
• SF/romance/adventure space opera most common
  subgenre of SF film

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SF Films of the 1960s and 1970s

• Most influential was 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Films of this time were more sophisticated in
  plot and design

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• Star Wars A New Hope and Close Encounters of the
  Third Kind both released in 1977
• Beginning of the blockbuster era big, flashy
  adventures emphasizing visual imagery
• Two main directions of films of the 1980s and
  afterward idealistic and optimistic vs. dark and
  dystopian
• CGI imagery first used in early 1980s e.g. Tron,
  The Last Starfighter

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More Developments in SF on Television

• Various Star Trek spinoffs began in 1987
• Prevalence of animation, for audiences of all
  ages use of CGI in live-action series
• Connections between TV and film, with series
  being adapted from one to another
• The Sci-Fi Channel (US) began in 1992 its
  Canadian equivalent, the Space channel, began in
  1997

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SF and Games

• Tabletop RPGs e.g. Space Opera, GURPS, etc.
• Computer games beginning with early examples
  e.g. Space Invaders, Asteroids present-day
  interactive fiction influenced by developments
  in SF on film
• Adaptations between films and games, or between
  literature and games (Dick, Adams, and Gibson all
  had games based on their writings, as did
  Stephenson)
• Influence of gamer culture on SF e.g. Gibson,
  Banks, Stephenson

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SF on Radio

• Mainly anthology series or specials, most
  famously Orson Welles 1938 adaptation of H.G.
  Wells War of the Worlds (a Halloween special)
• Adams radio plays are probably the best-known
  contemporary example
• Lem and Gibson have also had radio plays based on
  their works

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SF Literature and Other Media

• Have been closely related from the beginning
• Verne and Wells are probably the most frequently
  adapted SF authors
• Literature adapted from other media
  novelizations, spinoffs, sequels, etc.

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The CompLit 342 Reading List and Other Media

• Of the writers on our reading list, Dick has been
  the most frequently adapted Adams has had the
  most adaptations of a single work
• Dick, Adams, and Gibson have the most diverse
  adaptations (film/TV, radio/ audiobooks, computer
  games, graphic novels)
• Indirect adaptations Stephenson, Murakami
• Non-SF adaptations Murakami, Banks