Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (396 page)

The passageway reverberated with the thunder of wings. The air compressed around her thickly. Then they broke into a gigantic cavern.

Why, the entire mountain must be hollow, thought Lessa, incredulous. Around the enormous cavern, dragons perched in serried ranks, blues, greens, browns and only two great bronze beasts like Mnementh, on ledges meant to accommodate hundreds. Lessa gripped the bronze neck scales before her, instinctively aware of the imminence of a great event.

Mnementh wheeled downward, disregarding the ledge of the bronze ones. Then all Lessa could see was what lay on the sandy floor of the great cavern; dragon eggs. A clutch of ten monstrous, molded eggs, their shells moving spasmodically as the fledglings within tapped their way out. To one side, on a raised portion of the floor, was a golden egg, larger by half again the size of the mottled ones. Just beyond the golden egg lay the motionless ochre hulk of the old queen.

Just as she realized Mnementh was hovering over the floor in the vicinity of that egg, Lessa felt the dragonman’s hands on her, lifting her from Mnementh’s neck.

Apprehensively, she grabbed at him. His hands tightened and inexorably swung her down. His eyes, fierce and gray, locked with hers.

“Remember, Lessa!”

Mnementh added an encouragement, one great compound eye turned on her. Then he rose from the floor. Lessa half-raised one hand in entreaty, bereft of all support, even that of the sure inner compulsion which had sustained her in her struggle for revenge on Fax. She saw the bronze dragon settle on the first ledge, at some distance from the other two bronze beasts. The dragonman dismounted and Mnementh curved his sinuous neck until his head was beside his rider. The man reached up absently, it seemed to Lessa, and caressed his mount.

* * * *

Loud screams and wailings diverted Lessa and she saw more dragons descend to hover just above the cavern floor, each rider depositing a young woman until there were twelve girls, including Lessa. She remained a little apart from them as they clung to each other. She regarded them curiously. The girls were not injured in any way she could see, so why such weeping? She took a deep breath against the coldness within her. Let them be afraid. She was Lessa of Ruatha and did not need to be afraid.

Just then, the golden egg moved convulsively. Gasping as one, the girls edged away from it, back against the rocky wall. One, a lovely blonde, her heavy plait of golden hair swinging just above the ground, started to step off the raised floor and stopped, shrieking, backing fearfully towards the scant comfort of her peers.

Lessa wheeled to see what cause there might be for the look of horror on the girl’s face. She stepped back involuntarily herself.

In the main section of the sandy arena, several of the handful of eggs had already cracked wide open. The fledglings, crowing weakly, were moving towards…and Lessa gulped…the young boys standing stolidly in a semi-circle. Some of them were no older than she had been when Fax’s army had swooped down on Ruath Hold.

The shrieking of the women subsided to muffled gasps. A fledgling reached out with claw and beak to grab a boy.

Lessa forced herself to watch as the young dragon mauled the youth, throwing him roughly aside as if unsatisfied in some way. The boy did not move and Lessa could see blood seeping onto the sand from dragon-inflicted wounds.

A second fledgling lurched against another boy and halted, flapping its damp wings impotently, raising its scrawny neck and croaking a parody of the encouraging croon Mnementh often gave. The boy uncertainly lifted a hand and began to scratch the eye ridge. Incredulous, Lessa watched as the fledgling, its crooning increasingly more mellow, ducked its head, pushing at the boy. The child’s face broke into an unbelieving smile of elation,

Tearing her eyes from this astounding sight, Lessa saw that another fledgling was beginning the same performance with another boy. Two more dragons had emerged in the interim. One had knocked a boy down and was walking over him, oblivious to the fact that its claws were raking great gashes. The fledgling who followed its hatchmate stopped by the wounded child, ducking its head to the boy’s face, crooning anxiously. As Lessa watched, the boy managed to struggle to his feet, tears of pain streaming down his cheeks. She could hear him pleading with the dragon not to worry, that he was only scratched a little.

It was over very soon. The young dragons paired off with hoys. Green riders dropped down to carry off the unacceptable. Blue riders settled to the floor with their beasts and led the couples out of the cavern, the young dragons squealing, crooning, flapping wet wings as they staggered off, encouraged by their newly acquired weyrmates.

* * * *

Lessa turned resolutely back to the rocking golden egg, knowing what to expect and trying to divine what the successful boys had, or had not done, that caused the baby dragons to single them out.

A crack appeared in the golden shell and was greeted by the terrified screams of the girls. Some had fallen into little heaps of white fabric, others embraced tightly in their mutual fear. The crack widened and the wedge head broke through, followed quickly by the neck, gleaming gold. Lessa wondered with unexpected detachment how long it would take the beast to mature, considering its by no means small size at birth. For the head was larger than that of the male dragons and they had been large enough to overwhelm sturdy boys of ten full Turns.

Lessa was aware of a loud hum within the Hall. Glancing up at the audience, she realized it emanated from the watching bronze dragons, for this was the birth of their mate, their queen. The hum increased in volume as the shell shattered into fragments and the golden, glistening body of the new female emerged. It staggered out, dipping its sharp beak into the soft sand, momentarily trapped. Flapping its wet wings, it righted itself, ludicrous in its weak awkwardness. With sudden and unexpected swiftness, it dashed towards the terror-stricken girls.

Before Lessa could blink, it shook the first girl with such violence, her head snapped audibly and she fell limply to the sand. Disregarding her, the dragon leaped towards the second girl but misjudged the distance and fell, grabbing out with one claw for support and raking the girl’s body from shoulder to thigh. The screaming of the mortally injured girl distracted the dragon and released the others from their horrified trance. They scattered in panicky confusion, racing, running, tripping, stumbling, falling across the sand towards the exit the boys had used.

As the golden beast, crying piteously, lurched down from the raised arena towards the scattered women, Lessa moved. Why hadn’t that silly clunk-headed girl stepped aside, Lessa thought, grabbing for the wedge-head, at birth not much larger than her own torso. The dragon’s so clumsy and weak she’s her own worst enemy.

Lessa swung the head round so that the many-faceted eyes were forced to look at her…and found herself lost in that rainbow regard. A feeling of joy suffused Lessa, a feeling of warmth, tenderness, unalloyed affection and instant respect and admiration flooded mind and heart and soul. Never again would Lessa lack an advocate, a defender, an intimate, aware instantly of the temper of her mind and heart, of her desires. How wonderful was Lessa, the thought intruded into Lessa’s reflections, how pretty, how kind, how thoughtful, how brave and clever!

Mechanically, Lessa reached out to scratch the exact spot on the soft eye ridge.

The dragon blinked at her wistfully, extremely sad that she had distressed Lessa. Lessa reassuringly patted the slightly damp, soft neck that curved trustingly towards her. The dragon reeled to one side and one wing fouled on the hind claw. It hurt. Carefully, Lessa lifted the erring foot, freed the wing, folding it back across the dorsal ridge with a pat.

The dragon began to croon in her throat, her eyes following Lessa’s every move. She nudged at Lessa and Lessa obediently attended the other eye ridge.

The dragon let it be known she was hungry.

“We’ll get you something to eat directly,” Lessa assured her briskly and blinked back at the dragon in amazement. How could she be so callous? It was a fact that this little menace had just now seriously injured, if not killed, two women.

She wouldn’t have believed her sympathies could swing so alarmingly towards the beast. Yet it was the most natural thing in the world for her to wish to protect this fledgling.

The dragon arched her neck to look Lessa squarely in the eyes. Ramoth repeated wistfully how exceedingly hungry she was, confined so long in that shell without nourishment.

Lessa wondered how she knew the golden dragon’s name and Ramoth replied: Why shouldn’t she know her own name since it was hers and no one else’s? And then Lessa was lost again in the wonder of those expressive eyes.

Oblivious to the descending bronze dragons, uncaring of the presence of their riders, Lessa stood caressing the head of the most wonderful creature on all Pern, fully prescient of troubles and glories, but most immediately aware that Lessa of Pern was Weyrwoman to Ramoth the Golden, for now and forever.

* * * *

Copyright © 1967, 1995 by Anne McCaffrey; first appeared in
Analog
; from DRAGONFLIGHT; reprinted by permission of the author and the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.

Most people start out writing fan fiction without knowing that what they’re doing has a name, and more importantly, a long history.
Fan fiction
is a story written about some other text, like a TV show or film, and thus falls under the rubric of derivative fiction. Texting someone in a TV character’s voice, posting a quick paragraph of a new plot that’s a sequel to your favorite film, writing a full-length story or even a novel about other people’s characters—all these forms of creativity fall under the rubric of fan fiction. Fan fic, and derivative artworks in general, by definition require a primary work by someone else to exist. Certainly professionally published derivative fiction is out there. One famous example is
The Wind Done Gone
(2001), by Alice Randall, which retells Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War story
Gone With the Wind
(1936) from the point of view of a slave. But the output of fan fiction dwarfs the production of derivative pro fic: writers publish fan fic online, for free, and they create communities with each other people interested in the same media property, called
fandoms,
that engage with each other, often online, by writing, consuming, and commenting.

Even though fan activity takes a wide variety of expression, written fan fiction remains among the most visible and popular of fan artworks. Media fandom, including fan fiction, started in the late 1960s and early 1970s around two important American television shows: science fiction classic
Star Trek
(1966–1969) and stylish secret-agent drama The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–1968). Women mostly comprised the fans, a demographic that hasn’t changed much over the years; even today, women make up the majority of writers and vidders. Early fan fiction appeared in mimeographed or photocopied fanzines, which editors compiled and sold for the cost of materials. Joan Marie Verba’s 1996 history of Star Trek zines, Boldly Writing, provides much more detail about the editors and writers of these early texts, and several university libraries—notably those of the University of Iowa and the University of California–Riverside—hold huge collections of original fanzines from a wide variety of fandoms, dating back to the 1960s. In addition, fans also circulated apas (apa stands for “amateur press association”). This form of document, which originated in the late 1860s and which was picked up by science fiction/fantasy fans in the late 1930s and then co-opted by media fans in the 1970s, comprises a core group of writers who send their texts to a central editor, who collects and arranges them, then mails all the contributors a copy. Despite the advent of the Internet and its associated blogs, bulletin boards, listservs, and other modes of instantaneous targeted distribution, hard-copy fanzines and apas are both still created and disseminated.

The study of derivative literature has a far longer history than fan studies. It’s safe to say that as long as there have been stories, there have been people retelling them, embellishing them, and inserting themselves into them. But today, in the context of an interactive Web 2.0, fan activity about creative texts (as opposed to fan activity around activities like sports or coin collecting) tends to be centered around forms of media, such as film, TV, video games, novels, and anime, and much of the activity occurs online. Writing creatively about these sources can be in any sort of format imaginable: blog entries, Web pages, fan fiction archives, Twitter accounts or blogs set up in characters’ names, hard-copy fanzines, wikis, comics. But fans don’t limit themselves to textual expressions. Fans create image-based fan expressions, like paintings and drawings, fan videos (with recuttings of the primary text, often set to music, arranged to tell a new story), image manipulations, and avatar artwork (small images meant to be used to identify a user online). In addition to creating content and sharing it online with a virtual group, fans also might meet face to face to create costumes, role-play, or attend conventions.

Although many fans begin creating in the privacy of their own home, unaware that an audience exists to consume their artwork, many others find fan activity online. Fans may stumble across FanFiction.net or ArchiveOfOurOwn.org, both large multifandom fan fiction archives that permit comments and other forms of engagement with the text. They may find a wonderful fan vid posted at YouTube.com. They may find sewing instructions for an anime costume. Or they may find a convention schedule and decide to attend because their favorite actor or actress will be a guest. Many fans prefer to simply post at an online forum, like TelevisionWithoutPity.com, and leave their engagement at that—and of course far more simply lurk, poking around and reading but rarely commenting. Others find a community of like-minded fans, often organized around a particular media source—the 2009 film Star Trek, or the TV show Supernatural, or some version of the Harry Potter universe, all of which have large, active fandoms—and engage in the blogosphere at LiveJournal.com or some other fan-friendly site.

Although fan practice ranges widely and things acceptable in, say,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
fandom may not be welcomed in Harry Potter fandom, it’s possible to make some generalizations. One is that fan artworks, including fan fiction, cannot be sold for profit. This is partially the result of perceived copyright concerns: fans are worried that if they make money, the owners of the properties might sue them or forbid their activities. Individual pieces of fan fiction thus often include a disclaimer that names the copyright holder and remarks that no money was made. In actuality, derivative artworks such as fan fiction fall legally under notions of transformation and parody that permit their creation, but the “no money made” aspect of fandom has become so engrained that it has nudged fan practice into what is known as a gift culture, where nonmonetary forms of exchange are used to cement the fan community’s cohesiveness and exclusivity. Another form of consistent fan practice involves labeling fan artworks with indications of genre and content. Often these artworks are given a rating that hints at its content and permits the consumer to gauge its appropriateness. The most common labels in the header that precedes the piece of fiction include title, author, contact information (so people can write feedback), fandom, romantic pairing, rating, summary, disclaimer, and any warnings. Subject lines for fan fiction delivered via a Google group or a listserv are densely meaningful: one might read, “VOY ‘It’s Alive!’ [P/K; R].” This indicates a story in the Voyager fandom entitled “It’s Alive!” that romantically pairs the characters of Tom Paris and Harry Kim and that is rated R.

As my example hints, much fan fiction is given over to explicating, inferring, or inventing intimate relationships between the characters, including relationships not overtly presented in the media text. Many TV shows in particular are actually workplace dramas, and fans are eager to know more about what goes on at home, behind the scenes, or behind closed doors. If the canon source doesn’t provide it, fans will create it. Thus, fans of, say,
Star Trek: The Next Generation
may write a story exploring the reasons why Jean-Luc Picard, in canon, can’t date Beverly Crusher, then follow it up with a story that finally gets the two of them together; they may explore a sexual relationship between Data and Geordi LaForge; or they may write an entire series about Wesley Crusher’s exploits at Starfleet Academy, when the character was absent from the show. The presence or absence of a romantic pairing is one of the primary ways fan fiction is organized. Some fans read exclusively according to pairing. Many fans focus on their fandom’s one true pairing (OTP). This can be a canonical pairing, like Mulder and Scully in The X-Files, or it can be an obvious one, like Starsky and Hutch in Starsky and Hutch, although some fandoms have OTPs that result from a lot of fan fic being written about a particular couple, like John Sheppard and Rodney McKay in Stargate Atlantis.

This focus on relationships is one important way that fans organize the genres of fan fiction, resulting in three major divisions: gen stories, or generic stories (that is, no romantic pairing); het or ship stories (
het
from “heterosexual,”
ship
from “relationship”), which posit an opposite-sex romantic pairing; and slash, which posits a same-sex romantic pairing. (Although the term
slash
is often used generically, regardless of the sex of the characters, some fans use
femslash
or
femmeslash
for female–female pairings and
slash
for male–male pairings.) Stories can suggest the existence of a romantic relationship without being sexually explicit: marking a story as slash simply means that the author is placing two men in a romantic relationship. Fandom was an early adopter of giving portmanteau names to pairings: Brangelina has nothing on Spuffy (the Spike–Buffy pairing in
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
) or Clex (the Clark–Lex pairing in
Smallville
).

The genre of slash has generated quite a bit of interest and scholarship. The genre is so named because in early fanzine ads, the summaries of tables of contents would use a slash symbol as shorthand to indicate a romantic relationship: the use of a slash in listing Kirk/Spock (or K/S) in a catalog meant that the fic was a Kirk/Spock pairing, as opposed to the use of an ampersand or comma, which meant simply that those characters were the major ones and the story was about them. The genre became known as slash. Academic work in the 1980s analyzed slash in particular as concerned with feminist issues of desire and representation, because most slash writers were (and are) straight women. Writer-critic Joanna Russ sees slash as feminist pornography, as the title of a 1985 essay makes clear: “Pornography by Women, for Women, with Love.” Other theorists of the era see slash as a way for women to write out their desire for a love relationship between equals, without the power dynamics inherent in male–female pairings. More recent work sees slash as concerned not with homosexuality but with queerness (as opposed to normativity), a broader reading that sees reading and writing slash as a queer activity that permits a much greater range of representation and play.

In addition to categorizing fan fiction on the basis of the presence or absence of pairings, it is also organized according to how closely it sticks to canon. Unless specifically marked otherwise, most fan fiction is canonical—that is, it assumes the existence of the world as presented in the media source. To this might be added fanon, or a fan consensus of how something might be, but that is not explicitly addressed in canon. And of course fan fiction writers worry about being jossed, a term named after Joss Whedon, which means that something happens in canon that provides new information that in turn invalidates a piece of fan fiction. Two common types of fan fiction story are related to canonicity. Crossovers combine two or more fandoms in one text (for example, Primeval and Torchwood), which means that the author has to reconcile two canons; and alternate universe (AU) stories, where characters are thrown into some other milieu (for example, Stargate SG-1 characters are sent to the Wild West).

The stories themselves run a huge gamut of content, although some categories are so well known that they have been named. The hurt/comfort story is a classic, as is the PWP, which stands for, depending on whom you ask, “plot? what plot?” or “porn without plot.” In episode tag or missing scene stories, authors fill in a perceived gap in content by showing what happened after an episode, or they show something that was elided between scenes. In episode fixes, an episode of a TV show may be rewritten to correct perceived flaws in the canonical text. In a deathfic, the author kills off a major character. In an mpreg fic, a man gets pregnant. In the often derided Mary Sue story, an author-created original character, usually a stunningly attractive woman and a stand-in for the author herself, single-handedly saves the day as the canonical characters look on in admiration. Sometimes fans come together to write long-story-arc virtual seasons, as when a TV show is canceled and the fans want closure.

These elements of categorizing fan fiction demonstrate its breadth and range, although fans may disagree on some organization conventions: some
Xena
fans, for example, might object to labeling Xena/Gabrielle fics as slash or femslash because they perceive the same-sex pairing as canonical, and slash, at least initially, had the connotation of being outside canon. However, the category of slash as a shorthand for “same-sex romantic relationship” has proven too useful to omit, canonicity notwithstanding. The standardization in labeling is partly the result of fan practice and partly the result of organizational systems imposed by fan fiction archiving software, which organizes fic first according to fandom, next according to relationship status (gen, het/ship, slash) and romantic pairing, and finally according to any other sort criteria or warning label, such as crossover, AU, or deathfic.

Fan artworks, including fan fiction, have been of interest to academics since the 1980s, when important academic analyses of slash were published. But the single most important analysis of fan artworks remains Henry Jenkins’s 1992 book
Textual Poachers,
in which Jenkins, himself a fan, argued that fans were not passive consumers of media, but rather active fans who made meaning out of things, such as TV shows, that others thought were trivial. Fans are metaphorical “poachers” (the term is Michel de Certeau’s) who sneak onto someone else’s land, take what they want or need, and sneak back out. In this case, the fans are taking elements from a media source without the permission of the copyright holder, and making something new out of it that they then disseminate. Fans are thus placed into opposition with The Powers That Be (TPTB)—that is, the people who create the original media source that the fans then co-opt—but they are hardly powerless bystanders. They have the power to rewrite the text to a preferred reading, to get something out of the text that they think TPTB are not providing.