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.
About the presenterGael Anne Sweeney
I teach in Syracuse University’s Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition in the areas of Queer Culture, Popular Culture, and Creative Nonfiction. I’ve given and published papers on everything from Elvis Presley, Hugh Grant, Cary Grant, and The Beatles, to The Lion King, A Christmas Story, Ed Wood, and Showtime’s Queer as Folk, everywhere from Harvard to the University of Newcastle. I’ve recently taught “The Culture of Fandom,” “Questioning Gender,” and “Reading Popular Culture.”