Star Trek: Fic and Fandom
As we explored in the last post, fanfiction has been around for a while, but before Star Trek, it wasn’t really ever in fanzines. Fiction about fans was, but usually not fanfiction in the way that we consider it to be now. In 1967, that all changed for good.
Star Trek had just started airing its second season in September, the same month the first issue of the fanzine Spockanalia. Created by Devra Langsam and Sherna Comerford, the zine was initially meant to be a one-shot, but the second issue was published in April of the following year. It was quickly joined by many, many more zines, each with their own stories and other content.
^ The front cover of Spockanalia Issue #1, featuring Mr. Spock illustrated by Kathy Bushman.
ST-Phile 1 was published January 1968, and the first issue of Warp Nine: A Star Trek Chronicle dropped in February 1969. In June of the same year, Ruth Berman released T-Negative, a zine named for Mr. Spock’s blood type, that would go on to run for 10 years. In Joan Marie Verba’s book Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History, 1967-1987, you can find a comprehensive history of the first 20 years of Star Trek fanzines.
^The front cover of Boldly Writing by Joan Marie Verba.
Star Trek was the first fandom to make fanfiction (as we know it today) an integral, collaborative part of its culture. Prior to ST, this kind of fanfic wasn’t really published in science fiction zines. So many people wrote fanfiction about Star Trek that there were multiple zines dedicated to fic alone (Jamison, 2013).
Not only was Star Trek the first fandom to routinely publish modern fanfiction in fanzines, but it is also home to the first published slash fic, unsurprisingly featuring Kirk and Spock. The story, “A Fragment Out of Time '' by Diane Marchant, was published in the 1974 third issue of the fanzine Grup. It was unique not only because it was most likely the first slash fic, but also because it was initially unclear as to the genders/sexes of the two people having sex in the story. Marchant cleared this up in Grup’s next issue, and it’s now definitively clear that the two characters in the story are Kirk and Spock.
Another groundbreaking fanfic is the Kraith series, which was originally authored by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, co-author of the first published book on media fandom Star Trek Lives!. The Kraith series explored the planet Vulcan and its society, and several other authors helped to write installments of the story over time.
Despite the fact that the original TV series aired its final episode in June of 1969, Star Trek definitely isn’t a dead fandom; new and OG fans are still active and new installments of official Trek media are being released constantly. Just because a fandom is older doesn’t mean it has any less life in it!
The Sandy Hereld Memorial Digitized Media Fanzine Collection
Star Trek: Slash and Suits by Colleigh Stein
