Fanfiction

[scarfman]

If I recall correctly, fanfiction first meant "fiction appearing in science fiction fan magazines".

By the time I came along at the beginning of the 1970s, fanfiction meant "unlicensed Star Trek stories circulated in the mails".

By the end of the 1980s "fanfiction" had come to mean "unlicensed derivative work of a copyrighted property".

On LambdaMOO in the 1990s fanfiction meant "roundrobin stories on a MOO mailing list". There were probably other elements to the definition that I never perceived since I didn't investigate it at all thoroughly.

Nowadays fanfiction seems to mean "any derivative work, going back to Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Malory, ..." *

Fanfiction no longer means "unlicensed derivative work of a copyrighted property", at least not exclusively. Perhaps we need a new word that does.

* Modesty doesn't forbid me from mentioning that I never saw anyone else invoke Homer and Shakespeare before I did, which I think I started in the mid-90s when I first got online. I shall no doubt be corrected if I'm wrong.

Comments

[antiwesley.livejournal.com]

Fanfic was also very prevalent, at least in some circles, on the Usenet.
alt.creative.drwho was a popular hangout for those of us of the Timelordish lean.

Kate Orman, Jon Blum, and others were frequent posters, and this was the mid-early 90's.