A guest post from my awesome narrator Benjamin Fife.
A project I’m in the middle of producing, Pemberly: Mr. Darcy’s Dragon has got me thinking. As I’ve told friends and family about the project, I’ve had more than one person respond with “So, it’s basically Fan-Fiction then?” My initial knee-jerk reaction has been, “Well, no, its kind of its own sub-genre called Gas-Lamp Fantasy.”
But it made me consider – what makes something fan-fic? Is there some line between a “legitimate” work of fiction, and “fan-fic.”
Is fan-fiction just taking something in Pop Culture & putting your own spin & stamp on it?
One of the highlights of my youth was when after a dearth of new Star Wars material, George Lucas finally gave the green light to Timothy Zahn who in 1991 released Heir to the Empire. It was a new era. Was Timothy Zahn the ultimate fan-fic writer? His Thrawn trilogy was superb, and probably in large part the impetus for the special edition release, followed by… you know the rest.
But the Thrawn trilogy was superb. Yes, it was Star Wars told by someone other than the original creator. The characters themselves have become such fan favorites that Thrawn is now canon, as well as several of the names created by Zahn, David Wolverton, Kevin Anderson and more. I myself had a superb novel etched out in my mind after revenge of the Sith that filled in the prequel holes & married it to many of Zahn’s characters. But alas, Disney chucked out 3/4’s of my plot (I still toy with the idea of writing the story as a non Star Wars book, with the names changed to protect the innocent). Was Zahn a Fan-fic writer? He was already a writer, well established. The reason the Thrawn trilogy did so well, was because he used is skill and applied it to a universe that was already there.
Isn’t that what all fiction is?
Yes, there are folks like George Lucas, Frank Herbert, Brandon Sanderson, George RR Martin, JR Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis who have created completely fleshed out worlds of their own, but ultimately, all fiction is a variation on something we already know about. There have been roughly 70 billion self aware humans who have inhabited this planet. Imagination exponential. We’re bound to revisit things again and again. Some things are obvious: The Three Amigos, Galaxy Quest, A Bug’s Life. All the same idea. Is that fan-fic of an idea? I’m sure there’s probably a Shakespeare play that it goes back to.
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