Personally, I’m convinced that the legends of the Holy Grail are fanfic about the Eucharist.

I think that's brilliant, I think you're right, and I think you need to start accumulating bits from ML to revise for Vol. II of Making Book.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:33 AM by Lisa Spangenberg

Thanks for expressing this so well.

Whatever moves us or matters to us will show up in the stories we tell, whether or not we have a socially approved outlet for those stories.

"But what would happen if...?"

When that question grabs you by the throat, finding the answer is what is important, not whether the context is original.

Posted April 25, 2006 2:53 AM by enjay

YES! Thank you, Teresa, for saying this so well. And thank you, Patrick, for putting it on the front page for easy finding.

Personally, I’m convinced that the legends of the Holy Grail are fanfic about the Eucharist.

Possibly enough, yes. Something I noticed as a young'n.

Posted April 25, 2006 3:11 AM by Sigrid Ellis

Another "thank you, Teresa" - this time from a lurker.

I see it the other way around: Believing that fanfic wrongs you and that it should be stopped is where entitlement comes into play. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of fanfiction based on my work, but I firmly believe it wouldn't be right to interfere ... in the unlikely event that anyone wrote some.

Posted April 25, 2006 5:00 AM by kutsuwamushi

A great deal of my inspiration for writing things comes from such what ifs, though far more general.

What if characters in this situation acted like real people?

Or, more specifically and more frequently, what if women in this situation acted like real women?

Long ago in the ages of middle and high school a friend and I had a long conversation about a series of books we would write called "Plus one sensible," all of which would be retellings of classic tales with a sensible person either substituted for the main character or as an additional member of whatever cast was involved.

One particularly insane idea was "Ophelia's Oilcan" which was a rewrite of Hamlet with Ophelia as the one sensible character. Things ended pretty much the same (we realized while writing it that "you can't stop Hamlet") but at least someone was present to realize how much things were falling apart.

Of course, this kind of thing is almost omnipresent in modern day parody. Scott Evil from the Austin Powers movies is one of the best examples ever of a fully functional, integrated "plus one sensible."

Posted April 25, 2006 5:27 AM by Leah Miller

A voice of sanity in the Dark, Savage Internet! I applauded this the first time and I ovate the encore.

Posted April 25, 2006 6:13 AM by A. J. Luxton

To the main post: absolutely. I can't find it now, but I prefaced one of my fan stories with a quote which I found in a promo booklet for Frankie Goes To Hollywood of all places, the gist of which was that once a character is created, it becomes possible to imagine that character in many other situations where the author never thought of putting him or her. No idea who said it, but it's a good quote.

Posted April 25, 2006 7:08 AM by Zander

Not just the Holy Grail, but I'd say all story cycles from pre-literate times are a form of fanfic. I first realised this when thinking about Hercules, of all people. When I look at the Labours and the other bits of myth he's involved in, they seemed to me to have the quality of somebody literate trying to paste up a bunch of stories that others just made up about their favourite hero while gathered around the campfire. Those in the oral tradition can tell tall stories without a lot of regard for continuity or the other fine sensibilities of the literate, because they're more concerned with immediate audience reaction to Hercules' bad-assedness.

But then that applies to all myth cycles. They're stories told for instruction, or illustration, or to excite or otherwise entertain as their primary aim, not as pieces of a grand unified story. If you look at everyone's favourite collection of myth, the Old Testament, the stories don't make a lot of sense all bound together, and even directly contradict each other (two creation myths?).

Or the New Testament, what is that but a collection of Jesus fanfic? Okay, maybe not. Maybe the gnostic texts are more like fanfic, while the New Testament is part of the official Bible Cycle(tm), approved by the authors' heirs.

But it seems to me that fanfic is the natural mode for story-telling in our species, that stories (like most ideas) benefit us by being shared. Once you put an idea in someone's head, it doesn't belong to the original storyteller any more, it belongs to both parties. Trying to control what happens to your story when it's in someone else's head is folly, and trying to control the expression of what's in their head under the illusion that you own it is dangerously close to folly piled on folly.

Posted April 25, 2006 8:52 AM by NelC

Hooray for fanfic!

Posted April 25, 2006 9:05 AM by Sandra McDonald

I haven't read much fanfic over the years. The stuff I have read hasn't been particularly good. I think this is because the characters didn't translate well when written by someone who wasn't carrying all that backstory in their heads. Authorly arrogance here, sorry, but I don't believe anyone writes a character better than the originator. Yes, I've pondered how I would write someone else's characters, but I've tried to pull back from that over the years. They're not mine to play with.

It's the difference between filling in the spaces in a paint-by-number kit and starting from the bare canvas. The thing that's wholly yours is going to contain something that the kit pic never will.

Posted April 25, 2006 9:12 AM by Kristine Smith

I'm also particularly interested in revisionist versions of other works. Brust's To Reign in Hell, of course, or John Gardner's Grendel. I just finished Jacqueline Carey's Banewreaker, which is "Lord of the Rings" told as tragedy. Donald Kingsbury put a brilliant spin on Asimov's "Foundation" books in Psychohistorical Crisis.

All these books do somewhat of what Leah mentioned above: what if these characters were real people? What if these ideas really worked? What would it really be like?

I'd love to have a canonical list of such works in genre. Can anyone else think of any?

Posted April 25, 2006 9:15 AM by Alex Cohen

NelC, not only have I thought, for some years, of the New Testament as Old Testament fanfic, but Jesus is pretty clearly a Mary Sue.

Posted April 25, 2006 9:15 AM by Avram

Okay--a sour note here. I know of at least two instances where fanfic in modern universes were devastating to the authors, one being Marion Zimmer Bradley. The problems can arise when a fan "owns" a piece of the invented universe and turns around to sue the originating author. Or otherwise harass the inventing author.

I had to ask a couple of fans NOT to make an online game of my Pit Dragon books because we were in the middle of negotations with a movie company (which like most movie deals, fell through) that wanted those rights as part of the deal.

It is true that playing in pd domains are a large part of writing, both fan and fic, whether those domains are biblical (DaVinci code etc.) or Arthurian or Arabian Nights or Sherlock Holmes. But I would think it only polite that if an author who has invented a world asks you to desist SELLING your fanfic or fangames or desist from posting them in an open forum online, that you take your passion for the place and keep it private.

Satire is, of course, something else, and protected.

Jane

Posted April 25, 2006 9:17 AM by jane

Personally, I’m convinced that the legends of the Holy Grail are fanfic about the Eucharist.

You are not alone in thinking this. Something of the sort was suggested in Holy Feast and Holy Fast, which is one of the leading works on medieval food practices.

In terms of fanfic, I was taught that there are about 12 basic plotlines, and part of the trick of writing well is making that new again, with twists and turns and charecters who make you want more and more. On the other hand, it means everyone is borrowing their plot from somewhere.

Posted April 25, 2006 9:38 AM by Sisuile

I very much appreciate Theresa's take. I wrote my first novel as fanfiction precisely so that I would never try to publish it. Also, since character and setting were given, I had to work on plot entirely. It was a useful excersize, and as a bonus, the few people who have read it seemed to enjoy it.

That said, and as noted, extending other people's stories isn't anything new. Pepys notes in his diary going to see The Tamer Tamed, which was a Shakespeare fanplay. Who knows what Bill thought of it? I'm sure that through the ages story tellers added on to legends and made new stories with the characters. Maybe Hercules only started out with a couple of labors.

Poppy Z Brite has a comment over on the LiveJournal feed in response to this post that I found just as wierdly self-justifying as all the fandom wank. After disclosing that she's written and published what is essentially RPF (real person fic) and retold a Lovecraft story in her writing life, she then goes on to say, "Personally, when a stranger takes the liberty of writing about my characters, it makes me feel as if somebody sneaked up behind my husband and stuck a finger in his butt."

What I find curious is that it isn't her own butt in question, but one removed. If she weren't married, would there be no problem?

Posted April 25, 2006 9:38 AM by John Blonde

Their own work may be original to them, but even if their writing is so outre that it’s barely readable, they’ll still be using tropes and techniques and conventions they picked up from other writers.

I've got a joke to back up this particular point:

There was once a conjurer who boasted that he had become god-like. One god happened to overhear, and challenged him to a contest.
"Can you do this?" the god asked, scooping up a handful of dirt and making it into a bird. They watched the bird fly away.
"Sure," said the conjure-man, and reached down for a handful of raw material.
"Hey," said god. "Use your own dirt."

Props to any writer who can make a story fly. None of us use our own dirt.

Posted April 25, 2006 10:07 AM by Will A

[M]any writers have works of personal erotica tucked away in their unpublished-or-unpublishable manuscript trunks.

And some of us are merely shameless about it.

Posted April 25, 2006 10:16 AM by Elf M. Sternberg

It's the difference between filling in the spaces in a paint-by-number kit and starting from the bare canvas. The thing that's wholly yours is going to contain something that the kit pic never will.

Except that it isn't, of course - comparing fanfic to paint-by-numbers is an analogy that just doesn't hold up. It seems to imply that the author is merely phoning in a piece where the work's already been done, and if you think that's something inherent in fanfic, you'd be very wrong.

(If fanfic has a counterpart in the visual arts, I'd say it's collage more than anything else. But that may be another discussion.)

I get the point you're making with a work being "wholly yours," but it seems worth pointing out (as others in this thread have done) that story is never wholly the author's; it's always remixed from bits of other plots, other characters, other archetypes, other Cool Stuff. Makers of story are more or less in the business of twiddling knobs on existing material to see what happens - fanfic is only, perhaps, the most transparent example of this because the writers haven't bothered to change the names and file off the serial numbers. And, objectively - setting aside for the moment the issue of "ownership" - why should they?

Is Odysseus "mine" to play with? Is Hamlet? How about Fagin, or Ahab? Even if I were to accept that no one could possibly write any of them as well as the "original" author (which I don't, but okay), is that enough reason to not use them as a jumping-off place for a new work? And if every other particular of plot and narrative were (somehow) original to me, is that really any less "mine" than if I changed the names and fine details but more or less wrote Moby-Dick?

Posted April 25, 2006 10:19 AM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

[W]hat if these characters were real people? What if these ideas really worked? What would it really be like? . . . Can anyone else think of any?

[tiny, embarrassed cough]

Posted April 25, 2006 10:21 AM by John M. Ford

Jane, I don't think Teresa was trying to say that fanfic can do no harm. I do think, and suspect she does as well, that the vast majority of the problems with fanfic come about because of a screwed-up legal regimen rather than because of the activity itself. There's trouble with it because the law assumes things about creation and distribution that it shouldn't.

Posted April 25, 2006 10:27 AM by Bruce Baugh

To echo Jane, fanfic is all fine and good, except when it isn't. Fanfic as a modern phenomena is more than mimeographed sheets shared with people in the neighborhood. Because of today's ease of distribution, it's everywhere, and it dilutes what the creator of the original work has done.

I do understand that copying is the sincerest form of flattery. It's also fundamental: it's how we've evolved. But copyright was invented because copying became easier and easier, and copyright preserved the value of what the creator made for the creator, to encourage more people to invest in what is already a not very lucrative field (for the majority of non-Lucases of the world).

Yes, all writing cribs from previous sources. I also agree that modern changes to copyright laws have put a lock on the growth of the public domain that has been bad for artists. But there has to be a balance between outright stealing what's out there and synthesizing something new out of old. There is a difference.

I'm not sure I'm being very coherent, but in the rush to support a natural phenomena (trying to immitate what we love) I think we have to think about the consequences of wide distribution of the copies of someone else's creation.

Best,
Alice

Posted April 25, 2006 10:29 AM by AliceB

NelC (& Teresa) Yep, I agree — tho you probably say it better than my attempt at it.

Posted April 25, 2006 10:29 AM by Epacris

...it dilutes what the creator of the original work has done.

How? Is literature a zero-sum game?

Posted April 25, 2006 10:32 AM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

Fanfic can be a very good way to get people into writing, and I don't think anybody would try and claim that getting people to write is a bad thing. I can see how authors can dislike it though - if I were JK Rowling, I'd be quite upset with some of the fanfic that's appeared featuring the Harry Potter characters in a variety of unlikely sexual relationships (this is of course not unique to Harry Potter).

Posted April 25, 2006 10:39 AM by MaW

Regarding the Marion Zimmer Bradley incident: I think it's worth remembering that J. K. Rowling recently found herself in a similar situation, when a woman sued her claiming she had invented the term "Muggle" and Rowling had stolen the idea from her. Had Rowling lost that suit, it would have had a severe impact on her ability to continue publishing her work. The litigant in that situation was not a fanfic writer, though, but another professionally published author. I don't think there's any way a writer can ever be completely safe from the possibility of someone popping up and attempting to claim ownership over part of their work.

Posted April 25, 2006 10:45 AM by dlnevins

"Authorly arrogance here, sorry, but I don't believe anyone writes a character better than the originator."

As a categorical statement this is plainly false, unless you really want to argue that, for instance, King Leir is superior to Shakespeare's reworking. In fact literature is full of people writing characters better than the originators. The fetish of "originality" is a quirk of the modern age, not an eternal human verity. Maybe it's a good quirk. I'd say the jury's still out on that.

As to whether fanfic can be upsetting or hurtful, why, of course it can. Was Teresa saying fanfic is always wonderful, or that its effects are always benign? Of course not. Her point is that discussions of fanfic and its rights and wrongs could benefit from a broader view of how, historically, people have told stories and made texts. She's suggesting we be less provincial. Arguing with her as if the question on the table were "Fanfic: Bad or Good?" is not engaging with the actual matter at hand.

Posted April 25, 2006 10:56 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Echoing Dan Layman-Kennedy, I want to better understand what AliceB means when she says that fanfic "dilutes what the creator of the original work has done."

Of what does this "dilution" consist? By what signs can we recognize that it has happened? What are some mechanisms by which it operates? Please give examples.

Posted April 25, 2006 11:03 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

This seems to be the same territory Harold Bloom was mapping when he was writing about the anxiety of influence. (Bloom can be a real dufus but occasionally he makes a good point.) I suppose with fan fiction, anxiety is simply ignored or absent, and all that is left is influence and invention.

Posted April 25, 2006 11:06 AM by Joe J

Avram,
I would say that "the New Testament as Old Testament fanfic, but Jesus is pretty clearly a Mary Sue."
is actually a pretty traditional, orthodox, Christian understanding of the matter.

The traditional claim of Christians wasn't that Jesus was "a nice man who taught us how to live". It was that he was the Author, inserted into his own story, as a Gary-Stu no less.

This makes his fate inevitable, too. Think about it: a Mary Sue is so incredibly annoying in fiction, but in real life...! It's no accident that he was killed.* Now his ressurection - that was necessitated by the plot.**

-r.

*none of his contemporaries disputed that bit, wether friend or foe.
**you know, The Plot.

Posted April 25, 2006 11:07 AM by rhandir

"Is literature a zero-sum game?"

I guess I don't know what that means.

As to what I mean by dilution, let me start with an aside by using comic books as an example. There you create a set of characters, place them in ever-changing environments, and, if you're lucky, the characters last for decades on monthly installments. Well, actually, they don't. The original characters become stale. The story lines repeat. Sales drop. So the owner of the characters hires new talent to reshape the characters, create new sets of story lines that fit these new personalities, and go from there. Success! Until, after a while, that flags too. So, we repeat, ad nauseum. After enough intallments, the current version of the characters bears only the slimmest relationship to the original. This works in the comic book field, because the characters are not owned by their creators, the audience keeps changing, and this is the expectation.

For a book, where the characters do belong to the creator, and the creator has invested in that personality and that world, the constant "what ifs" published by others makes these characters and this world stale. Unlike comic books, the world created by the author is meant to be finite. There may be sequels, but they fit withing the framework that the author has created. The fanfic dilutes the creator's work, because it can become lost in what others have created.

George Lucas, as I understand it, has been pretty good about letting fanfic flourish. But I think it's up to the creator to decide whether it's okay, or not. And given the wide and fast distribution of fanfic these days, I don't have a problem with the base line being: fanfic is not okay unless the creator says it is.

Best,
Alice

Posted April 25, 2006 11:11 AM by AliceB

I just posted an essay about the necessity of fanfic which came out of this discussion, which is really very long, and more of a parenthentical digression to a digression than a relevant comment. Since lj doesn't trackback, it's here, if anyone's interested.

Posted April 25, 2006 11:16 AM by melannen

Well before everyone blog-piles on top of AliceB for her "dilution" comment, the arguments about "dilution" isn't too far from the same arguments by those who want to maintain control of their works for life-plus-n years. Mention to some authors the notion that copyright terms should be short enough to the point that they might expire while the author is still alive, and you'll hear all manner of "dilution" arguments. some of them quite forcefully, pounding of tables, etc.

I recieved a number of "dilution" arguments when I suggested a 42 year copyright term. Writers said their original works would be "diluted" if their work went public domain and Hollywood came in after and made the movie version. It would have "diluted" the original somehow.

So, before AliceB is completely scared off by the sharpening of knives and pitchforks, lets be clear that her argument isn't her's alone. It is an already existing meme that is fairly widespread. It isn't personal to her alone.

Posted April 25, 2006 11:20 AM by Greg London

Alice,

So is Robin Hood stale now, because so many authors have written Robin Hood stories? Is King Arthur stale? Is Sherlock Holmes stale? (And btw has anyone read Michael Chabon's brilliant The Final Solution? Which is, of course, fanfic?) Dracula? Romeo and Juliet? Red Harvest?

You actually make the point that when a specific character/story becomes old, the best solution is to bring in new writers. Why is that? Because new authors actually can reimagine works in interesting ways. So in the comic book world, it's well understood that many authors can create interesting versions of the same character. The only difference between that and fanfic is a particular contractual legal relationship that says it's okay.

This is somewhat wrapped up in the issue of "canon," I think. I recall a story in which Frank Miller was asked a convention whether Dark Knight had "really happened." "Of course not," said Miller. "It's a comic book."

Posted April 25, 2006 11:20 AM by Alex Cohen

Patrick, I posted before seeing your post. As an example of "dilution" I'd use Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series. She authorized the publication of short stories by others. As a die-hard Darkover fan, I purchased them. They were, in my opinion, not as good as the original, and usually repetitive of her tropes. The series lost some luster because of it. The additional volumes that have been published after her death have also diluted the story by adding to her world without her specific style and storytelling talent.

I assume that the additional volumes have not hurt sales--I don't think fanfic does. To the contrary, it probably is a great vehicle for advertizing the original. But it doesn't help the original story.

It's a value assessment, not an assessment of volume.

Best,
Alice

Posted April 25, 2006 11:23 AM by AliceB

Because of today's ease of distribution, it's everywhere, and it dilutes what the creator of the original work has done.

Don't mean to pile on here (like Patrick, I'm curious to hear how it dilutes). But I think it's the opposite of dilution. Rather than diluting the original product, fanfiction enhances and intensifies it. One function of fanfic is to analyze characters and offer reactions to what they've said or done. Good, insightful fanfic has made me love and understand the original characters more. It's brought characters to my attention I might otherwise overlooked, or shed light on some aspect of a relationship that I didn't quite grasp. It's multiple conversations going on at once, one between the original writer and the reader, and another between the fanfic authors and the reader. The reader comes away with a lot of intellectual riches. There's no down side, unless the reader is reading bad fanfic, and why would anyone want to do that? (Fanfic, like everything else, has good, bad, and awful. The ninety percent of everything is crap rule.)

Posted April 25, 2006 11:25 AM by dotsomething

I can't quite keep up with the pace of the postings, but I'll try to respond once more.

Alex, rewriting characters can be absolutely fabulous. I don't dispute it. However, I think creators should have a say, while they are alive, about whether anyone can do it. I won't rehash what I've said, but I don't think I'm alone, or irrational, in that belief.

Alice

Posted April 25, 2006 11:29 AM by AliceB

"Good, insightful fanfic has made me love and understand the original characters more. It's brought characters to my attention I might otherwise overlooked, or shed light on some aspect of a relationship that I didn't quite grasp. It's multiple conversations going on at once, one between the original writer and the reader, and another between the fanfic authors and the reader. The reader comes away with a lot of intellectual riches."

I had not thought of that, and it's given me something to think about. I guess my concern is that an author may not agree with the fanfic's author's take on the character involved.

See, I don't dislike fanfic, per se. It can, like a lot of things, be both good and bad. But I still think it should be the creator's choice about whether it should be published--and as I have said before, the nature of distribution these days is such that putting in on the web can be the equivalent of a publication (in fact may get more readers in some cases).

Alice

Posted April 25, 2006 11:38 AM by AliceB

By "zero-sum game" I mean that there's a finite amount of something, and not enough to go around; if I take your meaning right, I think you're saying that "quality" (or maybe just "entertainment value") is a resource that can be depleted if too many people use it all at once.

I don't think it works that way, though.

Posted April 25, 2006 11:38 AM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

This is a fabulous quote. I find it really refreshing and encouraging to see people IN the publishing industry who feel the same way I do. *goes back to lurking*

Posted April 25, 2006 11:44 AM by Nabil

My 2 cents CDN here:

'Dilution' is one of those vague terms that can mean different things to different people. For me, it involves first and second impressions.

F'instance, my first exposure to Buffy et al was through sexually explicit fanfic (most of it bad). Ergo, when I finally saw the series (I didn't own a TV during the series' first run) my reaction was not what the original creators intended--or wanted, I'm sure. I found myself wondering when/why character1/character2 so much that the stories took back seat. I lost interest completely shortly after.

I have no doubt I would have the same reaction to other fanfic/original work, so I avoid the former as much as possible. I consider it the only way for me to be fair to the original creator. YMMV.

Posted April 25, 2006 11:50 AM by Renee

But I think it's up to the creator to decide whether it's okay, or not.

I disagree. Here's an alternative: let the market (not so much the commercial market but the literary market) decide. Those works which find an audience will flourish; those which don't will be ignored.

Now, I think creators have a very strong right to be paid for their creations. But I don't think they have a right -- that is, I don't think they should have a right -- to control what happens to those creations.

Which brings us back to a subject which has been brought up in earlier threads about copyright: mandatory licensing. The precedent here is from music: if you want to record another's song, you have to pay the composer -- but they can't deny permission.

This, I would argue, is clearly what should happen with literary characters and worlds. Anyone who wants to write the starship Enterprise should have to pay a percentage of the take to Paramount. But I don't think that Paramount should get to decide what works get written, get published, get sold or get read.

Bad works, damaging works -- as decided by readers, not writers -- will be ignored. How many revisions of Odysseus there've been -- most of them simply ignored in favor of Homer. But those with some real power (Dante comes to mind) add to our view of the character. (And, of course, this is decided on an individual level -- the literary market just being a sum of the individual decisions.)

Copyright should be a vehicle for making sure artists get paid. But it shouldn't be a vehicle for control.

Posted April 25, 2006 11:54 AM by Stephen Frug

I am rather uncomfortable with the idea that one should have total control over the impressions that one's ideas give, in any form.

Posted April 25, 2006 11:59 AM by perianwyr

"I could show you stuff centuries old—heck, some of it’s millennia old—that’s fanfic by any modern definition."

The entire cycle of stories, plays and poems about Troy is fanfic to Homer, including the Aeneid. And then the ghost of Virgil guides Dante throught Hell. Now there's a fanfic touch if there ever one.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:02 PM by Diana

I ... don't know.

I stand before you confessing to fanfic myself, only I got paid for it. In my first book, a fantasy, I had a group of travellers who try to cross a mountain range, get turned back by a magically-induced snowstorm, find a passage under the mountain in which they are ambushed and lose one of their number who turns up again later in another guise, revealed as a great magic-worker.

Nobody's ever called me on it. It might be because it was a different group of characters, doing something completely different for a different purpose, and the lost character turns out to be, well, different.

So what? Well, there's something not kosher about using the very same characters that have been created by someone else, to do the very same things in the same way in the same setting to get the same outcome. Is it still so if you change one of those things? I... think not, tentatively. There's a sort of line, somewhere. I know how Patrick feels about boundary conditions, and anyway I'm not up to defining this one, so I can't say where the line is. It's over yonder, somewhere. I don't think I crossed it. I think it is possible to come a lot closer than I did, and still not cross it. But I think it does exist, and it can be crossed.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:06 PM by Dave Luckett

AliceB: using comic books as an example

(Sorry, a lot of posts popped up while I was composing my earlier comment about dilution)

That's a good example, except that it's a hazard of comics as a medium, isn't it? By the nature of their publishing style, characters get so many writers and retoolings over the decades they keep getting reinvented. That's not necessarily a bad thing, except that it makes comics so cyclical that characters that are readable this decade may not be the next even though they have the same name and costume.

I agree that single-creator books are a different situation.

But I still think it should be the creator's choice about whether it should be published--and as I have said before, the nature of distribution these days is such that putting in on the web can be the equivalent of a publication

I think the original creator's wishes do have to be respected. If a creator says outright "please don't write fanfic based on my characters," then I think people need to follow that. A lot of creators don't mind, don't care, or take it as the highest form of flattery. This has more to do with consideration and respect than copyright laws. (fanfiction dot net will not archive works if the author has issued a public statement to please stop doing fanfic.) But that's a separate issue from whether fanfic is intrinsically bad for the original work. I tend to think the original works can stand on their own feet sturdily. The bad fanfic is just so much noise, and the good only adds to the dialogue.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:07 PM by dotsomething

It seems to me fundamentally important that we remember that there's more than one argument here. One is about justice: the extent to which we should ensure that creators are compensated, and the rules by which we hope to ensure that this happens. The other is about aesthetics, about how certain kinds of art do or don't change our view of other kinds of art, or our relationship to our own art.

Under the right circumstances, when properly chartered, government can play a positive role in ensuring something approaching justice in the first matter. Its cannot play a just role in the second.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:11 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Stephen, the problem with "mandatory licensing" or "compulsory licensing" as used in the music industry is that it requires the government to set prices on every little variation of possible use. I'm unconvinced that the government can do what's best here, given their history to date in setting terms and rights etc based on who pays them a campaign contribution. As it is now, there are compulsorary licenses for cover songs, and I believe that is the entire extent of mandatory licensing. There are no compulsory licenses for sampling, derivatives, mixes, and the like. There are also no compulsory licenses for turning a novel into a movie, a movie into a novel, or an original oil painting into a poster. Copyright also covers software, and the idea of Microsoft ever allowing compulsory licenses for software, let alone trying to figure out the pricing that would actually be "fair" is boggling.

Compulsory licenses that would allow paid fan fiction, from a copyright point of view, would mean that two of the most complicated concepts in literature, characters and worlds, would have to be put on some sort of bureaucratic look up table and a price put to it. What percentage do you pay Lucas to put Chewbacca in your shortstory? Or just a wookie? Or to set a short story on Planet-Wookie? A flat rate? All different rates? And if so, how much? What about action figure wookies?

That's one of the actual beauties of copyright: licensing is left to the copyright holders rather than trying to have some bureaucratic nightmare try to create a single look up table to apply to every possible derivation. THe author decides how much they are willing to accept for their works or to license their works.

At that point, this would still prohibit a lot of current fan fic, because current fan fic is by fans who aren't charging money for their works. I don't believe you can use the "compulsory license" to make a cover of some popular song and then give that song away. I believe the original artist must get some money somehow, some way. Which means most current fan fic would still not be allowed by "compulsory licenses".

Compulsory licenses would solve the derivative problem. The only problem is that it would create a nightmare of bureacracy. It's the modern day equivalent of communism being the worker's paradise. In theory, sure, in reality, never.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:13 PM by Greg London

there's more than one argument here

OK. Is the discussion about "dilution" one of justice or asthetics? I was thinking it was about "justice" but perhaps you were thinking "asthetics"?

Posted April 25, 2006 12:18 PM by Greg London

Renee: I've heard that before; people turned off the original work by reading its fanfic first. What I always end up wondering is *why* they end up reading fanfic for something whose original they haven't sampled? (Not critical, just curious. For me most of the appeal of fanfic comes from seeing how it bounces off or resonates with what the original creator meant, so there's no popint to reading even a good fanfic in a universe and among people one doesn't know.)

Greg, you're generalizing writers' motivations on copyright again. I still disagree with you on a copyright term that ends prior to the death of the author, and yet I have no problem with the idea of fanfic. As far as I'm concerned, the term of copyright has more to do with fair compensation than anything else.

Fanfic falls under the debate about what constitutes fair use, and where spin-off works fall. There's a reason it seems to be at least partly the authors' will whether fanfic is a good thing, or a bad thing but not worth pursuing, or acceptable, or flat out not wanted under any circumstances.

I certainly don't think that fanfic, even bad fanfic that misinterprets the characters or the feel, 'dilutes' the original work, any more than a badly-made but legally-agreed-to movie does. If someone is concerned that it will do so, that someone doesn't read the fanfic, or watch the authorized film, for that matter.

There are stories whose fanfic, or even movies or anthologies or other legal tie-ins I haven't perused, or watch/read while mentally rewriting the character names to something saner, because I honestly can't see the connection. (This latter includes bad Arthurian films that make more sense set in Ruritania than even an idealized ahistoric Britain, as well as at least two damn good fanfics which could have worked far better as "original works" than some original works do whose serial numbers were inadequately filed off. Again, not the legal/copyright aspect of fanfic.)

Some works seem to be whole and intact on their own.

But some seem to work best in interaction with other things, with a sort of busy, messy, chaotic whirl of activity. I can't explain why I choose to read the fanfic of some universes but not others, except that some universes seem to be improved by the byplay.

And on those rare occasions a work really does seem weaker and worse after reading its good fanfic, I don't blame the fanfic writers....

(For me, when I fantasize about those far-off days when my own books are out there and some crazy kid writes fanfic, you know what my greatest fear is so far? Reading one that so completely screws up and miswrites my characters and their motivations that I can't stop myself and I say something stupid and mean to the hapless kid. Who won't deserve it, and I'll get a reputation as one nasty -----.)

Posted April 25, 2006 12:22 PM by Lenora Rose

Greg, obviously the "dilution" argument is about aesthetics.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:27 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

As regards comic books...

Yup, single creator comic books are a different animal. For example, in Japan, you have the same writer-artists working (sometimes) for decades with the same pool of characters, with the same basic plot premise. (See: Ranma 1/2, Oh My Goddess!, etc.) Of course, the kind of repetition and variations you get there is different - you can take the same basic awkwardly funny scenario, and treat it in several different ways, and at greater length. (It can be equally bad, as anyone who's ever read Dragonball Z will tell you.)

Our continual retoolings and retconnings in American super-hero comics are as good an example as you can get of the need to arbitrarily change stuff in order to be original. (Combined with a really odd production model that doesn't lend itself to stable creative teams.)

And as long as I am on this tangent, this is probably one of the explanations for why manga is so popular right now: kids love long, complicated stories about their heroes* that are internally consistent. Heroic people + engaging plot + cliffhangers. You know, genere fiction. American comics aren't really good at much outside the cliffhanger bit. I mean, when was the last time Superman saved the world...but it took 36 issues to do it?

*sorry, kids don't like real anti-heroes, Mr. Miller and Mr. Alan Moore. Those are for grownups. Fake anti-heroes are much better.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:29 PM by rhandir

It might surprise you to find out how many writers have works of personal erotica tucked away in their unpublished-or-unpublishable manuscript trunks. There’s no good way to get those published, but they write them anyway, because they’re writers, and eroticism is an important part of our lives.

That would make an interesting anthology. Anonymous works of erotica from famous authors. But we're not telling who.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:30 PM by Shmuel

Aargh! Patrick's last (now two) comments weren't up -- even when I deliberately set out to check and read all the posts that came up while I was composing.

Greg, scratch my grumble at the top of my last post: Patricks' Aesthetics vs. compensation is a much better summation of what i was trying to say there. The whole dilution debate here is *aesthetic*. So, I'm sorry about the grumble. If I could write as brief and pithy as he, well, maybe I'd be published.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:31 PM by Lenora Rose

There's another aspect to the argument besides the rights of the author--what about the rights of the culture?

The culture in which you grew up is a big part of who you are, and a big part of any culture is its mythology.

For instance, the Greek heroes were a big part of the imaginative life of 19th-century kids. That's still true to some extent today, but I'd argue that the positions formerly occupied by Zeus, Hera and Hercules have largely been usurped by Superman(TM), Wonder Woman(TM) and Luke Skywalker(TM).

I'm not arguing that creative minds aren't entitled to financial reward for their labors. However, the trend for effectively perpetual copyright seems to me excessive and actually slightly dangerous. When was Superman's first appearance? 1936ish? When did Jerry Siegel die? 1992? I dare you to post Superman fanfic on Amazon--he's got a movie coming out this summer, and the lawyers are liable to be testy.

At this writing, the character of Luke Skywalker has been part of the public consciousness for over a quarter century. He is an important component of the childhood imaginative life of an entire generation. It's darn nice of George Lucas and his minions to have come up with him and I don't argue that Lucas entitled to his share of the wealth and (to a lesser extent) kudos, both of which he has in abundance.

However, at the risk of incurring yet more wrath, I will say that my reverence for the rights of intellectual property holding corporations is somewhat limited.

Bear in mind that when we talk about intellectual property rights, we're usually not dealing with individual human beings, but rather with holding companies. Take Marvel as an excellent case in point. When it emerged from bankruptcy, Marvel comics came back with a stated business model of being a holding company rather than a creative force. Since then they've zealously sued any number of (to my mind) innocent geeks who dared use any of Marvel's characters without permission.

I see perfectly well how Marvel might think its ability to squeeze profit from, say, future video game franchises is affected by existing games that let users tailor the interface to appear suspiciously similar to Marvel's IP--I just don't give a shit.

If we as a culture have gotten to the point where the average citizen seriously values the right of Avi Arad (Marvel CEO) to buy himself a bigger jet over the right of creative kids to express themselves, then we, as a culture, are really dumb.

I'm not going to read Another Hope because the writing is painful. I agree that the author was breathtakingly naive to hope that she could get away with it. But Christ, Star Wars has been part of the public consciousness for close to three decades. It's part of the imaginative life of a generation. When, exactly, does it stop being a @$^%ing felony to play with George's toys?

I would argue that if we, as a culture, continue to insist that the right to profit trumps all other rights then we will inevitably strangle ourselves intellectually, competitively, and spiritually. Actually, I'll go even farther and say that it's already happening.

Software patents, anyone? Grr. Argh (tm)

Posted April 25, 2006 12:42 PM by Scott H

Greg, you're generalizing writers' motivations on copyright again.

Revisting my actual post, adding emphasis where needed:

[paste]
Mention to some authors the notion that copyright terms should be short enough to the point that they might expire while the author is still alive, and you'll hear all manner of "dilution" arguments. some of them quite forcefully, pounding of tables, etc.

I recieved a number of "dilution" arguments
[/paste]

I believe I managed to avoid using the phrase "all authors". And I sprinkled "some" and "a number of" qualifiers in my post. So, I don't believe I was generalizing for "all authors".

That you support FanFic and oppose 40 year terms is your business. But your opinion does not generalize to all authors. Some authors oppose both FanFic and any term less than Life-Plus-70 and defend their views using "dilution" arguments among other things.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:43 PM by Greg London

Dave,

I apologize if I misunderstand you, but fanfic isn't writing the same story with the same characters--it's more about expansion.

For example, perhaps I became with enamoured with the idea of the teenage Marauders in the Harry Potter series. Except they are only spoken of in flashbacks. But the imagination runs wild, and I want to know more about the Marauders. So I make up stories about young James and Remus and Sirius and Peter. I'm not writing about Harry finding the Philospher's Stone all over again. Sure, eventually James is going to meet his fate later on somewhere (unless I'm writing alternative history), but that's not what I'm writing about. I'm writing about misadventures of side characters that inspired me.

Or, maybe I follow the line of the original storyline, but deviate somewhere along the way--what it really was Snape working for Voldemort instead of Quirrel? Sure, it's a tangent, even a cannonical change, but why not if that's where my imagination wants to run?

And maybe I don't care about getting something professionally published; I just want to show it to my friends or keep it to myself. It's what I do for fun because the story given inspired me to explore something.

That's what fanfic is generally about--at least in my experience.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:44 PM by Ann K

AliceB writes:
Patrick, I posted before seeing your post. As an example of "dilution" I'd use Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series. She authorized the publication of short stories by others. As a die-hard Darkover fan, I purchased them. They were, in my opinion, not as good as the original, and usually repetitive of her tropes. The series lost some luster because of it. The additional volumes that have been published after her death have also diluted the story by adding to her world without her specific style and storytelling talent.

A different Patrick responds:
While I don't necessarily disagree with this, your argument seems to me to have little to do with fanfic generally, and more to do with quality of writing. Some fanfic is horrible, some is absolutely sublime. (A friend wrote unauthorized fanfic based on an anime series. The anime series treatment of the characters was mediocre at best, but my friend's treatment was excellent and fun to read. To compare, I found the authorized prequels of the Amber series published after Mr. Zelanzy's death to be terrible.)

See, I don't dislike fanfic, per se. It can, like a lot of things, be both good and bad. But I still think it should be the creator's choice about whether it should be published--and as I have said before, the nature of distribution these days is such that putting in on the web can be the equivalent of a publication (in fact may get more readers in some cases).

It seems that you are trying to join this argument to the dilution one. However, they seem to be two different things. Even with an author's permission, the fanfic created could be bad and make the series lose "some luster because of it."

Posted April 25, 2006 12:45 PM by Patrick Anderson

NelC:

Not just the Holy Grail, but I'd say all story cycles from pre-literate times are a form of fanfic. I first realised this when thinking about Hercules, of all people. When I look at the Labours and the other bits of myth he's involved in, they seemed to me to have the quality of somebody literate trying to paste up a bunch of stories that others just made up about their favourite hero while gathered around the campfire. Those in the oral tradition can tell tall stories without a lot of regard for continuity or the other fine sensibilities of the literate, because they're more concerned with immediate audience reaction to Hercules' bad-assedness.

Kristine, if all fanfic were as you describe, I wouldn't be defending it.

Jane, not that I don't believe you, but how can a fan own a piece of the author's fictional universe, unto being able to sue and harass the author?

Making an online game from a copyrighted work is outside anything I'd defend. So is offering fanfic for sale. I won't say I couldn't change my mind later, but for now I'm firmly of the opinion that this stuff belongs in the gift economy.

Sisuile: Thanks for letting me know I'm not the only one who thinks so. It seemed logical to me that the storymaking imagination would move from "real presence in the Eucharist" to "really real presence in the Eucharist."

Will A., that's an illuminating story. Reload the front page.

Alice, I agree that poor-quality imitation can dilute the original, but how is that unique to fanfic? Third-rate Tolkien imitations don't put a dent in my love of Tolkien, but they sure do sour me on second-rate Tolkien imitations. That's exactly the process you're describing, and it's all taken place in the commercial market.

dlnevins, the case you're talking about is Rowling vs. Stouffer, which was discussed here at length. The situation had no resemblance to fanfic. Stouffer was falsely ownership of "muggles" by right of prior use. I absolutely disagree that it's reasonable to conclude, on that basis or any other, that there's no way "...a writer can ever be completely safe from the possibility of someone popping up and attempting to claim ownership over part of their work." Mind, it's a good idea to check and make sure you haven't inadvertently duplicated something; but that possibility aside, if it's original work, it's yours.

Anyway, what's that got to do with fanfic? Most of what I see starts out with an explicit disclaimer that says they don't own the characters or setup.

Melannen, I fixed your link.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:50 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Which means most current fan fic would still not be allowed by "compulsory licenses".

Of course, most current fan fic is illegal now, too. The only difference is that under a compulsory licensing scheme it could be published legally.

As for the bureaucratic mess... I dunno. I'm not a lawyer. So I could be wildly wrong here. But it seems to me that some fairly simple rules could be established, with some sort of arbitration board to keep costly litigation to a minimum. (Of course, we'd have to guard against creeping elimination of fair use... but that's a big problem now; this would be -- presumably -- part of a more general push-back.)

And again, the question is: as against what alternative? At the moment we have complete control by the creators -- or, all too often, by corporations. I think a bureaucracy would be better than that. I think that some of the works that might be written (or that have been written and might be published) in other's (currently-under-copyright) worlds or with other's (currently-under-copyright) characters might be wonderful -- just as many works people write with out of copyright worlds/characters are wonderful. And I'd like to read 'em.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:51 PM by Stephen Frug

Gift economy. You can give it, but you can't sell it.

Posted April 25, 2006 12:57 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Okay, howabout dilution -
based on your first contact with the world-work*.

If your first exposure to, say, Batman is the sixties tv show, then that can become your framework for interpreting what's good about the premise. The essential "batman-ness" has become fixed in a particular way, which leads to bafflement when you see the movie Batman Begins. Suddenly your understanding of "why people like this stuff" doesn't work. It's not camp, its...something else.

TruFans of course, become endlessly divided over what the real "batman-ness" is, but the problem is that multiple takes on a given work tend to lock people out who would assume that there is only one true way to understand what something is. (Director's cuts anyone?)

Fanfiction presents a special problem: trufans produce it, because they love the world-work so much, but at the same time they are multiplying the possible ways of understanding it.

(Sorry, I feel like I'm not tying this together well.)

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the Western idea of a one to one coorespondence between the author's vision and the one true authorized work is part of the problem. Its like the Western idea of a one to one coorespondence between any idea and a physical reality, e.g. purity=virginity, democracy=voting, etc.

Right, so the reason why fanfiction upsets us is the reason why we produce it: we fell in love with a particular interpretation of a story-world**, and want that to be the entry point for everyone, or the canonical way of understanding that world.
At the very same time, we love that story-world so much that we want to play with it. (The second case, love producing fanfiction, is misleading, because not all creative borrowing is motivated by love of the original work.)

-r.

*sounds like there should be some fancy German word for that. Any takers for Weltarbeit?
**Story-world? Howabout Geschichtewelt? Anyone?

Posted April 25, 2006 12:59 PM by rhandir

One further note.

One might argue that right now we have de facto compulsory licensing for anything produced by individual creators. And full protection for corporations.

The case I'm thinking of here is the Italian writer who rewrote Lolita from Dolores Haze's point of view. This was bitterly opposed by the Nabokov estate (basically, his son Dimitri), on the grounds that it was a bad novel, copyright violation -- etc. But in the end they lost -- because they don't have money to fight it out with lawyers, because it was a fait accompli in many countries so it seemed ridiculous to ban it in other countries, etc.

I bet the same would not be true of Star Trek, Star Wars or the like. It would've been shut down.

A system of compulsory licensing would be used mainly by individuals against corporate owners -- i.e. precisely against those owners whose claim to moral ownership (as opposed to legal ownership) is weakest.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:01 PM by Stephen Frug

AliceB:

I guess my concern is that an author may not agree with the fanfic's author's take on the character involved.

Interpretation happens every time someone reads a book. Any author who's uncomfortable with that is screwed, because there's no way to stop it.

Of course, fanfic is only one of the ways that a particular interpretation can be spread. I've never seen an author argue that they should have the right to shut down fan essays, reviews, or English courses that are "distorting" their work.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:03 PM by kutsuwamushi

Regarding comics and dilution:

Alan Moore's Watchmen, arguably one of the best superhero comics ever made, was based on the old Charlton heroes with the serial numbers filed off.

Neil Gaiman's Sandman, likewise on many people's Top N lists, is a pastiche of other creators' comic book characters, folk heroes, and mythological figures.

There are very few American comic book characters that haven't, at some point, had something brilliant done with them by someone other than their creator. I would tend to think of comics as an argument for the potential aesthetics of fanfiction.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:04 PM by Ashni

Ann, in that case you're doing what Tom Stoppard did with "Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", and it's absolutely, completely legitimate. It's not plagiarism, it's not aesthetically dubious in itself, and it's good if it's good. No argument, no objection, and I would be tickled pink if anyone did it with any of my stuff.

But somewhere there's still a line. On the other side of that line is work that is so dependent upon an earlier source that it retains almost no originality of its own. How much originality must it have before it's legitimate?

As I said, I don't know.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:06 PM by Dave Luckett

Teresa, would you be in favor of making gift economy fanfic legal regardless of the wishes of the copyright holders? Because right now, of course, we have not just a gift economy, but an illegal gift economy. Lucas can shut down all star wars fanfic, not just stuff that gets charged for. Or should the gift economy be at the whim of copyright owners and/or an illegal economy?

Posted April 25, 2006 1:14 PM by Stephen Frug

How much originality must it have before it's legitimate?

As we say in the business, that's a matter of fact for a jury to decide.

If we restrict the conversation to justice for a moment, it's a mistake to try to encode into law the precise barrier between allowable inspiration and infringing derivation. That's why there are juries.

If we turn to aesthetics, then I don't see why originality has anything to do with legitimacy. Then, the question is how original does it have to be to be good?

Posted April 25, 2006 1:16 PM by Alex Cohen

Although Patrick Anderson made my point, I'd like to follow up on the dilution and the relative quality issues.

if the commercial and authorized Darkover stories to which AliceB refers were not good, that's a failure of the editors, IMO. The short stories set in Gaiman's Sandman series were quite good. The stories set in the Aspirin- and Abbey-edited Thieve's World, a shared world with multiple writers, were generally of even quality, though they varied in style. Editing is everything.

OTOH, what first drew me into fanfic was finding stories based in Star Trek Voyager that did a far better job than the series writers with the potential in the characters and situation set up by the creators. What kept me reading fanfic was the same impulse that had me re-reading Dune and LoTR and Heinlein as a kid - the desire to revisit the setting. Good fanfic is like that, with the added bonus of new stories. I don't read some fandoms (Dune, LoTR, Babylon5, etc) because, for me, fanfiction stories generally don't add.

OTOH, I absolutely do not think unauthorized fanfic should be publishable for monetary gain. Many fanfic readers and writers are horrified by the idea of a fan writer asking for money because in general their impulse for writing is quite different from original fiction writers. Some of them are insulted when one suggests they might, in fact, try their hand at original stories.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:21 PM by John Blonde

Dave Luckett wrote:
But somewhere there's still a line. On the other side of that line is work that is so dependent upon an earlier source that it retains almost no originality of its own. How much originality must it have before it's legitimate?

I know exactly what you are talking about, and I have seen it. But I can't define it either. I think it is held in common with another characteristic of bad writing that we all recognize. You know, the one where, er... well, for example, for some people the idea of a hero enacting revenge is so compelling that they will read any book that has the revenge plot. Or, if they are a writer, will fill a book with bland characters with no inflection, no backgrounds, no scenery, because the idea of revenge (or love, or sex) is so potent in their minds that it lights up everything else.

Frankly, I was that way about elves when I was 11, and had just finished the Two Towers. Even seeing the word "elven" gave me quite a jolt in the psyche.*

The same motivation comes up in slash fiction, I think - the idea of a certain pairing is so compelling that one reads blindly (or writes blindly). So if you Star Trek fanfiction needs to be about Han and Leia, because it's about them, then you've got a problem. If it's about a princess and a scoundrel, and it
would be cool if it was them, but it doesn't carry all its emotional charge from it being them, then you are okay.

-r.
*in my psyche! I was pre-pubertal, thank you very much!

Posted April 25, 2006 1:23 PM by rhandir

If there is a moral argument for authorial right to control their original materials, it's not the same as the copyright bargain.

Copyright is effectively a bargain between society as represented by government and creative artists (as represented by publishers) wherein to encourage the public good of the creation of art and the addition to the cultural discourse, artists are granted certain limited rights for a set period of time. Society gains in that at the end of the rightholding period, the works become our collective property. Without this bargain, some art wouldn't be created at all. With it, we can count on a continually refreshed pool of cultural artifacts to play with and artists can plan how they and their descendants will be compensated over the commercially viable life of their work.

That's a commercial bargain, a public good for created right, where both sides win. It's not the recogintion of a moral obligation, where absolute control is granted because it is objectively right. However, it's an old bargain and people are emotionally attached to it. It's also become subject to erosion and regulatory capture. Additional protection of (for example) Mickey Mouse was valuable enough to the Disney Corporation that the large amount of lobbying money they spent on retroactive copyright extension was strictly a prudent investment, even if getting the bargain changed was harmful to the culture (in that it was not getting an infusion of public domain art and characters).

Posted April 25, 2006 1:23 PM by Michael

Another point to think about as far as "legal" versus "moral" rights -- a lot of us have a lot of difficulty respecting that "authors have a LEGAL right to own their creations; OMG you're STEALING THEIR LIVELIHOOD!!!!" when most of them DON'T hold their own copyright. Copyright inheres in the publisher for several years on a lot of authors' contracts, and in the record company forEVER (so far as i understand) on a lot of musicians' contracts. The creators get royalties, but they don't OWN THEIR WORK as far as that goes.

I have a lot of respect for free and anarchic movements (fairtunes.com was the big one, but it got shut down) that try to get illegal downloaders to send money directly TO THE ARTISTS. Their position is that the record labels, not having done any of the "creative" work, don't have any MORAL right to be paid regardless of the legality of their position, whereas the creators DO have a moral right to be paid for their creations.

I understand this is almost certainly a really irritating position to those of you in the publishing industry -- and i'm not saying i AGREE, entirely, with it.

But the sheer magnitude of the legal difference between "who holds the copyright" and "who MADE THE THING" may go some way toward explaining why a number of fanfic authors, illegal downloaders, and other "pirate" consumers of culture don't care much about arguments based on legality.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:24 PM by Adrienne

See "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson as the (IMO) best SF story about the danger of eternal copyright laws.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:24 PM by Josh Jasper

IJWTS that I think ScottH's

If we as a culture have gotten to the point where the average citizen seriously values the right of Avi Arad (Marvel CEO) to buy himself a bigger jet over the right of creative kids to express themselves, then we, as a culture, are really dumb.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:25 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

if I were JK Rowling, I'd be quite upset with some of the fanfic that's appeared featuring the Harry Potter characters in a variety of unlikely sexual relationships (this is of course not unique to Harry Potter).

JK Rowling seems amazingly level-headed about the (admittedly insane) fandom community which exists around her work. For example, there's one well-known website full of explicit Potter erotica which was contacted by representatives of Rowling's. It wasn't a Cease and Desist, though, just a request that the site institute password protection to keep kiddies from stumbling across the fics. (Of course, by "request" I mean "do this or else we will bust out the C&D," but that's not the point.)

The site locked down its contents and is still running today. So on the subject of Potter porn: JKR knows, and is either unconcerned about it, or bothered yet still willing to let fandom tiptoe into those creepy nooks and crevices. Either way, I'm impressed.

As for me - I was part of a long-running RPG based on Rowling's series, and it has improved my writing by leaps and bounds. All writing flexes the same muscles, and keeping them in shape did wonders for me.

Yes, the general quality of fanfic can be pretty low, but then, most completed manuscripts don't get published, either. What's that saying again? 90% of everything is crap?

Posted April 25, 2006 1:27 PM by Relly

In Judaism, there's a long and extremely honorable tradition of writing little stories (called midrash) to fill in the gaps that are readily apparent to anyone who reads sacred scripture. One of the best-known midrash is the story in which Abraham's father owns an idol shop, and Abraham smashes all the idols but one and then claims the big idol destroyed the others. This has been retold so faithfully that there are people who are convinced their Bible is defective when they can't find the story in there. In fact, it's a midrash written to explain why God chooses Abraham for the covenant.

I have long thought Milton was basically Christian midrash. But you know, midrash is fanfic, and Milton works much better defined as fanfic. I mean, geesh, he turned Satan into this fascinating sexy (anti-)hero; if that's not fanfic, what is?

I've gotten to speak in schools about writing a few times; once I found myself trying to explain to a bunch of twelve-year-olds why Barry Trotter was legal but fanfic without the consent of the creator was not. It does not, honestly, make a whole lot of sense from a legal perspective, and it makes even less sense if we're talking about the ethics of writing about someone else's characters.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:30 PM by Naomi Kritzer

My take on The Fanfic Question is a little different from the comments I've read above. Whether fanfic is (or should be) an intrusion upon the creators' rights or not, whether it is well written or not, I personally don't read or write fanfic because I think it's creatively lazy.

I'm defining "fanfic" here as "new stories about existing characters and settings, written by someone other than the original creator or their designates." So Dave Luckett's snitch of a fragment of plot from Tolkien isn't "fanfic" by my definition.

Fanfic can be a way for new writers to learn their craft by relying on existing characters, character relationships, and settings so they can focus on plot, prose, pacing, and all the other aspects of writing. Certainly, there's no reason that such stories can't be entertaining and emotionally valid. But I find them unsatisfying for the same reason I find most series television (and tie-in novels, and many sequels) unsatisfying: because the characters and their relationships are already established, they can't grow or change much (unless the fic is prepared to violate canon to an extent that most of the fics I've read don't).

Also, many fics are weak because they rely too heavily on the crutch of the existing characters (and the reader's knowledge of those characters), sometimes to the extent of omitting character description completely. The characters become merely labels, or puppets, animated more by the reader's existing knowledge than by the writer's craft.

I'm a plot-focused writer. I want to see things happening -- things with consequence, things that change the characters' understanding of the world. Most fanfic fails for me because it is, instead, focused on the reader's involvement with the characters -- the purpose of the fic is to enjoy another hour or two with old friends, or to deepen existing relationships (often taking a non-sexual relationship to a new or more intense sexual level), rather than to create new situations and change the characters' lives.

So I have no moral objection to fanfic. But it doesn't turn my crank.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:30 PM by David D. Levine

What I'd like to know is, what is the current legal status of how fanfiction affects a creator's rights?

For a time, there was a notion that if a writer was aware of fanfic, and didn't pursue action, they were in danger of losing rights to their work. I see less concern about that now, but is this still an issue?

I think having one's work ficced is more an honor and homage than otherwise, but are there legal issues involved with noticing and not taking action? (The solution being, of course, to carefully not notice in the first place.)

Posted April 25, 2006 1:33 PM by Janni

Lenora Rose:

What I always end up wondering is *why* they end up reading fanfic for something whose original they haven't sampled?

Someone recommends it and gushes over it. Or they come to a smallish multi-fandom archive for one set of stories and then explore that archive's other offerings. Or they're asked to beta.

A friend gave me the first two HP books so that I could become familiar enough with the setting to properly beta her fic.

I can't explain why I choose to read the fanfic of some universes but not others, except that some universes seem to be improved by the byplay.

I'm drawn to writing and reading fic primarily in two situations: the setting has room for other stories besides the one the author is telling, often with other characters, or the characters and/or scenes are generally sketchy enough that they practically beg to be fleshed out.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:34 PM by OG

Alex, I quite agree that it would be a mistake to try to legislate, and if it comes to law, only a jury could decide whether a piece infringes on another, and only in each specific case. But does this mean that we should not discuss the general principles, perhaps to decide severally on approximately where the barrier lies for each of us?

Posted April 25, 2006 1:34 PM by Dave Luckett

Another point to think about as far as "legal" versus "moral" rights--a lot of us have a lot of difficulty respecting that "authors have a LEGAL right to own their creations; OMG you're STEALING THEIR LIVELIHOOD!!!!" when most of them DON'T hold their own copyright. Copyright inheres in the publisher for several years on a lot of authors' contracts, and in the record company forEVER (so far as i understand) on a lot of musicians' contracts. The creators get royalties, but they don't OWN THEIR WORK as far as that goes.

This is pretty confused. Except in the case of certain very well-defined exceptions (for instance, movie novelizations), book publishers almost never acquire authors' "copyrights". That's why (to choose a random example) the copyright page of Ken MacLeod's Learning the World (Tor, 2005) says "Copyright 2005 by Ken MacLeod", rather than "Copyright 2005 by Tor Books." Our contract with Ken doesn't convey his copyright to us, nor does any aspect of his copyright "inhere" in us for any period of time whatsoever. What our contract with Ken conveyed to us was the exclusive right to publish his book in the English language in a certain set of territories, subject to certain conditions. In effect our contract is a license to make use of his copyright in certain ways. It's fundamental that the copyright itself remains the possession of Ken. This is absolutely bog-standard practice in fiction book publishing. So I don't know how it's sensible to claim that "copyright inheres in the publisher for several years on a lot of authors' contracts" unless we're talking about movie tie-ins, computer-game novelizations, and other edge cases. In the broad middle ground of fiction publishing, we don't traffic in copyrights.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:40 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Greg, obviously the "dilution" argument is about aesthetics.

but if it was obvious, I wouldn't have asked. And I'm not being flippant in saying that.

I mean, if AliceB thinks that fanfic "dilutes" the original work from a purely asthetic point of view, isn't that like me saying I don't like seafood? I view asthetics as personal taste and you can't really argue with someone about their personal taste. It took my wife, who's father was a lobsterman, a couple of years to stop asking me to try a bite of whatever seafood she was eating at the time. I just don't like seafood.

If AliceB thinks fanfic dilutes the original from a purely asthetic point of view, isn't that the end of it? That's what she thinks. That's her experience of it. To argue with her about her personal experience seems to be yelling at someone for putting pepper on their steak. "My god, why did you ruin a perfectly good steak with all that pepper?"

The thing for me is that when people start talking about fanfic "diluting" the original work or whether fanfic actually "improves" the original work, the original work is owned by the author, and it is really up to the author to decide what is best for his creation. It's sort of like the guy in the restauraunt telling the chef that cooking with a wood fire will make the steak "better". Well, that's the chef's choice at that point.

When we're talking about what a derivative does for the original, aren't we talking about what is "fair" for the original author? What is just? What we should allow and should not allow?

The basis of copyright is that the author is empowered to do what's best for their creation, to get rewarded for their work. To talk about whether a derivative created by someone else is for the benefit or detriment of the original author, even from an asthetic point of view, implies a connection to what is fair for the original author. That's the way I see it anyway.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:40 PM by Greg London

I refer David Levine to my exchange with Cheryl Morgan here. Obviously most fanfic isn't brilliant, but there's a occasional subcategory of it which is anything but "lazy."

Posted April 25, 2006 1:44 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Posted this in the other thread but I think it fits better here:

Does that mean that a lot of historical novels are fanfic written by history fans? I mean, what's the difference between writing novels about the rifle lieutenant you've made up meeting Wellington, and writing novels about the Jedi you've made up meeting Yoda?
And if you write historical novels in which an invented character sleeps with a lot of historical characters, is that slash? Or Flash?

Posted April 25, 2006 1:47 PM by ajay

I personally don't read or write fanfic because I think it's creatively lazy. ... So Dave Luckett's snitch of a fragment of plot from Tolkien isn't "fanfic" by my definition.

Which is interesting, because I would have said that lifting a fragment and incorporating it into your own work was more creatively lazy than using an existing framework to tell your own story.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:50 PM by Relly

Stephen Frug, I go back and forth on the compulsory licensing idea. Your argument there is one of the reasons I do it.

Another thing that gives me pause is the existence of fragile creations. Middle Earth and Bordertown and The Dreaming look like wonderful toys to play with, but they have inobvious and necessary built-in constraints. It wouldn't take much messing-around to break them -- and when you break part of a story, you weaken the rest.

My current sense is that writers will play with such universes, and that it's no great matter if they quietly exchange their stories with each other. Putting the full turbo-charged mechanisms of commercial marketing and promotion behind injudicious additions to those universes could do real damage.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:50 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

And again, the question is: as against what alternative?

42 year copyright terms. Give the author control of their work for 42 years, let them make all the money they can make off of it, then put it in the public domain for all the fanfic you want.

No, it doesn't solve it completely, but it restores a lot of balance in a simple and straightforward way.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:52 PM by Greg London

David Levine, are you by any chance sneaking up on the "if it's good, it can't be fanfic" formulation?

Posted April 25, 2006 1:52 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Janni asks:

For a time, there was a notion that if a writer was aware of fanfic, and didn't pursue action, they were in danger of losing rights to their work. I see less concern about that now, but is this still an issue?

You probably see less concern over it because people are gradually realizing that it's not true.

You can (under certain rather hard-to-achieve circumstances) lose a trademark by failing to aggressively defend it. Somehow this got warped into a widespread belief that you can "lose your rights" to a literary creation if you don't sic a lawyer against every transgression of which you become aware. In point of fact, under current US law, it's extraordinarily difficult to alienate a copyright.

(You can--again, under very hard-to-achieve circumstances--wind up limiting your ability to collect damages. But tolerating a 12-year-old's web-published fanfic does absolutely no damage to your ability to, for instance, sue a book publisher that pirated your work. Rather, to limit the damages you could collect from that publisher, it would be incumbent on them to show that you'd been engaged in a persistent pattern of letting comparable book-publishers repeatedly pirate your work, and the bar to them establishing any such thing would be roughly 5,271,009 times higher than "you let someone write fanfic on the web".)

Bottom line: It's not true.

Posted April 25, 2006 1:56 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

It's not the recogintion of a moral obligation, where absolute control is granted because it is objectively right. However, it's an old bargain and people are emotionally attached to it.

I think it started in Europe around the time the Berne Convention started. ~1860? I'm guessing from memory. Before that "moral rights" didn't exist anywhere on planet earth. They still don't exist in teh United States the way they do in Europe.

Personally, I think Moral Rights is protection against a modernday boogeyman. But that's just me...

Posted April 25, 2006 1:57 PM by Greg London