Links Roundup for 23 September 2011

Here’s a roundup of stories about pros saying fannish things that might be of interest to fans:

  • Sci-fi author Nicola Griffiths posted about questions she was asked as part of a BBC series on the history of women in science fiction. which dealt with how gender and sexuality have been addressed in the genre. Some of her comments will resonate with fan fiction writers: “Realism, mundane fiction, can only explore gender in terms of What Is: what’s possible within the legal, cultural, and biological constraints of the reader and writer’s society. SF gets to ask What If? You could argue that SF is, essentially, a post-modernist genre, obsessed with not accepting fixed meaning.”
  • Communications scholar Nancy Baym interviewed numerous musicians for her presentation Biting and Feeding the Hands That Feed which focused on “broaden[ing] the discussion beyond what fans do to consider the richness of the ways those practices affect artists and creators.”
  • Singer Michael Bolton provided his own example of fan interaction in an interview about how his Saturday Night Live appearance as a movie fanboy, obsessed with the Pirates of the Carribean marathon he had just seen, has brought him new admirers. ““You won’t believe the people that are yelling “Jack Sparrow!” as soon as I walk on stage…I’m also getting high-fives from an audience that is not my touring audience — the 14- to 40-year-old male YouTube audience.””

If you’re part of music or sci-fi literature fandom, why not contribute your experiences to Fanlore? Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

2011-09-23 admin
News of Note , , ,
  1. Cesy commented: That Nancy Baym article was really interesting - thanks for the link. I am still surprised by the number of people who could tell from the headers that a piece of fanfiction would bother them, and yet still go ahead and read it anyway, and then complain. I love the examples of Kickstarter and fan-funded tours, though, and the attitude to sharing music.
    • Claudia Rebaza commented: It is unfortunate if people's first encounter with fan fiction happens to be of fan fiction about them, though this is a relatively rare problem to have. Fans, too, need to have some etiquette in not sending material to artists that was never intended for them in the first place. But if people could be forced to read stories just from seeing them in an Inbox or on a website, I suspect writers would complain a lot less about lack of readership!