Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

by Kurt Andersen

Self-conscious fan fiction was another 1960s invention that permitted consumers of fiction to enter fictions. It started with Star Trek. During the show’s first season in 1966, young Americans began publishing homemade magazines that included their stories about the Enterprise and the Federation. Four years later, after the original show was canceled, there were dozens of such ’zines, and soon many more. Chekov and McCoy and Scotty and Spock actually corresponded with the ’zines—only the actors, but still—and appeared in costume at fan conventions. And in their stories, the young amateurs often included heroic and beloved and very young new characters—that is, fictional versions of themselves having adventures (and sometimes sex) in the twenty-third century with the Star Trek characters. Which became a trope in all fan-fiction genres as they emerged. Before that moment, there had not been hordes of people living in their own private Disneylands or inserting themselves into familiar fiction and sharing their stories with the world.