Fanfiction: From Underground Fanzines to Mainstream Recognition

A 1986 New York Times article by Camille Bacon-Smith revealed that in the decade after Star Trek aired, about ten thousand fans—mostly women—had produced over thirty thousand works inspired by the series, including stories imagining a romantic relationship between Captain Kirk and Spock. These circulated via photocopied fanzines at conventions. Today, platforms like Archive of Our Own host over seventeen million fanfictions in dozens of languages. The third episode of the podcast Superfan explores fanfiction, fan art, fan edits, and cosplay, tracing their historical roots to the Middle Ages and noting that most fanfiction writers today are women and queer people exploring underrepresented desires. For years, this creativity was offered free as a gift to the community, but the entertainment industry has recently begun to exploit it. The episode features interviews with Henry Jenkins, the father of fan studies; Eleonora Caruso and Andrea Di Lecce, cultural critics who met through the Neon Genesis Evangelion fandom; Daria Signorotto and Francesca Motta, fanfiction experts; and Eleonora Benecchi, a fan studies scholar who discusses how Fifty Shades of Grey transformed the relationship between fanfiction and the market.