The Past, Present and Future of Fan-Fiction: Special Issue Reprint

This collection explores the new and changing forms of fan fiction with a focus on the importance of new technologies, social platforms and global audiences. More than ever, the study of fan fiction, and the communities of fans who read and write it, is also about understanding new methods of storytelling in a digital world. Fan fiction is a cultural practice and has rapidly evolved in recent years, from a community-based form of social interaction to a globally recognized form of narrative world-building. Once a niche genre of writing, mainly shared within small communities to express emotional connections with popular media texts, fan fiction is now viewed as a means to create new content that extends and builds on those texts beyond national and industrial boundaries. Often, authors who have spent years building a readership within their small communities are finding new audiences and, as a result, are assuming a level of celebrity and renown that propels them into the world of professional publishing. The articles reprinted in this Special Issue use multiple methods and adopt multiple perspectives that position this important genre in new and critical contexts. The
authors discuss the relationship between literary characters and the various ways fans have rewritten some of the classics, look at the increased monetization of the genre as more fans start to write their own stories for profit, analyze the cultural and transnational boundaries that fans cross by reading
new stories translated from China, highlight the culture of podcast production surrounding fan fiction, and focus on the thin line between fiction and reality as some fans write stories about real people and convicted felons. All articles in this Special Issue advance the study of fan fiction, and thus offer scholars and students alike new ways of appreciating this long-established fan practice.