1974
From Fan History Wiki
1974 kicked off the beginnings of the great schism when Star Trek fen officially started to break fannish ties with the science fiction community. It is also the year that marked the first appearance of a Kirk/Spock story published in a zine.
The relationship between Star Trek fans and the general science fiction community had been growing more acrimonious for several years. There were several reasons for the schism. One involved the repeated attempts by Star Trek fans to have one of their fanzines win a Hugo award. They finally succeeded in getting a fanzine nominated in 1974 when Laura Basta and Jacqueline Lichtenberg were both nominated for best fanzine writer based solely on their Star Trek fan fiction zine material. (Langley, Verba) The science fiction community did not think highly of Star Trek, finding it of an inferior quality, and were afraid that Star Trek would overshadow and marginalize other science fiction being produced at the time. The community was also upset about the amount of Star Trek fen who had invaded their fan space at WorldCon. These factors would set up the great schism and separation that happened a few years later. (Verba)
Slash starts to enter the picture in this year with one of the first Kirk/Spock stories published in a fanzine. This story was written by Diane Marchant from Australia, and appeared in Grup #4. The story did not include names of the characters. The details, including the lack of names, were so vague that it could have been interpreted to be a story about a man and a woman. Only later, in various essays, did Marchant make it known that the story was really about Kirk/Spock. Henry Jenkins would later estimate that after this material appeared on the scene, that around ninety percent of early slash fen writers were female.
KWest*Con, held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was held for the first time this year. From the convention, a number of important fan fiction traditions that would heavily influence later fan fiction culture would happen. These include the creation of the MediaWest convention, the FanQ awards, the distribution of fanzines, open discussion between zine publishers and more.
See also:
- Fan fiction archives founded in 1974
- Mailing lists founded in 1974
- Fanzines published in 1974
- Technology innovations in 1974
