Pseudonym names in fandom
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[edit] Fan Fiction
During much of the late 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s, pseudonym names were sometimes used in fandom - by the 1980's at least a third of fan writers were using some sort of pseudonym in one editor's experience.
Fanzine publishers often a created a press name which was connected with either their real names and real addresses or a P.O. Box. Fan writers provided their real names and addresses to fanzine publishers so that trib copies and comments about their work could be passed on to them through LOCs (letters of comment). The LOCs were either collected by the publisher and disseminated to all contributors or publishers would pass along individual comments to the contributor to which those comments applied. There were few occasions where the real name and address of a fan writer was made available to the public and that usually occurred when the writer was also the zine editor or publisher.
It was not uncommon for fans (including fan writers) to include their home addresses in letters addressed to letterzines, where having a real name and address would help the publisher insure that a letter had originated with a real human being and not a fictitious construct (an pre-internet version of the sock puppet). Some letterzines printed only the name, city, state, and country of origin, while others printed the letter writer's full address, and still others left the address designation up to the discretion of the letter writer. Endangering personal security through the release of a home address was not an overwhelming concern for most fan writers.
Those fan writers who chose to publish their work under a pseudonym usually did so for one or more of the following reasons:
- They were writing in a number of fandoms and used a different pen name in each fandom (mirroring the use of pseudonyms in professional publishing) or used different names to distinguish their gen material from adult material.
- They were protecting their 'real' lives and reputations, particularly when writing adult or same sex material. At that time (and still in many places today), proving that someone had written adult material could be used by an employers as grounds for removing the individual from a position, demotion, or loss of a job.
- They were trying to provide themselves with some minor protection regarding the legality of writing fan fiction or prevent the stigma of what could be seen as a juvenile pastime.
- It was accepted as crass or a sign of the poor quality of a fanzine for an editor to publish too many of their own works in a single fanzine, so an editor/fan writer might use pseudonyms to hide the fact that they, or a particular contributor, had been responsible for writing most of the contents of a fanzine.
- Pen names were assumed in certain fandoms to indicate the author's attachment to that fandom (like the addition of T' to pen names to indicate a Spock or Vulcan fan).
The people of this period most likely to use a pseudonym name were fan artists. Fan artists, particularly cover artists, had much the same experience as fan writers with regard to the possible legal implications of producing fan art, although they were easier targets because they had higher visibility. The production of the actual art was less of an issue than the reproduction of that art, particularly in the 1980's, where court cases by estates of dead celebrities (like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Humphrey Bogart) set legal precedents for how much of a celebrity's appearance and image was considered fair-use and how much was considered a commercial right that could be exploited by the copyright owner (the estate).
With the courts leaving the definition of 'pornography' subject to individual interpretation, fan artists who created adult and particularly same-sex art as a hobby faced the same danger to their professional lives as fan writers in that an employer might be able to demote or fire them due to an existing morals clause in their terms of employment. A pseudonym put one more layer between the artist's hobby and the 'real world,' which gave them an (often imagined) feeling of protection.
Some fan artists also used pseudonyms as a 'brand name' of sorts; cover art or interior art by a particular artist was often a selling point of a fanzine and an artist could build brand recognition by creating work under an evocative name.
Pseudonyms during the pre-internet days of fandom were usually typical names (first and last) or a one word name (like "Prince"), which is different from the internet convention of creating an 'identity' name (like 'ravenslasher').
There was active use of pseudonyms in the Blake's 7 saffic community because zine editors thought that a female name would sell better than a male name for that f/f material. Anime fandom also seemed to have a large percentage of people using pseudonyms.
[edit] Science Fiction
Science fiction had its own reasons for the use of pseudonyms. Jon D. Swartz outlines the reasons as follows:
- "Publishers of prolific authors want to avoid flooding the market with many books by the same author; " [1]
- "Magazine editors want to disguise the fact that two different stories in an issue are by the same author; " [2]
- "Anthology/magazine editors want to disguise the fact that one or more of the stories they include is by the editor himself/herself; " [3]
- "Authors write in different genres and want to have a particular name associated with a particular genre; " [4]
- "Authors with names similar to those of other writers use pen names to avoid confusing the reader; " [5]
- "Collaborations between (among) authors are disguised by a pen name; " [6]
- "A publisher has a series of stories and wants to be able to continue the series without interruption if the author doing the series leaves, so s/he requires the stories to be written under a “House” name; " [7]
- "An author wants to disguise his/her sex to make the story more credible; " [8]
- "Authors want to disguise authorship because of personal revelations made, the sensitive nature of the story, the quality of the story, to conceal their writing activities from their principal employer and/or their colleagues, etc." [9]
[edit] Sources
- http://www.livejournal.com/users/accioslash/33580.html#cutid1
- Verba, Joan Marie. Boldly Writing.
- Susan M. Garrett, editor of Time Winds.
