From: "Kevin J. Maroney" <kmaroney@ungames.com>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Wombat on TBOTSS and fanfic
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 16:32:02 

At 12:15 PM 6/21/01 -0700, Mantis wrote:
>SHORT/LONG SUN                     EARTH
>biography                          fiction
>autobiography                      fiction
>biography masked as autobiography  fiction
>autobiography masked as biography  fiction
>docudrama                          fiction
>based on a true story              fiction

I'm not sure what point this table is making. You're being too compressed 
again.

 >Many people on Blue have read TBOTLS, a biography in novel form *

Actually, they've read _The Book of Silk_, but I mostly agree with your 
characterization of it as "a biography in novel form".

>People
>who have never met Silk in the flesh are huge "admirers of" him...

Yes. But they're not "fans" of Silk any more than the author of "Acts of 
the Apostles" was a "fan" of Jesus, Paul, and Peter. They're historians 
writing historical narrative for a didactic purpose.

>Funny, I don't recall all this definition gaming/term policing when people
>were calling Robert Borski's work "fanfic"--I guess I must've dozed and
>missed all of his slash and Mary Sue stuff! (I could've sworn that others
>used this term, but who knows, perhaps I started misusing it even then!)

I missed the initial discussion and only noticed it when Blattid put 
"fanfic" in the subject line. Checking the archives, I can't find anyone 
using the term "fanfic" to describe Borski's pieces.

The term was introduced into the discussion to describe *Wolfe's* work as 
being fanfic-like--"wouldn't it be neat if Silk met Severian?" is the type 
of impulse which drives fanfic. But it makes no sense to apply the term to 
what Hoof and Hide (or any other unnamed redactors) are doing, because 
they're not writing fiction about fictional characters.

-- 
Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney@ungames.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://www.nyrsf.com


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