Last month, a friend of mine gave me a short story to critique, as he was getting ready to start sending it off
to short-story monthlies, like SF&F, Locus, etc, and he wanted an opinion on it. It was a good story, once
I finally got round to reading and critiquing it. The prose needed some work, and the story some more exposition, but on the whole he had
some great ideas. Can’t wait to see the next draft.

Anyhoo, as we were discussing the story over lunch yestiddy, the conversation rolled round to the topic of Fanfic, and its
place in relationship to “professional” (note the quotes) writing. During our talk, I finally put to words a little
essay that I’ve been mulling around in my head for a while.

Fanfic, for those of you not already in the know, is taking pre-existing characters, (usually from a celebrated fantasy/science fiction book series,
television show or movie) and placing them in new stories. There are several ‘subclasses’ of Fanfic, which I won’t go into here for
the sake of brevity, but if you’re really interested in a dissertation on the topic, you can always go
here.

First off, let me state for the record that I’m not opposed to Fanfic in general. Secondly, let me state unequivocally that I
Do Not Want To See Vögelein Fanfic. It’s not that don’t particularly want it to exist — imitation is the sincerest form
of flattery after all — but please don’t show it to me.

Why, you ask? Because of the legal ramifications, and here’s why. Take, for instance, the horriffic Anne McCaffrey Fanfic Debacle
(see http://www.annemccaffrey.org or
http://www.burnedforfandom.org for all the gory details). I can see the
argument from both sides. Anne, long ago, granted permission to literal hundreds of play-by-mail Weyrs to use her world as
a springboard for thousands of new characters of their own making. There were rules, however: you couldn’t use Anne’s established
characters in the fic, you couldn’t sell your fic, you couldn’t invent New And Wierd Dragons (silver, red, two-headed) and women couldn’t
Impress bronze, blue or brown, period. Most importantly, the Weyr newsletters and APAs were meant for a small, closed audience
and were not to be sources of profit. Anne was forbidden by her lawyers from even glancing through the zillions of individual
fics, even if they were sent to her, lest some plot element or character name that a fan wrote inadvertently turn up in a
later Pern book or story… even if purely coincidental, it could prove grounds for a lawsuit.

Since the advent of the Internet (which started taking off in earnest some thirty years after the initial appearance of “Weyr Search”
in Analog in ’67), most of those rules got blown to hell. People could post Pern fiction of any make or shape with little
to no policing. Throw a page up on the web, and in an instant, literal millions of people could view it. Unfair, cried Anne, and
sicced her lawyers on the most egregious offenders, some of who were only posting legit fanfic, but many of who were making money off of
unauthorized Pern merchandise.

There have been attempts to patch up relations between Anne and her fans, but it has not always gone well. In a compromise of sorts,
http://www.annemccaffrey.org has created a FanFic section of the website
where registered users can post their fics, and where content rules are rigidly enforced. Todd (Anne’s son) or one of the other
web-keepers doesn’t like it, or a user’s behavior, and off it goes, pfft.

From the fannish perspective, this is unbelievably draconian (pardon the pun) behavior. They’ve been invited into this
unbelievably lush and open universe, just crammed to the top with possibility, with a three-thousand year history that has plenty of
elbow room for entire generations of Weyrs and Dragonriders to exist without ever rubbing historical shoulders. One woman alone,
or even her son, couldn’t ever possibly write all the stories that could be told, and they want to play there, too. Honestly, the best
way to improve your fanbase is to let the fans play regularly with your world and sculpt bits of it in their own image. It brings
the reader even further in to the beautiful world you’ve created, and still allows them to have an individual, personal relationship
with it. An author with a light whip-hand can reap unbelievable benefits from FanFic.

Now, I’m hardly in Anne’s shoes; I’ve hardly written a series as great as the Pern universe, so don’t get me wrong, but this is the
biggest, fiercest example of the argument I could find. The special problem I’ve got with Vögelein Fanfic is that when Jeff Berndt
and I were first creating the series, we designed it to be particularly open-ended to allow us to write hundreds of stories
for her. To this day, there’s a huge tabula rasa in the center of V’s history, one that I never intend to fully map out, just for
happy little miracles. Also, we wanted to leave open the possibility of inviting other authors to come play in our sandbox. One
such author is doing so right now, though I can’t discuss the details until he’s finished with it (*cough*CrimeanWar*cough).

But the problem for me is, y’see, that if you guys were to start writing Vögelein Fanfic and showed it to me, then I’d run
the same risk as Anne would… if you had, say, written a story in which Vögelein participated in the French Revolution, and
one day I wanted to write a story in which Vögelein participated in the French Revolution, then you might have grounds to
sue me for stealing your idea, no matter how divergent our two stories were. For heaven’s sake, look at how ridiculous this
claim against J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series got.

So the bottom line is, if you have already written Vögelein Fanfic, please don’t show it to me. If enough people approach me about it and
really Really REALLY want to write some, maybe we can set up an APA, or a web repository with a messageboard, and I can assign
someone I trust to have a look in every now and again.

Here’s the way I look at it: Writing FanFic is like walking when you could be training for a Marathon. Some people don’t want
to run in a Marathon. They’d rather just have a nice relaxing walk, maybe go out with a couple of friends for a leisurely stroll.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and it certainly helps you stay fit (mentally or physically as the case may be) and
there are far worse things to do with your time. But let’s face it, when you’re done walking, you haven’t accomplished all that
much, and you don’t really have anything to show for your walk. You probably feel much better than you would have if you
spent the evening in front of the television, and you did do something of your own initiative, but if you wanted to do something
with your walking, about the best you could do would be to join a local walkathon or 10K walk and maybe get some small-town
press or recognition from your friends.

Training for a Marathon, however, is hard. It takes a ton of work, and a big time investment, and special shoes. You
have to run on a regular basis to stay in shape, and there are sometimes qualifying rounds before you get to run with The Big Dogs.
A Marathoner has to be disciplined, and guarded with her time, and often make difficult decisions between training and having
fun with her friends. The payoff, however, is tangible. There’s the roar of the crowds, the teevee cameras, breaking that cool
tape at the end, and possibly even a purse to the top few runners that work the hardest and run the fastest.

The sad thing is, I think there are a whole lot of Marathoners out there who are just too comfortable going for a Sunday Walk.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I’ve written Fanfic before. I’ve written alternate Quantum Leap scripts, done the
obligatory short stories about my D&D characters, and even created my own member of the SilverHawks when I was still in highschool.
Fanfic can often be a great way to ‘prime your creative pump’, if you like. But I’d way rather see a lot of those FanFiccers
really try their hand at writing their own stuff. At the end of the day, a lot of Marathoners spend just as much time
training as a lot of walkers do walking — but they have something to show for it.