fanfic day on BoingBoing

Categories: fanfic, blog

Yesterday, the blog BoingBoing (a daily read for me) had not one, but TWO posts about fan fiction. The first was nothing startling, but was eloquently put. The post links to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, an editor at Tor Books, who said:

In a purely literary sense, fanfic doesn’t exist. There is only fiction. Fanfic is a legal category created by the modern system of trademarks and copyrights. Putting that label on a work of fiction says nothing about its quality, its creativity, or the intent of the writer who created it. (link to original)

And then later in the day, someone else chimed in to report that California was named after some 16th century fanfic:

California is named after the island of California, home of Queen Calafia, her beautiful black amazons and their man-eating griffins, as all detailed in Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo's Las Sergas de Esplandian, which was the Sword of Shanarra of its day, a highly unauthorized but popular sequel to the much more highly respected Amadis de Gaul, more The Lord of the Rings of its day. (link to original)

They both stemmed out of the same discussion going on over at the blog Making Light, prompted by a post titled "Fanfic: force of Nature." I might have a new blog feed I need to add to my Bloglines!