Page 9 - Fandom: Fic Writers, Vidders, Gamers, Artists, and Cosplayers

Most of the sixty Sherlock Holmes
tales appeared in the Strand, which
printed fifty-six Holmes short stories
and one novel in serial form. Two of the
remaining three were novels, and the
last appeared in another magazine.

the first copyright law in 1710.)
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote sixty
adventures featuring his famous
detective Holmes, most of them
serialized in the Strand Magazine
between 1891 and 1927.
In 1893, tired of the
character, Conan Doyle killed
Holmes off. Holmes fans were
outraged, and they let the author
know it in letters. Then, in a
classic case of fans wanting more
of what they love, they wrote their own stories, which they called pastiches,
a word borrowed from French. Some, in what modern fans call fix-it fic,
found ways to resurrect Holmes. Conan Doyle eventually brought Holmes
back—but by then an influential fandom had been born.
Sherlockians named or invented many practices that modern fans still
use, such as the key concept of canon. They took the word canon from
the world of religious scholars who pored over the Bible and other ancient
texts and hotly debated what was official—that is, canon—and how to
make sense of pieces that didn’t seem to fit. In fandom, canon refers to
works by the creator of a source. Fans generally include the creator’s public
pronouncements as well as their published work. It is canon, for instance,
that Voldemort killed Harry Potter’s parents. It is also canon that series
character Albus Dumbledore is gay. Although author J. K. Rowling didn’t
state that in the books, she declared it so later. (By bringing Holmes back
to life after decisively killing him off, Conan Doyle anticipated the practice

THE ExTRAORDINARY WORLD OF FAN WRITERS 17