2. Diane Marchant & Kirk/Spock [SF Women of the 20th Century]

grup3p2Fanfic, and slash fiction in particular, is a huge part of SF fandom history – and its overlapping communities have mostly been built and shared by women.

Diane Marchant is generally regarded as the writer of the first published fic featuring Kirk/Spock – the ship which popularised slashfic as a fan phenonenon. And she was Australian, to boot!

You’re welcome, rest of the world.

The story, “A Fragment Out of Time,” published in Grup #3 in 1974, contained a steamy sex scene but named no names (and played the pronoun game, so it wasn’t even clearly marked out as a m/m relationship).

Still, the piece was illustrated with a Kirk & Spock picture drawn by Diane, making her intentions fairly obvious, and a cartoon underneath the final page of the story shows Bones saying to Kirk: “Impossible….. No, Jim. I warned you about messing with aliens…….. especially Vulcans.” (The look on Kirk’s face in the cartoon implies he has just been told about the existence of slash fiction. Oh, sweetie.)

Diane wrote a followup meta-essay in Grup #4 entitled: “Pandora’s Box… Again: A Psychological Discussion of the Relationship Between Captain James T. Kirk and Conmander Spock.” This essay explicitly confirmed that her story was about Kirk and Spock, and discussed the idea that many fans had been chatting and privately writing about for some time: the Kirk/Spock relationship could be read as a love story.

(the term Kirk/Spock including the all important slash symbol which gave slash fiction its name is thought to have been coined around this time, with Connie Faddis’ review in The Halkan Council #12 of Diane Marchant’s essay including one of the earliest published uses of the phrase)

“Pandora’s Box… Again,” early toe in the water of slash fandom that is is, presents the theory that Spock would not think he is human enough to meet the emotional needs of a human woman, or Vulcan enough to provide whatever it is that Vulcan women need. The logical extension of this, therefore, is for him to find love among his male colleagues:

“He had to love someone, he was human enough for that; although his Vulcan side would not permit the terminology ‘love.’ What to call it then? Simple! Call it ‘Vulcan loyalty’ to a superior officer. Hidden, beyond that self-deception, Spock can happily love Kirk all he wants and not feel that it is un-Vulcan…”

Spock expresses his love for Kirk in TV canon largely through risking his life to save his captain. And possibly that thing with the eyebrows.

“Then the letters started arriving…. Whee…. Phew!!!” is how Diane describes the fan response to “A Fragment Out of Time.” Decades later, she declined to have her story reprinted for the Foresmutters Project, which provided a digital archive of the earliest fanfic (mostly K/S slash) from paper zines. It can, however, be found on Tumblr and various other archives on the internet.

In an interview with Diane shortly before she died in 2007, she modestly refused to take any credit for the Kirk/Spock phenomenon:

“Really, I had nothing to do with the initial concept, as it was there unfolding on our screens as we watched our beloved Star Trek. Me, well—I just accepted a challenge and attempted to subtly present the idea deftly (with slight humorous overtones) as a scenario which most could find acceptable at that time.”

grup3p3Fanfic around Star Trek was very active in the 1970’s, as the cancellation of the show in 1969 had left many fans bereft, and creative. “Dirty Old Broads” was a term used and embraced by many female fans who enjoyed creating and sharing sexually explicit fan art and writing. Grup itself was the first R-rated Star Trek zine (produced by mimeograph!) was known for its adult content even before becoming Ground Zero for slash. Grup #2, for example, featured an actual fold-out centrefold poster featuring fan art of George Takei’s Sulu. (Takei has not only seen and occasionally autographed this particular piece of saucy artwork, but complimented the artist.)

Star Trek’s popularity and recognition-factor outside science fiction circles meant that academics with an interest in slash fiction have often used it as a reference point, so academic critical discussion of slash is highly Kirk/Spock-focused, despite other fannish pairings having since eclipsed it in popularity.

The article “A Short History of Kirk/Spock Slash,” points out the irony of the first sentence in Diane’s story, spoken to the character believed to be Spock: “Shut up… we’re by no means setting a precedent.”

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PS: while we’re talking about Kirk/Spock, let’s give a shoutout to Delia Van Hise, who wrote Killing Time, an official tie-in Star Trek novelisation that was published in Pocket Books in 1985. The original manuscript included slashy Kirk/Spock references and Paramount requested they be edited out… but because the books were in the process of an editorial handover, it went to print as originally written. 250,000 copies were printed, and at least 100,000 were distributed to stores before the book was recalled and revised. The original editions are collector’s items now!

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1. Raccoona Sheldon & “The Screwfly Solution”
2. Diane Marchant & Kirk/Spock

One reply

  1. Mortificator says:

    Love hearing about the zine days! I have a much-read booklet of essays from Spockanalia, and it never occurred to me before, but they’re all written by women.

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