Month: December 2013

Fandom is really fandoms, plural-an always diverse and contentious sphere. Mass media representations of fanfiction and fan culture present it at best as a “wacky world,” or more typically as a bastion of the physically, socially and literarily inept. Academic accounts of fandom overcompensate, often presenting overly utopian pictures of sisterly collaboration and feminist critique. Utopias and dystopias, though, are not parallel but rather interesecting universes. This is surely one of the great lessons of Star Trek-and of its fandom