silwritersguild | Cultus Dispatches: Affirmational Fandom, Transformational Fandom, and Two Old Tolkien Fanfics

Although Star Trek and media fandom are often credited as the beginning of fanfiction, the first fanfiction texts are much older than that and oriented in book fandoms. (The first fanfics are older even than the term fanfiction!) The first two known Tolkien fanfics appeared in the 1960 fanzine I Palantir, and they couldn't be more different.

This month's Cultus Dispatches column analyzes these two old fics, in particular how they illustrate the fan studies concept of affirmational and transformational fandom. Transformational fandom is often depicted as the fertile field where fanworks grow, but Tolkien fanworks (and probably many other fandoms' fanworks as well) defy this, drawing on affirmational elements oriented in mastery of canon and consideration of Tolkien's authority. The earliest Tolkien fanfics not only show how both "types of fandom" can give rise to fanworks but how, even in fanworks that clearly belong to one or the other, elements of the other fandom approach are essential to making a particular story work.

You can read the article "Affirmational Fandom, Transformational Fandom, and Two Old Tolkien Fanfics" here.