Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2022: Week 48
Kraith (pronounced like "wraith") is a very well-known, early Star Trek: TOS alternate universe. Its original creator was Jacqueline Lichtenberg.
The first Kraith story was Spock's Affirmation, and it was originally published in the fanzine T-Negative #8 in 1970.
The series imagines Vulcan culture and telepathy, and in later episodes features a telepathic and empathic bond between James Kirk and Spock. Media scholar Henry Jenkins explained that Kraith "reconstructed Star Trek from several different generic perspectives, including mythic adventure, courtroom drama, mystery and spy intrigue.
While the series is gen, later stories came to cater to a number of (by now) well-established fannish kinks and thus may be considered idfic – fiction with a direct appeal to the basic emotional drives of the author, reader, or both.
Kraith fiction, by Lichtenberg, and other fans, appears in many zines, as well as in Kraith Collected volumes. Some of the fiction is now also available online. While it is a shared universe, Lichtenberg kept a very strong hand in its formation. She controlled topics, editing, and content.
Kraith, deeply embedded in early Trek fandom, was a topic for satires, parodies, responsefics and "unofficial" fanworks. See Satires, Parodies, and Responsefic for some examples.