Kirk/Spock (TOS) - Fanlore

Kirk/Spock (TOS)

< Kirk(Redirected from Star Trek/Kirk/Spock)
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Alternative name(s): K/S
Gender category: slash
Fandom: Star Trek
Canonical?: Close, but not quite
Prevalence: Massive -- 90% or more of the slash in this universe is K/S
Archives: The K/S Archive
Other: see also Kirk/Spock (2009)
Click here for articles related to this site on Fanlore.

Contents

See also Kirk/Spock (2009)

Kirk/Spock was the first officially slashed couple of media fandom. Women may have written and circulated stories about Holmes and Watson, or Napoleon and Illya prior to 1974, but Star Trek was the first show to grow a fandom structured with zines that allowed stories to be circulated outside of a circle of friends. In Boldly Writing, Joan says that the first fiction in zines mostly played with the sfnal universe, then gradually, more Mary Sues and Kirk and Spock friendship stories started appearing (largely from writers who didn't seem to have much of a SF background), then the Kirk/Spock stories.

The beginnings of K/S (Kirk/Spock)

There is no record of the first K/S story to be written and passed around to friends. But the first K/S story to appear in a zine was "A Fragment Out of Time" by Diane Marchant, published in Grup 3 (the first 'adult' Star Trek zine) in 1974.[1] It was written so obliquely that it wasn't clear to many readers that the two people having sex were both men, much less Kirk and Spock. (Though in an essay called "Pandora's Box…Again," in the next issue, the author 'outed' the story and defended the idea of K/S.)[2] The piece usually given credit as the first K/S story was published a year later, Alternative: The Epilog to Orion, published by Gerry Downes. An anonymous review said,


Alternative: The Epilog to Orion isn't really fully-realized K/S. It's a tiny thing, less than 100 pages long. Although there are some sketchy line drawings in the last part of the zine depicting homosexual acts, the zine itself is about half gen, and the "slash" part is actually a fuzzy fantasy, mostly told in verse, that occurs during a mind meld. And, at the end of the zine, Kirk and Spock reject a sexual relationship between them.


In October 1976, Shelter by Leslie Fish came out in Warped Space 20. Shelter was the first true first time slash story in fandom. (It was also the first cave story -- a genre that has receded in importance now, but was once very popular: if nothing else works, strand them on a planet with a nearby cosy cave, and everything will work out fine.)

"The Premise"

Thrust (1978), the first all-K/S anthology zine. At the time, it was considered to have a shockingly explicit cover.
Thrust (1978), the first all-K/S anthology zine. At the time, it was considered to have a shockingly explicit cover.

As the stories about Kirk and Spock as lovers started to appear, conversations both pro and con K/S appeared in Trek letterzines and lettercols.

The entire controversy was unofficially titled "the premise", as in "I don't believe in 'the premise', but I don't mind those who do" or "I can't stand how all the good writers have started writing about 'the premise'."

The phrase was used by both sides throughout the late '70s.

The K/S Golden Age

1979-1980

  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, and perhaps more importantly for K/S fans, so did the novelization by Gene Roddenberry. In it, he coined a new word for the Kirk/Spock relationship, saying that Spock thought of Kirk as his t'hy'la, a Vulcan word that, the footnote tells us, can mean "friend," "brother" or "lover." K/S fans took it as canonical justification; after all Roddenberry didn't have to include "lover" in the definition. Strangely, non-K/Sers frequently tried to use it as "proof" that we were wrong. The Footnote article, published in 1997, is an awe-inspiring step-by-step refutation of the idea that Roddenberry's footnote disproves K/S.[3]
  • The movie launches hundreds of post-Gol stories.
  • The movie rejuvenates all factions of Trek fandom; old fans come back, new fans arrive in droves -- and many of those fans become K/S fans.
  • Nancy Kipax and friends hold the first K/S Con houseparty -- held annually until 1987.[4]
Naked Times #1 (1978). The zine series ran to 32 issues; the last was published in 1994.
Naked Times #1 (1978). The zine series ran to 32 issues; the last was published in 1994.

The new movie may have unleashed K/Sers creative forces. After a just few K/S zines are published in the 70s, over 200 K/S zines came out in the 1980s. (There are over 500 K/S zines listed in the K/S Database.)

1981

  • At the first MediaWestCon, non-K/S fans were beginning to whine that "all the zines are K/S", even though the number was probably less than 1/4.[5] Score!

1982

  • Wrath of Khan hits the theatres. Kirk and Spock's closeness in the movie revitalizes K/S.
  • First zine to come out incorporating Wrath of Khan was Still Out of Bounds, Old Friend
  • 22 K/S zines came out in '82.

1983

  • First open K/S convention, IDICon, in Houston, Texas. The con sponsored their own awards of merit, which they called the K/Star Awards.
  • 17 K/S zines came out

1984

Cover of T'hy'la #4 (1984)
Cover of T'hy'la #4 (1984)
  • David Gerrold's updated World of Star Trek published. In the chapter about conventions, he included a mention (complete with exclamation marks of disbelief) about a ridiculous idea called “slash”, which concerned Kirk and Spock having sex with each other. Fangirls the world over realized that there was a name for the thoughts they'd been having, and They Were Not Alone. (Fandom owes him a kick in the ass, and a cookie.)
  • First Time, a K/S anthology zine that eventually had sixty issues, publishes issue #1.
  • 23 K/S zines published

1985

  • Killing Time published. After years of fannish whining about how horrible Pro Trek books were, and how fans could do it better, a prolific K/S writer and publisher sold Pocket Books her Trek manuscript. While not overtly slashy, the manuscript definitely wrote a Kirk and Spock closer than most pro Trek books did. The first printing was recalled after it was discovered that an earlier, even slashier version of the manuscript had made it to the press.
  • In the December there were 42 K/S fanzines and 160 non-K/S ST fanzines.
  • Joanna Russ publishes Another Addict Raves About K/S in Nome 8, before publishing it in one of her books later that year. Essay in Nome is widely praised -- modified version of the essay in a book aimed outside the K/S community raises consternation. Some fans feared that by promoting K/S as pornography, that new writers would join the community for the erotic first, instead for Kirk and Spock first. A fan quoted in Enterprising Women said about Russ's essay, "This stuff is private, and taking it out into public isn't going to get you well liked."[6]
  • 34 K/S zines published

1986

  • First K/S convention, IDICon, in Houston, Texas. The con sponsored their own awards of merit, which they called the K/Star Awards.
Cover to Courts of Honor‎ (1985)
Cover to Courts of Honor‎ (1985)
  • Courts of Honor won a Fan Q for Best Trek Novel. (Years later, claiming that the Fan Q staff didn't like slash, slash fandom will create its own slash-only award at MediaWestCon.)
  • Star Trek IV comes out
  • In the October/November issue of Datazine, the zine-buyer's bible, the Sears Catalog Wishbook of zine fandom, the editors began to use two labels for Star Trek fanzines: "ST" for non-K/S fanzines, and "K/S" for that genre. Universal Translator soon followed suit. 35 K/S zines published

1987

  • 37 K/S zines published -- from this point on, most K/S zines are published by the same 5 or 6 'big' fan presses (Merry Men Press, Mkashef Enterprises, Pon Farr Press, Natasha Solten) and a few others; most of the zines are the next one in a series (i.e., Daring Attempt #7, Daring Attempt #8; First Time #13, First Time #14, First Time #15)

1988

Cover of First Time #6 (1986) by Caren Parnes. The first issue is from 1984 and this zine series is still being published.
Cover of First Time #6 (1986) by Caren Parnes. The first issue is from 1984 and this zine series is still being published.
  • First ClosetCon in England?
  • Last IDICon
  • 30 K/S zines published

1989

  • Star Trek V comes out.
  • 27 K/S zines published

1990

  • 35 K/S zines published

1991

  • 25 K/S zines published

1992

  • 28 K/S zines published

1993

  • 27 K/S zines published

1994

  • 23 K/S zines published

1995

  • 13 K/S zines published -- beginning of the end; never again are more than 10-15 K/S zines published in a year.

K/S in Autumn

Common Ground (2009), back cover by Lorraine Brevig
Common Ground (2009), back cover by Lorraine Brevig
Common Ground (2009), front cover by Lorraine Brevig
Common Ground (2009), front cover by Lorraine Brevig

Long term K/S fans didn't think of themselves as media fans or slash fans; they were K/S fans. When other fandoms (first Starsky & Hutch and Blake's 7 and Star Wars, then The Professionals and others) started to grow and recruit K/S fans, there was animosity towards those who left.

Still-active K/S fans -- as many old K/S fans moved onto newer fandoms, or left fandom all together -- tended to be K/S-only, or at least Trek-only, and thus, fell of out of mainstream of the increasingly Multimedia slash community. K/S (and gen Star Trek) held onto zines longer than most other fandoms; they still have snailmail-only letterzines when pretty much everyone else has gone to email or web-based newsletters. NOTE: We still do have a postal mail newsletter, The K/S Press, but an email version of the same newsletter is also available.

On the other hand, Trek fans took to Usenet like few other fandoms, and for years, k/s was posted openly to alt.trek.creative. Befitting the fandom that had the first 'slash is evil" battles (see K/S wars), K/S was the first slash fandom to put up an all-ages slash archive [7]. There is more Trek and K/S history on the web than any of the other old fandoms, thanks to sources like Joan Verba's Boldly Writing and others. The strength and tenacity of Trek should never be doubted. For the 30th Anniversary of K/S, Jenna Sinclair brought out the five-volume Legacy project, over a thousand pages of stories, articles, reprints of long-out-of-print lzs and art.[8]

K/S conventions (Very incomplete)

  • 1984 - 1988 IDICon -- the first true K/S or slash con -- in Houston

Influential K/S Works

Star Trek Lives!, edited and written by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston, was published, 1975

Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Gene Roddenberry, 1980


Zines

The Price and The Prize 2nd edition
The Price and The Prize 2nd edition
The Price and The Prize, 1st edition (1981). Most copies coming into Britain were seized by Customs, even the trib copies, because of the explicit content.
The Price and The Prize, 1st edition (1981). Most copies coming into Britain were seized by Customs, even the trib copies, because of the explicit content.
  • Thrust, the first K/S-only fanzine, published in 1978 by Carol F. At the time, it was considered to have a shockingly explicit cover.
  • Naked Times, a K/S anthology zine that eventually had thirty-two issues, publishes issue #1 in 1978.
  • The Rack, a novel-length story that attempted to refute K/S. (Verba, pg 44: "In the story, Starfleet Command suspects Kirk and Spock of having an affair, and court-martials them. At the end of the story, Kirk attempts suicide. The authors wrote the story to show what, in their opinion, would "really" happen if Starfleet suspected, even erroneously, that Kirk and Spock were having an affair."[9])
  • Nightvisions, one of the first K/S novels, pub'd in 1979. Kirk is blinded, and Spock decides to leave Star Fleet to be with him. Beautifully illustrated.
  • The Price and The Prize, published in 1981, 141 pages of the most scorching fiction fandom had read up to that time, published and illustrated by Gayle F. (Most copies of The Price and the Prize coming into Britain were seized by Customs, even the trib copies. [10])
  • T'hy'la, the longest-running K/S anthology zine, first published in 1981, with new issues planned for 2009.
  • First Time, a K/S anthology zine that eventually had over sixty issues, publishes issue #1 in 1984. NOTE: "First Time" is still being published, #62 was published in 2008.
  • Courts of Honor, a huge, novel-length zine by Syn Ferguson, published in 1985, with a K/S storyline but featuring a number of secondary characters and romances as well as an intricate political plot. Sequel to The Price, the first story in The Price and The Prize.

Here is a complete list of Kirk/Spock_Zines

Non-fiction

  • Nome 8, K/S anthology zine with occasional articles, publishes Joanna Russ' "Another Addict Raves About K/S" (which Russ later publishes in one of her own books.)
  • Universal Translator, an {monthly? quarterly?} adzine with occasional reviews. Started Trek only, but eventually went Multimedia. Fans would circle zines they wanted desperately to buy much like kids used to circle toys in the Sears Christmas Wishbook.
  • Not Tonight, Spock, a {monthly? quarterly?} slash letterzine and reviewzine with articles about K/S and fandom in general.

Other K/S letterzines:

  • The Sound and the Fury
  • On the Double
  • The LOC Connection
  • Come Together

Songtapes

screnshot of the viral youtube version of Closer
screnshot of the viral youtube version of Closer

K/S online

  • In 1982 net.startrek [12] was created as one of the first 20 or so newsgroups. As part of the Great Usenet Renaming, it became rec.arts.startrek in 1986.
  • In 1990, alt.startrek.creative appeared. Soon after, alt.tv.star-trek.tos started, and almost from the start, the k/s-ers and gen fans pushed back and forth. One prominent k/s fan got tired of the same arguments being used against k/s over and over, and created the K/S Retort sometime after 1990.[13]
  • In 1996: Killa (as Killashandra) posted "Turning Point", the first attributed K/S story on the internet, to alt.startrek.creative.
  • In 1998, the Rude Person meme began on Alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated, which resulted in a group of K/S parody stories written in various styles and dialects.

Misc.

A number of Trek and K/S fans contributed cites to the OED to get K/S into the dictionary: Meg Garrett submitted a 1984 cite from the letterzine "Not Tonight, Spock!". Susan Payne submitted a 1978 cite from a letter by Juanita Salicrup in Obsc'zine, and a 1977 cite for the form "Kirk/Spock" from a letter by Susan Bridges in Obsc'zine. Joan Marie Verba submitted a 1978 cite from a review in the fanzine "Scuttlebutt, and a 1975 cite for "Kirk/Spock" from the Fanzine Halkan Council 12.

Added to the OED as a new entry in September 2003 with an earliest cite of 1978.[14]

References

  1. ↑ Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History, 1967 - 1987
  2. ↑ A SHORT HISTORY OF EARLY K/S
  3. ↑ The Footnote by Judith Gran, 1997 on alt.startrek.creative
  4. ↑ Nancy Kipax' LJ
  5. ↑ Verba, pg 54: This convention was the first time I encountered the "all Star Trek fanzines nowadays are K/S" attitude (though it was certainly not the last).
  6. ↑ Bacon-Smith, Camille. Enterprising Women. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. pg 242]
  7. ↑ All-Ages Kirk/Spock Archive
  8. ↑ LEGACY: Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Kirk/Spock fiction
  9. ↑ Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History, 1967 - 1987, pg 44.
  10. ↑ The Foresmutters Project
  11. ↑ The Footnote by Judith Gran, 1997 on alt.startrek.creative
  12. ↑ net.startrek
  13. ↑ K/S Retort
  14. ↑ Science Fiction Citations page
Retrieved from "http://fanlore.org/wiki/Kirk/Spock_%28TOS%29"