"Fanlore - Home Page"

Kirk/Spock (TOS)

Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Alternative name(s): K/S
Gender category: slash
Fandom: Star Trek
Canonical?: Some would say: 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 related articles on Fanlore.

Contents

See also Kirk/Spock (2009)

Kirk/Spock was the first officially slashed couple of media fandom. People 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 Verba 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.

It is important to understand that in the early days of media fandom, the use of the symbol, "/", between two character's names did not necessarily indicate a sexual relationship, but rather denoted a story that focused on a portrayal of a close friendship. There is a period of overlap, even into the mid 1980s, when the symbol was seen on both stories with sexual intimacy and stories with no sexual intimacy. It is therefore tricky to determine the first use of the "/" in past fanworks in the way fans translate the symbol today. For more information about the history of the terms "slash" and of the symbol, "/," see Slash.

There are many, MANY numerous instances of fans referring to K/S in the late 1970s, early 1980s as being an a very intense form of relationship story that, in some instances crossed a physical and emotional boundary , and in some, did not. It is extremely difficult to draw a line between the two.

One example of how hard it is to draw a line between "slash" and "gen" is this review of a 1980 decidedly advertised gen zine, Enter-comm #2: "It is beautifully put-together, with a certain slant towards K/S relationship stories, though not X or even R-rated, and is obviously done with a great deal of love... 'Difference That is No Difference' is the third in a series of stories by Sue Stuart which started in one of the Gropes. The premise: what would have happened to Kirk and Spock if Kirk had been forced to stay in Janice Lester's body? If one is able to suspend belief (something that is often quite necessary in K/S oriented stories), the idea works very well." [1]

History of K/S

Main article: History of K/S Fandom

The foundations for K/S were actually laid by Isaac Asimov along with some of the Star Trek creators, including Robert Justman and Gene Roddenberry Himself. According to Justman in Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Captain Kirk had been intended from the beginning as the central, focal character in the series, and William Shatner was paid accordingly; but fan response to Mr. Spock was much greater. In order to turn audience attention back toward the Captain, Roddenberry asked for ideas. In a letter reprinted in Inside Star Trek, Isaac Asimov suggested that the scripts and actors should show the two men becoming close friends, including incidents where they save each other's lives. That way, when viewers thought of Spock, they would also think of Kirk, and they would think highly of him because Spock did. Asimov also suggested that Kirk be given lots of intriguing, interesting things to do, e.g. solving mysteries, going incognito, etc.[2] The book's authors do not speak of fan fiction at all, let alone K/S; but it is possible that this is what fans picked up on as they began to speculate about just how close they were.

There is no record of the first K/S story to be written and passed around to friends, though one such story may be "Green Plague" by Audrey Baker in the zine Son of Grope. An ad for this zine states that the story was "written in the '60s but still wearing well. This was probably the first K/S story to be printed in a British zine; certainly one of the first written." [3] The theme was hinted at in some of the very earliest issues of STAG newsletters in late 1973, something that caused quite a bit of discussion. [4] 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.[5] 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.)[6] 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.

During the "golden age" of K/S fandom in the 1980s, dozens of zines would be published every year. K/S fans also made songvids, attended K/S conventions, and argued with non-K/Sers over their ship. Meanwhile, many fans wrote K&S friendship stories.

Some K/S fans are still publishing and circulating print zines, but K/S has also had a substantial presence on Usenet and the World Wide Web since these platforms became available.

Possibly the first K/S story to be posted to the internet was A Job for the Young, first circulated widely in January of 1995. The author remains unknown.

"The Premise"

Thrust (1978), the first all-K/S anthology zine. At the time, it was considered to have a shockingly explicit cover. Note: Image marked as sexually explicit, minimised.

As the stories about Kirk and Spock as lovers started to appear, conversations both for and against 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.

Some Early Fan Reactions

From Implosion #5 (1977): "I'm rather surprised that other people are surprised at the controversy surrounding ALT; it was, after all, the first zine to deal at length with a top that was bound to make a lot of people uncomfortable at the very least, for the threoretical (the idea of homosexuality) and specific (Kirk and Spock are doing THAT?) reasons. I suppose that with the great emphasis on the Kirk/Spock relationship, in the last year or so, the topic was inevitable, especially given the current climate [7]-- if anyone has noticed, this is also been the Year of the Gay on television."[8]

Other fans were vehemently opposed to the K/S premise, even going so far as hosting anti-slash panels at Star Trek conventions and wearing "buttons with “K/S” with a circle/slash through it (like the “no smoking” signs.) " [9]

Winston Howlett, the conservative Christian editor of Probe, wrote an editorial for issue #11 of that zine where he objected to "adult Trekfic" in general. He called K/S "Kirk and Spock go gay crap", and said fans were "rushing about to jump on the Homosexuality-in-Trekfic bandwagon", but that they were quick to condemn a story in which McCoy has an affair with a younger woman who turns out to be his daughter.

Harlan Ellison mentioned "Kirk-shtups-Spock soft porn" in a review of The Search for Spock, published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 1984.

For more fan reaction, see: The Halkan Council, then Interstat, and, later, The K/S Press.

"We're Not Gay, We Just Love Each Other" or the "Oblivious Gen Fan"

Not all fans agree that the close relationship they see on the screen between Captain Kirk and Mr Spock translates into a sexual one. As K.S. Langley argues, fans are often reading physical intimacy into what is mainly an emotional intimacy. And because slash is in the eye of the beholder, neither position can point to canon for definitive proof:

...some of the earliest debate about K/S, when the K/S fans would point to instances of physical and/or emotional intimacy as "proof" of the slash, and the non-K/Sers (and anti-K/Sers) would respond that physical and/or emotional intimacy is not necessarily proof of a sexual/romantic relationship. And, K/S fan that I've always been, I agree with that. With Kirk and Spock, Starsky and Hutch, and countless other "buddy pairings," epic friendships, etc. you also would expect to see such intimacy. Now, you can make a case that such levels of intimacy certainly don't argue *against* the possible extrapolation of a slash relationship, but, in and of itself, it cannot be taken as definitive "proof" either." [10]

As evidence of the subjective nature of what is and is not "K/S" she goes on to say: "For example, I recall a very moving letter from Spock to McCoy in another zine, in which Spock wrote that he loved McCoy. He did not mean it romantically. It was not unusual for gen writers (then or now) to include things like that in their stories. They didn't see it as slash, and they didn't include it as slash." [11]

See discussion on Controversies Over Slash and Hurt/Comfort.

Waves and Patterns in K/S Fiction

All fandoms seem to have ebbs and flows of certain "types" of fiction, and K/S is no different.

A fan in 1988 comments: "K/S fiction is primarily vulnerable to the threat of stagnation. Most fan writers use it within a very limited context. When writers and readers become surfeited by the basic premise, they do move in other directions, but it is not a progress beyond the narrow boundaries of the concept? They more sideways — toward alternate universe slave stories, S&M stories, threesome stories, K/S death stories, etc. Honestly, guys, we're not getting more creative, just kinkier." [12]

A Fan Says "Thank You"

From The K/S Press #48 in 2000: "I don't know why any of you have dropped out of K/S. I do know it can be a very ticklish and time-consuming obsession and I suspect that sometimes the pressure induced by continuing to participate creates too much friction in your lives and you must make a choice. To those of you whose creations I've loved, I want to say how much I miss you. But I also want to tell you not to suffer any remorse for no longer being able to contribute. Think what you've done. Your words will live beyond you; beyond any of us. Ten years from now, twenty, they will thrive. Think of the stories we pick up today that were written in the 70's... close to 30 years ago. Children have been born and raised, schooled and had children of their own since this phenomenon all began. And from each of you who has contributed there is a flower in the garden of life for K/S for Kirk and Spock and what they mean to each other."

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 by Bantam, 1975. While there is a chapter on fan fiction, slash is not discussed. The stories covered are ones like "Joy in the Morning", The Price of a Handful of Snowflakes, The Daneswoman, Judith Brownlee's T'Pelle stories, and the Federation and Empire series, which all involve Spock and Kirk with women. However, the authors do illustrate that Kirk and Spock love each other in a nonphysical sense. There are also many pages devoted to the idea that women's liberation can also mean the liberation of men to express feelings more openly -- an end to the idea that "men don't cry". They discuss this in interviews with both William Shatner and (ironically enough) George Takei.

Gene Roddenberry revealed in Star Trek Lives that because he did not enjoy the typical amusements of his father's hyper-macho Southern culture, he was perceived as having something wrong with him: "Probably, say, I was... [different]". It is obvious from the context that "different" was substituting for "homosexual", ensuring that the book could be sold to and read by children and teenagers, Star Trek's presumed audience. As David Gerrold points out in his book, "more than one young would-be fan has been prohibited from attending Trek-cons or reading Trek-zines because his/her parents have seen this material."

The novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Gene Roddenberry, 1980, contained the much-discussed t'hy'la reference. Until this incident, many fans had not realized that they were not alone in imagining a gay love affair for Kirk and Spock.

Some Zines

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 contributors' copies, because of the explicit content. Note: This image has been marked as sexually explicit and has been minimised.
  • Shelter, by Leslie Fish, came out in Warped Space 20; the sequel Poses was printed in Obsc'zine 1 in 1977.
  • Desert Heat, a (novella) written and illustrated by Gayle F in The Sensuous Vulcan in 1977
  • Mahko Root #1 publishes a single K/S story; the second issue in 1978 contains six of them
  • Thrust, the first K/S-only fanzine, published in 1978 by Carol Frisbee. At the time, it was considered to have a shockingly explicit cover (by Gayle F).
  • Naked Times, a K/S anthology zine that eventually had thirty-two issues, publishes issue #1 in 1978.
  • Between Friends, believed the first published threesome, a Kirk/Spock/McCoy story, printed in Obsc'zine 3 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."[13])
  • 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 (contributors') copies. [14])
  • T'hy'la, the longest-running K/S anthology zine, first published in 1981. T'hy'la #30 was published in 2010.
  • 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, published Joanna Russ' "Another Addict Raves About K/S" (which Russ later publishes in one of her own books.)
  • Universal Translator, was an adzine with occasional reviews. Fans would circle zines they wanted desperately to buy much like kids used to circle toys in the Sears Christmas Wishbook.
  • Not Tonight Spock! and On the Double, a slash letterzine, ad, and reviewzine with articles about K/S and fandom in general.
  • The Footnote, a 1997 article was an awe-inspiring step-by-step refutation of the idea that Roddenberry's footnote in the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture disproves K/S.[15]
  • A Logical Look At Amok Time, by K'Sal, circa 2003, an essay that argues that K/S is 'subversively' written into the canon in this episode.
  • The K/S Press, a paper letterzine started in the '90s and still going strong, originally edited by Jenna Sinclair.

Other K/S letterzines:

Songtapes

screnshot of the viral youtube version of Closer

K/S Awards

Beginning in 1984, and again in 1997, K/S fan writers, feeling that their slash contributions were not getting enough recognition, began holding their own awards: the K/Star Award and the Philon awards respectively.

K/S Online

For much of K/S history, K/S fans participated in fandom through conventions, fanzines, and other offline spaces. However, "old school" K/S can be found today in many online spaces.

Usenet

?

Archives

Social Media Sites

(livejournal comms, tumblrs?)

K/S in the Dictionary

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.[16]

Outsider Reactions To K/S and to Slash in General

Outsider reactions vary. Fans often do not distinguish between academics or the press writing about K/S - both carry the same potential (in fannish minds) for ridicule and mischaracterization.

Press

Academia

External Links

References

  1. ↑ a review of Enter-comm #2 from a fan in Universal Translator #5
  2. ↑ This idea seems to have been passed on to Jean-Luc Picard.
  3. ↑ from Universal Translator #22
  4. ↑ see issues #3, #4...
  5. ↑ Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History, 1967 - 1987
  6. ↑ A SHORT HISTORY OF EARLY K/S
  7. ↑ Referring to Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade, the Moral Majority, the Christian Right, and the upswing in religious conservatism that began to be pervasive in American politics at the time. See Holy Terror by Conway and Siegelman, and Republican Gomorrah by Max Blumenthal for some of the history and origins of this movement.
  8. ↑ Possibly referring to an episode of Maude about a gay bar, the TV-movie Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn, and the satirical series Soap featuring Billy Crystal as a gay man who for a time believed he was a transgendered woman.
  9. ↑ From Vicki's 2007 interview which was published in Legacy.
  10. ↑ "Spock Shaped Snickerdoodles, dated July 27, 2009, accessed Feb 9, 2011; WebCite.
  11. ↑ Ibid.
  12. ↑ from On the Double #6
  13. ↑ Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History, 1967 - 1987, pg 44.
  14. ↑ The Foresmutters Project
  15. ↑ The Footnote by Judith Gran, 1997 on alt.startrek.creative
  16. ↑ Science Fiction Citations page

Please, Captain. Not in front of the Klingons.

Retrieved from "http://fanlore.org/wiki/Kirk/Spock_(TOS)"