Vulcan Lit... or, "Spock's Problem"
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| Title: | Vulcan Lit... or, "Spock's Problem" |
| Creator: | M.J. Fisher |
| Date(s): | October 1975 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
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Vulcan Lit... or, "Spock's Problem" is a 1975 essay by M.J. Fisher.
It was printed in Spectrum #20.
Some Topics Discussed
- too many fanworks feature Spock, when will fans lose interest?
- fanworks need to get more creative
- contains an early use of Don't Like, Don't Read
- has a mention of Spock Shock, a fan in thrall to the character, Spock
From the Essay
If you check a good many of the recent fanzines that have come about, say within the last six months, I would wager that a very good percentage of them have a Spock- based story somewhere. There are zines that started with Vulcan stories originally, and these are usually considered almost reference works; publications like Kraith, Spockanalia, Spock Enslaved and Grup. The number of new zines coming out is quite frightening, since it's now almost impossible for any fan to keep up on all the zines turning up; and a. second sorry aspect of this is being subjected to a whole plethora of Spock zines.
I'm not sure if I can stand to read another Spock zine again. There has to be a place to stop. Of course nothing can be done to curtail the writing and publishing of something by a determined person. Will the reader market for Vulcan stories peter out though?
As far as I can see, this overabundance of Vulcan stories is rather pointless. Too much of anything, even Vulcan, isn't necessarily a good thing. The majority of the apes' films had almost no valuable object to get across to the viewer: they sell sure, but there is not much there to communicate after you've said it in the first two episodes. I think this can be related to Star Trek fanfic as well. There will always be Vulcan and Spock-saves-the-day stories as long as there is fan fiction, but I don't think half of it will have been worth writing.
In constructing a ST story for publication it is nice for the reader if it all rings true. In Kraith, if Spock is Super-Vulcan and Kirk's identity changes it's because the story has a purpose, a fixed plot and idea that is coming across constantly throughout the whole series. Other Vulcan stories don't fare so well. Even Grup comes across as a catharsis (which has its place) but all of the Spock-in-pon-farr-gets-the-girl stories are becoming different variations off of a set theme. Fewer and fewer new twists are added to the story construction. Quartet Plus One wasn't a great zine, despite the writing ability shown, because in part it seemed too contrived.
Although the market for Vulcan stories will probably always remain open I hope to see changes in in fanfic, because I think other people are getting tired of the Spock stories too. For this reason I thought that "The Hunted and the Hunters" in Interphase was one of the best stories to come out this year, also "Sleep Not, Dream Not" from T-Negative 26. Anna Mary Hall's story (The Hunted...) contains a brilliant interpretation of a group of sentient aliens, the life style and their psychology. Connie Faddis' story (Sleep Not...) also contains an alien race that is intriguingly interesting. With all of the different avenues open to ST fanfic writers surely more of this type of work can be produced.
The Vulcans, in general, are something of a stuffed shirt as far as other races are concerned. Care has to be taken in constructing the stories on Vulcans and there are hundreds of fans that will jump on your back if your Vulcan does something improper. Not that this is a good excuse in itself to stop writing about Vulcan, but how much more can be done with just the races shown us in Star Trek: the Tellurians, the Andorians, the First Federation and especially the Medusans; and from the animated series we have another fascinating species: the Score (or Aurelian if you prefer. Aren't there any other imaginitive species out there like the Schillians?
Another area that hasn't been touched much in fanfic is the story that doesn't take place on board the Enterprise. I know Menagerie touches on this, but a lot of stories wouldn't like like ST fanfic. at all without the Big E. or part of the crew.
The problem I get with people who say "If you don't like it, don't read it is that reviews don't usually mention all the, time that a zine was written in the throes of Spock shock.
There will probably be more creative stories to come out in the future of ST fanfic. This may perhaps change the demand for the types of stories. More types of fanzines devoted to topics other than Spock and Vulcan may very well be in the future of fandom. I think this is a necessary trait that fandom must show if it is to evolve.