Definitional Debate No. 361

[rhetoretician]

Here we go, philosophers, writers and curmudgeons:

1. I provide a link to Robert Reed's cute little story, A Woman's Best Friend, in Clarkesworld magazine.
    
2. Robert Reed is among most prolific and successful living writers of short-form science fiction. He publishes quite a lot.
    
3. Clarkesworld is a professional market by the standards of the Science

Comments

[amamama]

Now this was way cool, but I have no clue whether it's fan fiction or not. Haven't seen "A Wonderful Life" and doubt I ever will (there're too many films on that "should see" list already), but I really enjoyed this piece. Is it fanfiction when you don't need to know the original to enjoy the story? I'm not sure knowing the story would increase the joy I got from reading this, possibly not, because I might have my own ideas regarding that universe that were opposed to this. Possibly. Or maybe not. Inspiration can come from several sources, and so this guy was inspired by that film. Did he base all his descriptions on what that particular film showed, or are they original? Is it the same world that's portrayed in the film, or a different one, working under the same principles? If it is the same, I guess you could argue that it's fan fiction, but that would be more out of legal interest than creative, wouldn't it? I mean, this story is great on it's own.

Take a lot of HP fanfic, you need to have read the books to make any sense of them. Some fanfics are wonderful and stand quite well on their own feet, but can't be published because they use Rowling's characters, but if the names were changed they'd be great pieces of original work.

So - have you submitted to this mag?

[rhetoretician]

Hi, Berte!

Reed's a great writer, that's for sure.

Your definitional question about fan fiction interests me. On the one hand, if needing to know the original story in order to enjoy the derivative piece is one of the definitions of fan fiction, then it's possible that some of my HP ff isn't fan fic.

The areas of overlap are described in my reply to Rachel, above. The story is clearly Reed's, and he could clearly have written it, with almost as much punch, without referencing George, Mary or the "world without George" trope. But there's no question that knowing the source made the story more meaningful for me. For one thing, the mousy librarian Mary Hatch found by George when he sees the world without him in the movie would never have propositioned a man the way Mary does in this story, and the contrast is resonant.

I submitted one story to Clarkesworld, but they're temporarily closed to submissions right now.