Asimov to blame for K/S?

[undyingking]

"The idea of this would be to get people to think of Kirk when they think of Spock."

Interesting correspondence suggests Isaac Asimov gave Roddenberry the idea of bringing Kirk and Spock closer together emotionally. The rest is slash-fiction history, presumably up to and including 50 Shades of Grey. Yikes, Ike!

Comments

[mr_malk]

Very interesting, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

It's very easy (and has been for many years) to ridicule the shortcomings of Star Trek, but it is good to be reminded of just how ground-breaking it was at the time. Fascinating correspondence in any case.

[undyingking]

Mm, and I recommend the Letters of Note blog in general, if you don't already follow it -- they quite often turn up really interesting stuff.

[brixtonbrood]

As promised, really interesting stuff, thanks.
It's sometimes easy to patronise the past, and forget that they really were doing their best, and that the stuff that we remember today did not get that way by accident.

[jackfirecat]

Fascinating.

[ninthcouncil]

I'd managed until a few days ago to be aware of the success of Fifty Shades of Grey without realising it was essentially Twilight slash fiction. Yech. The mainstream media seem to have kept that a bit quiet in a lot of the reporting.

[undyingking]

There's probably some Press Complaints Commission guideline against ever mentioning Twilight slash fiction in an article, in case it sends the youth sprinting off to find some on the Internet.

[watervole]

Thanks for the link - interesting letters.