OK, so fanfic is generally stories written about established characters by people who aren’t considered authorities to add to/revise the canon of said characters. I’m wondering what the oldest examples we know of are.
I’m sure that the first example was some caveman who heard a story of his favorite Gilgamesh-type character and wanted to hear more of his adventures and started his own stories, some of which may have been passed down and is now considered canon.
Also, as far as fanfic goes, if the original author doesn’t have a say in the matter, is it still fanfic if someone gets published with the work? I’m thinking of Sprague and Carter writing Conan stories after Howard’s death, or maybe the legion of Sherlock Holmes stories after Doyle’s death.
Garrett P. Serviss wrote a sequel to War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells titled Edison’s Conquest of Mars, in which Edison leads retaliatory strike against the red planet.
Not quite. Fanfic is stories written about established characters by people who are not the legal copyright holder of the work in question and who don’t have the legal copyright holder’s permission to publish stories using those characters.
Fanfiction as we know it is a creation of copyright law.
As your own example shows, the tradition of derivitive storytelling is an ancient one. “Fanfic” in the strict definition of the term (the one I gave above) couldn’t exist before modern copyright law, and as far as I know there are no examples of it before the early 20th century (when Sherlock Holmes fanfiction made its debut). However, if you’re looking for examples of historical ‘fanfic’ writers similar to the fellow in your Gilgamesh example, here’s a short list:
It was the NORM once for authors to freely use and adapt others’ work. That tradition only changed with the evolution of copyright laws.
If the work is no longer under copyright, writing a derivative story based on it is legal, and the result isn’t technically fanfic. In fact, if it’s good enough, you can even get it published. Examples of this would be the novel Wide Sargasso Sea (which fills in part of the backstory of Jane Eyre) and the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (which is a re-working of Hamlet).
Stories authorized by the legal copyright holders of a deceased author’s works (such as Howard) aren’t fanfic either. Those Conan stories you mention are authorized by Howard’s estate, and thus can be legally published.
Fanfic merely denotes a legal status: a derivitive work which cannot be legally published. Artistically, it’s no different from any other form of derivative storytelling, and we humans have been doing THAT since we first sat around a campfire, way back in the Pleistocene.
As I remember, there was an unauthorized sequel to “Don Quixote” floating around for a few years before the “real” sequel was published by the original author. I’m sure someone can remember more details than I can.
John Polidori wrote The Vampyre in 1819. It was the first vampire story in the English language and it was an immediate success. Several other authors quickly wrote vampire stories or plays using Polidori’s character Lord Ruthven.