Everything has always had a fandom.

And other questions related to the "literary" genre in response to sundry articles and comments in circulation.

Sep 25, 2025

A house with a green door surrounded by plants — Photo by Dennis Thompson on Unsplash

person holding dragon ball z comic book — Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Everything has always had a fandom. This is why Dorothy Sayers — the mystery writer — talked about the “power” of the authorial voice, person, work. Eventually, when you release a work into the wild, it starts to manifest in the minds of other makers. It’s what prompts, long term, sentiments like George RR Martin’s:

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to middle Earth.

— George RR Martin1

Imagination per se and shared loci per se are the focus of the novelist, not the “real world,” which is the purview of the lower sciences and journalism — though the ends of these ends, as Bonaventure points out, are also theology and philosophy.2 That seems to be Martin’s point, though, comparing Heaven to Middle Earth — especially when you consider that Middle Earth, having been written by a Catholic, is more of the biblical ideal than Martin’s own earthly concept of heaven and therefore more like heaven, more like New Creation precisely because it is subcreation — particularly the eschatological and antediluvian parts of that story. By some philosophical conceptions of the New Heavens and the New Earth, especially Tolkien’s, we do indeed go to Middle Earth when we die. Or something better: the shared loci of the mind of The Author of Life. As the reader meets us in our created work, whether we be as gracious as Tolkien or as psychopathic as Kvothe, so yet we meet no mere human or demiurge, but rather — according to Tolkien’s philosophy — God — the infinite Unity, an ocean of Being, Consciousness, and Bliss.

And, if that philosophical version is correct, we also meet the risen Tolkien himself and even the best parts of his work made real: including Middle Earth.

In other words, if Tolkien was right in his Catholic belief, then George R.R. Martin gets exactly what he wants when he dies: live action role playing of self-insert fan fiction.

Thus Dante’s trilogy and the rest of fan fiction. The healthy bits, anyways.

We find shared loci most prevalent in fandoms, of course, but not only in literal fan fiction. And in fact, formal causes lead to real objects: fans can purchase the folded steel version of Aragon’s sword, the stitched version of Spiderman’s suit, or any other ephemera.3 As Lisa Tuttle (fellow fiction author and former lover of George R.R. Martin) said:

Writing has been described as a lonely business. Most writers actually like it that way, thank you very much, but still there is that restless urge to share which leads to collaborations, shared worlds, theme anthologies, and round-robin stories. If fantasy and science fiction writers are more prone to this than writers in other fields, maybe that’s because we’ve long had the habit of meeting up for conventions, conferences and writers’ workshops. I think of Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Clare Claremont and Dr. Polidori gathered together in an Italian villa in the summer of 1816, challenging each other to write horror stories. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was the most memorable result; yet I can’t help wondering what a Byron-Shelley collaboration might have been. Then I remember a roach-infested apartment in Austin in the summer of 1973, where Bill Wallace, Joe Pumilia and I wrote a horror story together. We thought it was brilliant, but didn’t manage to find an editor to share our view.4

I shutter personally to think about that haunted night locked in with a horny Lord Byron might have felt like to Mary, but I grant Lisa’s point.

Martin himself had a similar experience writing for fan zines as an early start to his career, first with dittoed copies for superhero zines and then more elaborate worlds involving horror and fantasy.5 Harlan Ellison did that in his teens, hitchhiking to NYC to give contributor’s copies to Lester Del Rey and the rest of the Hydra club. Nerding out never leaves. Anyone who has been to a science fiction convention knows how drastically different it is from a press scrum at a political event. Perhaps precisely diametrically opposed, seraphic and diabolic respectively. This is likely because fantasy and science fiction authors deal in universals — in formal causes — that predicate entire genres and subgenres. I’m using “universals” in the classic sense, though I won’t here bother to parse Plato’s or Aristotle’s or anyone else’s side of the argument for now. (Not that I’m the expert who could do it anyhow).

All I mean to show is that as we mean greenness for the color or treeness as the universal for all trees (both Chesterton’s a tree is a tree at last and Tolkien’s trees are trees), so too we mean vampire-ness for all vampire stories, consciousness for stories about A.I., or swordness for sword and sorcery. Not to mention deals with the devil for any sort of Faustian bargain, belly of the beast for any deep dark hole a protagonist gets into, or even — as Thomas C. Foster says — “if she comes up, it’s a baptism.”6 The list goes on, but any of these discussions at both comicon and more professional conferences like The World Fantasy Convention or WorldCon (including their academic papers) sound much more in line with the sorts of discussions going on behind closed doors in any philosophy or theology department. Indeed, these conversations often are identical at places like Mythcon — often cross-pollinating: both deal in hypotheticals. The hypotheses of fantasy authors tend to be something like the school of practical philosophy, practical in the Franciscan sense: prompt action over any doubt or delay. I myself gave a talk at one of these conferences arguing that magic reveals the metaphysics of the author.7 All of these talks at all of these fantasy conferences on the subject of universals led, ultimately, to the assumption of the word “universe” in this context by Don Markstein in 1970 as he more-or-less systematized a way of parsing the idea of a shared universe. By “universe” they mean what I have meant by “shared loci.”8 Internet denizens further systematized this thinking into Markstein’s Criteria:9

If characters A and B have met, then they are in the same universe; if characters B and C have met, then, transitively, A and C are in the same universe.
Characters cannot be connected by real people — otherwise, it could be argued that Superman and the Fantastic Four were in the same universe, as Superman met John F. Kennedy, Kennedy met Neil Armstrong, and Armstrong met the Fantastic Four.
Characters cannot be connected by characters "that do not originate with the publisher" — otherwise it could be argued that Superman and the Fantastic Four were in the same universe, as both met Hercules.
Specific fictionalized versions of real people — for instance, the version of Jerry Lewis from DC Comics' The Adventures of Jerry Lewis, who was distinct from the real Jerry Lewis in that he had a housekeeper with magical powers — can be used as connections; this also applies to specific versions of public-domain fictional characters, such as Marvel Comics's version of Thor (a Norse god) or DC Comics' version of Robin Hood (a Welsh legend).
Characters are only considered to have met if they appeared together on-panel in a story.

In these universes, as Lisa Tuttle hinted, not merely fans but authors collaborate to create stories with shared characters, props, places, and all the trappings of a shared loci. When the reader encounters these stories, they end up encountering not only the author, but the authority of the collaboration. Something like the fandom.

In certain cases, these can span most of or even the entirety of a given conference operating — properly — as a shared text in microcosm. Known Space, Merovingen Nights come to mind for fiction examples or perhaps the endless riffs on Cthulu or Sherlock Holmes. Are there not Harry Potter conferences full of critics and fan fictioneers and cosplayers? And did not Beneath Ceaseless Skies throw a ten year anniversary party at Baltimore’s World Fantasy Convention for everyone who had ever edited, written, read for, or given money to the zine?10 Clearly both Marvel and DC have heavily delineated universes that — due to the deaths of all of the original creators — is nothing more than highly specialized, highly marketed fan fiction. Once sold along with Star Wars to Disney, the transition into the great compost heap (I mean that positively — as in biodiversity — not negatively as in garbage) of mythologized pantheon is complete. The original creators of Marvel no longer even live (Stan Lee and Jack Kirby come to mind) and therefore the blending of fiction and fanfiction that existed so beautifully in the middle ages has, more or less, returned:

I am inclined to think that most of those who read ‘historical’ works about Troy, Alexander, Arthur, or Charlemagne, believed their matter to be in the main true. But I feel much more certain that they did not believe it to be false. I feel surest of all that the question of belief or disbelief was seldom uppermost in their minds. That, if it was anyone’s business, it was not theirs. Their business was to learn the story. If its veracity were questioned they would feel that the burden of disproof lay wholly with the critic.
Till that moment arrived (and it did not arrive often) the story had, by long prescription, a status in the common imagination indistinguishable — at any rate, not distinguished — from that of fact. Everyone ‘knew’ — as we all ‘know’ how the ostrich hides her head in the sand — that the past contained Nine Worthies: three Pagans (Hector, Alexander, and Julius Caesar); three Jews (Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabaeus); and three Christians (Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon). Everyone ‘knew’ we were descended from the Trojans — as we all ‘know’ how Alfred burned the cakes and Nelson put the telescope to his blind eye. As the spaces above us were filled with daemons, angels, influences, and intelligences, so the centuries behind us were filled with shining and ordered figures, with the deeds of Hector and Roland, with the splendours of Charlemagne, Arthur, Priam, and Solomon.11

And it is the same now with Marvel and DC, more or less: how well can you do Captain America? Or Black Panther?

Do not all of Chabon’s works have a shared universe conforming to Markstein’s Criteria?

And what about other prize winners?

Christopher Nolan gave his take on Batman and it forced others like Shane Carruth to try and “find his Batman.”12 Though cutting one’s teeth in these publishing houses and studios is more a function of money rather than honor, it certainly gets us closer to the idea of riffing on worthies, what Kevin Feige of Marvel calls the “sandbox.”13

The early — aptly named — Universal Monsters allowed Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, and Wolf Man to interact. And that universe — that they shared the sandbox — gave King fodder for an entire PhD thesis in Danse Macabre, arguing that the four original monster predicate all other horrors, including the literary ones.14 Whatever else King’s masterwork thesis was, it was as much a part of the Universal Monsters fandom as it was a part of the literary fandom.

Perhaps the most well-known shared loci in the film world would be the Star Wars franchise. Forgotten Realms of the Dungeons and Dragons mythos is, perhaps, the most prolifically used locus when it comes to collaborative storytelling, in its case more of an improvisational-comedy-meets-back-of-the-napkin-math format involving character sheets and dice. But certainly, role playing games do not work unless everyone agrees upon the shared reality, the Yes, And of longform improv comedy. Specifically with “Yes, and…” you’re not actually forbidden from the word “no” in later acts of longform improv, nor is conflict forbidden. Rather you must agree that we are all playing the game of, for instance, a door-to-door toilet salesman. Anyone who doesn’t play that game of door-to-door toilet salesman isn’t building the improv universe that creates the context that tees up what’s funny for the audience.15 In a similar vein, spin-offs have become standard fare for making more money off of successful television shows. And the proto shared loci for animation is, of course, The Mouse. You know the one I mean, the mouse who shall not be named.16

Perhaps the most fascinating — to me, at least — is the magazine 1632, an alt-history book series that started with Eric Flint and Baen Books. In 1632, the fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia and its power plant are transported in space-time by some alien civilization to central Holy Roman Empire, 1632. The series started with Flint’s standalone by that title and virtually everything since has emerged through collaborators, whether through website submissions or multiple authors contributing to a “main work.”17 But it also includes the Grantville Gazette, an anthology — or magazine — that allows short story contributions from those who submit to the “established canon.” I myself sold a story to 1632 & Beyond once I realized that moving a small West Virginia town into the middle of the hundred years war would introduce kudzu to Europe. Outside of extreme recherché in some obscure academic journal, 1632 has one of the largest quantity of pages a contributor is required to read prior to submitting to any given market. Other than, perhaps, a Star Wars work for hire.

All of that in mind, what — pray tell — do you call all of these recent Pulitzer Prize winners that retell all our old stories other than fan fiction? Other than a shared universe, that is?

Other than a communal loci? A shared memory artifact that we all discuss?

An embalmed master spirit?

Oh yes, the fandom has always been alive and well in the literary crowd.

Ultimately, these arguments about canon pervade every shared universe and — like any philosophical or theological dialog or really any art or science — make up the borders of what is and isn’t allowable within the loci, that shared mind space. They create a nested trysting place of thought within the Trysting Place of Thought and require prior knowledge (perhaps, in the worst cases, of a Gnostic variety as in the case of Scientology; perhaps, in the best cases, of a Trinitarian variety as in the case of the once-bedridden Christopher Tolkien carrying on his father’s standard once his father had fallen beyond the veil) to further the story. Some universes end up stricter than others, but they more or less achieve the same function: we mean this when we use these terms. It’s about sharing imagined memories.

George R. R. Martin has an interesting take on this in A Dance with Dragons:

Down here, sleeping and waking had a way of melting into one another. Dreams became lessons, lessons became dreams, things happened all at once or not at all. Had he done that or only dreamed it?
“Only one man in a thousand is born a skinchanger,” Lord Brynden said one day, after Bran had learn to fly, “and only one skinchanger in a thousand can be a greenseer… once inside the wood they linger long indeed. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. Greenseers.”
Bran did not understand so he asked the Reeds. “Do you like to read books, Bran?” Jojen asked him.
“Some books. I like the fighting stories. My sister Sansa likes the kissing stories, but those are stupid.”
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,” said Jojen. “The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become bard of that godhood.”
“…For men, time is a river,” Lord Brynden said, “We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different… Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past.”18

As with weirwoods, so with books: we share our memories unbounded from time and live a thousand lives. How appropriate that one’s on pulp and the other’s in the wood that predicates pulp. That the rings of the trees can be looked at all at once, when hewn, just as any part of the book can be seen with the flip of a page, any part of the library from selecting any book, as Jorge’s Library of Babel showed.

And when you meet the mind of the weirwood, you meet the mind of the greenseer within. Can you change his mind? Carruthers shows the same phenomenon at work in Shereshevski’s mind, how he stored his own synesthetically:

S.’s process of recollection was a process of perception; he mentally walked through his memory places and looked at what was there. This accounts for the essentially perceptual nature of ancient advice on the preparation of loci….
S. was completely uneducated in mnemonics. The system of backgrounds and images he devised was self-taught, refined by trial and error. He never seems to have discovered the principle of “memory for things” that every ancient writer on the subject is at pains to emphasize as the key to the successful composition and delivery of an oration. This, surely, was because his prodigious feats of memory were treated as freakish, and he himself as a vaudeville act, his art perceived to be a mere curiosity without social usefulness and ethical value. Moreover, he was rewarded only for his iterative accuracy — creative composition was not his aim.19

But composition could have been his aim. And said composition could have been shared and subsequently “walked through” by another. As it already had been in the Middle Ages:

It is clear, both from descriptions of pedagogy and from the practices of individual writers, that much of the process of literary composition was expected to occur mentally, in mature authors, according to a well-defined method that had postures, settings, equipment, and products all its own. The drafts that resulted were designated by different names, which do vary a bit according to the particular writer, but each of which denotes a fairly well defined stage of composition. These are, first, invention, taught as a wholly mental process of searching one’s inventory. It involves recollection, primarily, and occurs with postures and in settings that are also signals of meditation; indeed, it is best to think of invention as a meditational activity, and indeed Quintilian so designates it. This meditation involves both the discovery and the disposition of the subject matters, and it results in a product called the res, a term familiar also from the pedagogy of memory training. More complete than what modern students think of as their outline, the res should, according to Quintilian, be formed fully enough to require no more than finishing touches of ornamentation and rhythm. In other words, the res is like the rougher drafts of a composition, with much room left still for shaping, rearranging, and adjustment.20

So the res, particularly — for our purposes — in creative works, is rearranging of memories stored in the loci (and, if Synesius, Lewis, and Bonaventure are correct, the loci itself) into a rough draft form that becomes an original composition. The res is a fully formed rough draft in the mind. Focus on that for a moment, because the sort of discipline that any composer made we would associate today with photographic memory. The assumption is that making a res could be taught to any writer. Indeed, it was the expected form for all.

Medieval reading is conceived to be not a “hermeneutical circle” (which implies mere solipsism) but more like a “hermeneutical dialog” between two memories, that in the text being made very much present as it is familiarized to that of the reader. Isidore of Seville, we remember, in words echoed notably by John of Salisbury, says that written letters recall through the windows of our eyes the voices of those who are not present to us (and one thinks too of that evocative medieval phrase, voces paginarum, “the voices of the pages”). So long as the reader, in meditation (which is best performed in a murmur or low voice), reads attentively, that other member of the dialog is in no danger of being lost, the other voice will sound through the written letters. Perhaps it is not inappropriate to recall again, having just spoken of the Petrarch, the Greek verb, anagignôskô, “to read,” but literally “to know again” or “remember.”21

Reading is to remember again what the author once remembered, to encounter the author’s memory as your own — as per earlier an author’s book becomes the reader’s experience? That’s not merely magic, it’s something the most magical and controversial writer of our time — J.K. Rowling — rendered literal in the chapter of The Goblet of Fire entitled The Pensieve.

Set aside for a moment the fact that Chabon’s work has an interconnected universe like all fandom from Vonnegut to King to Sanderson to Marvel.

Any literary work has a fandom. Academic citations are a fandom. Weird little knitting circles on a reading night at the Center for Fiction are a fandom. drDoctor was and is a fandom.

Any time you’re remembering the crafted memories of an author in community, it’s a fandom.

If any of you do anything at all with this piece — talk about it, comment, respond to it, react to it, dialog about it with a friend, share it, remember it later in another argument incidentally without citing it, plagiarise it by yourself or using Ai, use it to inspire a story, cut it up and turn it into an anti-my-ideas collage — you’ve instantly made a fandom.

Every MFA program is a fandom. Every writing critique circle. Every poetry slam. Every salon.

That’s always been the case. Ever shall be, world without end…

Lancelot of Little Egypt

Discussion about this post