As someone who spent fifteen years reading and collecting fan-fiction, this book was a gem and a delight..
Reread Very similar in structure and content to Textual Poachers. Also published in 1992 and therefore contains no information on the X-Files Internet fandom phenomenon. This one was also full of underlining from my previous reading and again I underlined a bit more. I only had three fandoms X-Files, Starsky & Hutch and The Professionals. I have read some Star Trek and like TP, this book is mainly about Trek fandom. Excellent source book about a subject with few well researched histories. I did a little research recently about which fandoms have the most posted stories. Currently, there are only two archives and none of these four fandoms is represented in the top 30 or 40. I remember all of those archives on Geocities, Tripod, Angel etc. that vanished with stories. All of those personal websites and host websites that disappeared overnight. I have on my computer 7000 X-Files stories...every one Mulder/Krycek and I know I don't have every one ever written. That totally excludes all the Mulder/Scully shipper fic, all the Mulder/Skinner, all the noromo, all the het fic, all the case fic, all the canon fic. 90% of all X-Files fic has not been transferred. I have 6000 Pros stories on my computer...there are 2700 on A03. So much has been lost but the phenomenon continues and is still growing. ( ( )

A snapshot of tv fandom from when physical mailing lists were still the order of the day. Some of her theories into the culture of female fandom are insightful and interesting and others miss the mark, but either way they're worth reading. ( )

Given the poor quality of the research in the fandom I know from the inside, I'm disinclined to trust the research on the other fandoms covered in the book. There are also hearsay reports that the author did not obtain consent to publish some of the personal statements quoted in the book. ( )

Despite the controversy in the fan community surrounding this book--particulary among fans who feel that Bacon-Smith selectively edited and even distorted their words--I have to say that her observed experiences in fandom tallied with my own more often than not. Especially at the time of her writing, there were very few sympathetic treatments of the fan community, and even fewer studies where the author had anything more than a cursory knowledge of fandom.

Fandom has changed a great deal since Bacon-Smith published this book. Fan fiction, and especially slash fiction, is no longer an underground secret. The internet has opened up the world of fandom to anyone with a computer and a phone line, and even the super-secret circuit archive she wrote about is now available online to anyone who cares to look for it. This book is, I think, an important record of media fandom at the time of its writing, and shows fans and fandom churning on without the spotlight of internet scrutiny turned on them. ( )

A very intimate and interesting look at a small off-shoot of science fiction fandom ( )