I'd have to agree with Kris here. There can't be "professional fan fic." By its very definition, fan fiction is not professional. Fan fiction, however, can be published. Look at Star Trek's Strange New Worlds series. Still, this does not make it professional. Merely a contest.
There's nothing that says, also, that the writers were fans of WC when they wrote their novels. Hell, the may have not known anything about the series before they got to writing about it (this is just blind assumption, by the way
).
But that's just my opinion.
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If I'm locked on, there's no such thing as evasive action!
First, I don't want to offend -- I'm sure there's lots of quality fan fiction in the world -- but just the term 'fanfic' itself is associated with a very derogitory sense. For every excellent WC story by Avatarr you have 63,948 bad stories about how the ultral33t author of the story killed a million Kilrathi and single handedly saved the world. Sad, but *true*.
There is a significant difference between fan fiction and professional work.
Professional work is *not* done because the author is a fan. If the author is a fan, it's a coincidence. In the case of novels based on things (Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Wing Commander, etc) the publisher first decides how many books they want to release at a given time and then requests that specific authors write specific books. This is why you cannot submit a manuscript for a Wing Commander novel to Baen and expect it to be published. They have to call you and request a story. Even in the case of the Star Trek short stories you mentioned abouve, Pocket Books specifically held a concept for fan-written stuff -- they didn't go around reading things on the internet and going "Ooh, lets take this!".
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Long live the Confederation,
Ben "Bandit" Lesnick
( loaf@wcnews.com - 302228)