Turning Fan Fiction Into Reality: A Cautionary Tale
What is fan fiction? Merriam-Webster describes it as stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet. It’s much more than that, especially when you start looking at the various ways it has been leveraged in all types of entertainment. You’ll see fan fiction in almost every medium today, from novels to movies to anime to video games.
(What Is Fan Fiction in Writing?)
Good entertainment creates characters that are either lovable or detestable, but it hooks the readers or viewers and makes them want more. This is why superhero movie adaptions have done so well in the box office. The kids that used to read about these superheroes in comics are the same ones lining up at the box office to watch them come to life on the big screen. In my personal case, that didn’t happen for one of my fan favorites, The Six Million Dollar Man.
The bionic man series aired for only five seasons in the mid-70s with some made-for-TV movies in the late 80s. To this day, the iconic sound of the bionics in motion are recognized by fans all over the world. I still distinctly remember running around my grade-school playground and using the back of my throat to replicate the sound with a confident “na-na-na-na-na-na.” I truly believed it made my seven-year-old legs run faster LOL.
As I grew older, I saw my favorite heroes grace the big screen. It was as if they were almost real. Technology got better and movie-making techniques got better and more realistic. We are practically now at a point in society where anything an author can conceive in written context can be created visually. This is mostly thanks to the advent of AI, which is run on powerful GPUs (Graphics Processing Units). Still, two of my favorite heroes, Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers, were missing from the action, no pun intended. Being an author, with the ability to create whatever I want, I decided to start filling that gap.
Artificial Agent was conceived from that inert desire to keep my personal fan fiction alive. But I wanted it to be even better than the old, sometimes campy, series. My core bionic-loving audience is grown up now and desires something different for their intelligence and entertainment level. I decided to make it better, stronger, and faster. Not just talking about the protagonist’s abilities here, but the plot, the pace, and the technology. I also thought the new AIonicTM person could be much more than a strong cyborg but also have the wit, charm, and coordination of a secret agent. You may be thinking James Bond, and you would be right. Another fan fiction favorite of mine.
There is a cautionary part of all of this, though. As much as I wanted to use the old bionic series’ characters in the story, I decided against it. After talking with a copyright lawyer, the risks of using something that is owned by Universal were too great. The last thing I wanted was to be fighting off big corporate copyright attorneys while I am trying to promote my novel. After seeking counsel, we determined that “bionic” is nearly a household word now, especially as prosthetics advance, albeit slowly, leveraging them.
My story didn’t need anything but a hint of the past, primarily because it’s leveraging technology that is 50 years newer, including brand new characters. My advice for fan fiction authors is to do your research especially on the concept of derivative work, which is where the legality of fan fiction falls under. If a work requires the mention of copyrighted phrases, characters, or storylines, best to get permission from the original content creators.
Fan fiction is a fantastic option for writers especially when parallels or derivatives become an expressive way for an author to express their love for an original work. Consider the works by Chris Colfer in his Land of the Stories book series. He had a real knack for taking fairy tale characters and expanding on their lives after their harrowing adventures. What happened to Red Riding Hood after her encounter with the wolf? According to Colfer, she became a queen of the Red Riding Hood Kingdom which is surrounded by tall walls to keep the wolves out as well as signs that any trespassers would be killed and made into rugs. And it didn’t stop there, he had future plans for others too, like Snow White and Cinderella.
Move over bionic, AIonicTM is the new reality for this fan’s fiction derivative of The Six Million Dollar Man. My hope is that the reader starts contemplating the lines between fiction and nonfiction in this technothriller. With enough modern-day resources, the Artificial Agent could become a reality, not just fiction, and it might happen sooner than you think.
Check out J.W. Jarvis’ Artificial Agent here:
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