if you should see a great big box, and it's within your reach

Some day, I am going to write fanfic for Pratt and de Camp's Compleat Enchanter books. Then I can write derivative fiction based on "The Mathematics of Magic", which is essentially self-insert fanfic for Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which borrows characters and situations from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, which is an unauthorized sequel to Boiardo's unfinished WIP Orlando Innamorato, which takes as its source text the Matter of France and the Matter of Britain, both of which essentially started out as RPS. It would be the MOST DERIVATIVE FANFIC EVER! Also, Reed Chalmers is teh sex.

Interestingly, one of the characters from the Compleat Enchanter-verse falls in love with a character from the Faerie Queene-verse who suffers from the malady of not being entirely real, so what does he do? He takes her one level back in derivative-ness to the Furioso-verse, in hopes of making her less imaginary.

People, this is the background from which I came to thinking about the Thing we call fandom. Most everything that fanfic does well, I can point you to an SF novel that did it first, or at least concurrently. If not necessarily better. Except for the 'immersing you in an impossibly large universe of related continuities' - for that I'd have to point you to superhero comics. But fanfic does it all at once. And often.

Now, time to go pull out my ongoing mpreg crossover crackfic. Or possibly the Morte Darthur story. One or the other.