[1] The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age, edited by Francesca Coppa, is primarily intended to be used as a textbook in the college classroom although it would also be relevant to any reader who is interested in an overview of a certain subset of fan fiction. The Fanfiction Reader focuses on Western media fandom and contains stories from popular fandoms, such as Harry Potter, with which potential readers—everyone from the college student to the casual reader browsing shelves at a bookstore—can be expected to have some degree of familiarity. Coppa begins the book with a preface and introduction that provide some historical context for fandom as a whole; she follows this introductory material with thirteen chapters of fan fiction, most chapters concentrating on a single story in a single fandom, with two chapters containing multiple stories from a fandom and one chapter containing a crossover story in which characters from two different fandoms appear. The beginning of each chapter consists of a brief history of the particular fandom being discussed, contextualizing information about tropes and other storytelling choices made in the fan fiction selection, a summary of significant plot points from the source on which the fan fiction is based (the canon), and suggestions for further reading about the fandom and issues raised by the fan fiction. All genres of fan fiction—gen, femslash, slash, and het—are represented in The Fanfiction Reader although femslash is only illustrated by a single story. Most of the stories included in the reader were written between 2009 and 2017, with one story written in 1998 and a small cluster of stories written in the early 2000s. While most of the fan fiction in The Fanfiction Reader is told in a traditional, prose narrative format, Coppa includes two short fan comics in the chapter on Supernatural (2005–). The book is scholarly, but Coppa writes in a conversational tone and uses humor that should appeal to a wide audience.
[2] Coppa is frank in the introduction about the challenges of constructing a fan fiction reader, many of which influence whether that reader can be successfully used in the college classroom. Such a reader cannot be comprehensive because that history is too vast and diverse; it cannot function as an in-depth history of fandom at large or even of the history of the fan fiction being produced in the fandoms included. It cannot cover the breadth of fan fiction currently available on the internet, either in terms of the multitude of fandoms for which fan fiction exists or of the tropes those stories employ. The Fanfiction Reader offers a cross section of fan fiction, a snapshot of the output of one corner of fandom only. Another challenge is length. Fan fiction runs the gamut in length from 100 words or less to novels hundreds of thousands of words long. Choosing works that are short story length allows the anthology to include a variety of stories in a variety of fandoms; this choice also makes the reader more useful in the college classroom, as it provides a range of topics for discussion. Coppa chooses not to include works that are sexually explicit or that contain kinky elements. While sexually explicit material is certainly not off-limits for college syllabi, its inclusion can be problematic for some students, particularly since high school students sometimes enroll in college classes; omitting that content completely sidesteps any potential issues. Finally, Coppa acknowledges that readers may struggle to understand the stories included if they don't have a thorough grasp of the canon on which the stories are based. Coppa provides a fair amount of framework to help readers who may not be familiar with the plot points of the TV show or movie treated in the fan fiction, but it may not be enough framework. For example, a reader who hasn't watched all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer may not understand exactly why Buffy is so weary and ready to relinquish control in "next," the fan fiction featured in the chapter of the reader titled "The Slayer's Tale." Most college classes are constrained for time and don't allow for viewing of entire seasons or series runs of TV shows; for that reason, the chapters of The Fanfiction Reader that concentrate on fan fiction written for movies that can easily be consumed during the course of a semester probably provide the most fruitful reading experience for the intended audience.
[3] The content of The Fanfiction Reader covers a great deal of ground: the anthology includes a story of female friendship set in the universe of Star Trek Reboot; a James Bond story that puts an older, female mentor in a sexual relationship with a younger, male mentee; a Doctor Who time travel story; a story that tells readers what happens next after the canon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has ended; a comic set in the world of Supernatural in which the race of the protagonists has been changed; and a story that reimagines a minor Harry Potter character as trans. The Fanfiction Reader also contains stories that attempt to fix what some fans perceive as problems with canon, such as the epilogue to the Harry Potter series and stories that take place in alternate universes where one or more facts of canon are fundamentally changed.
[4] Coppa defines a meta fan fiction as "a story of fandom itself; the story of our stories" (248–49), and several of the stories in the collection fit that description. The chapter titled "The FBI Agent's Tale" focuses on the story "The Sad Ballad of Mary Sue's Blues," a meta story that explores the nature of writing as well as questions of just who is writing fan fiction and why. This story presents a complicated and not altogether flattering portrait of the fan fiction writer. Another meta story, "The Vacation," is also an example of real-person fiction, a controversial category of fan fiction in which fans write stories about the imagined romantic relationships and adventures of celebrities and other people who actually exist in the real world. "The Vacation" functions as meta commentary on the challenges inherent to the way fans construct narratives of the lives of celebrities out of paparazzi photographs of their shopping trips and sound bites carefully culled from interviews. As Lance Bass, the pop star protagonist of "The Vacation," begins to wonder, does a real person even exist under the facade of persona constructed for public consumption?
[5] A third meta story, "The Story of Finn," encapsulates one of the central themes running through the reader—the idea that fan fiction is not created in a vacuum but rather as part of a communal experience in which the stories fans write are not just in conversation with canon but also with the stories their fellow fans are writing. In "The Story of Finn," a group of stormtroopers participates in the subversive act of storytelling; they tell funny stories, heart-wrenching stories, and stories that make their superiors look foolish. Stories are so important to the group that the stormtroopers are characterized by the kinds of stories they most often choose to tell. "The Story of Finn" ultimately suggests that stories are powerful and can lead to revolution. Most significantly, the stormtroopers in this story learn to tell stories from each other, and they learn to look for story material in their experiences that will appeal to their audience. The reader is subtitled Folktales for the Digital Age, and perhaps its most important feature is the way that the introduction and construction of the chapters make explicit what "The Story of Finn" implies. Coppa writes that the "organization of the book as a modern Canterbury Tales" (4) is intended to showcase the communal nature of fandom. Each of the chapters is titled as an homage to the Canterbury Tales, and Coppa points out multiple times throughout the reader that certain stories were written in response to other stories or that the storytelling conventions in a story began with one writer and then traveled by osmosis to other writers. While fandom is not a monolith—not one umbrella but a strange architecture composed rather of many corners and nooks and crannies that sometimes differ more than they resemble one another—being a fan, and particularly being a fan fiction writer, is generally a communal experience that is collaborative and social. The Fanfiction Reader makes clear that most fan fiction is connected to other fan fiction in significant ways.
[6] The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age by Francesca Coppa is a welcome addition to the body of work written about fandom and fan fiction as it primarily relies on the fan fiction itself to demonstrate vital characteristics of fan writing. College professors will find this volume easy to teach, and college students will find the stories included accessible, as will other readers interested in the subject matter. However, The Fanfiction Reader leaves open a myriad of avenues for subsequent publications of a similar nature to explore: more sexually explicit fan fiction, fan fiction from anime and book fandoms, interactive fan fiction, and fan fiction containing tropes not featured in the reader are all prospective areas of further examination.
[7] All profits from the sale of The Fanfiction Reader will benefit the Organization for Transformative Works.