David Dyer-Bennet wrote: > Parody is protected fair use, so that's not at issue. Most fanfic > *is* a tragedy. The better fanfic is a tragedy *twice* (they > should have been writing something original). Once upon a time I got into the Darkover novels. As I was running out of new ones to read I picked up a volume of Darkover fanfic. I remember being satisfied with exactly one story in the entire collection and then glanced back to see who the author was. Turned out to be Mercedes Lackey. I have no idea whether that Darkover story got her a chance with her first Valdemar efforts, but it is the only occasion I've seen reasonably good fanfic that wasn't written by an already established author. Casey