From: Stephen Date stephend999@yahoo.co.uk
--- Dana Shilling dshilling@worldnet.att.net wrote:
ObB7: it's beginning to look like there are at least as many fen who like detective stories as who like science fiction--I've often wondered why there are so few B7 detective story fanfics.
Having tried and failed myself I suggest that one reason may be because writing a good Detective story is damned difficult !
Having also tried and failed myself, I can only agree.
A more fundamental reason may be that Detective stories tend to take place in a society where murder is a crime and not a tool of statecraft.
What might be even more fundamental is that the detective genre is about the establishment (the detective, professional or freelance) taking on the forces of chaos and disorder (crime, social disruption), whereas in fanfic the focus is normally on those forces of chaos, ie; outside the establishment. So a B7 detective story would probably have to be told from the Federation's POV, and hence rule out the regular characters. And as has been made fairly clear over the past few days, fanfic for most readers is about those regular characters.
Yes, you could contrive a situation where Blake or Avon or whoever have to play detective (as was done in Mission to Destiny), but it would need a special set of circumstances in order to work. (Susan Cutter contrived a good one for 'Traitor to the Cause' in Pressure Point.)
But the premises of B7 don't really make it natural detective fiction material for mainstream fanfic.
Neil