For every television series, the original vision grows within a press of forces-both social and artistic expectations, conventions of the business, as well as conventions of the art. Bad television-predictable, commercial, exploitative-simply yields to the forces. Good television, like the character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, fights them. Fighting the Forces explores the struggle to create meaning in an impressive example of popular culture, the television series phenomenon Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the essays collected here, contributors examine the series using a variety of techniques and viewpoints. They analyze the social and cultural issues implicit in the series and place it in its literary context, not only by examining its literary influences (from German liebestod to Huckleberry Finn) but also by exploring the series' purposeful literary allusions. Furthermore, the book explores the extratextual, such as fanfiction and online discussion groups. The book is additionally supplemented by an online journal Slayage (www.slayage.tv), created by the book editors in acknowledgement of the ongoing nature of television art. Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery have written and edited several books and articles exploring the social, literary, and artistic merit of quality television. In addition to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, their work has covered a variety of programs including Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, The X-Files, and The Sopranos.

For every television series, the original vision grows within a press of forces-both social and artistic expectations, conventions of the business, as well as conventions of the art. Bad television predictable, commercial, exploitative simply yields to the forces. Good television, like the character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, fights them. Fighting the Forces explores the struggle to create meaning in an impressive example of popular culture, the television series phenomenon Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the essays collected here, contributors examine the series using a variety of techniques and viewpoints. They analyze the social and cultural issues implicit in the series and place it in its literary context, not only by examining its literary influences (from German liebestod to Huckleberry Finn) but also by exploring the series' purposeful literary allusions. Furthermore, the book explores the extratextual, such as fanfiction and online discussion groups. The book is additionally supplemented by an online journal Slayage (www.slayage.tv), created by the book editors in acknowledgement of the ongoing nature of television art. Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery have written and edited several books and articles exploring the social, literary, and artistic merit of quality television. In addition to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, their work has covered a variety of programs including Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, The X-Files, and The Sopranos.

""Enterprising Women" offers a picture of one of the few models around for female community and self-affirmation. Rather than accepting the passive female images and consumer values purveyed by most TV shows, women fan-fiction writers have adapted television to their own purposes."--"Women's Review of Books" "Bacon-Smith's many years of skillful ethnographic research and lucid prose help nonfans understand the cultural and theoretical significance of the fan-produced fiction, artwork, and social relations that make fandom so cohesive and critically essential to its members. . . . Both males and females in communications, sociology, ethnography, psychology, and women's studies will benefit from this fine book."--"Choice" A study of the worldwide community of fans of "Star Trek" and other genre television series who create and distribute fiction and art based on their favorite series. This community includes people from all walks of life--housewives, librarians, secretaries, and professors of medieval literature. Ninety percent of its members are women. Contemporary Ethnography

In a century that has taken us from the horse and buggy to the world wide web, science fiction has established itself as the literature to explore the ways in which technology transforms society while its counterpart, genre fantasy, insistently reminds us of the magical transformations of the individual in response to the demands of the social. So it should come as no surprise that the fans and producers of these genres come together to create the culture of the future around the ideal that tales of wonder about the future and the imaginary past can be shared as both symbolic communication and social capital. In "Science Fiction Culture," Camille Bacon-Smith explores the science fiction community and its relationships with the industries that sustain it, including the publishing, computer, and hotel/convention industries, and explores the issue of power in those relationships: Who seems to have it? Who does have it? How do they use it? What are the results of that use? In the process, Bacon-Smith rejects the two major theoretical perspectives on mass culture reception. Consumers are not passive receivers of popular culture produced by the hegemonic ideology machine that is the mass media industry, nor are they rebels valiantly resisting that machine by reading against the grain of the interpretation designed into the products they consume. Bacon-Smith argues that the relationship between consumers of science fiction and producers is much more complex than either of these theories suggests. Using a wide range of theoretical perspectives, she shows that this relationship is based on a series of continuing negotiations across a broad spectrum of cultural interests.