Frequent commenter BenYitzhak wants to know, after this post in which I joked about fic becoming part of the critical lexicon. It's a fair question. Ben flagged a couple of books that have been published by respectable imprints, one using Sherlock Holmes as a character (a fairly popular choice, I might note), the other Todd McCaffrey's continuation of the Pern series created by his mother*.
The answer is that I don't quite know. Wikipedia's history of fan fiction is fairly useful as these things go, but it's grown so much beyond its origins in contemporary form in the Star Trek universe that I think it merits further discussion here, and I'm going to go beyond Ben's question in doing it. First, I've never seen a definition of fan fiction that decisively excludes professionally published work. Given the attitudes of the authors who have helped expand the authorized Star Wars universe (the extended fandom I'm most knowledgable about), it would seem odd to place them outside the definition of fans, and their work outside the definition of fan fiction. My friend Kelly wanted to know if moving into the professional, authorized world and participating in the expansion of canon precludes considering someone a fan fiction author. I guess my thought in response is this: if fandom is like an organized religion, the original text or movie is the deity, whether it's Episodes IV-VI, the original Star Trek series, The Other Boleyn Girl, Twilight, Harry Potter, whatever. The canon is the celestial architecture. And fan fiction is a form of worship. Canon novels, like the Rogue Squadron series, my personal favorite, both expand the celestial archicture and pay homage to the source material. They occupy an intermediate space, but I think you can still consider them fan fiction.
But I also really appreciate the non-professional aspect of a lot fan fiction, and think it creates some fascinating and high-quality results. After The End, for example, a monster-sized novel that proposes an alternate ending for the Harry Potter saga (the authors began the book before some critical plot developments, rendering it a particular kind of alternate vision of that universe), is absolutely marvelous. The way the authors approached magic is both consistent with J.K. Rowling's vision and I think extends it in certain considerable ways. The way they explore questions of professional development for Ron, Harry, Hermione and Ginny feels entirely plausible. The writing can be treacly, particularly the (mostly very chaste) love scenes, and the damn thing is extremely long. But it also produced a community of beta readers and readers (I'm a voracious reader in every area of my life, even this: I've read After The End at least three times), and it's an impressive labor of love. It's impossible to imagine that the book will be published for continuity and copyright issues, and yet it expanded my understanding of J.K. Rowling's universe considerably, and I think the authors, the pseudonymous Arabella and Zsenya, deserve a nod for that.
Further down the rung, if the spectrum we're discussing runs from publication to private fantasy, you've got a whole slew of stuff: sexual fan fiction, crossovers between universes, folks who just wanted the chance to describe what they think it would feel like when a ship goes to warp speed. I think there are multiple purposes to these smaller, more personal projects, and certainly multiple levels of results. I certainly remember loving characters so much that I wanted to own them, literally deciding to pull back from franchises because I wasn't sure I could handle that level of attachment again--we all learn about love in different ways, something that struck me hard, finishing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao last night. But I don't particularly think that the talented dabbler who decides to write an epic narrative of a romance between Joshn Lyman and Sam Seaborn complete with many, MANY Bruce Springsteen references (if I broke West Wing for anybody, sorry) is doing something less worthy of respect than someone who plugs along on a throwaway novel with no pretensions simply to stay in writing shape, or because they enjoy the process. Some of the other stuff? Let's just say dark fic involving rape isn't really my thing, but people have a right to write it.
Obviously, there are intellectual property issues at stake here, questions to be asked about fan communities and their various cultures. But I really do appreciate that fan fiction gets people writing, gets people reading, and gets people talking about work they love. Maybe it's not, you know, fifteen page epistles to their beloved aunt in London, or secret masterpies of Latino sci-fi to be discovered after their deaths. But not everything has to be, just as not all culture has to be high. I vote for keeping the definition of fan fiction expansive, for keeping attitudes towards it tolerant. And for more Corran Horn, more of Hermoine pursuing heretofore-unknown magical professions, and more White House aide angst.
*Random side note for those who have read the Pern books more recently than I have: is there a scene in one of the early novels where something dreadful happens to someone's foot? I have this vivid memory of there being such a scene, and being very upset by it, but I can't figure out if my memory is correct. You know you're old when things like this happen, and they start to really bother you.