If it’s a stretch to call a fan fiction novel on the Web a book, it’s only a slight one. More than a few people reading this will be interested to learn that Leslie Fish’s Star Trek fan novel Banned from Argo is now available for reading.
Warning: When you follow that link, you may be required to agree to massive terms-of-service and privacy policy documents before you’re allowed to read the novel. There are ways to get around them, the simplest being to turn off JavaScript. I’m positive that Leslie would approve.
If you’d like to support Leslie, see her Bandcamp page.
Some background
In 1976, Leslie Fish and her group, called the DeHorn Crew, produced the first commercial album of filk music, music by and for science fiction fandom. It was called Folk Songs for Folks Who Ain’t Even Been Yet. Most of the songs were related to Star Trek, the original series with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. They needed one more song to fill out the second side of the LP. To do that, she dashed off a song in which all the major characters got into highly embarrassing situations while on shore leave on the planet Argo. It was called “Banned from Argo.”
To Leslie’s amazement and sometimes distress, it became her most popular song. She got requests for it at conventions to the point that she was tired of it. So were many other filksing regulars who were repeatedly exposed to it. She’s lived with it all these years.
She’s also a writer of fiction, and somewhere along the way she expanded the song into a novel. There had been precedent for a comic Star Trek novel, in John M. Ford’s How Much for Just the Planet? However, the gatekeepers of Trek novels had decided not to accept any more, so she couldn’t get it published. Finally she’s published it as fan fiction for free distribution.
The novel
The novel follows the song, verse by verse. At first it seems she’s just expanding on the verses, providing accounts significantly different from what the verses suggest. For me, the “Lady of Communications” chapter was where I could see a story emerging. It’s the story of a petty, dishonest, somewhat Puritanical planetary government. It decides to clean up the dens of vice when the Enterprise arrives and steadily digs itself into deeper trouble. It’s a story of rebels against authority — in other words, exactly what you’d expect from Leslie.
While the story suffers a bit from its pre-imposed structure, it works well enough. The events fit together, and they culminate in a long courtroom scene that blows the lid off a pot of pretentiousness. At the very end, there’s an in-joke for everyone familiar with filk music. If you don’t get it, don’t worry. Or better yet, look up the names mentioned. You might find some music you’ll like.
No one’s going to say that Banned from Argo is great literature, but it’s fun.
Why didn’t Leslie mention this? I’ve been in a Zoom chat room with her recently….
She did mention it on FB.
Minor nitpick: while Folk Songs…was indeed the Dehorn Crew’s first album, BFA was actually written for their second album, Solar Sailors. Leslie’s story of how the song came to be can be found in The Bastard Children of Argo, a compendium of BFA parodies that we of Random Factors pubbed in 2001.