This cover embodies the new aesthetic of photo-manipulation, which remains controversial among some fans but which has also represented a clear demonstration of the way that fans turn borrowed materials into resource for their own collective expression. My hopes for the new cover were that it should represent, as the original did, the work of a fan artist and it should employ an aesthetic that grows out of the fan community's own modes of cultural production that it should represent a transformative use of existing source material and that it should suggest the dynamic nature of fandom, which has absorbed new content and embraced new forms of production since the original book was published. Here's part of the explanation for the cover design I wrote for the book: To be honest, it was very hard for me to let go of the original cover, which was constructed around a wonderful piece of Star Trek fan art by Jean Kluge, which my wife, Cynthia, had bought for me as a gift at MediaWest and which had been close at hand throughout the process of drafting the book.īut, in the end, we were able to produce a cover I am really very proud of - in collaboration with a contemporary fan artist who has chosen to go here by the name of GLM: One of the challenges of producing this edition was the struggle to come up with the right approach to the cover design. (well, never mind that part!) When I wrote this book as a first year assistant professor, I would never have anticipated the impact it would have and I certainly would not have imagined that Routledge would be willing to reissue it to mark the twentieth anniversary of its publication. This book, my first, is now twenty years old (meaning that it is old enough to drink and vote) and that means that I am old enough to. This past week, I received in the mail my author's copy of my book, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture.

Textual poacher