Fans have been responding to literary works since the days of Homer's Odyssey and Euripedes' Medea. More recently, a number of science fiction and fantasy works have found devoted fan followings. The advent of the internet has brought these groups from relatively limited, face-to-face enterprises to easily accessible global communities, within which fan fiction proliferates and is widely read and even more widely commented upon. New interactions between readers and writers of fan fiction are possible in these new virtual communities. From Star Trek to Harry Potter, the essays in this volume explore the world of fan fiction - its purposes, how it is created, how the fan experiences it. Grouped by subject matter, twelve essays cover topics such as genre intersection, sexual relationships between characters, character construction through narrative and the role of the beta reader in online communities.