A couple places you might check:

Writer's U timeline. Includes stuff like "1974: "A Fragment Out Of Time" is the first known Star Trek slash to be published in fanzine", with citations.

The Foresmutters Project. Includes an early history of K/S.

You might also try the zendom multi-fandom list/group/whatever they are. I seem to remember there being a fair amount of old-time Trekkers on there. last I remember, they were at zendom.diaryland.com.

Also Glass_Onion has a bunch of people on it.

Re: fannish history, I am in legal (if not equitable) possession of three boxes of old Trek zines, originals and reprints, going back as far as 1968.

It's a fascinating collection, not least because I keep stumbling across names I know, like Jean Lorrah, Eleanor Arnason, Lois Bujold, and -- get this, Nutty -- Lee Burwasser. From 1969! Yoiks.

Fascinating stuff, although some of it is in tiny tiny type and very hard to read. When I have time in a few weeks I'll type up an inventory.

I did know about Lee Burwasser! In fact, I think it was Theodosia who recognized the name when I mentioned it, and said she'd been in fandom longer than I'd been alive.

Suela, I want to see those boxes some day. Not just for the coinage of terms, but because I bet one could work up a social history of plot development from them and from later archives.

I bet one could work up a social history of plot development from them and from later archives.

And who says time is wasted on fanfic and college degrees? From such small beginnings are great sociological theories born.

Nutty, I'd love to spend a day poking through them with you, unfortunately you'd have to get out here soonish. They were donated for the Save the Children project Fi's putting together, and I'm inventorying them for auction.

Still, Lois Bujold! Heh. And I had no idea Lee had been around that long. Quite interesting. One of the stories I saw by her was called "The Hoplite" and it was... Bible-fic? I guess. Although weren't Hoplites Greek? Huh. Anyway, it seemed unrelated to Trek but there it was in an old copy of Spockanalia.

There's some great stuff in those collections, though, including some stories I remember reading in The New Voyages compilations.

Hoplites were heavy infantry, yes, and they were Greek.

Make copies before you give them away!

Okay, I am an obsessive archivist. Not everybody is like that.

I have a rec!

Impact, by Silver. It's a time-travel story about Cordelia, set in AtS S1 and S4. Great characterization, Cordy has her snark on, and it has a sniffly-happy ending.

Mosca rec'ed me.

Linguistic update: I have found print sources from 1984 (Leslie Fish, and a couple of others), so it may be possible to "chain" backwards through their citations to find an earlier print use of the word "slash". Less luck with the "K/S", although I found evidence that "Kirk/Spock" was in use in 1975, as used in a fanzine essay quoted by Camille Bacon-Smith. (I'll have page refs when I get home; they're all marked, but I didn't bring the books to work with me.)

I also found that the coining of "Mary Sue" as a noun was very soon after the first Mary Sue story was widely published. By 1974 the term was well-known and seemed to need no explanation.

I love this stuff. It's so cool.

You know what? Michele, you might have your linguist friend try contacting Camille Bacon-Smith directly. I know she's online and still in fandom (I've been on some listservs with her) and I bet she probably still has a lot of the old-style contacts who (a) were actually into K/S in the 70s and (b) still have print fanzines lying around in collections.

Me, I've never even seen a print fanzine.

Go SA! That's cool!

Go Nutty! That's cool stuff!

Go Fandom. Fandom is cool.

Signed, everything is so cool today I think I may have sucked one too many icecubes.