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.

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

Hubby has an old one with some Kirk/Uhura plus a "McCoy goes home on shoreleave and meets up with old flame while dealing with assorted shenanigans" plus a fun but truly silly "incredibly sexy female ambassador/entire male command staff on sucessive nights." Kirk gives it the trademark Starfleet try, Spock fakes her out with a nerve pinch and post-hypnotic type suggestion, McCoy goes all Southern gentleman, Chekhov is just grateful as hell, and Scotty is thinking, "Finally! My turn! Let me show you what a Starfleet engineer can do!" Truly, truly silly, not explicit, but funny.

SA and Am-Chou, I found y'all both rec'ed at Blue Laces it's in the 22. For Fastlane and MASH.

Coolness. Thanks for pointing it out.

Always happy to point out where people have been recced.

Am-Chau got recced! Yay, Am-Chau!

And SA, too, of course. But I feel proprietary for Am, because I got a theological toaster for converting her.

NUTTY! You rock like a rocking thing. You rock like Gibraltar. Thank you so much.

Okay, sources. The Mary Sue source material is in Bacon-Smith, Camille. Enterprising Women : Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press) 1992. The entirety of the story that Bacon-Smith claims coined the term is quoted on page 94, and first appeared in the fanzine Menagerie in 1974. It is called "A Trekkie's Tale" and is by Paula Smith (collected by Johanna Cantor, in a 1980 publication). This actually contradicts standard myth about the phrase, which is that the first Mary Sue story wasn't intended jokily (as this one clearly is), and that the author of the first Mary Sue story was really named Mary Sue. So, make of it what you will.

For "K/S" and "slash", I found a quote in Jenkins of a 1977 essay by Kendra Hunter, which uses "Kirk/Spock" in the relationship, but not sexual, sense. (She is arguing against slashability.) That essay is marked in the Jenkins bibliography as Hunter, Kendra. "Characterization Rape". The Best of Trek 2, Irwin, Warren and Love, G. B., eds. (New York: New American Library) 1977.

The other source from Jenkins's bibliography worth mentioning is Leslie Fish. She wrote an essay in 1977 called "Warped Communications", in the zine Warped Space 25 (May): 13-14. She wrote other essays, and several stories, but that's the earliest citation and it's a discussion on "homosexual fiction", as it seems to have mostly been called in those days.

Camille Bacon-Smith has a web site: [link]

Looks like she's posted (not recently) to rec.arts.sf.fandom -- your friend might try just asking about history there -- and I think she's still on RATales and a couple of other Yahoo groups. (Last I heard, she was wandering around the Smallville archives.)

Actually, you know what? The Jenkins (Textual Poachers, 1992) bibliography will be a great source of chaining backwards to early citations, since he has record of Bacon-Smith's 1986 ethnography work, Lamb and Veith's 1986 work on Trek, and Joanna Russ's 1985 essay about K/S slash (she does use those terms, although her earlier sources and citations may not). I might also suggest chaining backwards through John Fiske (Television Culture, 1987, of which I have only excerpts here), because although his prose can be dense and boring -- I think he's an economist by training --, he's a thoughtful endnoter.

There's also reference to a tantalizing "The K/S Completist", by Khrys Nolan, in the zine Not Tonight Spock 3: 15-18, published in 1984. It's sure to have good fannish history, and equally sure to be practically impossible to find.