FictionMania

FictionMania, alternate spelling Fictionmania, is a transgendered story archive established by Mindy Rich in February 1998. Drawing its roots from early internet newsgroups such as alt.sex.stories.tg, it was preceded by the Transformation Stories Archive, Sapphire's Place and FM's immediate precursor, Maniapages. Starting out as a one-person operation, FictionMania has grown into one the largest databases of TG literature on the World Wide Web, overseen by a "taskforce" of volunteer editors. As of May 2021, the site receives over 200 stories per month, including short pieces, novellas, serials and captioned images.

History
Text courtesy of FictionMania (see links below):

In the early 1990's, when the Internet was still a new and very small operation, with a limited number of institutions connected together, there existed electronic bulletin boards. These were individual computers with a single modem. People with computers who had modems could call a number (usually long distance) and if no one else was connected at the moment they could connect and either upload TG (Transgender) stories or download them from that computer.

FM Volunteer Carol Collins recalls that one free bulletin board was the legendary Sierra Bulletin Board owned and operated by Mindy Rich.

By the mid-1990s newsgroups began to flourish and some of the general public discovered the Internet. The newsgroups, such as alt.sex.stories.tg became the place to find TG fiction. There still weren't a lot of stories, but instead of dozens there were now a few hundred.

Then spam worked its way on to the newsgroups. To avoid the spam, many groups banded together to form a list serve or e-list. (A list serve allowed a subscription base to automatically receive stories posted by other members of the service. Messages were also exchanged in this "broadcast" format.)

One of these was the TSA, the Transformation Stories Archive. Any story involving a transformation was welcome.

One of the members of this community was Sapphire. She created the first actual TG website, Sapphire's Place (www.sapphireplace.com), which is still active. She encouraged and promoted various authors at her site, most of who are among the better known authors here.

To join in on the fun, in 1996 Mindy founded a list serve called Maniapages. She expanded the gender transformation story concept to include all types of TG stories. Many of the users of TSA who were interested mainly in gender stories, went to this group. When that happened, the number of new TG stories on TSA declined.

In late 1997 Mindy Rich bought servers and programmed software, launching www.fictionmania.com in February of 1998. She read and formatted all of the stories herself, figuring that she would get maybe two or three a month. Soon there weren't hundreds of TG stories available for free, but thousands.

By December of 1999, Mindy was overworked at FM, which was affecting her health. A temporary illness, combined with some controversy at the time on the hyperboards, was wearing her down. She shut FM down and a month later, shut her list serve down as well.

A group of authors asked if they could run the server for her. After getting reassurances that the operation would remain the same, she decided to let FM continue. The Taskforce (think board of directors) was born. Mindy let the Taskforce operate the server until a new home was found.

Sue took charge as webmaster and began adding new stories. She recruited Anne-Mal as a helper. These two added stories for the first months of the Taskforce's running of Fictionmania. When they discovered the enormous task that Mindy was doing, it was made clear that more help was needed. Because of real life needs, Sue has had to drastically cut down on the number of stories she could upload

Talea is now the head volunteer and uploads almost all stories.

While preparing and posting the stories is obviously important to FM, that work isn't all that goes on here. The Taskforce has spread around the work, hoping to avoid the overwork that plagued Mindy. Other volunteers, who do not work on stories, have been gathered to help with FM, the FAQ is a result of one of these groups. While some are known more publicly than others, everyone involved has worked hard to put FM together for the good of all.

Taskforce member Carol Collins, who provided most of this history, said, "The newbies coming on the Internet and finding FM simply do not realize how lucky they are. It used to be very difficult to find TG stories. Here, we have thousands available for free. I would call FM a national treasure except that FM belongs to the world. The world wide web to be more specific."

All in all, FM is the result of altruism. No one gets paid. The authors, the Volunteers and the Task Force all volunteer their services. We do it simply to enjoy the stories.

Current Editorial Staff

 * Carol
 * Mr. Ram
 * Talea

Previous Editorial Staff

 * Nostrumo
 * Raven
 * Rhonda
 * Sapphire
 * Elaine
 * Sue
 * Vickie
 * Anne-Mal
 * Darkside
 * Mindy
 * Pyrite