“In a 1986 sketch on Saturday Night Live, William Shatner told a gathering of Trekkers at a Holiday Inn in Rye, New York, to “get a life . . . for crying out loud.” A lot has happened since then. Tremendous technological transformations and online opportunities have created a complex calculus regarding the relationship between texts and brands and the people who love them. Superfandom provocatively explores this evolving relationship―with a dazzling number of examples―and describes what happens when fans don’t just consume something but influence it as well. And it’s not just a celebration of the new voices now being heard in the process of the production of culture; it also describes how superfans can, on occasion, be real pains-in-the-neck.”
–Robert Thompson, professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communication and director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University