of such a relationship between Kirk and Spock. It has also been noted that although Kirk has had many female companions throughout the series, he always leaves them behind, citing his duties to the Enterprise, but he frequently risks the Enterprise and defies his stated duties in order to keep Spock safe. During the production of "Shore Leave", writer Theodore Sturgeon suggested, when criticising a scene with McCoy and two women, that "the whimsical friction between Bones and Spock" should be addressed in a future episode with a prostate massage. "Shore Leave" also contained a back massage scene where Kirk believes that he is being massaged by Spock. The first known Kirk/Spock fan fiction story was "A Fragment Out of Time" by Diane Marchant, published in the fanzine Grup #3 (September 1974). It consisted of a sex scene but was written to not identify its participants nor make both of their sexes clear; Marchant stated in the next issue, however, that they were Kirk and Spock. Although many early Star Trek fans were fans of science fiction in general, as the show's popularity increased, it acquired fans who were not general science fiction fans but rather found the show appealed to them as a "buddy" show, or as a heroic/romantic saga, in which Kirk and Spock were the focus. This led to a quantity of fan fiction about the show focusing on the relationships between characters on the show, with less of an emphasis on science-fictional elements. Many of these fans found that Kirk and Spock's deep friendship was the most interesting topic for writing about Star Trek fan fiction. Such "relationship" stories (K&S) were distinct from homoerotic ones (K/S), but both often removed Kirk and Spock from the Enterprise to avoid science fiction "distractions" like the starship and the Federation. In June 1976, the first Kirk/Spock dedicated fanzine appeared, but as the number of non-science fiction fans grew, within several years "relationship" stories became the dominant form of Star Trek fan fiction outside the K/S genre. By 1987, 30 K/S fanzines existed to 47 non-K/S. Among Star Trek fans, the pairing was euphemistically referred to as "the premise", and mentioning it as such was a verbal shibboleth or "secret handshake" used to identify like-minded fans. Other responses Susan Sackett, Gene Roddenberry's personal assistant for 17 years, sometimes commented on the slash phenomenon. In September 1978, a fan mentioned a