November 2007

World in the Satin Bag

SFWA Strikes Back…Like A Poorly Made Prequel

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Who would have thought that after SFWA’s earlier debacle, which I discussed here, would only lead to further debacles of complete idiocy? I certainly wouldn’t have. Apparently SFWA has renamed its e-piracy committee and, against just about everyone else’s wishes, has reinstated as its chairman the very man who caused the whole Scribd issue in the first place–Andrew Burt. To put Burt’s reputation as an authority figure into perspective, Cory Doctorow has put it wonderfully in his post: Last August, Andrew Burt, the vice president of SFWA, sent a list of thousands of works that he alleged violated the copyrights of Robert Silverberg and the Isaac Asimov estate. This list was compiled by searching the Scribd site for the words “asimov” and “silverberg” and it included my own novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a teacher’s guide to great science fiction for young readers, and the entire back-catalog of a science fiction magazine whose editors had placed their work on Scribd. Burt sent an email to Scribd’s management in which he said that this list wasn’t “idle musing, but a DMCA notice.” This is the man that SFWA has put back into the position he was in before, only under a new title. How wonderfully idiotic. So, to prove that it intends to change its policies, SFWA has done nothing at all to change its policies. You see the unmoving logic in that statement right? Obviously some changes have been made on paper, but with Burt returned to the throne how can SFWA expect those textual changes to be acknowledge when clearly Burt has a serious lacck of good judgment in the first place?Charlie Stross has also blogged on this issue, saying something that I agree should happen if SFWA is going to make decisions such as this: Under Dr Burt, the new copyright committee will almost inevitably devolve into a reincarnation of the old piracy committee. If I thought it’d do any good I’d be resigning in protest right now; only the expense of a life membership purchased a couple of years ago is restraining me right now. Clearly the current executive of SFWA is making damaging decisions and ignoring input from committees it appointed, and and in view of this I call on SFWA president Mike Capobianco and the rest of the SFWA executive — including Andrew Burt — to resign immediately. Meanwhile, I’d like to call on all other SFWA members who don’t want to see their organization commit public relations suicide to make their voices heard. At this point I don’t think any of the people running SFWA are going to be resigning, although by all accounts they should if this is the way they are going to think. What exactly is the point of this? Burt has clearly hurt SFWA’s reputation, which it has gone through great pains to earn back, but now they’ve decided to put Burt back where he was? And of course the wonderful Scalzi has weighed in on this issue while providing interest insight to how Burt got to his position in the first place: That said, I think the board choose puzzlingly, to use as polite a word as possible, in its choice of chairman for the new committee, for some of the reasons which Charlie outlines in incendiary but not unreasonable fashion. It would not have been my choice, for those reasons and a few others (the suggestion in the board’s statement that our committee recommended installing the chairman of the new committee is quite obviously in error). I believe the situation was additionally complicated by the fact that the once-and-future chairman is on the SFWA board, and voted on the recommendations, and voted for himself as chairman of the new committee; had I been him, I would have chosen to recuse myself from the deliberations. I think what Scalzi is hoping for is that people like Burt will have considerable amounts of personal integrity. Clearly that isn’t the case, and if such people sit on the thrones of SFWA, what can we expect in the future? Probably more problems not only for writers, but for fans too. Read the posts I linked because they can give you a lot more information than I feel entirely adequate or authorized to discuss, seeing how I am not a published author or a member of SFWA. Still, my opinion is worth something.

World in the Satin Bag

I’m Lazy Today

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That’s not true. Actually, I’m far from lazy. The problem with today is that there’s so much going on out in the world of SF & F that I can’t really ignore it anymore. I subscribe to 170+ blogs and, well, when I see things being repeated over various blogs and the like I have to mention things here. First off, I did a review of The Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction Volume One by Edge/Tesseract/Dragon Moon that you should all check out here. I also reviewed Neo-Opsis Issue #12, which can be found here. Both are good reads, the latter rather surprisingly (I may be subscribing to that one if nothing beats it out of the top spot). Now for a series of links of interest: This has been all over the blogosphere and I figure if ten or more of the blogs I read regularly mention this then it must be something worth bringing out here. I’ve already mentioned I’m not much into reading online, but for those of you that don’t mind, Solaris has released Chris Roberson’s novel Three Unbroken online. They’ll be publishing a new chapter every week. The press release can be found here. I got the information from Fantasy Book Critic, just so you all know, but it’s all over the net. Futurismic put up this article that discusses the future of thermoelectrics. Basically, this means generating electricity by using heat. An example would using your body heat to power your iPod or other mp3 player. Well, they may have figured it out. That’s a good thing. SF Bookworm has been running a huge series of articles on how to store and care for your books. For some of us who consider ourselves collectors, this is a great series. But I think a lot of us don’t have the means they are suggesting to fully care for books the right way. We can still learn some things like how to keep bugs off your books, etc. Scalzi rants (effectively mind you) about Dragon Magazine’s re-opening to submissions with very bad requirements: giving up all rights to your work for a crappy pay rate. Read his rant, it’s good, and valid. Futurismic has another interesting article about e-democracy, a concept we’re probably not very familiar with here in America. However, in the lovely UK they have a government electronic petition site, which, while not very effective for producing good results, is still a step in the ‘right’ direction. (I put that in quotes because some would argue it’s not the right direction, an argument I could agree with to some extent. This is really only the tip of the iceberg though. I have links saved on my laptop and on my personal computer at home, so expect more links in the next few weeks.

World in the Satin Bag

Writing Snags: What do you do?

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Problems with writing have struck me again. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, but here’s an update anyway. The Lies of Venicia is on hold at the moment. I’m still writing it, but I’m needing to re-evaluate where I want it to go. I have two very different storylines going on and I’ve hit that point where I need a transitional period. I may try to add a fourth POV to the story, but that might extend the word count well beyond the 90,000ish word mark I was shooting for. I want it to be a relatively short, less-epic novel. I’ll figure it out though, don’t you worry. Asher is a short story I’m basically finished writing, but I mentioned having a problem with it. My girlfriend didn’t get it. I’m thinking about either rewriting it or assuming that it is simply a ‘she-doesn’t-read-SF’ problem, which means the story might still be good. I’m leaning somewhat in the latter direction, but again, if anyone reads a lot of SF that could read Asher and tell me their opinion I would greatly appreciate it. Now for my new problem. I have far too many of them actually. I’m currently writing a story called “Marx Ignatia For Hire!” (working title), which is actually the story of a character that is mentioned in passing in Asher. I just loved the name Marx Ignatia and when I started thinking about the character I realized it would be really awesome to tell a story that takes place in the same time period as Asher’s story, but from an entirely different perspective. What happens in Marx Ignatia is far different from what happens in Asher, since both events take place at the same time, but are entirely opposite.Here’s my new problem. The story is turning out to be a lot longer than a typical short. I can’t fit this into 3,000 words, considering I’m at 1,566 and that’s maybe 1/3 into it. The middle section alone is going to take up a lot of space. It’s sort of a detective story, so there has to be plenty of time for Marx to, well, investigate. This means the word count could go anywhere from novelette to novella size. The longest it could go is novel size but I think the likelihood of me stretching it to that length is slim.So what do I do in this instance? Is there even a good market for novelette or novella sized science fiction? How hard is it to sell something like this? I like this story a lot, so I am going to write it anyway, but if the chances of finding it a published home at those lengths is slim I might write a short story that involves the character, but a different story, and save this one until I can come up with enough to make a novel. I just think this story works well, at this point, as a novelette or novella (most likely novelette though, since that goes up to 20,000 words and I think this story will sit in around 15,000). What are you thoughts everyone?

World in the Satin Bag

Neil Gaiman Is Awesome!

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I was reading about this over on Grasping For the Wind and thought it would be interesting to talk about. This is a good reason for saying that Neil Gaiman may be one of the coolest writers in the world right now. I’ve not read any of his writing and I’ve only heard one interview with him, but for him to do what he did for that couple is just amazing.I’ll give you the really basic version of what happened and then you should go off and read the full version in the link above.So Mr. Gaiman was doing a book signing and Jason decided he wanted to ask his girlfriend, Maui, to marry him. Jason’s brilliant plan (no sarcasm, this is a brilliant plan) was to ask Mr. Gaiman to sign his girlfriend’s book by putting Jason’s marriage proposal in the message. Now, Mr. Gaiman could have said “well that’s not for me”, but no, he agreed (score one point for Mr. Gaiman). He wrote the note and handed the book to Maui and, she being such a fan, didn’t read it. Mr. Gaiman said “you have to read what I wrote”, she glanced at it and got all excited, even though she hadn’t read it. So Mr. Gaiman insisted, over and over, until finally she broke from her moment of starstruck paralysis and realized what was going on. In comes Jason, kneeling with ring in hand.That’s the short version and it doesn’t have the lovely pictures of the actual story. But let me just say that this is by far one of the coolest things a writer could have done and what an amazing way to propose to the woman you love. Congrats to Jason and Maui (I don’t know you personally, but congrats anyway) and I hope you two have a great life together!What an amazing way to propose!

World in the Satin Bag

Aldiss and Ridley Scott on Modern SF/F

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(A lot of this applies to fantasy as well, so that’s something to consider when reading this post) As per usual it seems like there is plenty of criticism of science fiction out there, especially amongst those who have some pull in the world of literature. Brian Aldiss has brought up the interesting question of ‘why are science fiction’s best writers so neglected‘? Why indeed? We have all headd of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, etc., but what about all those others who may have once written superb works that seem to have been lost in the wake of more prominent authors? And what exactly constitutes something being ignored? Does Aldiss mean works that aren’t discussed but still sold relatively well? Or does he mean any work that is actually good but for whatever reason never got any attention from sales or from the public? I think for this we’ll have to assume he’s mostly talking about works that have sold at least decently, but are forgotten.No matter how you look at literature there will always be something that is ignored. I think it would be impossible for any one person to read every single SF or F book that is printed in the United States alone. Maybe it could be done if such a person had no job or personal life. In any case, all SF books published can’t sell millions of copies or be critically acclaimed. So I think the crux of the matter is how books are chosen to be remembered. Do we remember Isaac Asimov because he was better than Kornbluth? Bradbury because he was better than Bester? Perhaps what makes authors like Asimov and Bradbury into science fiction icons is the stories that they told. Asimov developed the laws of robotics, which even today we consider with great interest as our technological achievements in robotics and artificial intelligence flood the market with new technologies. Bradbury presented us with a world where books are burned and it is illegal to read or own them. Do any of us remember the worlds of Kornbluth or Bester? What about Del Rey, Lafferty, or Gernsback? And why don’t we remember?Perhaps some aspect of this has to do with the fact that science isn’t taught as readily as it should be in schools. If high schools (or whatever would be in the equivalent in your country of origin) brought SF and F to the front, we might see a wider appreciation for the genre. More people will read Bester and Kornbluth, Asimov and Bradbury. College programs could really address the golden age of science fiction, an era that seems so forgotten in this ‘age of style’. For some of us the authors I mentioned are remembered, even if we have not read their work, but they aren’t remembered the same as the bigger names and I wonder why that is. Any thoughts? Any idea why we have forgotten Wagner in literature, but remember Tolkien? I’m interested to know what you all think out there. On a side note, Ridley Scott recently criticized the state of science fiction in film, which I found to be rather amusing. First, I have to make a point in saying that Scott didn’t write the novel that Blade Runner is loosely based on. Philip K. Dick did and it was called “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” On the subject of forgetting SF authors has Scott forgotten who is responsible for Blade Runner? All Scott did was bring the story to the big screen, and in a very artistic manner, which had to have been difficult back in the day. Regardless, it’s not Scott’s story and for him to pretend that it is, which he makes it very clear he thinks he wrote it in the above link, actually disgusts me. Maybe Philip K. Dick wouldn’t care, but I know I certainly would.But, that’s a difference discussion than what I was originally talking about. Now, Scott brings up a good point about how science fiction on TV and film is becoming almost repetitive–like horror films you might think. In a lot of ways this is very true. With shows like Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman, both remakes of originals which, while I believe different from their origins, still fall prey to common problems in science fiction film. Then there are the many Star Trek incarnations and the different Stargate series. We are seeing a lot of elements repeated in today’s SF that were original, or at least seemingly original, so many years ago. As Scott says, “where do all the writers go?” I don’t know either. I think there is a lack of truly deep SF right now in the media. We need to work on that.

Book Reviews, World in the Satin Bag

WISB vBlog v.1.07

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Another video blog everyone. I talk about the book I just reviewed, magazines I’m going to read, books that are up next for reading, some new review copies coming, and also some stuff that is happening at my school. So, enjoy! My Review of The Complete Guide to Science Fiction Volume One by Dave A. Law and Darin Park Edge/Tesseract Dragon Moon Press

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