Book Piracy Won’t Destroy Writers
Why is it that people think so negatively about the Internet? Apparently the Society of Authors, whoever the heck they are, have spouted the doomsday report that the ever popular book group of book pirates will ruin us all: For a while it will be great for readers because they will pay less and less but in the long run it’s going to ruin the information. People will stop writing. There’s a lot of ‘wait and see what the technology brings’ but the trouble is if you wait and see too long then it’s gone. That’s what happened to the music industry. Except, the music industry never stopped. Where the heck do you live where you think people are no longer making music? That’s absolutely absurd. The music industry never died. In fact, it’s doing just fine. Yeah, there’s some lost revenue, but has it stopped people from making music? No. The Internet has actually done the exact opposite: it’s inspired musicians. Remember the old MP3.com? That site was like a haven to musicians everywhere, and quite a few relatively popular groups spawned from the historical incarnation of that site. There are loads of new sites today using similar models for music. They may not be making a whole lot of money, but they are making music.The same thing has happened with writers. The Internet has opened up a whole new avenue for them to express themselves and become better known. Granted, just like in music there are loads of writers who suck, and the Internet has given them the avenue to spew their pointless dribble, but in the end my point still stands. They are writing, and I’d argue that the writing community is more vibrant now than it ever was in the past. There might not be a whole lot of superb writing, but does all writing have to be superb to be respected? A book might suck, but I can at least respect the author and the work that author put into it, can’t I?The stupidity, however, doesn’t end with proclaiming disaster for the writing industry. It moves on to an idea that, quite frankly, makes my skin crawl: In the 19th century and before, other models of paying writers existed, including lump-sum agreements and profit-sharing. She sees no reason why the book industry should not be equally innovative. She suggested four possible sources of income at an industry discussion on copyright law last week: the Government, business, rich patrons and the public. Government funding could take the form of an “academy” of salaried writers. What would this do to the writing industry? You’re suggesting we dispense with the current publishing model, which gives ample opportunity for a variety of new authors, and instead leave it up to the government to make the decision about what is acceptable reading material? Do these folks even realize what including the government in choosing the “pick of the litter” will do to the writing industry? This might have wroked just fine some hundreds of years ago, but let’s face it, this is stupid, elitist tripe. Let’s just let the government get involved in what we’re reading. Great idea. Because that’s not asking for censorship at all.By the way, two examples that were used as examples to support the claim of the Society of Writers were: Stephen King and J. K. Rowling. There is mention that lesser known authors have suffered from piracy, but to claim that these two authors are actually suffering from the piracy of their books is like saying Bill Gates is broke.Book piracy isn’t going to kill the urge to write, just as music piracy isn’t going to kill the urge to make music. This is stupid on too many different levels.
Gay marriage equals the end of democracy?
Orson Scott Card is apparently at it again. To be honest, I’m not even going to touch this. If you want to read some brilliant counter-rants, go here, here (this one is suprisingly not tinged with hateful anti-man language), or here. In short, I think Card has lost his mind and joined the ranks of the very lunatic religious wackjobs who have been attempting to tear down the foundations of science and rationality for decades. His insanity is too obvious. He needs to go on vacation or something. Seriously. Nobody should be this angry about anything (except, perhaps, having one’s entire race of people eradicated). If this is a publicity stunt or something, it’s working, cause he’s getting loads of attention. Anywho, I’m done. His rant is so horrible I don’t even have the time to refute his dribbling nonsense. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Canadian Books in Canadian Schools (About Time)
Thanks to Matt Staggs for this link. It won’t just be teenagers reading Canadian literature this fall when a new curriculum requires B.C. high school English teachers to assign at least one Canadian book per year, says the new chairman of the Writers’ Union of Canada. I admit my ignorance of this. I was unaware that Canadian schools weren’t assigning works of Canadian literature to be taught in their English classes, which sort of worries me. Now, I can’t say I know any great classic Canadian writers (I know of Robert J. Sawyer, but he’s relatively new, so I wouldn’t consider him a part of the classic structure just yet). There are obviously plenty of American works and British works, and I imagine those works already get taught great frequency.My only complaint, or potential point of contention, would be if the works that are taught aren’t actually good works and are simply chosen because they happen to be Canadian. All the works chosen should be good and of literary value. The value, of course, would have to be determined by the schools. I’m not saying that the kids should be reading nothing but old stuff, but they should be exposed to works that have something to say as opposed to works that have very little to say. I wouldn’t subject American children to the large quantity of relatively pointless stuff floating out there that gets more attention than it deserves; likewise, I don’t think Canadian children should get the same treatment.But that’s my opinion on that matter. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Should SF/F authors read in their genre?
Apparently this is the next big issue that people are discussing across the blogosphere, and likely elsewhere. It all started, so it seems, with an interview Pat over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist did with David Bilsborough. Some people have taken great offense with certain things Mr. Bilsborough said and it has sparked a bit of a feud in the genre world about whether or not authors should read within their genre. Now, to what Mr. Bilsborough said that apparently has some people in a tiffy, and has other people raising their defensive walls: I don’t see why it [fantasy] should be respected. With the obvious JRR exception, (and possibly Bernard Cornwell’s “Starkadder / Vargr Moon”) I have to say that I’m not the greatest fan of fantasy, at least not the swords & sorcery tradition with all its preposterousness and banality. I’ve read a fair few fantasy books in my life, and am always surprised that such stale, hackneyed and vapid pulp should get published at all. I particularly have problems with US fantasy; there are definite exceptions, of course, but in my opinion the Americans just don’t get it, with their phony Olde-Englishness, green tights, bucket boots, square-jawed ‘Rone Garet’ heroes, pretty-but-with-a-hidden-fire ‘Fern Leah’ love interests, hissing insidious black-robed ‘Sith Mordax’ villains, or whatever it is they harp on about in their hollow regurgitations of Conan, Star Wars or Buffy. Is it any wonder spec. fiction has so little respect? This is what has got people upset, and rightly so. What really hits home is his apparent disdain for the genre. He specifically says, “I am not the greatest fan of fantasy.” How much clearer does it have to get that this guy pretty much hates the genre, with some very minor, and, albeit, obvious exceptions. Everyone says Tolkien is fantabulous, because to not do so is akin to telling Christians that the Bible was written by Satan worshipers. And then you throw out Cornwell, another who has quite a bit of respect in the same fashion as Tolkien due to the types of stories he tells. But, anyone can toss those names out without having read them, presuming that liking said authors is an indicator of one’s worth. And then there’s that opening line: “I don’t see why it should be respected.” Excuse me? You’re writing in a genre you don’t feel should be respected? So, by default, we should just look at you as another of those hack writers that you so despise, because, hey, fantasy doesn’t deserve any respect? I don’t really care if you read within the genre. That’s pretty much pointless to me. John Varley told me in an interview he reads mostly mysteries, but he writes science fiction. And he’s good at science fiction. One doesn’t have to be superbly versed in genre to write in it. I simply have problems with this presumption that just because the genre has quite a few writers who basically write derivative garbage that it should be treated with no respect whatsoever, with exception to a pair of writers who only until recently began pushing out of the land of “crap literature” into the literary academia (the supposed “good literature”). If that’s so, then all literature, by extension, deserves no respect. Literary fiction isn’t graced with a tremendous amount of originality, nor has it been founded upon only great books. There are plenty of crappy, completely useless and utterly pointless novels that have been under the label of “literary fiction” (and I have read quite a few of these crappy lit fic novels). The same can be said about every single genre that has been created and will be created. There are great and crappy science fiction novels, horror novels, romance novels, mystery novels, detective novels, etc. There’s no such thing as a genre of perfection, one in which all the novels are great. Yet we give respect to certain genres while shunning others (“we” being the literate and educated, primarily the academia), despite their imperfections and unoriginality. Of course fantasy has an abundance of what one might call “lesser literature”. Yet this is what people want. They enjoy it. It’s entertaining and that’s it’s purpose. Shouldn’t we respect it for that? Just because you don’t like a specific set of writers, or a specific class of fantasy, doesn’t mean we should shun it to the bottom of a well, forsaking it to be consumed by people who, I suppose, have to be mindless nitwits simply because they like such things. Sometimes entertainment is all you need. That doesn’t make those that read it particularly idiotic or mindless. We should be thankful that they’re reading at all, and even more thankful that it’s because of the people reading “such stale, hackneyed and vapid pulp”, as Bilsborough says, that we even have an industry revolving around the act of writing. Entertainment value, no matter how desperately you want to argue against this, is keeping literature alive. So I say celebrate vapid pulp, because without it there wouldn’t be a fantasy genre, or if there was one, it would be so small and under-appreciated that nobody would really care if Bilsborough released a new novel. Lastly, of course, is the comment about Americans, and I put this last for a reason. It doesn’t bother me all that much. Yes, I think it’s rather offensive that because I was born in America I’m suddenly devoid of taste, and that my choice of reading is cause for ridicule. What does being American have to do with it? That’s my question. This is a lot of that “Brits are better” attitude that I find to be rather silly. I think it’s an inborn pride that has never let up, and, of course, Americans have a similar attitude (or some of us anyway). Some of the discussions about the American comment have been somewhat ridiculous, in my opinion. While I would agree that calling Americans phony and essentially useless is offensive, I
Thoughts on Tor
Alright, so Tor has officially unveiled their new social networking super site (or whatever you want to call it since it is a mishmash of things). Some folks are rather excited about it and others a bit apprehensive. There has been a wicked fight going on between John Scalzi and Jonathan of SF Diplomat and I have a few things to say myself.Now, having read the arguments on SF Diplomat I have to say that I’m a little on the fence about all this. I agree with certain points on both sides of the issue. On the one hand the new Tor site isn’t all that new: it’s several years too late in the social networking sphere and isn’t necessarily offering us anything new or superbly interesting (I’ve gone a couple times and mostly I’m just disappointed in how it turned out). On the other hand the new Tor site is offering payment to writers (known writers at this point) and aiming to reach out to the SF community, being one of the first publishers to do so. Perhaps it will prove successful, or maybe they have a lot of things up their sleeves and they are keeping them behind closed doors before releasing them. I don’t know. I’m not in the loop on that.My problems with the new site stem from the fact that the site isn’t really new. What is it offering us that hasn’t been offered elsewhere? Two new stories by John Scalzi and Charles Stross? I must confess that while new stories are enticing, it’s not enough to get me on the bandwagon (and I probably won’t read those stories since I am not much of an online reader in general; perhaps turning some things into audio fiction would be nice, or as DRM free ebook style things would help too) . I just don’t find the site all that interesting. I’m a huge SF fan and it isn’t really doing anything for me that I haven’t received elsewhere. I don’t want to be negative about this. There is a positive side to everything (they actually made the site, while a lot of publishers don’t really have this sort of fan inclusion), but at the same time, it could be so much more.Part of my disappointment is that I was expecting something more from Tor. Yes, the social aspect of the site I did expect, but I thought that perhaps Tor, of all companies, would take things to the logical conclusion and really push the envelope. I remember the SciFi channel online fiction site that paid 25 cents a word and perhaps I was a little naive to hope that something similar might pop up from Tor. In fact, my interests would be peaked if such a thing existed for Tor, though I imagine it’s not a very lucrative concept. While I am not a big online reader, I think such a project would be truly beneficial to the short story market, and perhaps interesting for Tor since it would have a personal stake in its authors–not to mention front row seats into finding out who might be the next big thing (or semi-big thing).The other part of my disappointment has already been mentioned: it’s not very new. I imagine a lot of people will like it, but I just don’t want to waste more time on yet another social community. I have too many social communities as it is, including my website for young writers.Maybe I’m just being lazy or too negative, but I think we need more from Tor’s new site. Perhaps things are going to change. I imagine they have a lot of things to unleash. This is just the start and with Tor behind it I think there is potential for greatness. We’ll see I suppose.
Blind Eye Books Special on Pre-Orders
I just realized that Blind Eye Books is having a special on pre-orders of The Archer’s Heart by Astrid Amara. Anyone who pre-0rders form their site gets 25% off. That’s a good deal if you ask me! The offer ends August 1st, 2008 (sorry about the late notice). Go check it out. Also, if you all could pass the word along that would be great. Help out a small press. Thanks! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)