Have a dime, mister--

[bellatrys]

At least, if you don't have a clue to your name, you should really refrain from advertising that fact. For, you know, your own sake.

On a more intelligent note, the newest SFWA Stupidity Outbreak (must be something in the bottled water!) made me aware of Ray Gun Revival, an online 'zine of SF in whose forums I found this link to spiffy hi-res NASA

Comments

The SFWA brouhaha is because their leadership is nuts.

[bellatrys]

This is the same outfit whose last veep came up with the "pixel-stained technopeasant wretches" sneer at writers who give away work for free on the internets. This new veep has had a bee in his bonnet for many years, it turns out, about digital piracy, to the point where he got SFWA to lend him a chunk of money for his antipiracy project, which consisted of, get this, distributing a whole bunch of corrupt e-book sff texts with the hope of thereby disillusioning people and discouraging them from pirating books.

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried, really.

Brust, OTOH, recently shoved his foot way up his mouth by joining in with the Shetterly shouting that there's no such thing as racism, it's all classism, causing a lot of fans to give up in disgust on him (altho' some of us had given up on him earlier after his defense of the Ellison Grope) - he's like a one-man-bastion of White Male Privilege, which he continues to prove. There's an expression "here's a dime, buy yourself a clue," and a saying "not a red cent to one's name," so I just kludged them together. He's been writing for quite some time - the Jhereg books, and you've probably seen the famous poster at least from the cover of the first one (the little gold dragonlet hatching on the black background, by Michael Whelan, used to be available at every music store that sold posters back in the Eighties.) I agree that the last several have kind of gotten tedious, although I haven't read the most recent one.

Re: The SFWA brouhaha is because their leadership is nuts.

[chaoticgoodnik]

Incidentally, if we can believe Jerry Pournelle, there were ~3 shouldn't-have-been-there items in a list of ~100k items whose removal was requested. (I didn't see the list, so I don't know if we can or not. I note, however, that I'd call what Pournelle is doing in most of his post about it frothing at the mouth.)

While it seems like neither side is really considering the other's perspective (based on the public statements and comments I've seen), I do think Burt's approach was ill-conceived.

Pournelle is an authoritarian paleocon

[bellatrys]

as well as a raving sexist IRL, so his retrograde establishment kneejerkitis shouldn't be any surprise to anyone. At least he's being honest in saying "It's All About The Moola, I Call Dibs!" in his slams of Doctorow, which is more than Hendrix was.

The thing about "neither side considering the others' perspective" is that SFWA very simply claimed legal rights that they did not and do not have, and used these self-proclaimed legal rights to do damage to persons out there, including some of the very people they were claiming to be protecting, like Doctorow. It's like if someone went to my ISP with a C&D and had MY site taken down for plagiarizing both Jane Austen and some author named Philosopher At Large - and then said oh well if you can PROVE you're P@L and that JA isn't under copyright any more, then we'll take it back and let you get it reinstated.

You better believe I'd be there with torches and pitchforks, considering their "side" - which side to stick the pitchfork best in!

Re: The SFWA brouhaha is because their leadership is nuts.

[voxwoman]

Heh. Never heard of the Jheregs, but it sounds like something Douglas Adams might have made up.

Not sure about the Whelan poster, either, unless it's recycled from a Pern cover. It may be in the Whelan book I have, but it doesn't ring a bell.

I can almost understand about the fellow who is upset about writers writing for free - I feel much the same way about bands willing to play in bars for nothing (because it makes it nearly impossible to get paid to play a gig in a bar - the owners don't really care WHO plays, only how much money they make).

I'm more upset at seeing coverless paperbacks in odd-lot stores for sale than I am over PDF files. If an author wants to give their writing away, it's their choice. I would hope that most adults would deign to pay for enjoying creative work, and I'd like to think that most adults know what it is to have to earn a living, and would afford the creative people a living, especially if they are getting something from it.

But I'm not holding my breath, or quitting my day job, either.

actually, that's not how it works

[bellatrys]

Bars that won't pay, won't pay - if nobody would play for nothing, then they wouldn't have music, is all. Bars that want music and whose owners think that it is worth paying to bring in customers, will pay - my tiny little mill town has a bunch of them downtown, and they're always *packed* on band nights, and they charge a significant cover fee those nights, too. (Conversely, there are customers who make sure to find out if bands are playing, so as to avoid them then, because some people just want a quiet place to sit and drink with friends.) It's just like advertising, there are lots of businesses that don't believe that they should spend ANY money on print advertising, and then wonder why no one comes, but preventing them from sticking flyers on telephone poles wouldn't MAKE them buy ads in the paper.

The stripped book business is OTOH completely illegal, and can/should be reported to the publishers when noticed: those are books that a bookstore or supermarket reported as destroyed so they wouldn't have to pay for them, and then sold anyway. They are stolen property being fenced.

What's going on with Hendrix and Burt is the exact same thing as with that guy who sells media-tie-in novels denouncing fanfic as immoral and unartistic - or the SCLM's denunciations of bloggers - they think that by killing the competition they will get their customers, and refuse to realize that no, people look for what attracts them, and either will pay for it if they can afford it, or won't pay for it if they can't, but giving them no other options than bland, bullshit, or junky crap isn't going to make them think that they're anything but. Killing free webcomics won't make anyone frex, believe that Rob Liefield is a great artist worth buying instead of [fill in favorite webcomic here]...

Re: actually, that's not how it works

[voxwoman]

Understood. (and the first time I saw "Hendrix" I thought, what does a dead guitarist have to do with any of this? But I gather from context that Hendrix is a SF/F writer of some sort. I know who Burt is, having been a member of critique.org in the past, when I was actually attempting to finish some fiction and try to sell it)

cx for crossed wires - Whelan did Pern covers

[bellatrys]

which were also popular posters in the '80s, the Jhereg dragonling cover/poster was Hickman.

Re: cx for crossed wires - Whelan did Pern covers

[voxwoman]

*snerk*!!!

I used to sell T-shirts with a gold Hickman dragon on it (obviously, this one all growed up, LOL!) from Offworld Designs. (Just looked at their website, and the shirt is called "Jhereg Dragon".)

Since I rarely read fantasy (it took the movies to come out to get me to read Tolkein - he put me to sleep as a teenager) - the closest being the Pern novels, I'm not surprised that I haven't heard of many of these people. I appreciate your patience and hand-holding during my many "duh" and "WTF" moments. Feel free to tell me to google off at any time :)

ex library aide here!

[bellatrys]

Feel free to tell me to google off at any time :)

Going down into the sub-sub basement to try to track down old newspapers for people was my *job* when I was in high school - I couldn't believe how lucky I was to get *paid* for it!

My own reading in genre is very eclectic - there are a lot of Classics of SF and Fantasy that I'm only just getting around to, or have yet to read, for any of many various reasons - fortunately the internet makes it a lot easier esp if all you can remember is "I read this book when I was a kid and it had a really strange cover with kind of melting purple figures on it" or the like, as someone prolly has it right on their shelf and can tell you *exactly* what it is, who published it, and who the cover artist was...