Not every comment is going to be deep and original. Some are blunt and, well, kind of obvious. Like this one. But that doesn’t mean the thing doesn’t bear saying – and (re)publishing. Sometimes things are not spelled out for the simple reason that there is no dramatic issue (in the literal sense) that needs to be dealt with. There was a recent thread on the 1632 subReddit about education and why it’s not talked about more. Quite simply, it’s not dramatic. Are there new schools? You betcha. Are they spreading the up-time style of teaching and attitudes? Yupper. Are there places to learn the new teaching methods? Totally, and for sure. (Hey, they went back from 2000 – Valley Girls weren’t that far in the past!) Do these get mentioned in stories? Indeed, but mostly in passing. Why? When’s the last time you watched or attended a local school board meeting? Exactly. They are important, but boring. While it’s possible to write something interesting about such a boring topic (see “David Weber Orders a Pizza”), is it something you really want to read? There are just so many more interesting things to write about, even if they aren’t as important. Thus, Eric’s question: What IS the point? – Bethanne (Publisher, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine) This comes up fairly regularly. In short, sometimes slush readers (stories that haven’t been published, but might be) need to stop fussing about minor points and focus on whether it’s a good story. If not, what about THE STORY needs to be attended to and why? 03 January 2015 01:01 I have been following this thread with increasing exasperation. WHAT THE **** IS THE ISSUE HERE? Aside from a lot of what seems to me — pardon my English — pointless pettifoggery. When I say, “what is the issue?” I mean that in terms which are relevant to the 1632 series. I.e., terms…
From the Editor
It’s no secret that Grantville is based on the real town of Mannington. Eric explains how the name came about. – Bethanne (Publisher, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine) [I didn’t copy the date and time on the first posts I copied, which are generally the most recent.] Grantville is a composite of the names of two towns in the area: Grant Town and Barrackville. I had originally planned to model my fictional town on Grant Town, because that’s where the power plant in the area was located. (I needed both a power plant and a high school to make the plot work, and I knew I’d have to move one of them. Moving a high school seemed a lot simpler.) But when I came to the area in 1999 to do the research, I discovered that in the 20 years since I’d lived there in the late 70s, a lot had changed. A couple of big malls had opened up on I-79 between Morgantown and Fairmont, not far east of the various small towns along US 250. They’d sucked the life out of the downtowns and turned them into bedroom communities, which is not what I needed. So I drove west to see what might still work. Barrackville had suffered the same fate, but Mannington (which is the westernmost of that little string of towns) was far enough from the malls to have remaining a fully rounded town. The high school is located just outside of Mannington so I switched my plans and moved the power plant. Voila. Such were the origins of “Grantville.” It had nothing to do with Ulysses Grant or any other person named Grant so far as I know. (Don’t ask me who Grant Town is named after. I don’t have a clue.)
Canon is really important to us here in the 1632 universe because even if you “just” look at the writers who are currently actively writing or planning stories and novels, that is still generally coordinating at least a couple of dozen authors with different backgrounds, knowledge bases, and goals for their story. Everyone wants the best for the universe, to be clear. But their character and story goals may vary wildly, as may their real-world knowledge and their knowledge of the 1632verse. So, canon matters, and defining what is canon matters. Our basic stance is that everything is canon, but to varying degreees. Primary, essentially unchangeable canon belongs to things published by Baen, with hardbacks having precedence over paperbacks which have precedence over ebook-only. Then Ring of Fire Press books, which at this point are mostly either being republished by Baen as ebook only publications or are no longer available. A small number have been self-published on Amazon. Magazine stories (Grantville Gazette and 1632 & Beyond) have been considered provisionally canon, meaning mainline Baen novels can contradict them. In reality, great effort has been made to ensure the two streams don’t cross in any meaningful way. With all of that said about how everything is canon, this is fiction, people are human, and sometimes mistakes happen or things are overlooked. Sometimes it’s a detail, like one Virginia notes below about a person being somewhere they shouldn’t be. Sometimes it provides an opportunity for a story. One of the driving forces for my novel Mrs. Flannery’s Flowers is my extreme irritation that in over 20 years of writing, not a single writer had mentioned stashes of crafting supplies! In West Virginia! Impossible! When I mentioned it to them, they all looked a bit sheepish and admitted they did remember seeing such things around. So, I wrote a whole novel to establish they existed and exactly why it was no one talked…
In this comment from BaensBar.net in 2015, Eric notes that because he is the author (sometimes overseer) of the 1632 alternate history, hegets to make the final decision on what is or isn’t plausible, and a big part of that is what makes the best, most interesting, most entertaining story. Since Eric has died, that mantle has passed. There are now a few who carry that mantle, but it starts with Bjorn Hasseler, editor-in-chief for Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond. If you disagree with Bjorn’s canon call, you can appeal above him – but I strongly suggest you have a really good reason if you do. You may know some specific subject matter area better than Bjorn, but you don’t know the 1632 universe better than he does. Seriously. You just don’t. And now, for Eric’s thoughts, which are what you are really interested in anyway. – Bethanne (Publisher, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine) 06 April 2015 12:39 There’s a lot of overlap between this discussion and the one under the thread title “Military guns in 1636 (the Ottomans)” and I’ve already made a couple of posts in that thread. I’m pressed for time because I’m trying to get a novel finished — well, most if it, anyway — before Lucille and I leave for a ten-day trip to the eastern Mediterranean in two and half weeks. And I have to go to LA for the Writers of the Future event this weekend, which will eat up a big chunk of that time. So I’ll keep this as brief as possible. I want to start by making a general comment. I am bemused by the ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY I KNOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE AND WHAT ISN’T!!!! attitude that’s being taken by some people in this discussion. My response is blunt: Bullshit. I am 68 years old. I have personally observed a number of wars and have a very good knowledge of…
Getting Started Writing Bjorn Hasseler, Editor-in-Chief: Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond Magazine I don’t remember where the idea for Neustatter’s European Security Service came from. I remember going to the library—the New Carrollton branch of the Prince Georges County, Maryland library system—looking for Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars trilogy. I read the first two, but The Last Command was never on the shelf. A couple shelves up or down, though, was a set of eight matching books that were clearly a science fiction series. About the third time the Zahn book wasn’t there, I grabbed David Weber’s first Honor Harrington book, On Basilisk Station. Then I came back got the next two, and the next two, until I’d read up to Echoes of Honor, which was the most recent one on the shelf. (Ashes of Victory wasn’t staying on the shelf any more than The Last Command was.) And then I was out of things to read again. I walked down the aisle, and I saw this book whose cover has three guys in a pickup facing off against a couple guys in armor. It had the same rocket ship publisher logo the Honor Harrington books had. I figured it would be a fun read. 1632 turned out to be awesome. This was sometime between when 1632 was published (February, 2000) and when I moved (December, 2003). At that time, lots of people had websites dedicated to their favorite series, organized into “webrings.” They drove traffic to each other. At some point (it took a while), I found Baen’s Bar. 1632 had three chat boards: Slush, Slush Comments, and Tech. They weren’t just talking about the book; they were working on actual stories in the 1632 universe—that were going to count. And anybody could play. I think by then 1633 had come out, and if Ring of Fire wasn’t out yet, it was certainly a done…
Bjorn Hasseller, Editor-in-Chief: Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine Eric Flint studied African history; worked as a machinist; drove trucks; wrote, edited, and published books and short stories; and was a union organizer. He was married to Lucille Robbins and had a daughter, a son-in-law, and two grandchildren. He once posted a picture of himself wearing a shirt that said “Grumpa.” I think Eric liked to come across as grouchy. You could quickly see how much time he spent helping others out, though. That might be when he was risking his personal safety helping the unions or something as simple as taking a couple hours to make sure you understood where he wanted to go when he offered you a co-writing opportunity. Eric’s first novel was published when he was fifty years old. I count at least 69 novels as well as numerous anthologies, collections, novellas, and short stories. He wrote in several genres but was probably best known for alternate history. He didn’t just write; he worked with others, especially helping new authors get started. Between the 1632 series and The Grantville Gazette, he helped over 200 authors be published. For about three-quarters of us, it was our first professional sale. That’s aside from everything he did at Writers of the Future and the Superstars Writing Seminars. As he often pointed out himself, the 1632 universe was less than half of Eric’s writing. Of his many alternate history, science fiction, and fantasy universes, it’s the one he opened to anyone who wanted to write in it. Sometimes he’d look bemused at the directions people took with it, but he’d let them do it, as long as it wasn’t interfering with his own plans. We are excited to help carry that legacy forward. * * *
Bjorn Hasseller, Editor-in-Chief: Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine Jose Clavell served in the US Army, was a nurse at Walter Reed, and served in the Puerto Rico Wing of the Civil Air Patrol. He passed away in March, 2023. In the 1632 universe, Jose developed the USE Marine Corps and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. These are moving stories, and they’re influential on other authors. We’d like to keep Jose in the series. FROM: CPT. L. KLINGL, USEN TO: CDRE E. CANTRELL, USEN —MESSAGE BEGINS— RE: RETURN VOYAGE FOLLOWING OPERATION “ISLAND HOPPERS” AND HURRICANE, CAPTURED PIRATE SHIPS LOW ON FRESH WATER. TWO VESSELS DIVERTED TO PUERTO RICO AND HOVE TO OFF LOCATION LABELED MAYAGUEZ ON UP-TIME MAP. REFILLED WATER. NO ENEMY CONTACT. STOP COMMEND USEMC SGT. J. CLAVELL FOR INITIATIVE LOCATING FRESH WATER AND ESTABLISHING CACHES AND DEFENSIVE POSITIONS FOR FUTURE OPERATIONS. STOP HOWEVER SGT. CLAVELL LEFT USE FLAG. CLAIMS WE OWN ISLAND. STOP —MESSAGE ENDS— “I dunno, Clavell.” Hans Ludolf squinted. His nose was scrunched up, and his lips pursed, all signs that the Marine was very skeptical about something. “I think the captain is pissed.” “Hard to tell, from how he was trying not to laugh the whole time,” Clavell countered. “What if the Spanish find that flag? They will search the area. They might find the caches and fighting positions.” “Then they will think there are patrols on the island and waste a lot of time and many more resources than we left in the caches,” Clavell returned. “And if one of our ships passes between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola and needs food and water . . . It is what the up-timers call a win-win. And who knows? We could find ourselves back there someday.”
Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond Short fiction is back in the 1632 Universe! Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond will publish six issues per year, on the first day of odd-numbered months. Is this from Ring of Fire Press or 1632 Inc.? It’s from a new company, Flint’s Shards Inc. Do you have permission? Yes, we have a contract with Lucille Robbins, Eric Flint’s widow and heir. We will also coordinate closely with Baen Books to maintain the canon continuity for which the 1632 series is known. I missed some Grantville Gazettes. Can I get those? Yes. Grantville Gazette issues are available here individually and in groups of six. What about Gazette issues I paid for but didn’t download? While we are making the back issues of the Grantville Gazette available for sale, we have an obligation to pay the owner of those issues for every issue sold. We do not have permission to give them away for free. I had three issues left on my Grantville Gazette subscription. 1632, Inc. (the company that sold those subscriptions) is no longer in business. Is this going to be just like the Grantville Gazette? Not exactly, but close. We will publish primarily 1632 stories with some stories in the other Assiti Shards universes (Time Spike and Alexander Inheritance). What about 1632 serials? Yes, with caveats: The editors may decide to split a story up into multiple parts. The editors need to see the full serial. Our upper limit is going to be 17,500 words total. That is a hard limit. We can publish novelettes, but not novellas. The same group of characters can go on to have another self-contained adventure. We are strongly in favor of this. But we’re not publishing novels with the serial numbers filed off, either. (Pun fully intended.) What about the other Assiti Shards? Yes, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond will publish stories in the Time Spike and Alexander…
Griffin Barber, 1632 writer Friends, We have been talking about how we need to act on the 1632 forums of Baen’s Bar for years. You can’t have a working idea factory if the first answer is always “No!”. Griffin Barber has written a very important piece that we would really like everybody involved with the 1632 Universe to read, and think about. And maybe agree with. Walt BoyesBjorn Hasseler I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Like, ALWAYS. Funny, that, who would think a dyslexic kid with ADD would have any success at all in sitting down to write a story, let alone several lengthy novels and a bunch of short stories? Funnier still, for that same dyslexic1 kid with ADD to grow up and eventually become assistant publisher at a small press like Ring Of Fire Press.2 All I can say is that a red-hot desire to succeed can overcome a great many roadblocks, especially if that desire finds a community that shares not only that desire to succeed, but actively encourages it. I found such a community early on, in the electronic halls of Baen’s Bar, the forum created and hosted by Baen Books. I haunted those halls for a while, posting an occasional opinion or even a snippet of some story I was tinkering with for others to look at. I didn’t get much feedback, but what I did get was both commensurate with my (small) contributions and helpful in a general sense, allowing me to think I might have some chance at writing stories someone might read. I went with that small encouragement and wrote my first novel. (No one will ever see it.) I then set out to try and sell it to a publisher. I started attending conventions and meeting people. Good people. Fun people. Some were even famous, and not just ‘in-genre famous,’ either. I had various advice from those who were kind enough to dispense it.…
by Walt Boyes It is my unwelcome duty to tell you that we have lost another member of the 1632 family. This time, it was Head Geek Rick Boatright. Rick passed away on July 22 from pancreatic cancer. He was 66 years old. Rick was a polymath. He knew something about nearly everything and his ability to research little squirrelly facts was astonishing. He and I came up with the Aqualator at a con, and he wrote it into the series. He was the lead presenter, along with Kevin Evans and me, doing Weird Tech at Minicons. (The fact that we lost both Rick and Kevin within eight months, leaving me the Last Amigo, worries me.) He said he wasn’t really a writer, but he had a respectable body of work, and his latest novel (with Kerryn Offord) was published in August. But above all, Rick was a teacher. He gave up teaching because he wasn’t politically correct enough for the Topeka Board of Education, but never stopped being a teacher. He taught everyone he met. The world is much poorer without him in it.
I want to take the time to remember two of the Gazette’s favorite authors. In December, right before Christmas, Kevin Evans passed away suddenly. Then, shortly after that, his wife and writing partner, Karen Carnahan Evans, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and she passed away in April. We have lost two of the finest authors in the Gazette, but more than that, we have lost two very good friends. Kevin and Karen lived outside Albuquerque, NM, and they participated in the Balloon Festival every year. This gave them a unique skill set for when the 1632verse decided that balloons and dirigibles were the way to go for flight. Kevin was a steam-head and spent many years working on getting a vintage steam locomotive ready to run again. He was a fantastic artificer, and over time, became the 1632verse’s Master Armorer. He created the designs for the rifles and shotguns used by up-timers and down-timers in the stories. He got pushback over the designs, so he built working models and brought them to Ring Of Fire Cons to show them at the Weird Tech panel, which Rick Boatright, myself, and Kevin presided over for years. He proved that you could power a dirigible with a steam engine. He and Rick made the smallest functioning steam engine I’ve ever seen to prove it. Karen was a great writer, and a gastronome. She delighted the 1632verse with bringing modern chocolate back to the seventeenth century. Not only did she produce recipes, but at RingofFireCons, she brought samples of real Grantville chocolate.” Kevin and Karen were members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), Kevin was knighted as Sir Thorgeirr and Karen served as his squire and shieldmaiden, Lady Tyrca. They were great people, a wonderful couple, actually bigger than life, and the world is significantly smaller and darker with them gone. I am going to miss them dreadfully, and I…
Eric Flint on Writing Note: The original post wasn’t dated, so we don’t have any real idea when this was written and posted beyond Eric was still alive. The assigned date is fairly random, but before his final illness. – Bethanne (Publisher, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine) How long does it take to write a book? ERIC: That basically depends on three factors: The length of the book.2. The type of book it is.3. Whether I’m writing it solo or with a collaborator (or collaborators). Length is the most obvious. Novels are made up of words, and the more words in a given novel the longer it’s going to take to write it. My novels, thus far, have ranged in length from about 110,000 to 180,000 words. The shortest being The Philosophical Strangler and Rats, Bats & Vats; the longest, 1632. Although that’s about to change — The Shadow of the Lion, now nearing completion, is going to be well over 200,000 words long; probably closer to 250,000. (I might mention here that writers gauge the length of a book in a different way than readers. Readers think of length in terms of pages, but for an author that’s almost meaningless. The number of pages which a given number of words translates into varies wildly, depending on many factors determined by the publisher, not the writer — fonts, leads, margins, etc. So writers talk in terms of words, because that’s the only fixed absolute quantity.) How many words do I write a day? Well, that varies a lot, depending on the type of book it is, as I’ll explain in a moment. But I don’t write every day of the year, anyway. Not even close. Writing, for me, is “burst work.” When I dig into a novel, I will write just about every day until the book is finished. Never less than 1,000 words. Once or twice — as many as 10,000 words. My average per…
How long does it take to write a book? ERIC: That basically depends on three factors: The length of the book.2. The type of book it is.3. Whether I’m writing it solo or with a collaborator (or collaborators). Length is the most obvious. Novels are made up of words, and the more words in a given novel the longer it’s going to take to write it. My novels, thus far, have ranged in length from about 110,000 to 180,000 words. The shortest being The Philosophical Strangler and Rats, Bats & Vats; the longest, 1632. Although that’s about to change — The Shadow of the Lion, now nearing completion, is going to be well over 200,000 words long; probably closer to 250,000. (I might mention here that writers gauge the length of a book in a different way than readers. Readers think of length in terms of pages, but for an author that’s almost meaningless. The number of pages which a given number of words translates into varies wildly, depending on many factors determined by the publisher, not the writer — fonts, leads, margins, etc. So writers talk in terms of words, because that’s the only fixed absolute quantity.) How many words do I write a day? Well, that varies a lot, depending on the type of book it is, as I’ll explain in a moment. But I don’t write every day of the year, anyway. Not even close. Writing, for me, is “burst work.” When I dig into a novel, I will write just about every day until the book is finished. Never less than 1,000 words. Once or twice — as many as 10,000 words. My average per day runs somewhere in the 1,500 to 3,500 range. Once a novel is finished, I will then take a break of anywhere from two weeks to two months, basically in order to “recharge my batteries.” During that time I occupy myself with editing work, writing short stuff, rewriting…
by Eric Flint | May 12, 2020 | Blog | 1 comment As many of you already know, I have a publishing house of my own called Ring of Fire Press. I launched the house back in 2013 as a way to publish stories in the Ring of Fire series that were too long to include in one of the anthologies published by Baen Books. For the first few years, I operated the house on a pretty hit-or-miss basis. I had no regular publishing schedule and didn’t put a lot of money or effort into it. I was really doing it just as a service to some of our long-standing authors. A little over two years ago, however, I decided to take it more seriously. The first thing I did was engage a professional artist (Laura Givens) to do the covers. That instantly made a huge difference—by which I mean increasing our sales by almost an order of magnitude. Once I saw that we had a much bigger income, I took on Walt Boyes and Joy Ward as a combination of managers and editors of the house, so that it would no longer be something I was trying to do on the side. And we decided to establish a regular publication schedule. Initially that was one book a month, but we soon expanded that to two books a month. For a time, our focus remained on publishing Ring of Fire series books. But it didn’t take us long to realize that we’d built a real publishing house—so why not use it to publish any sort of fantasy and science fiction? We’ve been doing that now for some time, and reached the point where Ring of Fire series books are only about one-third of what we publish. In fact, we’ve expanded our output so much that beginning in July we’re going to shift to a three-book-a-month schedule. One of the things that has enabled us to do is…
by Eric Flint | Apr 14, 2020 | Interviews https://youtu.be/uaQHmiqkS6I
by Eric Flint | Feb 19, 2020 | Blog | 23 comments “Tempus fugit” is a Latin phrase that officially translates as “time flies.” What it really is, though, is a hoity-toity way of saying “old farts forget stuff.” The old fart in this instance being me—and what I forgot was that my novel 1632 was published exactly twenty years ago. Well… Using the term “exactly” with some poetic license. The book was indeed published in February of 2000, but I’m pretty sure it was published earlier than the 18th day of the month. So I’m fudging a little. By any reasonable measure of the term “success,” 1632 was a successful novel. To begin with, it was successful on its own terms. It sold—this is taken directly from my royalty reports so there’s no fudging at all—7,458 copies in hardcover, which was very good at the time for hardcover sales. Better still, it also had a 69% sell-through. For those of you not familiar with publishing lingo, “sell-through” means the percentage of books printed and shipped that are actually sold. The industry average is around 50%, so 69% is very good, That was the initial hardcover print run. Since then, Baen Books has done a special edition leather-bound hardcover edition ($36.00 a copy BUT CHEAP AT THE PRICE) that has sold 765 copies at a 77% sell-through. Furthermore, the novel is still in print after twenty years, and has sold over 140,000 copies in paperback with a 88% sell-through, which is like incredibly, spectacularly good. A publishing house which has a book that maintains an 88% sell-through over two decades has essentially been able to legally print money for all that time. And—I love this fact because I sneer at so-called “electronic piracy”—keep in mind that 1632 has been available electronically FOR FREE for about the last eighteen years and… still just keeps selling and selling. Every year I get royalty payments for the book somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000. But the novel doesn’t stand on…
Hi, I’m Eric Flint, a writer of science fiction and fantasy. My writing career began with the publication in 1993 of a short story entitled “Entropy, and the Strangler.” That story won first place in the Winter 1992 Writers of the Future contest, which was founded by L. Ron Hubbard. The coordinator of the contest in 1992 was Dave Wolverton, and the panel of judges consisted of Anne McCaffrey, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Algys Budrys. The story was published in the 1993 anthology, which the contest puts out on an annual basis. I’ve been writing fiction off and on most of my life, starting when I was fourteen years old. But this was my first sale, and led me to the point where I am now a full-time author. “Entropy, and the Strangler” was a small piece of a major fantasy series which I’ve been working on since 1969, some of the books in collaboration with a friend of mine by the name of Richard Roach. I didn’t really buckle down and start writing seriously, however, until 1992. By then I was 45 years old, and realized that if I was ever going to get published, I’d better get cracking. By early 1993, Richard and I had finished one volume in this fantasy series, a novel entitled Forward the Mage, and I’d written a large part of the novel which would eventually become titled The Philosophical Strangler (which was published by Baen Books in May, 2001). A rewritten version of “Entropy, and the Strangler” now serves as the Prologue to that novel. The universe in which The Philosophical Strangler and Forward the Mage are set is something which Richard and I simply call “Joe’s World.” For better or worse, the novels (of which there are at least five either written or partially written) don’t fit all that neatly within the normal parameters of the fantasy genre. As I soon discovered when I started piling up…
NOTE: For those of you who prefer your bibliographies chronologically, here it is. This page does not include the classic SF series I’ve edited. — Eric Flint. (last updated on 27 January 2019) 1970Trade and Politics in Barotseland During the Kololo Period, 1970 Journal of African History (Volume XI:1) 1993Entropy and the Strangler, (short story), in Writers of the Future Volume IX 1997Mother of Demons, September 1997 (pb) 1998An Oblique Approach, March 1998 (pb) with David DrakeIn the Heart of Darkness, August 1998 (pb) with David Drake 1999Destiny’s Shield, July 1999 (HC) with David Drake 20001632, February 2000 (HC)Destiny’s Shield, June 2000 (pb)Fortune’s Stroke, June 2000 (HC) with David DrakeRats, Bats & Vats, September 2000 (HC) with Dave FreerThe Thief and the Roller Derby Queen, (short story), in The Chick is in the Mail, edited by Ester Friesner, October 2000, (pb) 20011632 February 2001 (pb) From the Highlands, (short novel), in More than Honor #3: Changer of Worlds with David Weber March 2001 (HC)The Philosophical Strangler, May 2001 (HC)Carthago Delenda Est, (novella), in Foreign Legions, edited by David Drake, June 2001, (HC)Fortune’s Stroke, July 2001 (pb)The Tide of Victory, July 2001 (HC), October 2002 (pb) with David DrakeRats, Bats & Vats, September 2001 (pb)Pyramid Scheme, October 2001 (HC), with David Freer 2002From the Highlands, (short novel), in More than Honor #3: Changer of Worlds February 2002 (pb)The Philosophical Strangler, March 2002, (pb)Forward the Mage, March 2002 (HC) with Richard RoachThe Shadow of the Lion, March 2002 (HC) with Mercedes Lackey & Dave FreerThe Tyrant, April 2002 (HC) with David DrakeThe Islands in Warmasters, an anthology, May 2002 (HC) with David Drake and David Weber1633, August 2002 (HC), with David Weber“Carthago Delenda Est,” (novella), in Foreign Legions, September 2002 (pb)The Tide of Victory, October 2002 (pb) with David Drake 2003Pyramid Scheme, February 2003 (pb), with David Freerâ–ª “Fanatic,” (novella) in The Service of the Sword, the fourth Harrington anthology, April 2003 (HC), compiled by David Weber1633, July 2003 (pb)Forward the Mage, August 2003,…
by Eric Flint | Aug 31, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 185 comments Several people, in their commentaries on my recent essay (“Do We Really Have to Keep Feeding Stupid and His Cousin Ignoramus?”), challenged or at least questioned the assertion I’ve made several times in my various essays on the Hugo ruckus that the Hugos (and other major F&SF awards) have drifted away over the past thirty years from the tastes and opinions of the mass audience. It’s a fair question, so I’ll address it in this essay as best I can. It’s not an easy issue to analyze, though. That’s for the simple reason that popularity is gauged by sales, and there are no publicly available records on the sales of various authors. That’s information which is privately held. When I published my first essay on the Hugo ruckus a few months ago (“Some comments on the Hugos and other SF awards,” posted here on April 16), a number of people privately expressed their astonishment, or bemusement, or admiration at the amount of work I’d put into it. Or in the case of my publisher, Toni Weisskopf—although she never said a word to me about it—probably exasperation. (“What the hell is he doing writing this stuff instead of novels, dammit?”) The essay does indeed represent a lot of work, since it’s 7,200 words long. (If word counts don’t mean much to you, that’s the length of two or three chapters in most novels.) But, in fact, I put very little work into it—this year. That’s because most of the essay had been written eight years earlier. Here’s the history: Back in 2007, I wound up—I can’t remember how it got started—engaging in a long email exchange with Greg Benford over the subject of SF awards. Both of use had gotten a little exasperated over the situation—which is closely tied to the issue of how often different authors get reviewed in major F&SF magazines. In the…
by Eric Flint | Jun 16, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 245 comments Having come up with that nifty albeit long-winded title, I’m tempted to just write “see above” and take a nap. Mission accomplished… Sadly, some people need to be convinced that “inevitable” means “not evitable.” You don’t think there’s such a word as “evitable”? Tch. Of course there is! If there weren’t, how could anything be in-evitable? “Evitable” derives from the Latin evitare (“to avoid). It’s an adjective that means capable of being avoided; avoidable. In essence, what the Sad Puppies are arguing is that if people follow their lead, the tendency of the Hugo Awards to be slanted in favor of what are generally called “literary” qualities can be avoided. No, sorry, it can’t. You have as much chance of eliminating the tendency of a literary award to be tilted in favor of literary factors as you have of doing any of the following: Getting a fashion competition to award first place to blue jeans and a sweatshirt. But they’re so comfortable! And people wear them all the time—including those God damned probably-a-bunch-of-pinkos (PABOPs) when they’re not putting on a public show. Getting a dog show to award “best dog of show” to an unpedigreed mutt. But he’s such a good dog! Friendly, great with kids, never growls at anybody except people trying to break into the house and then—hooweeeeee!—watch the bastards run for their lives. And they gave the award to that—that—look at the damn thing! Its skull is narrower than a high-heeled shoe! God damn pointy-headed effete asinine retards (PHEARs). Getting a gourmet cooking competition to award first place to a dish consisting of a cheeseburger and fries. But almost everybody eats cheeseburgers and fries! Try setting up a chain of escargots-and-tofu restaurants and see how fast you go bankrupt! This is pure snobbery, what it is. God damn highbrow elitist stuffed shirt icky abominable nabobs (HESSIANs). Shall I go on? And on… and on… What the Sad Puppies can’t seem to grasp is that any sort…
by Eric Flint | Jun 13, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 68 comments In this essay, I want to address the second of the two objective problems with the Hugo Awards that I referred to in my last essay. That problem is the ever-widening distance between the structure of the awards and the reality of the market for fantasy and science fiction. When the Hugo Award was first launched, in 1953, four awards were established. The distinction between them was based on word count, as follows: Best short story: Any story up to 7,500 words. Best novelette: Any story between 7,500 and 17,500 words. Best novella: Any story between 17,500 and 40,000 words. Best novel: any story longer than 40,000 words. A little more than a decade later, in 1966, the newly-founded Science Fiction Writers of America (which later became the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) launched the Nebula Award, which is considered the other major award in F&SF. The award structure they adopted for written fiction was identical with that of the Hugo; i.e., the same division between three short form and one long form stories, using the same word counts. At the time, it made perfect sense to structure the awards in this manner, that is to say, heavily in favor of short fiction and with the definition of novel set with a very low word count. The genre of F&SF was predominantly a short form genre, and what (relatively few) novels got published were generally in the word count range of 40,000 to 60,000 words. Today, that structure is hopelessly outdated. Short form fiction is now a very small part of fantasy and science fiction, whether you measure that in terms of money—where it’s now a tiny percentage of the income authors receive—or in terms of readership. It’s certainly a larger percentage of the readers than it is of income, but it’s not more than 10% and it’s probably closer to 5%.…
by Eric Flint | Jun 11, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 66 comments What I want to do in this essay is go back to where I started in my very first post on subject (“Some comments on the Hugos and other SF awards,” posted April 16), which is to discuss the problems the Hugo awards actually do have—which, as I’ve now spent a lot of time explaining, has nothing to do with the political issues that the Sad Puppies insist are central. I singled out three key problems, two of them objective and one which is of a more subjective nature. The first of the two objective problems is the subject of this essay. It’s not complicated. The genre of science fiction and fantasy with all its related sub-genres—some of which, like paranormal romance, are so popular they often get their own sections in bookstores—has become enormous. It is a far, far larger field than it was half a century ago. But even back then, there was always some disparity between the tastes and opinions of the people who voted for the Hugo awards and the F&SF readership as a whole. To name what is probably the most outstanding example, Andre Norton never received a Hugo award. She was only nominated twice. But she was hardly alone in being overlooked in the Hugo awards. Many other prominent and important authors of the time, whose stories filled the major magazines and the shelves in bookstores, also never received a Hugo award and in many cases were never even nominated. Christopher Anvil was never nominated. Not once. A Bertram Chandler was never nominated. Hal Clement was only nominated once. He didn’t win. L. Sprague de Camp did win one Hugo, but it was for his autobiography and came almost at the very end of his long life. He never received the award for his fiction, despite that fiction being an enormous body of work spanning more than half…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 366 comments One of the comments that was put up on my web site while I was out of town was a long one by Brad Torgersen. Because of Brad’s prominence in the debate over the Hugo Awards, I think it’s incumbent on me to respond to him. My response is going to be long because I’m going to put it all up in one post today. I’m doing that because Brad will be deploying soon and is likely to lose access to the internet for a while. I don’t think it’s fair for me to criticize his arguments if he can no longer respond. Whether he chooses to respond or not will be his decision. If he does, I will make no further responses to him beyond this one. I think the argument we’re having about the Hugo awards is approaching its productive limits. I will make one more post in a day or so, but that one will deal purely with my own practical suggestions for ways I think the Hugo awards could be improved. The post by Brad that I’m responding to here is a long one—you can find it in the thread under “AND AGAIN ON THE HUGO AWARDS”—so I think this will work best if I begin by quoting all of it. My reply will come afterward: (the original comment can be found in context in the thread under “AND AGAIN ON THE HUGO AWARDS”— webmaster) “The following is general commentary, not directed at Eric Flint per se. But at the body of the thread and all the comments as a whole. “The thing about self-identifying progressives in 21st century America is that they don’t realize when they’ve won. Especially in the field of SF/F publishing. You cannot fight against The Man when you are The Man. In SF/F publishing, progressives make up the vast bulk of editors, authors, artists, and publishers. Oh,…
by Eric Flint | Jun 8, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 342 comments I’ve been traveling a lot for the past few weeks, so my ability to respond to comments made here is intermittent. One of the comments that was put up on my web site while I was gone lately was a long one by Brad Torgersen. Because of Brad’s prominence in the debate over the Hugo Awards, I think it’s incumbent on me to respond to him. Before I can do that, however, something else has to be dealt with first. One of the main points I’ve been trying to make, partly in the hope that I can persuade the Sad Puppies to change their minds, is that while scurrilous attacks have been made on them those attacks have come from people who have no real power or influence in the science fiction and fantasy community. Unfortunately, there’s a reliable old quip, variously attributed to Voltaire and Maréchal Villars: Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies. With the modification that I don’t consider the Sad Puppies to be “enemies” but simply opponents in the current wrangle over the Hugos, the quip has found a home again. While I was attending SFWA’s Nebula Awards weekend, the following statement was made on her Facebook page by Irene Gallo in response to a question. (The question was “what are the Sad Puppies”?) “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.” When it comes to sheer, breath-taking dishonesty and just plain silliness, this statement is far worse than any of the ones cited by James May which I dealt…
by Eric Flint | May 18, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 160 comments James May, who keeps posting here, is the gift that never stops giving. In one of his most recent posts, he insists once again that the SJW (social justice warrior) hordes are a menace to science fiction. So, in this essay, I will go through his points one at a time to show how ridiculous they are whether examined in part or (especially) as a whole. Let’s start with his first two paragraphs: “I don’t have to pretend anything. It’s not my imagination this crusading feminist movement exists nor that it’s baked into core SFF at every level as the new go-to ideological orthodoxy. In fact they do amount to squat. This is a very specific ideology that speaks a very specific faux-academic language and has very specific goals and issues. It is radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist to its core and its central bogey man is the straight white man. “As an example, just the 5 ideologically same-page winners of the Nebulas last year alone outnumber the entire imaginary racially and sexually supremacist culture supposedly bound by a similar opposite number ideology from Burroughs in 1912 to Niven/Pournelle in 1974. There is no semantic or thematic ideology that binds Burroughs, Heinlein, Van Vogt, Asimov, Herbert, Zelazny and Niven into such a club. That is a matter of record, as is the non-fiction writings of those 5 2014 Nebula winners.†The first thing to notice about this rant is that in the name of attacking a “crusading†movement which is an “ideological orthodoxy†that “speaks a very specific faux-academic language†James May immediately proceeds to… Use crusading terminology which is ideologically orthodox and speaks a very specific faux-academic language: “It is radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist to its core.†That phrase is practically dripping Rush Limbaugh-speak. He then informs us that all—yup, each and every one—of the 2014 Nebula winners were “ideologically same-page†which is a…
by Eric Flint | May 14, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 172 comments I swore to myself—again—that I was I was going to stay away from this ruckus after my first two essays (one long, one short) but some of the posts put up on my web site have worn down that resolve. A friend of mine once said “ignorance can be fixed; stupid is forever.” I suspect he’s right, but I will sally forth once again in the hopes that some of these seemingly-stupid statements and arguments are really just the product of ignorance. Let me start with this statement, from a recent poster named James May (and don’t complain, dammit; once you post on MY web site, you’re fair game): “The social justice warrior argument is not specious but right on point. When you have SF authors writing posts about white privilege and others saying straight out they won’t review white men then that represents a sea-change, and a very new one, only 3 years old or so. That sort of thing is not occasional but obsessive and daily and it is not the usual right vs. left, although it is often couched in those terms. That is why people make the mistake of stretching this conflict years and even decades back rather than the months back it deserves.” I have two points to make about this, one of which is: Who the hell are you talking about outside of your right-wing echo chamber where idiot acronyms like “SJW” mean something? But I’ll get back to that. My first point—picture me spluttering my coffee all over the place when I read it—has to do with this statement: “When you have SF authors writing posts about white privilege… that represents a sea-change… This is why people make the mistake of stretching this conflict years and even decades back rather than months it deserves.” Excuse me? SF authors have been writing about racism—AKA “white privilege”—for decades. And they came…
by Eric Flint | Apr 23, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 20 comments In light of the discussion that’s ensued here and elsewhere in response to my essay on the current situation with the Hugo awards (see below), I decided to make a few more comments. There are two points I want to make, the first in the way of a clarification. The following statement of mine in the initial essay has been somewhat misinterpreted, I think: “What’s involved here is essentially a literary analog to genetic drift. Biologists have long known that the role played by pure chance in evolution is greater in a small population than a larger one. The same thing happens in the arts, especially those arts which have a huge mass audience. The attitudes of the much smaller group or groups of in-crowds who hand out awards or do critical reviews are mostly influenced by other members of their in-crowd, not by the tastes of the mass audience. Over time, just by happenstance if nothing else, their views start drifting apart from those of the mass audience.” Some people have interpreted this as a sarcastic remark, in which they seem to think I am deriding the tastes of what I called the “much smaller group or groups of in-crowds.” But that wasn’t my point. What I was trying to explain, perhaps not clearly enough, was that once science fiction and fantasy became the enormously popular genre of fiction that it is today, the critical attitudes of any group of fans or aficionados will inevitably diverge over time from those of the mass audience as a whole. The problem, I think, lies in a misunderstanding of the term “popular” when it is used to refer to a “popular author.” What happens is that people start thinking that a “popular” author somehow represents or reflects the mass audience—as opposed to the oft-derided “literary author” who only appeals to a small subset of the mass audience. But…
by Eric Flint | Jan 23, 2013 | Information, Writing Dear friends, As many of you know, for the past several years I have been teaching a seminar once a year on the business of being a professional writer. This is a three-day seminar that I do with Kevin Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, Dave Wolverton (who often writes under the name of David Farland) and various special guests who vary from one year to the next. This is not the usual writer’s workshop. We assume that those people who take the seminar have the skills to be professional writers. What we spend three days doing is teaching you everything you need to know about the business of becoming a writer. That includes strategies for getting published, the use of agents, electronic publishing, how to read and understand contracts and royalty statements, and so on. People who’ve taken this seminar in the past have uniformly told us that they found it very helpful. Many of them take the seminar a second or even a third time-so many, in fact, that we now have a special lower rate for alumni. This year, in 2013, we will be holding the seminar on May 14-16 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Past venues have includes Pasadena, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Las Vegas, Nevada.) Special guests will include Jim Minz, the chief editor for Baen Books; Joan Johnston, a bestselling romance author; James Owen, a bestselling storyteller and illustrator; and Mark Leslie LeFebvre, the Director of Self Publishing and chief of author relations for Kobo.If you’re interested in looking further into the seminar, please look at our URL: http://superstarswriting.com/ POST HOC: I also participated in a different sort of seminar this year for the first time. This was a more traditional writers workshop, although it also covered aspects of the business of publishing. The workshop was held on a Caribbean cruise liner to the Bahamas and lasted for four days: December 2 through December 6.…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother I ended my last essay as follows: Is it true that modern electronic devices have made copyright infringement “so effortless” that it has become —or threatens to become— a serious menace to legitimate copyright owners? The answer is “no.” In the next issue, I’ll explain why. The reason the answer is “no,” in a nutshell, is encapsulated in the subtitle of this essay: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. That colloquial expression captures a fundamental economic truth. Nothing that requires labor to be performed is really “free.” You’re going to pay for it, one way or other. Either by performing unpaid labor yourself, or by paying someone else for it. If not directly, then indirectly. The real difference between a toll road and a “freeway” is not that a toll road costs you money and a freeway is “free.” It most certainly is not “free.” That freeway was built and is maintained by the taxpayers’ money. The only difference, from the standpoint of cost, is how the money is collected. In the case of toll roads, it’s collected directly from the users in the form of tolls. In the case of a freeway, it’s collected from the entire population in the form of taxes. Let’s now apply that economic principle to crime. Whatever else it is, crime is also labor. In some cases —what are often called “crimes of passion”— that fact is simply irrelevant. But it is not irrelevant at all when the crime involved is one that is either motivated by a desire for profit, or simply profit’s poor second cousin, the desire to eliminate a cost to yourself. To give an example, most shoplifters do not steal in order to resell at a profit. They steal for their own use— but it’s worth the risk to them because they eliminate the cost of paying for the stolen…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother In my last essay, I ended by saying that the claims made today on behalf of DRM—that stands for “Digital Rights Management”—can be summarized as follows: The advent of digital media makes it so effortless to copy an intellectual creator’s work that traditional notions of “fair use” have to be abandoned. In today’s world, any sort of “fair use” will inexorably and inevitably lead to wholesale violation of copyright. Therefore, fair use must be banned entirely—or, at a bare minimum, have tremendous restrictions placed on it. And I concluded by paraphrasing Mary McCarthy’s famous quip that every word in the above statement was a lie, including “the” and “and.” Let’s start with “makes it so effortless.” What’s being claimed here, by the proponents of DRM, is that because digital data can be processed by computers all of the traditional practical obstacles that made it difficult for somewhat to infringe copyright have vanished. “Online piracy” has therefore become rampant. If someone wants to produce a “pirated” version of an electronic text, they no longer have to have access to printing presses, nor do they need the financial wherewithal to operate them or pay someone else to do so. They can simply duplicate the text on their own home computer and thereby completely circumvent the need to pay the creator of the work under traditional copyright laws. For this reason, DRM supporters claim, all electronic text must be carefully encrypted. That forces the prospective user, whether he wants to or not, to pay the creators of the product the money that is legitimately owed to them. Without the code to open the encryption—to get which, he must pay for the legitimate product—the “pirate” is out of business. Furthermore, in order to prevent anyone from producing an illegal code-cracking mechanism, severe penalties must be levied against any such activity. And finally—oh, they’re a thorough lot, these…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother Although this column addresses the controversy surrounding so-called Digital Rights Management, I devoted my first three essays to a discussion of the general principles concerning copyright as such. As I explained, I did that because it’s impossible to discuss DRM intelligently without understanding that all the issues involved are couched within—derive from, actually—the general principles in our society that govern copyright as a whole. Copyright is not an issue sitting over here, with DRM being a different issue sitting over there. In reality, DRM sits right inside of copyright. The link between the two—the cushion that DRM sits on, if you will allow me to develop this into a metaphor—is called “fair use.” It is one of the most critical aspects of copyright law, and has been since the inception of the copyright era in the early eighteenth century. And my metaphor is actually a good one, because “fair use” is exactly that—a cushion. It’s the provision in copyright law—I’m about to lower the bar for this metaphor—that keeps society’s buttocks from getting too badly bruised by the hard limits that copyright places on society’s ability to benefit from creative intellectual or artistic work. But DRM is too heavy. It’s steadily squeezing all of the real substance out of society’s fair use cushion. By now, that cushion isn’t much more than a skimpy little pad. Before too long, the way things are going, it will be gone entirely. The definition of “fair use” is slippery in copyright law, and always has been. In the nature of things, it’s a gray area rather than a sharp line. Trying to define it precisely, in legal terms, poses much the same problem that trying to define pornography does. One person’s filthy disgusting story is another person’s literary masterpiece. Terms which have both been applied, to give just one example, to James Joyce’s famous novel Ulysses. Whatever the…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | The Editor’s Page This article was originally published in Jim Baen’s Universe Vol 1, Num 4, December 2006. By Eric Flint Since our third issue came out a few weeks ago, we’ve expanded our staff by adding two new people. Beginning a few weeks ago, Stoney Compton became our assistant art director. And starting with this issue, Mike Resnick is going to be joining the magazine as our new executive editor, while my title changes from the former simple “editor” to “editor-in-chief.” If you’re wondering what those titles really mean, I’ll explain in a moment. I’ve known Stoney for thirteen years, since we met at the annual award presentation of the Writers of the Future contest in 1993. I’d won first place in the 1992 winter quarter’s contest and Stoney had won second place. We became friends over the course of that weekend and have remained in touch ever since. Earlier this year, at my recommendation, Jim Baen bought Stoney’s first novel Russian Amerika, an excellent alternate history that will be coming out in April 2007. (Yes, that’s a plug. It really is good—and, better still, it doesn’t retread the standard ground that so many alternate history novels do.) Stoney started helping the magazine informally a few months ago, in all sorts of ways. Eventually, it simply made sense to officially add him to the staff. Stoney did and will wind up doing all sorts of things for the magazine. But since he’s a professional graphics designer and will probably spend most of his time working with Dave Freer on the magazine’s art work, we decided to give him the title of assistant art director. My personal acquaintance with Mike Resnick is much more recent than that, although I’ve known who he was for . . . Jeez, I dunno. Three decades, something like that. In my years as an unpublished author—we won’t dwell on that miserable period—there was no one…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother I ended my last essay by presenting the general principles needed to answer the question, how long should copyright terms last? For those of you who didn’t read or don’t remember what I said, here it is: First, authors need to have enough protection to enable them to be able to make a living as full-time writers. Second, that protection has to be long enough to provide them with a motivation to write for the public, and see doing so as a possible profession. But that’s it. Those are the only two legitimate concerns. Any term of copyright which exceeds that minimum necessary length, as Macaulay put it in the quote I cited in my last column, has no legitimate purpose. Once you cross that line, a necessary evil has simply become an evil—and the farther past that line you go, the more evil it gets. Now let’s get into the details. The first thing I need to establish are some facts. I need to do that because I’ve found that many people, including many authors, have very unrealistic notions about how long copyright actually protects anything. What happens is that they look only at the law—ignoring all social and economic realities—and say to themselves, “Oh, wow, anything that gets written—including anything I write myself—will be protected by copyright for seventy years after I die.” Uh, no. In the real world—except for intellectual property owned by giant corporations—here is what really happens: The longer copyright lasts, the less likely it is that 99.99% of anything ever written will ever get reissued. What excessively long copyright terms actually do is destroy writing. They don’t protect writing, they ravage it. Why? Well, it’s simple—if you look at writing as a professional craft, subject to economic imperatives like any other form of work, instead of a legal or philosophical abstraction. Here is the cold, hard reality. I call it the ninety-nine percent rule:…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | The Editor’s Page This article was originally published in Jim Baen’s Universe Vol 1, Num 3, October 2006. by Eric Flint Jim Baen, the founder of this magazine, died three months ago. Between that and the fact that we’ve now had enough initial experience with Universe to have a much better sense of the prospects for the magazine than we did when we launched it at the end of last year, I think it would be appropriate for me to use this issue’s Editor’s Page to let our readers know what our current plans are. Jim was replaced as publisher of Baen Books by Toni Weisskopf. I met with Toni at the recent Worldcon in Los Angeles to discuss the prospects for the magazine and, most importantly, to decide whether we’d continue with Jim Baen’s Universe after the first year was over. When we launched the magazine, Jim didn’t want to commit to more than one year’s publication. Six issues, in other words. Given that there were so many as-yet-unknown variables involved in publishing an electronic magazine based on the business model we’re using, I completely agreed with him. We simply had no way of knowing ahead of time, without any experience, whether a magazine like this could make it commercially. We had a lot of theories, when we started, but theory is a treacherous beast if it’s not muzzled by facts—and we had no facts. True, we could use Baen Books’ experience with Webscriptions, selling e-ARCs and distributing the e-magazine The Grantville Gazette as something of a guide. But none of those really served that well as a model for a magazine like Universe. That’s the reason, if anyone has ever wondered, that we’ve been selling subscriptions only in the form of a fixed one-year package. Regardless of what month you start your subscription, what you’re going to get is the first six issues, starting with the June 2006 issue—as opposed to a…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother Originally published in Jim Baen’s Universe, Vol 1 Num 2, August 2006 I want to continue my discussion of copyright, which I began in last issue’s column, before turning my attention to the issue of so-called “Digital Rights Management” itself. The reason I want to do so is because what lies at the heart of DRM is one set of answers to a few simple questions: 1) What sort of protection do authors require, to make sure that they can and will keep engaging in their labor? 2) Why do they need a particular sort of protection, as opposed to another? 3) For how long do they need it? I’ll address the first two of these questions in this column, and the third one in the next. Let’s start with the first one, whose answer is obvious. If you don’t figure out a way to pay people to do labor such as writing fiction, one of two things will happen: a) Some potential writers won’t do it at all. b) Most will, simply because they feel a personal urge to do so. But, because they can’t make a living as authors, they will—certainly on average—never get all that good at it. The second point, by the way, is much more important than the first. The number of people who set out to become writers for the purpose of making money is miniscule, and always has been. To be blunt, only a moron would take up being an author as a way to make a living, much less a good living. As careers go, for all but a tiny percentage, it is either impossible altogether except as a part-time occupation, or pays dismally and erratically even if you can manage to do it full-time. I know a lot of authors, and I’m an author myself. I do not know a single one who set out to…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | The Editor’s Page This article was originally published in Jim Baen’s Universe Vol 1, Num 2, August 2006 by Eric Flint My original plans for this issue’s “The Editor’s Page” got swept aside last month by the death of Jim Baen, the man who launched the magazine and whose name is—and will remain—on the masthead. Jim lived just long enough to see the first issue of the magazine come out on June 1. Less than two weeks later, on June 12th, he suffered a massive stroke from which he never recovered consciousness. He died on June 28th. That’s not much of a consolation, but it’s some. This magazine was important to Jim for several reasons, one of which I will spend most of this editorial discussing. He was only sixty-two years old when he died, after a life of many accomplishments, of which Universe was one. And by no means the smallest, either. For Jim, the magazine was both a return to his own origins—he was the editor of Galaxy back in the mid-seventies, early in his career—and a continuation and expansion of a policy he had made central to Baen Books since the onset of the electronic era. That was his complete and total opposition to so-called Digital Rights Management and all the panoply of laws, regulations and attitudes that surround it. One of the reasons he asked me to be the editor of Jim Baen’s Universe is because he knew I shared, in full, his hostility toward DRM. He wanted Universe, among other things, to be a showcase demonstrating that it was perfectly possible for a commercial publisher to be successful without soiling themselves with DRM. (“Soiling” is the genteel way to put it. Jim was far more likely, in private correspondence and conversation, to use a simpler Anglo-Saxon term.) There are a lot of ways you can examine Jim Baen’s life and his career. I spent some time thinking about how I…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother I’m going to be writing a regular column on the subject of electronic publishing, and the challenges it poses to modern society—as well as the opportunity it provides. This column will take up a number of related issues, including such matters as the proper length of copyright terms, the nature of Digital Rights Management and why we are opposed to it, and the largely mythical nature of so-called “online piracy.” We decided to keep this column separate from my general editor’s preface for each issue—see “The Editor’s Page”—because we think the issue is important enough for a separate column of its own. Furthermore, there will usually be a number of specific matters relevant to each issue of the magazine that I will need to address in “The Editor’s Page” that would simply get in the way of this discussion. We’re calling the column “Salvos Against Big Brother” because that captures the key aspect of the problem, so far as Jim Baen and I are concerned. Both the publisher of this magazine and its editor believe that so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM)—by which we mean the whole panoply of ever more restrictive laws concerning digital media, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)—are the following: First, they represent a growing encroachment on the personal liberties of the American public, as well as those of citizens in other countries in the world; Second, they add further momentum to what is already a dangerous tendency of governments and the large, powerful corporations which exert undue influence on them to arrogate to themselves the right to make decisions which properly belong to the public; Third, they tend inevitably to constrict social, economic, technical and scientific progress; And, fourth, they represent an exercise in mindless stupidity that would shame any self-respecting dinosaur. As this column progresses, in issue after issue, I will wind up spending most of my…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | The Editor’s Page This article was originally published in Jim Baen’s Universe Vol 1, Num 1, June 2006. By Eric Flint In my editor’s remarks for this first issue of Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, I want to discuss the current state of the short fiction market in science fiction and fantasy. I’m sure most people reading this already know that short form fiction has been declining steadily for decades, in our genre. All four of the major paper magazines still in existence—Analog, Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Realms of Fantasy—have been struggling against declining circulation figures for a long time, with no end in sight. Many smaller magazines have folded altogether. And the one major online F&SF; magazine that had been paying the best rates in the industry, the Sci-Fi channel’s SciFiction, recently closed down. The reasons are complex, and I’m not going to get into them here beyond a few brief remarks. What I want to talk about instead is the impact that the decline of short form fiction has on the field as a whole. That’s true, regardless of what causes it. In a nutshell, it’s extremely damaging, and for two reasons—one which affects authors directly, the other which affects the readership base of the genre and therefore its future. The absence of a large and vigorous market for short form fiction hammers authors directly. That’s because it makes F&SF; authors almost completely dependent on the novel market. And, while the novel market is and always will be intrinsically more lucrative than the short form market, it is also an extremely harsh environment for authors. Why? Well, simplifying a lot, it’s because of the fundamental economics involved. Novels, unlike washing machines and toasters and automobiles, are unique, each and every one of them. Not “unique” in the sense that they don’t have generic similarities, but “unique” simply in the obvious fact that each and every story has…
Eric said, in the preface to Grantville Gazette Volume V: “Sigh. Not one of these stories deals with Ye Big Picture. Not one of them fails to wallow in the petty details of Joe or Dieter or Helen or Ursula’s angst-ridden existence. Pure, unalloyed, soap opera, what it is.” And we continue in our grand soap operatic tradition with Grantville Gazette (count ’em) Volume Seven. Is Jon and Linda Sonnenleiter’s introduction of up-time style pizza to Naples critical to the war? Nope. Don’t think so. Neither is Mark Huston’s quiet story about an elderly couple and their choices. But the fans don’t much care, we’ve found. Ditto for John and Patti Friend’s crew of misfits who, somehow, make their way to Magdeburg. They’re not important to the events we’ll all read about in 1634: The Baltic War, at all. Neither is Virginia DeMarce’s Minnie Hugelmair or Tina Marie Hollister. They’re just not at all the type to get involved in politics and war. No more so is Russ Rittger’s Chad, who manages to find himself as something of a laundry mogul, or Terry Howard’s Jimmy Dick, who seems to drink himself into a philosophical mood with some regularity. On the other hand, Rick Boatright’s radio heads just might have an effect on that little altercation up in the Baltic, and there’s just no telling what Kerryn Offord’s Dr. Phil might come up with next. Kim Mackey’s Colette . . . well, she’s got this really, really rich relative who just might come in handy to know. And, if you’d like to build a Victrola, explore the mass media implications, plan the route for a railroad—not to mention learn about the engines for the trains, well, this is the place. Chris Penycate, Gorg Huff, Carsten Edelberger, Iver Cooper and I will tell you what we know about those. So, grab your coffee (or whatever beverage), load up on the chocolate bonbon’s, kick back in…
There is much to be said for inventiveness and imagination. Given our head, half the population of Grantville at the moment of the Ring of Fire would have contained exactly the right mix of characters and equipment to make our story a real whiz bang yarn. Hence the need for Virginia’s Grid. Unfortunately there too many of us and too many of these halves. Chaos is an ugly word. It’s worse than that. In addition to the half who are rocket scientists and the other half who are SEALS, Eric has provided us a list of the following additional halves: The half who are engineers, which are in turn divided into half electrical engineers, half locomotive engineers, half chemical engineers, half mechanical engineers, and too many thirds and quarters to count. The half who are collectors of all forms of weapons, including the third who collect Abrams tanks and Predators. The half who have a library larger than the Library of Congress. The half who have a library smaller than the Library of Congress, but significantly larger than the Great Library of Alexandria. The half who are above the age of 18 and below the age of 21. The half who are above the age of 21 and below the age of 23. The half who are above the age of 23 but below the age of 25. The half who are college graduates. The half who are one month away from graduating from college. The half who are one year away from graduating from college. The half who have advanced degrees in (see above, not forgetting the thirds and quarters). There is, I believe — at last count — exactly one person in everybody’s fantasy Grantville who is elderly and illiterate. Of course, he’s also the son of Alvin York and shoots even better than his daddy.