Why Is the Internet Getting Worse?

In Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column, he analyzes why everything on the internet is in his view "(suddenly, simultaneously) getting (much) worse."

The Villain of Their Own Story

He begins with how online platforms decay -- in the sense of no longer working to the benefit of users -- and proceeds to the questions of why they do so. He summarizes the "progression of the disease" thus: "First, companies are good to their users. Once users are lured in and have been locked down, companies maltreat those users in order to shift value to business customers, the people who pay the platform’s bills. Once those business users are locked in, the platform starts to turn the screws on them, too." The process sounds like the decline from a Golden Age or the fall from a primal Eden. Not that I suppose Doctorow claims the internet was ever perfect.

This essay focuses on his explanation of why it's all "suddenly, simultaneously" getting worse at the present time. According to Doctorow, it's not because the companies changed from beneficent providers of services and content to greedy Scrooges. They've always used algorithms to "twiddle" the figurative digital dials in the direction of the maximum profit to themselves. It's just that there used to be "constraints" on this strategy that no longer exist or at least not to an effective degree. The essay lists the principal constraints and explores how they've been weakened or eliminated in recent years.

As Doctorow puts it, "No one is the villain of their own story." Not even mega-corporations. "The tech bosses who once made good products told themselves they did so because they were virtuous, but much of that virtue stemmed not from their character, but from the consequences of failing to deliver good products at fair prices under ethical conditions." With the eviscerating of the consequences, as he sees it, the "virtue" built on pragmatic foundations has crumbled.

What, if anything, can consumers do to ameliorate this situation? We're left with an apparent scenario of inevitable decline -- a rather depressing prospect.

Doctorow elaborates on this topic in a more technically detailed post here:

Algorithms

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

If You're Going Through North Carolina...

I am not going to recommend that you wear some flowers in your hair. Such a disguise might not help at all. But you might want to read an article that has been thoughtfully shared by our sometimes copyright-unfriendly friends at the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article286920890.html

In my early days of bsp (blatant self promotion), there was a start-up company that did a very good deal on promotional postcards, and they also did car magnets. I remember embarrassing my daughter (and she was right that my behavior was inappropriate) by driving around with a shopping- bag-sized car door magnet displaying a bare chested hunk and promoting my alien romance novella, Mating Net.

If EFF and NewsObserver has it right, I should stop at the North Carolina welcome center rest stop near Asheville, and slap my old hunky door magnets on for the drive-thru of NC, because the plethora of surveillance cameras can even look at bumper stickers and share images with policemen everywhere. It would be better promo if I wrote first responder romances, of course.

Talking of promotion, Angela Hoy of Booklocker writes a fantastic weekly newsletter, which I highly recommend. Last week, she shared a feature article comparing the ROI (of time) of a newsletter vs a blog.

https://writersweekly.com/this-weeks-article/email-newsletter-vs-blog-which-sells-more-books-dawn-colclasure?utm_source_platform=mailpoet

What do you think? 

Maybe I am an outlier, but I tend to read the posts of the blogs to which I subscribe, and to delete unread the newsletters. I only stay subscribed because I don't want to hurt the authors' feelings by unsubscribing.

Also, a blog is searchable, and if one bothers with labels and so forth, blog posts show up in a by-topic search. Below are just two fantastic blog recommendations.

For excellent promo and marketing advice, you might want to add Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts to your list.

https://amarketingexpert.com/the-best-book-marketing-company-blog-in-publishing/

Another blog that ought to be a must-follow for not-yet-well-established writers is Writer Beware.

https://writerbeware.blog/

Happy Mothers' Day to all!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

Karen S. Wiesner: Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Hatching Series by Ezekiel Boone

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Hatching Series by Ezekiel Boone

by Karen S. Wiesner

Despite my avid fear of spiders (little bitty ones and big ones alike; monster queen ones? well, let's not even go there, except within this series), I couldn't resist something that was described as "Independence Day meets World War Z, only with spiders". In other words, apocalyptic stakes riddled with horror galore. I love horror and end-of-the-world stories. I took a chance of ensuring myself lasting months of nightmares all including the creepy-crawlies lurking around us, mostly unseen.

I devoured the first book, The Hatching, in almost no time at all, all the while feeling like I was about to be devoured by some arachnid monster creeping up behind me--and what the heck was that moving along my leg?!! I couldn't put this book down. Readers were taken all around the globe, given a piece of the puzzle from multiple angles. It starts in the heart of a Peruvian jungle, where tourists get the surprise of their lives when an ancient, long-dormant evil awakens…and feeds. Meanwhile, FBI agents are sent to investigate a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis with gruesome connections. Mysteries crop up around the world: Disturbing seismic patterns in India are stumping scientists in an earthquake lab. The Chinese government unfathomably decides to drop a bomb in a region of their own country. A package from South America arrives in a DC lab, and all hell breaks loose.

Mike Rich, an FBI agent, is an engaging main character. On the personal front, he's dealing with an ex-wife who's remarried, something that still wrecks him, and being a father to their daughter Annie while juggling a demanding job that barely gives him time to breathe. Professor Melanie Guyer is fascinated with all things spider, and she's also a loveable slut. The attraction between Mike and Melanie, after they meet through their work, is fun and an enjoyable reprieve from all the action and tension in this otherwise non-stop nail-biter.

Finishing the book was torture for me because I purchased it after it first came out--July 2016. At that time, I had no idea when the follow-up would be released, but I waited about nine months (April 2017). At that point, I was still interested in reading it so I went ahead and purchased it. Skitter was nearly as good as the first, but not quite as compelling. I still liked Mike, but Melanie's insistence on treating sex as unemotionally as she would a mindless massage was really starting to wear on me, especially since Mike was so lovable and her inability combined with unwillingness to commit to anything serious put me off rooting for her or Melanie and Mike as a couple. Zero Day came out in February 2018. I did buy it, mildly enjoyed it, but I think the huge lapse in waiting from one book to the next really harshed my initial buzz. I do intend to read them again back-to-back, as a series, instead of a drawn-out marathon of patience, like my first time around. Now that all the books are readily available, it's a great time to binge-read them again. The stories would also make an amazing movie series.

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

If We Could Do It Over Again

Recently, I've often pondered the question, "What if you could live your life over?" Many works of science fiction and fantasy explore this provocative idea, such as the 1986 movie PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED. Peggy Sue, disillusioned with her marriage, gets transported back to her senior year in high school. Her second chance, however, ends with her making the same decision as before, becoming engaged to her future husband just as she did on the first go-round. Would I take such a chance if offered? The prospect of avoiding so many past mistakes is attractive. OTOH, there are many things I would dread living through again, such as the hard work of getting through college and grad school And live one's life from what date? If I had to start over as a child (say, at the age of eight when my father remarried) with full memories of my first life, it would sound more like a nightmare than a gift. The idea of reliving childhood with an adult's mind -- and being treated as a child, with no significant power to affect events -- would be frustrating and depressing, I think. If I had to pick a "reset" point, I would probably choose to start over on the day after our wedding. But how could I convince my husband to make the desired changes? He'd think I was joking or crazy.

Anyway, in practice the memories would get fuzzy and confused after a while, so that one would eventually lose most of the advantage of hindsight/foresight (which would it be?). Maybe writing a detailed letter to oneself at an early age would work better; there's a country song about what advice the narrator would include in a message to himself at seventeen. With everything in writing, one couldn't forget the details with the passage of time. (How granular should one get, anyway? "Don't let that salesman in Albuquerque talk you into buying a sewing machine; it will be a waste of money.") But -- as soon as a few significant alterations were made, the past as I remembered it would go off the rails anyway. A shift in a day or two would mean different children would be conceived, rendering a lot of the memories moot. And changes might end up making things worse instead of better. Science fiction provides an abundance of cautionary tales about time travelers who try to "fix" the past and precipitate disasters instead (e.g., the protagonist of Stephen King's 11/22/63, on a mission to prevent President Kennedy's assassination).

On the whole, it may be better we can't do that. There's a TWILIGHT ZONE episode (based on a short story) about a rich man who wants the fun of returning to the prime of life and building his fortune all over again, so he strikes a deal with a demon. It turns out he doesn't enjoy the early 20th century as much as he thought he would on the basis of his rose-colored memories. Also, he keeps waiting to turn young again, which doesn't happen, so he dies of a heart attack (no modern medicine available). The demon appears to him and points out that he wanted to travel back to the time he remembered -- "Can we help it if your memory is lousy?" -- and he never mentioned having his youth restored. I'd probably tell the demon or genie, "No, thanks," and play the hand I've been dealt.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Tis The Season...

'Tis the Season to be jolly. Not. At least, "not" in the sense of expecting a portly foreigner to come down the chimney bearing gifts.

It might, however, be the season for romance writer conferences and retreats and spring flings. Many will be live and in person. Some may be over Zoom or through Microsoft Teams. If you are giving a presentation at one of these events, legal blogger Kiera Boyd of the law firm Fasken IP has some timely advice about copyright and presentations.

Copyright and Presentations: How to Avoid Presentation-Related Copyright Infringement

I've not seen a legal blog on this topic for years, if at all. There was a time when a speaker at a private conference could probably get away with using other people's photographs, music, video, or words, but now that everyone (almost) has a smart phone, one never knows when one is being photographed, recorded, filmed, or streamed. The chances of being exposed are greater than ever.

Also, at least in America, the legal laissez-faire approach to "Fair Use" (known as "Fair Dealing" in Canada, is tightening up.

Frank D. D'angelo of the law firm Loeb & Loeb writes warningly about a bit of a sea change in a couple of high-profile copyright infringment cases.

https://quicktakes.loeb.com/post/102j6l8/appeals-court-signals-narrowing-of-fair-use-doctrine-post-warhol#page=1

If you are an author, speaking at a convention, it is always best to get permission in writing from the copyright owner, even if you don't think that you need it, and even if it ought to be obvious that you are giving great publicity and promo to the author you are quoting or whose cover art you are displaying, or the musician whose music you are using to set a mood.

The most important rights to be aware of when jazzing up a presentation are "public performance rights", and "reproduction rights" (in the sense of copying, publishing, distributing).

Once upon a time, there was some tech titan who claimed that it is better to ask forgiveness after infringing someone else's copyright than to ask permission (and perhaps be explicitly denied permission) beforehand. This writer does not think that that is good legal advice! 

If you cannot get permission from the copyright owner, make very sure that you do give attribution to the owner, and that you make it clear that your use is either news reportage --preferably with commentary--, educational instruction, criticism or illustrative for research purposes. There are other potential "Fair Use" defenses that would not make sense in a the context of giving a seminar (or whatever) at a readers-writers shindig, where your purposes are self-promotion.

Copyright infringement lawsuits are expensive for both the plaintiff and for the defendant, and the outcome is unpredictable. Best not to give a copyright owner the provocation, IMHO.

For more on Fair Use, check out the CopyrightAlliance.

https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/what-is-fair-use/

Check out Kiera Boyd's article, with special attention to what she suggests are best practices for using images that you find online. 

Assume that any image you see online is protected by copyright, (even if the copyright symbol and attribution has been removed), but if the copyright symbol and attribution is on the image, that does not mean that you have a license to cut and paste it.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com
EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday  

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Leech by Hiron Ennes by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Leech by Hiron Ennes

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

I picked up Leech by Hiron Ennes at a used bookstore and bought it because 1) it was in the science fiction/horror section, 2) it sounded like a combination of genres I love and the back cover blurb definitely appealed, and 3) I liked the intriguing cover, which, by the way, my wastewater treatment manager husband immediately said, tongue in cheek, "Look, a BOD bottle--but what's that weird, black gunk coming out of it?" 

I barely know where to start with this review. I've never before read a book quite like Leech, which was published in 2022 and was the debut novel by the author, who works in the field of medicine. Leech runs the gamut when it comes to genre classification: Gothic, Victorian era literature, historical, science fiction, horror, medical mystery, speculative and post-apocalyptic fiction are some of the fitting categories, along with two others that may also (but I'm not quite sure) qualify: steampunk and body horror. In the case of the latter, I've only heard of such a thing in relation to Caitlin Starling, an author I really like who's also a narrative designer that creates art exhibitions. These could be considered (by the squeamish like myself) body horror. 

The back cover blurb barely seems adequate to cover what takes places in this unusual novel. But maybe that's the best place to start, with a posting of the blurb on the book. This reveals to us what the author and publisher intended to give away freely about the major themes in the story. 

Meet the cure for the human disease. 

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies. 

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed. 

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again. 

There are strongly overt clues running all through this blurb as to what the underlying plot is, but it's not really something that's realized fully until the reader is well into the novel--something I'll talk about again soon. 

I instantly liked this story when I started reading it because it has evocative depictions of the Victorian era--the picturesque setting (in this case, a desolate one filled with frigid, imposing mountains, dense forests, and a ruin of a "castle"); the genteel manners and mannerisms practiced by all with the classes of society always firmly occupying their proper places; the quiet, subtle, eerie, and insidious sense that absolutely nothing is as it seems on the surface. In fact, one of the things I liked most in those beginning chapters was how much the main character (who isn't specifically named through most of the story--it's written in first person point-of-view) reminded me of Jonathan Harker, a new solicitor, traveling to Eastern Europe to meet with his very first client. Leech takes place mainly in Verdira, located in a remote, frozen stronghold where wheatrock--an extremely valuable commodity used for many different things--is mined. 

What the back cover blurb plainly hints at but doesn't firmly verify for most of first two-thirds of the novel is that the pathologist the Institute has sent to investigate the death of the previous one is in fact a hive-mind body host of a parasite that's replaced all medical practitioners in existence in the past five-hundred years since it established predominance over living creatures. This very same parasite was in part responsible for most human beings being transformed into mutated states while some other, unspecified (but hinted at being caused by a "{galaxy?} flying machine") physical disaster turned the world's oceans acid, shattered the moon, and created feral machines called ventigeaux ("orphans of biotechnology", as the author describes them). 

Most of the characters in the book were transformed by that parasite in one way or another from mechanic hearts, to vestigial tails to Verdira's Baron being kept alive mainly through arcane machinery. The author intended it to be the norm in this world for regular patients to display "unconventional physical attributes" such as "a mechanical limb or a migratory birthmark or a literal doppelganger". 

In this feudal society, while the Institute handles all medical matters, powerful barons run local areas. In addition to the misery-inducing Baron who rules over Verdira and doesn't have a kind word for anyone living in the crumbling chateau with him are his family and servants. His grown son Didier cares nothing about the lost miners and numerous massacres that have and are taking place in Verdira so long as the precious wheatrock is capable of being mined to contribute to their ongoing wealth. His wife drinks but never escapes the fact that she is, sadly, little more than a breeder. Her only worth is in producing heirs. And she knows it. Due to the mutations from the pathogen, she's suffered a long series of stillborn births. Her only surviving progenies are twin girls creepily described as "A tangle of dark hair…two small bodies sprouting like stems from its middle." Additionally, there's the tragic houseboy, Èmile, the last survivor of genocide against indigenous cave and mountain dwellers. 

While the back cover blurb and the writing itself were almost blatant about touting the "symbiont" parasite that's running the medical show in this world, it wasn't immediately apparent what exactly was taking place in the story as I read through the first two-thirds. It took me that long to make all the necessary connections to comprehend that I was reading a book that was in the point of view of a pathogen for most of that time. (Guess having been in the POV of a dinosaur in another book I read isn't as odd as I formerly thought compared to this.) Only later in the story, when the previous owner of the host body re-exerted her (or them-) self and emerged despite the controlling parasite inhabiting the Institute's hive-mind also being there, did it become clear that the true horror of the story was that the main character in the host body had come to realize what had happened to her or them. At the same time, the hive-mind of that parasite had identified a brand-new parasite called Pseudomycota that killed the former doctor's host body and infected nearly everyone in Verdira. 

Stated in an interview on the BookPage website as the author's main influence for writing Leech are "…the stories science can tell us about our own cells. … Deep in our mitochondria lives a strand of DNA…an essential piece of our cellular network without which we would die. …Scientists…propose it is the genome of a foreign organism that hitched a ride inside us back when we were single-celled. It’s been sitting there ever since, perpetuating itself. … Does it care about me, or does it only care about my reproductive success? … You stay awake so many nights thinking about stuff like that, and eventually you write Leech." I found this to be one of the most unique premises I've ever heard for a story. It's part of why I found it so tantalizing as I tried to piece together the tapestry of what was happening. 

It's a brilliant story that was well-written…up until the last bit of the book, where the narration shifts from hive-mind parasite to former host-body consciousness. While this does make sense in the theme of the story, the end made for a lot of curse words strung together with poor grammar in an almost too modern tone of voice that I don't believe fit the previous Victorian style. Or maybe that was the point. I also felt like the book dragged on too long near the middle. Firmer editing in both these situations wouldn't have been remiss. 

Beyond that, the unfortunate side effect of keeping readers in the dark about the basic scenario of the story is that, when details are finally given to fill in the many, many gaps that'd been deliberately left hanging earlier in the story, now suddenly readers are overwhelmed, smothered, even crushed beneath the weight of it all. I found the last third of the book very hard to process, and quite honestly, I didn't understand the end scene one iota. It almost seemed to imply that one of the characters turned into a werewolf or a dog, like the ones he cared for at the chateau (gulp! a ventigeaux???). I wasn't entirely sure, and I could be completely off about that. 

In reflecting after I finished reading the book and then allowed myself to research it so I could figure out all the things that seemed foggy while I was reading, I asked myself if I actually liked the story. My answer is kind of the same answer as I would give for Never Let Me Go written by the absolutely brilliant author Kazuo Ishiguro. You can read Margaret Carter's review of the book here on Alien Romances Blog: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/01/clones-as-organ-donors.html. Ishiguro is the same writer who gave us The Remains of the Day, which will probably always be in my top ten of favorite novels. When I read Never Let Me Go, I felt like I was missing a vital piece of the puzzle--the one in fact that would give everything else there focus an intense meaning. Without it, nothing made sense. I had flashes of feeling like I understood what was going on in the story while reading it, but nothing cohesive, nothing strong enough to help me bridge the gap. When I finished the book and then, again, allowed myself to research it, I found myself deeply and irrevocably disappointed. If the author had given me one crucial bit of information, I would have not only liked the book I would have loved it. Instead, I felt disgruntled by the lack of clarification that should have been given within the book--in my opinion, as early as possible. Without it, I had no sense of cohesion or resolution, and I felt cheated. I was left angry enough to not read another Ishiguro book to this day. I know, sad. I've decided this manner of not quite finishing a book in a way that brings everything full circle isn't really my cup of tea when it comes to reading. 

In a similar but nowhere near as drastic way, Leech kind of gave me everything other than the illuminating key to understanding the whole book until the very end, at which point I did eventually get most of what was needed for clarity and closure. Nevertheless, I did feel that a search for deeper explanations to bring everything together was needed even then. Unfortunately, a lot of the websites that I found information about Leech saw this as an allegorical tale. Like Tolkien, I distrust and abhor allegory, and I try not to include it in any of the books I write. So I passed over all that without reading much, not wanting or even being willing to read "real world parallels" into a fictional story. I do recommend Leech, especially for those who love speculative horror set in the backdrop of Victorian-era-like literature. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

RavenCon 17 (April 2024)

Last weekend, my husband, our daughter, and I attended RavenCon near Richmond, Virginia. Here's the convention's website. Information about this year's con is still up.

RavenCon

Guests of honor were editor Ellen Datlow and author Ursula Vernon, aka T. Kingfisher. Since she's one of my favorite writers, I was thrilled when I learned she'd be there. Her reading consisted of excerpts from a new "Sworn Soldier" novel -- sequel to WHAT MOVES THE DEAD and WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT, yay! -- and a novel about an angel and a demon teaming up to solve a mystery in a small village. (She mentioned her dismay when the GOOD OMENS series premiered, after she was well into the book.) I watched part of her interview later, fascinating background information about the origins of her writing career.

I appeared on panels about Writing Believable Characters and Geeks Parenting Geeks. The latter especially was a lot of fun, the whole session filled with memories and anecdotes about introducing our children to the worlds of fantasy, SF, and horror, plus the works our kids turned us on to. My husband took part in discussions on Writing with a Partner and Writing a Series. Together we appeared in "How Will Religion Change in Space?" Well attended, that was lively and thought-provoking but slightly chaotic. In our opinion, the moderator opened the floor to questions too soon. Eager audience participation is always desirable, but people kept prematurely derailing topics in progress. I never did get to say much about Mary Doria Russell's THE SPARROW, one book I especially wanted to delve into, but anyway it was a worthwhile and memorable panel.

The most heavily attended session I watched, surprisingly, was a lecture with slides proposing that the folktale of "The Smith and the Devil" is the "world's oldest fairy tale." The room was packed, with people sitting on the floor and leaning against walls -- at 9 p.m. on Friday. An interesting late-night presentation I watched only part of was called "Ask a Necromancer," by a licensed mortician answering questions about her profession. On Sunday morning, a slide show about angel lore in myth, fiction, and film mentioned some works new to me that I may watch on video streaming. I brought up C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, strangely (from my viewpoint) omitted from her book list even though she cited several other things that sounded rather peripheral to the topic.

At the Saturday evening masquerade contest, even though I recognized hardly any of the costumes, I marveled at how impressively elaborate most were. Even the "cosplay showcase" of people who didn't enter the official competition featured many dazzling outfits. One I did recognize immediately -- the Queen of Hearts, complete with flamingo, with the equally regally dressed King of Hearts hovering in the background.

Fortunately for getting to events on time, the hotel restaurant offered buffets at all three meals on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday. Not so fortunately, we had to fend for ourselves at Friday dinner in the only food venue open, the bar. With the resulting crowd, we didn't get fed until half an hour after ordering, when the opening ceremony had already started. Aside from not being present for the self-introduction of guests, though, we didn't miss anything vital.

We drove there and back uneventfully. We arrived home on Sunday afternoon to find the house and the cats in good condition.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.