Publishing Contract Horrors

Happy Halloween!

Cory Doctorow on the worsening and non-negotiable clauses in typical publishers' contracts:

Reasonable Agreement

For instance, some demand all existing, hypothetical, and future-conceivable rights, regardless of the unlikelihood of ever using them. As Doctorow mentions, the confidentiality clause is a bit weird. Recent contracts I've signed all include it, but when would I normally receive confidential information from a publisher, and why or to whom would I think of revealing it? No problem agreeing to that clause, since the possibility of violating it is remote.

I've heard of most of these abuses but not suffered many, happily. As for indemnifying publishers against liability, from my limited experience there's no avoiding some version of that clause. Nowadays standard contracts include it, and an author who refuses to sign simply won't get the contract. One can only hope for an agreement that doesn't include the outrageous versions described by Doctorow.

My one experience in having a novel bought by a major publisher was with Harlequin. For a first-time, unagented author, their contract is a non-negotiable boilerplate document. Fortunately, I've had no problems with them or the agreement. By the time I sold them my stand-alone vampire novel EMBRACING DARKNESS (part of my Vanishing Breed universe but not dependent on any other work in it), their former restrictive pen name policies I'd heard about no longer existed.

The small presses and e-publishers who've published my books and stories have been almost always fine to work with. I did once have a narrow escape from a noncompete clause. A startup small press that a friend in an online writers' group connected me with offered to accept the novel I sent them. The offer included a contract with a clause that made me gasp in horrified disbelief. A broad interpretation would have forbidden me in perpetuity to "compete" with the book, which included vampires, by publishing anything else on the same subject. Vampirism -- my specialty. That's enough gall to divide into three parts! I wrote VOID over each page of the contract they'd preemptively signed, filed it in a drawer, and notified the publisher that I refused the offer.

Doctorow's essay condemns noncompete clauses in the strongest terms. In my opinion, an author of nonfiction might reasonably be asked to refrain from writing anything else that might be considered duplicative for, say, a year at most. As for fiction, how would "compete" even be defined? Maybe in terms of allowing one company exclusive rights to a series? Fortunately, I'd already had lots of stories and novels in the Vanishing Breed universe published in multiple venues long before there was any chance that question would arise.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Slop Dosh

My sainted father used to call my mother's cooking "slopdosh" on occasion. Slopdosh, also absquatulate, are not words in common parlance these days, which is a pity, I think. 

I write in praise of slopdosh, not literally of a mixture of mud and water but of the domestic economy of stews and curries. In hindsight, perhaps my father was not overly complimentary but his vocabulary was probably influenced by an institution that calls their fine dining facilities a Mess.

My father served in Burma and India during the Second World War. He brought home some interesting western oriental weapons, some exotic health problems, and a dislike of curry.

Curry contains garlic, cumin, turmeric and many other spices, and it is a wonderful preservative of elderly food and also a fine disguiser of less pleasant tastes and textures. The more times you cook a curry, the better it tastes, but the more indistinguishable its ingredients become. Hence, slopdosh.

I've got arthritis, alas. For a few months, I gave up potatoes (which I love), also tomatoes, peppers, chillies, and eggplant, and was doing well.  Last weekend, I mashed potatoes and made the most delicious fish pie (rather like cottage pie or shepherds pie, in that, instead of pastry, one has mashed potatoes on top of the protein slop). Well, that was a bad idea!!!!!  I had a flare up and could hardly walk or lift anything as heavy as a bottle of water, and if I got on my knees, I had to crawl for quite a distance before I hit a position from which I could get back to my feet. So, I had to call in a professional to help me clean my kitchen and my fridge this week.

My all-American cleaner said I am disgusting. What prompted this feedback? She saw a well-wrinkled apple, a half cabbage, some slightly wilted beetroot leaves, some carrot top leaves and the green ends of a couple of leeks, green stalks of broccolini, and a bowl of the parts of two cauliflowers that most people discard, the root end of a heart of celery, the remains of stewed prunes in cranberry juice, and a coffee mug full of kale stalks. She would have thrown it out.

On the bright side, she put my trusty electric crock pot within reach.

In times of food insecurity and rising prices, slop dosh is a good thing. I put a good splash of virgin olive oil into the crock pot, added diced onion, shredded leek greens, torn wilted beetroot leaves, chopped nasty bits of cauliflower (not actually nasty, in fact, surprisingly tender if the knobbly bits are discarded) and most of my other fridge contents (including the kale stalks) and seared it in the oil with half a jar of curry powder, then added reserved vegetable water and simmered the lot on and off during off peak electric hours.

By the way, I have attended two presentations by Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn of the Cleveland Clinic in which his wife and daughter flourishingly strip the leafy bits from kale, but in my experience the stalky bits can also be snipped with kitchen scissors, cooked in slop dosh and are excellent fiber for bowel health.

My internist tells me that I eat the most healthy diet of any of his patients. My gynecologist tells me that I am the only patient she has who eats sardines. (Sardines are good because they are the whole fish, soft, calcium rich backbone and all.)

This boiling of leftovers gave me a base for at least 8 meals for two, assuming that I add cooked chicken, or chick peas, or beans, or mussel meats, or shrimp/prawns, etc for protein respectively to each double portion. I've frozen some, recooked the rest. The French call reheated leftovers "rechauffe" which sounds ever so much more acceptable, doesn't it?

Curry can be as fruity as you wish. Old pineapple does well, or blueberries, or dried raisins or cranberries or cherries or ginger... or apples or figs. Wilted lettuce works, as does peeled and well cooked parsnip.  I cannot recommend bananas, though. You can thicken your slop dosh with Bisto gravy powder or granules, or Taco sauce powder, but it won't need much thickening.

Talking of ginger, the candied stuff is fine. The powder is only good for flavor. Fresh ginger has the best health benefits.

Americans don't seem to like beetroot. One tip is to boil it. Then peel off the skin by pressing firmly with a thumb, then slice it and reheat it in Braswell pepper or chili jelly with a sprinkling of chili powder. 

Set aside the liquor from cooking the original beetroot, because no matter how well you wash your beets, some sandy grit remains. Let the grit sink, pour off most of the water and discard the last inch. Use the red water to cook red or black beans from dry, and/or barley.

Another gross but fascinating thing I like to do is break a cob of corn in half, leave it out to dry overnight, then use a thumb to tease out the niblets, row by row, and add them to a dish every third day. Some always survive digestion. Nuff said.

Apologies that this has nothing to do with copyright law.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: State of Fear by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: State of Fear by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner  

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

State of Fear was a 2004 technothriller fiction novel written by Michael Crichton that I found utterly authentic each time I've read it. I'll state upfront that there really isn't anything "alien" about this book. No strange beasties or supernatural elements anywhere, beyond extrapolation of current events pushed to the extreme edge toward one possible conclusion. I chose to cover it here because the series of Michael Crichton reviews I've been rolling out for more than a month now and will continue for a few more weeks simply wouldn't be complete without this book included. 

Also, let's dispense with the climate controversy surrounding this particular title right from the off. The author included at the back of the book not only graphs and footnotes, an appendix, but also a 20-page bibliography containing a list of 172 books and journal articles presented "to assist those readers who would like to review my thinking and arrive at their own conclusions". In all this, the author supported his own highly-controversial beliefs about global warming. A host of so-called experts in numerous fields disputed his views, and he fought back with a statement on his website (which you can read here: https://www.michaelcrichton.com/works/state-of-fear-authors-message/). Crichton has also stated that he didn't want to write the book. He was encouraged to do it, tried to ignore the idea, felt like a coward, worried he'd be killed for going ahead and writing it, and, against all logic, he ended up doing it anyway. 

I think everyone needs to be reminded from the beginning of this review that this book is a work of fiction, one grounded in the very realistic science that Crichton was famous for delving into and finding the "potentially terrifying underbelly" beneath. 

That said, I don't have anything nearing an educated opinion about climate change or global warming. (I, in fact, doubt there's a single person alive who actually does. It would take great arrogance and audacity to believe anyone could know much, if anything, about an ancient planet that's been in existence long before any of us appeared on it.) I only know that I believe each and every one of us is a steward and caretaker of Earth by default, given that we were all born here. As such, we need to take care of it and do our parts in protecting our portion of it in whatever ways we can. I'll say no more about this subject than that. 

State of Fear runs the gamut of settings--from Ireland's glaciers to Antarctica's volcanoes, to Arizona desert and Solomon Islands' jungle, the streets of Paris and the beaches of Los Angeles. You won't be bored on the setting front. Each of these locations is described brilliantly, and the characters involved are finely drawn with a lawyer for a rich philanthropist, Peter Evans, leading the extremely large cast. Evans manages contributions to the fictional National Environmental Resource Fund (NERF). Misused funds are noted, and it comes to light that international law enforcement agencies are following the trail of an eco-terrorist faction with the acronym of ELF, a fictional group that's modeled after the existing Earth Liberation Front. This particular group is so fanatical about convincing the world that global warming exists, they're willing to simulate natural disasters, killing countless, in order to get their message across. Surrounding the controversy is the planning of a NERF-sponsored climate conference. Evans, along with a host of others, intends to stop ELF from causing a tsunami to inundate everyone and everything on California's coastline. 

The only reason I can see anyone not liking this book is because they've forgotten it's written in Crichton's usual modus operandi of fiction with "the absolute ring of truth" (stated by Larry Nation, American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), after the author received their 2006 Journalism Award, which has since been renamed the "Geosciences in the Media" Award, for the research he did for State of Fear). This story has everything a reader could want in a tightly-written thriller. It's sad when fiction has to be saddled with overwhelming and usually toxic political agendas. 

Whether or not you've read this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale from a master. 

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/

Mushroom-Robot Biohybrids

Robots controlled by electrical impulses from fungal mycelium threads:

Robot Blends Living Organisms and Machines

The "rootlike threads" are grown into a robot's hardware. I was surprised to learn fungi generate electrical impulses. Because the mycelia are light-sensitive, scientists can control the direction and speed of the robots' movements with ultraviolet light.

It's hoped that, when perfected, such biohybrid machines could have agricultural uses, among other applications. The article includes a photo of a robot covered with a "self-healing skin. . . that can react to light and touch." The picture looks a bit like the conventional image of a golem.

I'm reminded of T. Kingfisher's riveting novel WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, a retelling of Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" in science-fiction terms. It attributes the eerie phenomena -- e.g., the climactic rising of a dead character from her tomb -- to an intelligent fungal colony that lives in the tarn and infiltrates the bodies of animals (and at least one person). The organism seems to be trying to communicate and apparently doesn't mean any real harm. How could it understand why humans get upset when corpses walk around?

Has anyone ever produced a horror movie about a swarm of intelligent fungi? If mushroom-robot symbiosis ever results in a successful commercial product, surely such a film couldn't be far behind.

One expert in the ethical implications of technological innovations expresses concern "that if biohybrid robots become more sophisticated and are deployed in the ocean or another ecosystem it could disrupt the habitat, challenging the traditional distinction between life and machine." However, there's no mention of a potential for mycelium-powered machines to become conscious and demand civil rights or fair salaries, fringe benefits, and working conditions.

Margaret L. Carter

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

32 Grave Diggers

Everyone has 32 of them, more or less...

These grave diggers are associated with decay, disease, death, not necessarily in that order, and --yes-- I am talking about teeth.

Teeth are a bit wide of my usual mark of writer-related, copyright issues, but not so far from my occasional rants about pharmocracy and the food pyramid.

Astronauts may not have much use for teeth while they are in space. Apparently, most of their diet is designed to be "low residue", which means less poop, and it is freeze dried and designed to be reconstituted with the injection of warm water through a valve into a pouch.

https://www.space.com/what-do-astronauts-eat-space-food

Back on Earth, it seems, that gummies are being marketed heavily, for casual chewing throughout the day: super beets, CBD, clolestrum chewables for kids, laxative gummies, gummies for indigestion, and more.

Gummies are made of gelatin, sugar, high fructose corn syrup. Gelatin is pig or cow hooves, bones, skin, and other bits. 

 

Why this sudden gummy craze? Do dentists need work? Is there a glut of dead farm animals, such as newborn calves?

How Gummy Candies Are Made (Shocking!)

One wonders whether the ingredients of gelatin feature in ingredients lists. There are religions that forbid the consumption of pigs, or cows. Do religious adherents know?

Did you know that insulin was once made out of brown muck from a dog's pancreas, later it was extracted from cows and pigs, but nowadays, it can be synthesized from E-coli bacteria.

Talking of cows and hiding their gross bits... If you don't know what colestrum is, and that smug advertising guy gives a word salad explanation, but does not tell you, colestrum is the thick, super fatty, first milk post partum that a new mother produces for her newborn.

So, grown men are consuming it now? And calling it Armra.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/bovine-colostrum

 

No doubt it is very thrifty to make use of skin and bones, and space-efficient to process food for astronauts and warriors on deployment.  

https://science.howstuffworks.com/mre3.htm

There's an interesting book by Dr. Joel "Gator" Warsh, "Parenting At Your Child's Pace" that discusses the potential that up to 20% of the causes of autism might relate to environment and diet. And there is a documentary by Dr. Malhotra, "First Do No Pharm" which claims, among myriad things, that a poor diet drives disease (chronic disease), and that up to 60% of the calories in the Western diet come from ultra-processed foods.

The original saying (and an example of synecdoche) about "digging your grave with your teeth" referred to immoderate portion control rather than expeditious, necessary, or convenience-related dietary selections, but the point remains that while a little of what you fancy might do you good, a lot of it might not do so.

 

Another saying to live by  (literally! and an example of a pun) might be, "The quality of life depends upon the liver", in which "liver" refers to the organ, not to the bon viveur.

 

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

 

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Prey by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Prey by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Published in 2002, Prey is the technothriller result of author Michael Crichton's interest in extrapolating where three current trends of the time might go, including distributed programming, biotechnology, and nanotechnology (a concept proposed in 1959 by theoretical physicist Richard Feynman). 

The story opens in a Nevada desert where a secret facility has been built. The scientists there have undertaken an experiment using predatory micro-robots they've constructed. These creatures have the potential to evolve…and they've escaped. 

Main character Jack Forman is an unemployed software programmer and a stay at home dad while his wife Julia in an executive for a nanorobotics company called Xymos. Her team's development of a revolutionary imaging technology takes up most of her time, and Jack finds himself worried she's having an affair. When Julie shows him a video of what she's been working on, he's impressed but uneasy about the ramifications it could have. 

As the story progresses, Julia's behavior becomes increasingly strange and abusive toward her family, culminating in a car crash. Compelled to investigate what was going on with his wife of late, Jack is led straight to Xymos. The project manager admits to him that they've lost control of the micro-bot swarms that can replicate humans and they've escaped to the outside world. With Jack's help, the team has to figure out how to destroy something that only cares about survival at any cost and sees us as little more than its prey. 

As is so often the case with this author, Prey is a cautionary one. One reviewer for The Observer pointed out that in this novel Crichton does what he does best--probing the latest scientific advances and showing "their potentially terrifying underbelly". Even critics who found the story absurd confessed to being unable to stop turning the pages feverishly. This story has all the elements of great horror. It's grounded in believable science, populated with multi-faceted characters in an intriguing setting, and filled with all the suspense the best thriller novels have in abundance.

Rights to a movie version of the story were purchased but thus far it hasn't been made that I know of--a shame because this would make a great film. 

Whether or not you've read this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale from a master of the fantastic. 

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/ 

Organs on a Chip

Quinton Smith, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at one of the colleges I attended, the University of California (Irvine), is working on organoids -- "organs-on-a-chip." Stem cells are grown in "three-dimensional gel molds" to mimic human organs in order to explore "how tissues interact." For example, he has reprogrammed stem cells into liver cells to study the connection between liver disease and diet; he grows miniature placentas to investigate preeclampsia. Lab-grown organoids have an ethical advantage over animal experimentation. They're also preferable to animals, which aren't precise counterparts of human subjects, in being composed of actual human cells.

The Organsmith

Here's a Wikipedia article explaining the process in greater depth and technical detail:

Organoids

Of course, I realize these scientists aren't creating independently living organisms, much less generating life from inanimate matter, but the concept still sounds intriguingly Frankensteinian.

Remember the lab-grown miniature brains being studied by neuroscientists?

Artificially Grown Mini-Brains

It's fun to imagine the mini-brains attaining sapience, then conspiring to radicalize the other organoids, overthrow the experimenters, break out of the lab, and rampage through the wider world like the Blob in the vintage movie.

Margaret L. Carter

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

E.L.V.I.S. and the Trojan Horse

This is about your voice: your singing and speaking voice, not your writing voice. AI can steal either, or both.

As a writer, you may not have thought very much about your speaking voice, but if you are published, you have probably taken part in a vlog, or podcast, or been interviewed, or posted a recording of yourself reading a teaser scene, or a chapter of your book (aloud, obviously).

You probably have not copyrighted your voice. Voices cannot necessarily be copyrighted. Yet, banks and brokerage houses try to bully you into allowing your voice to be used as verification of your identity.

My advice is, never agree to it. Moreover --and I have said this before--never participate in any telephone call on a recorded line, unless you initiated the call and know with whom you are speaking. Don't answer polls on the telephone, especially if the self-described pollster wants you to answer "Yes" or "No" (and only those precise words will suffice).

They may tell you that the call is being recorded "for quality assurance", or "for your protection", or "for your convenience", don't speak up. Hang up. "Quality assurance" is to make you think twice about swearing, it's to protect the caller. "Your protection" is "their" protection at the very best, and could be the opposite.

Convenience is a Trojan Horse.

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. Or Greeks (a jingoist might say). 

Just to weave a little -- "weave" being a newly-envisioned synonym for an extended rhetorical digression which always returns to the original thought -- there are several stories in Greek mythology about toxically masculine men hiding inside a benign-seeming hollow statue in order to enter a fortress and wreak havok, and about one particular queen who was cursed by the gods with a specific taste for a love of animals and who is alleged to have hidden inside a hollow model of a cow in order to seduce a straight white bull.

The offspring from that mating resulted in the Minotaur, the labyrinth, and the ill fated flight of Daedalus and Icarus.

It has always baffled and amused me that a brand of short-term prophylactic wear is named Trojan... but not Trojan Horse. The mind continues to continue to boggle... and weave.

 

So, back to your voice, trojan horses, and E.L.V.I.S.; and, to be clear, ELVIS is an acronym. Elvis Presley probably inspired the acronym for a Tennessee law to protect an owner's right to their voice,

but I do not intend to imply that he had anything to do with Trojans or horses.

 

In E.L.V.I.S., the copyright cavalry may be coming, at least for Tennesseans.

Legal bloggers for the law firm Fredrikson & Byron PA , Luke P. de Leon and Anthony S. Mendoza

survey the legal landscape with a view to protecting your voice in the age of AI.

Protecting Voice in the Age of AI

Their interest was piqued, as they recount, when a client of theirs came to them with suspicions that this client's famously recognizeable voice had been snagged from other contexts, manipulated and published in a voiceover that gave viewers the impression that the client endorsed a cryptocurrency.

The article explains existing Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) "right of publicity" laws, which are state laws, not federal. Their article is worth reading for that alone. 

However, one's voice is not one's name or one's likeness. Enter E.L.V.I.S. in Tennessee.

"Tennessee’s Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security (ELVIS) Act of March 21, 2024, explicitly treats an individual’s voice as protected property in any medium. “Voice,” according to the act, means “sound in a medium that is readily identifiable and attributable to a particular individual, regardless of whether the sound contains the actual voice or a simulation of the voice.” The ELVIS Act guarantees post-mortem protection for 10 years if a voice is commercially exploited by the state; otherwise, protection terminates two years after death. The ELVIS Act provides for civil liability and equitable relief but makes exemptions for “fair use” — the right to use a copyrighted work under certain conditions without permission of the copyright owner — and for fleeting or incidental use."

Luke de Leon and Anthony Mendoza go on to examine other celebrities and public figures who live in other states, whose voices have been ripped off with impunity (my words). Or not!

They glance into Deep Fake territory, also music, and more. They also share potential legal avenues for their client in question, and the take-down of the advertisement... which I will not share. You will have to read their copyright-related blog. 

https://www.fredlaw.com/alert-protecting-voice-in-the-age-of-ai

With regard to anyone's voice, and the ability of AI technology to snag, misappropriate and manipulate it to mislead the many and profit the few, the lawyers conclude:

"From this experience, it is clear that the legal frameworks protecting an individual’s name, image, likeness and voice are inconsistent from state to state, and the advent of AI technology and its proliferation across the internet is going to test the effectiveness of those laws. We anticipate that there will be more legislation — and calls for legislation — in this evolving area. In the meantime, however, an individual should look to the right of publicity (if recognized in their state) and federal copyright law to protect their voice from being misappropriated in the age of AI."

Weave with the best of them!

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Timeline by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Timeline by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner  

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

I confess I'm not a fan of time-travel fiction, other than The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, but that's a worthwhile exception. Basically, every other time-travel story tends to get very convoluted (as the second season opener of the otherwise enjoyable Loki proved to me almost beyond a shadow of a doubt), especially when these stories are usually accompanied by an impossible "convergence" which has to be perfectly timed to pull off. What are the odds? Too astronomical to calculate. The incredulity is more than I can believe, let alone bear, in almost every case. However, Michael Crichton's 1999 time-travel thriller Timeline combined the usual things I love about his books: scientific and technical authenticity, high action, incredible characterization, and (for this particular one) quantum and multiverse theory. Finally, I love anything medieval. My biggest regret as an author intending to retire by 2025 is that I never got to write a series set in a medieval time period. I had some ideas for one and had even named the saga and the individual titles in it, but I have no plans to ever write it, despite that I continue to collect books about medieval lore left and right. Sigh. In any case, given that Crichton almost never fails to live up to my expectations and that the medieval world he created in Timeline is so fantastic, there was really no way to lose in betting I would enjoy this story the first time I read it. 

Travelers through the desert happen upon an elderly man and take him to a New Mexico hospital, where doctors discover before his death that he's an ITC company employee and that all hell has broken lose in his blood vessels. 

Meanwhile in southwest France, a team of archaeologists and historians study fourteenth-century Castelgard and La Rogue. They make disturbing discoveries, including the very modern lens from their leader Professor Edward Johnston's glasses and a message from him that appears to be over 600 years old. Graduate students Chris and Kate, along with assistant professor Andre, and technology specialist David are flown to their funds' provider ITC's headquarters in New Mexico. There, they're told that Johnston traveled to the year 1357--an extremely dangerous medieval time period--using their quantum technology. They're forced to go back in time to retrieve him. 

Not surprisingly, the time-travel transit pad is damaged upon their arrival to the place and time their leader was last deposited by the technology. Returning to their own time period might be impossible if it's not repaired. The locals are involved in political strife and war (the Hundred Years' War) that the time-travelers are inadvertently pulled into and become emotionally embroiled in with the key figures they meet. The only way to prevent suspicions that they're not who and what they say they are, which could get them killed in such a superstitious age, is to go along with the events as they play out, all while hoping the opportunity to get home comes soon. 

Crichton said about writing this story that it took twice as long to write as Jurassic Park, what he considered his last adventure story. What he found the most fascinating about it matches my own assessment--the medieval setting he wanted to be brutally authentic. When recalling the development process, he commented that he'd uncovered a world where you might be killed if you picked up a fallen glove, you risked death just by claiming you're gentle, where pastry was designed to look like animal intestines, where monasteries were utilized as tennis courts, where women were killed just for cutting their own hair short, and where wet gunpowder exploded. 

This story is tightly woven, the situations in the present and past fascinating, and the characters are ones readers can't help but root for. A film adaptation came out in 2003 but wasn't well received, though it's not bad--simply not as good as the book version. 

Whether or not you've read or watched this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, well-developed tale with depth from a master of the fantastic. 

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/

An Authorized Fanfic Re-Visioning of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

Last week Cory Doctorow posted a review of JULIA, by Sandra Newman, which coincidentally I've just finished reading.

Novel-Writing Machines

Newman's novel is an authorized retelling of Orwell's dystopian classic from the viewpoint of Julia, the protagonist Winston Smith's lover. As Doctorow mentions, Winston thinks of the Party as omniscient and omnipotent -- "Big Brother is watching you." Viewing this society through Julia's experience, we realize it's as corrupt and inefficient as the bureaucracy of any other dictatorship. She knows how to take advantage of cracks in the system, for instance with bribery and tricks such as getting a break from her job by signing out under the category "Sickness: Menstrual." (After all, nobody checks up on that excuse.) As a mechanic who maintains novel-writing machines in the Fiction department of the Ministry of Truth, she has the skills to fix other things as well, e.g., the perpetually clogging lavatories in her dormitory. She's valued for her abilities and enjoys her work. She also enjoys frequent sexual flings despite her membership in the Anti-Sex League. I wondered how women who take those risks, aside from the danger of getting arrested for sexcrime, avoid pregnancy given that contraception is illegal. Well, there's a dodge for that, too. Many single women who suspect they're in the early stages of pregnancy seek artsem (artificial insemination). If they've actually conceived already, they're covered; if not, the procedure didn't "take." And it seems to be common knowledge that some women volunteering to bear children for the Party are already pregnant. Newman's perspective flip opens up Orwell's fictional world from these and many other angles. Everybody knows the proper behavior, language, and facial expressions necessary to stay out of trouble, and for most of them it seems to be mainly an act. In one of the few relaxed scenes, workers joke about the intricacies of Newspeak. Julia excuses her linguistic mistakes with the claim that she isn't a bit intellectual, which is true. Winston's fascination with forbidden political, philosophical, and literary topics bores her, although she maintains a facade of enthralled interest.

JULIA answers questions many readers of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR may puzzle over. Why does she initiate a love affair with Winston, a rather stuffy man twenty years her senior? Does Big Brother, as an individual, literally exist? (Yes.) Is there really an anti-Party underground, and was its demonized alleged leader, Goldstein, a real person? (Yes.) Is Oceania really at war? Yes, we witness the bombed sections of London, though we never find out if the enemy is Eurasia, Eastasia, or neither. We also learn about the lives of the proles, including the thriving black market with which Julia regularly deals. Newman's work delves into potential features of Orwell's fictional world that he either didn't consider or deliberately left outside the frame of his narrative.

Cory Doctorow reasonably classifies this type of novel as fanfic, or as he defines it, "writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head." Whether an amateur or professional publication, fanfic expresses the drive to explore shadowed or underdeveloped areas of canonical works, or speculate on how the world of the original looks from the perspective of a different character. ROSENKRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, which he also mentions, is a prime example of the latter.

Similarly, WIDE SARGASSO SEA, by Jean Rhys, a prequel to JANE EYRE, creates a personality and a backstory for Bertha, Rochester's deranged first wife. In Rhys's re-imagining, Bertha isn't even the name she goes by; Rochester calls her that for the sake of respectability. They arrive in Britain near the end of WIDE SARGASSO SEA. Rhys explores the question of whether she was ever in fact "mad" before being taken from her Caribbean home to England and relegated to nearly solitary confinement in a suite of upstairs rooms (not, contrary to popular impression, the attic).

Doctorow also refers to THE WIND DONE GONE, which a court decreed to be a "parody" of GONE WITH THE WIND. It really isn't, but that classification served as a defense against a charge of plagiarism. When I read THE WIND DONE GONE, I was mildly surprised that Mitchell's estate claimed copyright infringement at all. Alice Randall's book doesn't literally retell the classic novel. It tells the story of the enslaved narrator, Cynara, mixed-race daughter of Mammy and half-sister of Scarlett, with transformative references to the events of GONE WITH THE WIND. None of the white people from the latter are named in THE WIND DONE GONE. Cynara gives Mitchell's characters satirical nicknames, e.g. "Planter" and "Lady" for Scarlett's parents, "Mealy Mouth" for Melanie, "Dreamy Gentleman" for Ashley (I love that one). Scarlett is simply "the Other" or "Her."

Then there's GRENDEL, by John Gardner, wherein the monster reveals his side of the events in BEOWULF. Of course, creating variations on works in the public domain doesn't risk legal problems.

My own all-time favorite professionally published fanfic, the book I'd always wanted to write, is Fred Saberhagen's THE DRACULA TAPE (1975), a retelling of DRACULA in which the Count himself sets the record straight.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Sphere by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Sphere by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner  

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

I admit I've always been fascinated by submarines. Here we have a deluxe trailer with all the bells and whistles that's put on the bottom of the ocean where people live in it. Mind you, the fact that I'm claustrophobic and terrified of allowing myself to be encased in a tin can--regardless of how fancy it is--holds zero appeal to me anywhere except in my imagination. 

Michael Crichton's 1987 supernatural psychological thriller Sphere depicts the perfect storm in a book that ticks all the boxes for me with incredible characterization, the coolest setting ever, and a plot that absolutely blew my mind the first time I read it and all the countless times I've re-read it since. The United States Navy discovers an enormous spacecraft of unknown origin on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean--that has English writing on it. They put together a team of the best scientific minds in the country to study it. This group includes a psychologist named Norman Johnson, the main character in the book, along with a mathematician, a zoologist, an astrophysicist, and a marine biologist who ends up being too claustrophobic to make the trip down and is therefore returned to the surface. They're joined by military personnel as they travel to the deep sea habitat that's been constructed at the bottom of the ocean to study the anomaly. 

Figuring out how to get inside the spaceship is the first hurdle the team has to overcome. Once they do, they find inside a mysterious sphere that couldn't possibly have been made at any point in Earth's past. Upon making this discovery, they're contacted by an alien entity that at first seems friendly and eager to communicate. As the being that calls itself Jerry begins to display increasingly child-like, bizarre behavior and "manifesting" deadly,  seemingly impossible sea creatures that attack and kill the crew, its power over the humans on the submarine grows. But is there actually an alien entity, or is the culprit someone or something much closer to home aboard the submarine? Even the most brilliant minds would find it hard to cope with the isolation and claustrophobia involved in being trapped in such a confining, remote, and exotic environment. Their grip on reality slips until even the protagonist isn't entirely sure what's real or true. 

Norman conjectures that the sphere allows subconscious thoughts to manifest in reality for those who figure out how to enter it. The sanity of the team members quickly begins to unravel as their trust in each other erodes hour by hour. The power of the sphere is irresistible to all of them, alternately too awesome and terrifying for any human being to wield responsibly.

I won't say anymore because the spectacular ending needs to be experienced personally. Suffice it to say, I can't imagine anyone who picks up this book will be disappointed with any aspect of the story contained inside it. 

With Sphere, Crichton apparently wanted to write a story about the discovery of an alien artifact with its host intact that was distinctly different than anything "recognizably human" whether it was "9 feet tall with spike teeth and it wants to eat you" or "3 feet tall and it wants to hug you". I'd say he succeeded gloriously. The 1998 movie adaptation with an all-star cast including Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone, and Liev Schreiber didn't do particularly well in the theaters but is nevertheless a decently watchable rendition of the novel. 

Whether or not you've read or watched this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale of the fantastical variety. 

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/ 

 

When the Proper Amount of Something Is Zero

Cory Doctorow on DRM, conflicts of interest, "bricking," the undermining of consumer privacy, collection of surveillance data, identity theft, and other abuses of consumers:

Thinking the Unthinkable

As one example of zero tolerance, he proposes, "We should order every data-broker, every tech giant, every consumer electronics company and app vendor to delete all their surveillance data." Not likely to happen, though, is it?

Concerning DRM, he half-seriously suggests products infested with it should be required to carry a warning that their advertised features are subject to "revocation without notice." When DRM began to become widespread, he observed that it "didn't just restrict how you used a gadget today, it provided a facility for nonconsensually, irreversibly field-updating that gadget to add new restrictions tomorrow." Also, "This device and devices like it are typically used to charge you for things you used to get for free."

I don't have much to say about this article aside from a general reaction of "good grief!" I'm opposed to DRM on e-books and grateful my publishers don't include it. From what I've read, any halfway competent hacker can disable that feature, which therefore just inconveniences legitimate readers. I already knew we don't literally buy software products such as word processing programs but only "license" them. I knew electronic files of music or visual media can be deleted from the purchaser's access at the whim of the seller, which is one reason I always buy such products on CD or DVD if possible. (I "bought" the live-action LADY AND THE TRAMP from Disney as a streaming movie because it wasn't available in tangible form; I'm still waiting for them to release a DVD so I can own the film permanently instead of provisionally.) I knew tech companies could "brick" gadgets such as phones or tablets, i.e., remotely render them inoperable. However, I didn't know powered medical devices such as wheelchairs and exoskeletons were vulnerable to the same abuse.

While I agree with most of Doctorow's rant, I'm not optimistic about solutions. The convenience of these kinds of technology would be too painful to give up, and the companies that produce it have probably grown too powerful to rein in effectively. Doctorow mentions the example of cars in the pre-seatbelt era, when the sensible rule would have been "don't buy a car." But how practical would that have been for most Americans? Must we simply fall back on "Caveat Emptor" (as an anti-regulation acquaintance of mine seriously declared way back in the late 1960s)? No wonder Doctorow's title includes the word "unthinkable."

Margaret L. Carter

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