RavenCon

We spent this past weekend at RavenCon in Williamsburg, Virginia. The author guest of honor was Melinda Snodgrass. Because she worked with George R. R. Martin on his Wild Cards series, the con played with a Wild Cards theme at the opening ceremony Friday night. I haven't read any of the series, but the premise sounds intriguing. In case you haven't either, it goes like this: A plague has rewritten human DNA. Among the total population, 90% died. Most of the others survived with grotesque mutations, and a tiny percentage developed superpowers. At registration, each attendee received a tag to attach to the name badge. Black Queens were dead (I got that one). Jokers got amusing mutations. Aces got superpowers. Friday night, the Jokers and Aces were called up front to learn their mutations or powers. Fun!

I appeared on the program in the Broad Universe rapid-fire reading. This year, so many authors participated that we got a two-hour time slot. Each person was allotted a little over five minutes for intro and reading. I read from my new light paranormal romance novella, "Yokai Magic," and it seemed to go well.

The program included a STEM track of panels and presentations, held in a designated "science room." Among other topics, sessions covered life sciences and medicine in SF, what science fiction authors get right and wrong about science, effects of space flight on the human body, and "Space doesn't work like that." A significant number of people with military experience, as well as scientists, appeared on panels. A non-science session that particularly impressed me tackled morality and ethics in SF and fantasy. One panelist held a doctorate in philosophy and had worked on the alignment system for Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition. There were also writing craft sessions, genre-focused sessions, and all the usual features you'd expect at an SF con. Fandom for David Weber's Honor Harrington series has a prominent presence at RavenCon, and at least two panels focused on that universe.

The musical guests of honor were the Library Bards, a filk duo. I enjoyed their songs when I could comprehend the lyrics. In common with most of the musicians I checked out, however, the Library Bards sang to a recorded background track of very loud, hard-rock style instrumentals that tended to drown out the words. However, they performed some pieces I liked quite a bit, e.g., a tribute to one of the "Dr. Who" stars (although I'm not familiar with him, it was cute), a celebration of Stan Lee and the Marvel universe, and a song summarizing the entire plot of PRINCESS BRIDE. Two musical guests I especially liked were the Nefarious Ferrets (a duo) and Gray Rinehart; both of those acts sang and played in a calmer style, and I could understand the words. (When old age creeps up, being able to hear the words of songs and TV dialogue becomes a non-trivial concern!)

Some highlights of the Saturday evening masquerade included a mother-child pair in elaborate kitsune costumes, a fan-dancing "steampunk geisha," and a joint appearance by Spider-Man and Spider-Man Noir (all in black). Unfortunately, the event ran behind schedule, so I eventually left to attend a panel and therefore didn't find out who won.

We were pleased with the hotel this year. Unlike last year, when they didn't have a room for us until well after the designated check-in hour, this time we got settled right away. Also, the meal service in the cafe was noticeably faster than in the previous two years we've attended. This hotel offers one delightful perk upon check-in—a large chocolate chip cookie for each guest.

You can read about RavenCon here. The programming schedule and the rest of this year's information are still on the site:

RavenCon

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Story Integration Part 1 - Villain Story Arc

Theme-Story Integration

Part 1

Villain Story Arc

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

This is the opening of a new "walk and chew gum" exercise.

We have "integrated" various combinations of (artificially) separated techniques of the writing craft in a variety of long entries.  The posts titled "Integration" are advanced writing lessons - not about spelling, punctuation, grammar, paragraph structure, etc.  But about how to take the fascinating scenario in your mind and give it to other people, to people you don't know who don't know you.

Recently, on Facebook, P. N. Elrod echoed the core lesson in attitude that a beginning writer must internalize.  My first writing teacher, Alma Hill, put it thusly:

WRITING IS A PERFORMING ART. 

It takes practice to de-personalize and project a tapestry of emotions so that the recipients find within the material something of personal value to them.

Another maxim often quoted, and (writers being writers) elaborately paraphrased, is:

THE VILLAIN IS THE HERO OF HIS OWN STORY.

So how does a good person (like you) depict a bad person and make that Character interesting (and plausible) enough to grab a Science Fiction/Fantasy-Romance reader?

The core technique is called STORY ARC.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

ARC indicates change along a curve, a changing vector or direction of change.  Vector refers to a resultant (or combination) of direction and momentum (or force).

STORY indicates what is going on inside a Character as the Character becomes aware of, then conquers, an INTERNAL CONFLICT.

THEME is what you have to say, as a writer, about life-the-universe-and-everything.  Why do you want to write this story?  Who do you want to read it?  What do you want them to understand from reading it (that they didn't know before?)

A Villain is not (necessarily) a bad person (human or Alien).

A Villain is a Character whose objectives thwart the Hero from achieving the Hero's objective.  This is the main source of conflict that drives Plot.

We've discussed Theme-Plot Integration at length.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

And in various cross-fertilizing combinations:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/05/index-to-theme-conflict-integration.html

And we've touched on where Story fits into both Plot and Worldbuilding.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

So now let's look at the possibilities revealed by bringing Story to the surface (rather than Plot).

Almost all traditional science fiction has been marketed to (thus written for) teenage boys -- not girls.  Romance has been firmly excluded, and the plot related in narrative without nuances of emotion.

Today, the popularity of Fantasy written for adults has blended Paranormal-Magic-ESP possibilities in world building into the genre, Paranormal Romance.  We see it in Vampire Romance and even Zombie Romance.

Any sort of Alien can be a Romantic Interest, or the Villain thwarting the Romance from crystalizing.  The Science Fiction genre has blended into the Romance genre.

Why do these two distinct genres blend so easily?

Because Science Fiction genre specializes in Plot, while Romance specializes in Story.

Both genre categories have both plot and story -- deciding which label to put on the spine is largely a matter of whether Plot or Story artistically dominates.

Both Plot and Story arcs are driven by Conflict. Plot by External Conflict (Man against Nature or other Men), and Story by Internal Conflict (Man against himself or as his own worst enemy.)

A prominent example of how Plot and Story are separate but blend is the TV Series, NCIS.  It follows the modern cop-drama formula of presenting a full plot-arc each episode with the case to be solved, then counter-currents the plot with the story of what it all means to the investigator team, individually and collectively.

Aggregate the Characters and you have a typical Science Fiction Romance novel.

Most Romance novel conflicts are not between Hero and Villain, but between the couple in the process of uniting, which in the case of TV cop-dramas is the investigative team.

But there is a wild sub-genre dealing with the Bad Boy lover, and of course the arranged marriage to anyone but the actual lover.  And all the variations make endlessly fascinating reading.

One element that often turns people off to anything called Romance is how "Love Conquers All" in one fell swoop, a single emotional-moral-ethical SEE THE LIGHT moment.

It is true such Character "reversals" happen in real life.  If that were not so, there wouldn't be a word to refer to it.  The word exists.  It is "epiphany."

Epiphany usually refers to an encounter with God, one way or another -- a religious experience, or spiritual one.  LSD was famous in the 1960's for revealing new ways of looking at reality.

The existence of a different way of looking at things is the core of all science fiction.  And it is what happens when you fall in love -- you see the exact same world you've always lived in as something very different from what you thought it was.

So, traditionally, we have the term "Black Hearted."

How can a heart be black?

We have the term, "Good Hearted Soul."

How can a Soul have a "heart?"

We call fiction about insanity, heinous crime, and logical reasons for doing unethical things -- turning good guys into bad guys, step by step, "Dark."

We use light and dark to refer to emotions, motives, behavior, choices, religion and ritual.  We term "understanding" as "enlightening."

We use white hats for heroes and black hats for villains - just to be sure the audience knows which is which.

Where does this convention of light/dark come from and how can a Romance writer (working in rainbow hued emotions) use this notion to "arc" the Villain's Character?

We'll look at the potential of Villain's Arc in Part 2.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

QWERTY bad...

....PASSWORD worse, and in case you were wondering, DR0W55@P is not much better.

The most interesting legal blog this week came from Linn F. Freedman writing for the law firm Robinson and Cole LLP on the topic of Password Fatigue.

Find the original here:
https://www.dataprivacyandsecurityinsider.com/2019/03/password-fatigue/#page=1

Find the Lexology version here:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=146c0b7e-8b58-4581-8e81-f8aa7fe6d68f&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-04-03&utm_term=

Do you spend 12 or more minutes a week entering or resetting your passwords? Have you ever kept count? For authors who have to be active on social media to promote their works, the tally and loss of productivity is probably greater unless one uses a "service". Just don't trust your browser. In all things in life, you get what you pay for.

Kacy Zurkus, writing for the Malwarebytes blog shares a raft of good ideas, and insights into password spraying, which is using a small number of common passwords on a large number of accounts.
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2019/03/hackers-gonna-hack-anymore-not-keep-reusing-passwords/?utm_source=double-opt-in&utm_medium=email-internal-b2c&utm_campaign=EM-B2C-2019-April1-newsletter&utm_content=antivirusmixtape

The comments section is worth perusing for helpful tips, particularly if it would never occur to you to post a photo of your car on any social media site.

For more information on recent-ish data breaches, read this by Malwarebytes:
https://www.malwarebytes.com/data-breach/?utm_source=double-opt-in&utm_medium=email-internal-b2c&utm_campaign=EM-B2C-2019-April1-newsletter&utm_content=laws

Krebs On Security has more creative tips and recommendations for those inclined to do some password navel gazing.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/password-dos-and-donts/


Norton, too, has useful advice for choosing and securing passwords.
Their tip about having a short personal phrase top of mind is a good one. So often, one goes to a site to change a password and the site rejects every password that one thought one might use because of "forbidden words" or because one's choices don't conform to whatever the site requires (such as 3 upper case, 3 lower case, 3 numerals, 3 special characters.)
https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-how-to-how-to-choose-a-secure-password.html

Nord VPN discusses the anatomy of a good password. It's instructive to read multiple tips by security experts to see on what they agree (such as reliable services for password management), and where they differ.
https://nordvpn.com/blog/the-tips-on-creating-strong-passwords/?utm_source=SecurityTips&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5passwords_all


Finally, do not give your email password to anyone or any site that says its' for your own good. It's not.  If you were tricked into giving your email password to Facebook, change your email password on your email site. Don't give them your phone number, either.
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2019/03/facebooks-history-betrays-its-privacy-pivot/?utm_source=double-opt-in&utm_medium=email-internal-b2c&utm_campaign=EM-B2C-2019-April1-newsletter&utm_content=chromebrowser

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

The Vampire as Alien

I'm thrilled that my nonfiction book DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN is back on the market at last. It's been re-released by a new publisher with some updating and a fantastic new cover:

Different Blood

This is a work of critical analysis that surveys the widely varied forms of the "vampire as alien" trope in fiction from the second half of the nineteenth century to the early twenty-first. By "alien," I mean a naturally evolved creature (regardless of whether earthly or extraterrestrial) rather than a supernatural undead entity. So DIFFERENT BLOOD examines one subset of the science-fiction vampire. Readers may be surprised to discover how many amazing stories and novels fall into that category.

In the Amazon "Look Inside" feature, you can read the introduction and part of Chapter One to get a sense of the flavor of the text. I've drawn upon Jacqueline Lichtenberg's essays such as "Vampire with Muddy Boots" and her article on Intimate Adventure to set the stage for my treatment of the topic. You'll find references to those essays in the introduction. To borrow Jacqueline's terms, I'm fascinated by the way most "vampire as alien" fiction deals with nonhuman characters in an SF framework instead of portraying them as "the Unknown that is a menace because it's a menace."

Naturally, Jacqueline's THOSE OF MY BLOOD is one of the books discussed, as well as HOUSE OF ZEOR and the philosophy underlying the Sime-Gen series. One delightful aspect of writing DIFFERENT BLOOD was having a chance to highlight lots of my favorite novels and stories that develop the figure of the vampire in original, provocative ways. I've always admired the way the vampire, as the most versatile of all the traditional monsters, can be used to explore gender, race, ecological responsibility, predator-prey dynamics, symbiosis, and many other themes; the concept of "alienness" is ideally suited for this exploration. I hope DIFFERENT BLOOD introduces readers to numerous works of exciting, innovative fiction they haven't encountered before.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

How to use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Part 5 - The Story of A Life

How to use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction

Part 5

The Story of A Life  

Previous entries in this series:
Tarot:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/10/index-to-posts-about-or-involving-tarot.html

Astrology:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Part 1

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html

Part 2

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-astrology-in-science.html

Part 3

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html

And we looked at copyright, DRM and phone repair as it intersects the Law.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/copyright-drm-and-phone-repair.html

Which raised the esoteric aspects of "ownership" leading to issues of the reality of Happily Ever After leading to Part 4.

Part 4
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in_22.html

And here we are at Part 5.

In 2019, Passover begins on Friday night, April 19.  On Saturday April 20, 2019 we count #1 (one day) "of the Omer" and every night until June 7 when we count the 49th day of the Omer -- the 49 day count representing the 49 days between the Israelites marching on dry land through the parted Sea, and the arrival at Mount Sinai.

That journey is an archetype.

It is a spiritual journey, the story of a life, a steep climb up out of the mindset of being subjugated to the values of one people and into a free mindset where it is possible to receive a new, different, value system.

The two value sets are not the focus of this blog post -- whichever two you might want to lift from human history, or invent, your Science Fiction Romance novel is the STORY of changing value systems.

This free radical condition, between value systems, the receptive mental state, is dramatically useful to you as a Romance writer.  Mastering this value-system-switch process will let you usher your readers into "far away places with strange sounding names."

It is an Inner Journey -- and is driven by inner conflict.

In Theme-Conflict Integration Part 6,
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/03/theme-conflict-integration-part-6.html
we touched on how a Character you are creating responds to being Under The Influence of another Character.

Previously, we discussed how writers can apply the counting of the Omer to plotting Romance novels.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

Humans, by and large, fight to the death to get free of Influence.  Any influence -- good, bad, indifferent -- having someone else tell you what to think just arouses adamant opposition in most humans. (not all, which is what makes humans interesting.)

In the case of the fleeing Israelites, the Influence was Egyptian culture -- not just the Pharaoh bullying them, but the entire society.  The Egyptians didn't notice they had a culture -- this was long before scholars studied human behavior with anything other than astrology.  The existence of Egyptian culture was only apparent because the descendants of Jacob had inherited a different take on life-the-universe-and-everything than the Egyptians had.

The contrast created conflict.

Study what happened then, and extract a pattern for what will happen at First Contact with non-human Alien cultures.

Humans are adaptable, but not as adults.  Humanity does our adapting in childhood -- somewhat in adolescence, but mostly before age 7 or so, we are incredibly adaptable.

After about age 13 or so, dropping a value system and adopting a different one takes much more work, a vertical learning curve where we slide back a lot.

The older you get, the harder it is to internalize the non-verbal content of Values.

Values are hard to write about in fiction because:
a)Values are inherently non-verbal
b)Values are referred to by different words meaning the same thing
c)Values are referred to by the same words meaning different things

We assign words to represent inner experiences and assume everyone using that word means the same experience.

This is why the language of imagery, (such as Tarot), and the disciplined, orderly, non-verbal communication in artistic symbolism works so much better in fiction for conveying Values.

The Romance writer has to answer questions that no real human could ever answer -- for example, "Why do you love that guy?"

We don't know what we see in him, or him in her, because what we see is not something that can be "known."  It is apperceived by another sense, informed by an array of sensory input, but ultimately a thing of the Soul, not eyeballs or logic.

So experiencing the shift of Values necessary to weld two individuals into a couple is one of the essential tools of the Romance writer.  As it happens, it is also the core tool of the science fiction writer introducing humans to an Alien species.

Any non-humans we meet up with in space will be even more different from us than the Egyptians were to the descendants of Jacob (who weren't Jews, yet.)

We have discussed this upward journey of the Soul previously.  It isn't a journey of the body, from place to place, but a gaining of energy by climbing to another soul-level.  As when you climb a mountain, you store potential energy in your body -- which can be lost if you fall down the mountainside -- the Soul gains potential energy in a spiritual climb which can be lost by falling down -- and it hurts when you hit bottom.

It is ridiculously difficult to do this 40-day exercise in Spiritual preparation for receiving a new and different value system.  The forces of reality sweep in and knock you sideways -- you forget to read the page one night, you forget to do the daily exercise, and you forget that you forgot.

So they made a booklet bound like a reporter's notepad, where you can flip the pages to keep your place.

In this book:
 http://store.chabad.org/product.asp?Product=bk-mlc-counteng

Which you can also buy on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Counting-Omer-Simon-Jacobson/dp/188658723X/

...each of the 49 individual Emotions discussed comes with a do-it-today exercise that is a challenge to your ordinary way of looking at the world.  These exercises, done in this sequence, strip calluses and leave vulnerability.

As I said, it is insanely, ridiculously difficult to do this very simple thing in step with the Hebrew Calendar ( between Passover and Shavuot), but if you can achieve it (and it might take several years), you will not regret the effort.  It will improve your ability to create and depict Soul Mates who deserve and achieve a "Happily Ever After."

In fact, it will make it much easier to craft a story that convincingly presents the Happily Ever After as a very real, everyday, achievable lifestyle for a couple.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Trouble With Memes

This week, this writer noticed that at least two legal blogs are warning about Memes.

For the purpose of this discussion, a meme is an image or short clip of video, to which a caption is added by someone other than the copyright owner of the image or short clip, and it is forwarded across social media by thousands with no regard to the copyrights of the copyright owner, or the moral rights of the subject of the image.

Meme enthusiasts would probably say that the use of the image is "transformative", or that the use is "fair", because the image is only half the work, and the text is the other half --which is not a definition of Fair Use-- or that it is commentary, or parody, or being used to disseminate news or opinion, or to educate.

Memes are like emoticons. They are a quick, convenient way for the inarticulate to spread someone else's expression of an opinion without having to think for themselves. To date, the re-tweeter has also been able to share the meme without any liability or responsibility.  That may change, even if copyright law explicitly protects parody, criticism, and pastiche.

Legal blogger Georgia Shriane for Boyes Turner LLP (specializing in European Law and UK law) warns that meme law is coming....

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1191618e-8200-49db-b9d7-c89d494d5546&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-03-29&utm_term=

The original article can be found here:
https://www.boyesturner.com/article/article-13-meme-law-is-coming

Even if the meme is protected, if content platforms use automation to filter out copyrighted images, the bots may not perceive the difference between "a good meme" and copyright infringement. That's not all.

See also, from 2017, commentary on a weeping athlete, with a question about the consequences if this meme is used for commercial advertising
https://www.internetandtechnologylaw.com/unauthorized-meme-crying-jordon/#page=1

Also, see the commentary by Claire Jones of  Novagraaf  for when memes are used gratuitously, with the sole apparent purpose of tormenting a public figure:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/documents.lexology.com/78503cc7-93e3-470e-8a7d-37ffcbee9a56.pdf

Or read it on Lexology...
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c470fc1e-d61e-4f98-a3b3-d113233998db

The most ominous shot across the bows for meme sharers comes from legal blogger  Jordyn Eisenpress  writing for the law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein& Seltz PC  "Popular Meme Account Sued For Copyright Infringement And Other Claims.   

Read it on Lexology  (but beware, gentle readers: there is a very vulgar word as part of the defendant's twitter handle.)
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=33280fc3-a77a-41c2-b429-f998d6f22556&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium=html+email&utm_campaign=lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=lexology+daily+newsfeed+2019-03-28&utm_term=

Or find the very recent original here, (also including the shocking handle).
https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102fh6p/popular-meme-account-sued-for-copyright-infringement-and-other-claims

Apparently, meme enthusiasts in New York should take note, and be very careful going forward.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

What Makes Private Property Private?

Cory Doctorow's latest column explores the doctrine of "terra nullius" (nobody's land), which he traces back to John Locke's 1660 work TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT:

Terra Nullius

Under this theory, private property is created by "a human taking an unclaimed piece of the common property of humanity and mixing it with their labor" to create something new, which then "belongs" to the creative innovator. The catch in this theory, according to Doctorow, is the problem of deciding what constitutes "unclaimed," "common property," or unimproved "nature." European colonizers, for example, viewed the lands of "primitive" people as available for settlement and exploitation because they weren't "owned" by any individual according to the Western concept of ownership—in an act of radical "erasure" of the indigenous peoples. As Doctorow puts it, if those lands belonged to nobody, the "primitives" who lived there must be "nobody."

How does this distinction apply to intellectual property? Doctorow summarizes the claim as follows: "The labor theory of property always begins with an act of erasure: 'All the people who created, used, and improved this thing before me were doing something banal and unimportant—but my contribution is the step that moved this thing from a useless, unregarded commons to a special, proprietary, finished good.'” One application he cites is the example of the Beatles. The R&B rhythms the Beatles incorporated into their music didn't count as owned; they were considered common property, available to anyone who chose to use them. On the other hand, if any musician nowadays takes recognizable elements of the Beatles' songs and incorporates them into new material, that's considered theft. How do we decide what's owned and what's free for use without acknowledgment or compensation? A similar phenomenon that occurred to me, not mentioned by Doctorow, is the 20th-century folk revival. Some folk musicians recorded traditional songs and copyrighted them, thereafter claiming ownership of the song (not simply of their particular arrangement of the song). Here's a forum thread discussing what elements of traditional songs can be copyrighted, as opposed to changes by individual singers that should be considered part of the "folk process" rather than private property:

Folk Song Collectors and Copyright

Two remarks in Doctorow's article that particularly struck me:

"The Ayn Randian hero is delusional: his (always his) achievements are a combination of freeriding on the people whose contributions he’s erased, and bleating that everyone who had the same idea as him was actually stealing his idea, rather than simply living in the same influences he had."

Here's how Doctorow applies this principle to authorship, using his own work as an example: "I wrote my books. They were hard work. I made real imaginative leaps that contributed to the field. Also: I wrote them because I read the works of my peers and my forebears. If I hadn’t written them, someone else would have written something comparable. All these things can be true. All these things are true. Originality exists, it just doesn’t exist in a vacuum."

In my opinion, that last sentence makes a valid and important point. Nothing in his essay, however, supplies guidelines on how to determine what creative elements qualify as "original" contributions that deserve protection as private property.

For example, here's an update about the ongoing lawsuit among Tom Clancy's estate, his widow, and his first wife over who gets to profit from past and future works featuring Clancy's character Jack Ryan:

Who Has Custody of Jack Ryan?

While I don't think anyone would deny that Clancy created and therefore "owned" Jack Ryan according to both ethical and legal principles, the question of who holds rights to the character after Clancy's death (or should the profits be split on some kind of chronological basis, depending on when the particular books or films were released?) is tangled up in a dense legal and contractual controversy.

Speaking of "commons," if we could trace back far enough, we'd find that every creative work was originally made by some individual or particular group of creators. It's just that once a work gets so old we can't identify the creator(s), we categorize it as "traditional" and part of the "common property of humanity."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Dark Matter TV Series

Dark Matter

TV Series

Just a quick heads-up about an old bit of entertainment making the streaming rounds.

Before they disappear it forever, do watch some of the episodes of Dark Matter.

Just a quick Google tells you:

Dark Matter (TV series) - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Matter_(TV_series)
Dark Matter is a Canadian science fiction series created by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, based on their comic book of the same name and developed by ...
No. of seasons‎: ‎3 Original release‎: ‎June 12, 2015 – August 25, 2017
No. of episodes‎: ‎39 (‎list of episodes‎) Based on‎: ‎Dark Matter series of comics

Yes, and the TV Series availability on various delivery systems, (Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Prime, YouTube etc. ) tells you more than you want to know about it.  They are still charging money for this series, so it should be around a while m
ore.  When it becomes free, it will be about to disappear. 

It is made from a comic, and the TV Series is mostly by the same people who created the Comic.  As a result, the fabrication is what I would term "thin" -- or screenwriters call "on the nose."

The Characters are formulated from a formula  -- not a hint of the USA channel's "Characters Welcome" quirkiness.  The quirks that are included (an android, a woman subconsciously imprinted with everyone else's missing memories, a tough guy, a martial arts guy, a boss woman) are formulaic.

So why should you look into it?  Because it seems to be aimed at early-teen or pre-teen boys -- the classic audience for science fiction.  If you are writing Science Fiction Romance, you have to shift the target audience, or broaden it.

The lack of dimensionality and nuance is what sells to that pre-teen boy audience.

But this TV series went 3 seasons and was cancelled.  Yes, it had fans, but not enough for the actually cheap production to cover costs.

Writers looking to create stories for an adult audience that is at least 50% female (if not more) can learn a lot about how to do that by studying this TV Series.

The signature of a genre resides in what must be LEFT OUT, much more than it does in what must be INCLUDED.

Consider last week's post on Theme-Conflict Integration and what that has to do with Character and Genre.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/03/theme-conflict-integration-part-6.html

Dark Matter has one, tentative, embarrassing kiss in the first 3 episodes.  It has males and females confined in a space ship.  All the characters are portrayed as amnesiacs who were wanted for horrible crimes.

They have innate, trained skills -- but no existing Relationships among them.

Does Relationship depend on memory?

Is Character a function of memory? 

Is morality a function of memory? 

How important is memory?

Amnesia/Romance novels are not usually my favorite fare, but I've read a lot that were deep, revealing, thought-provoking and even funny and heart-warming.

Dark Matter is not a Romance in any sense.  It is way too thin for that. 

Watch some of it -- if not all -- and consider how to fundamentally change the story into a Romance.  You can use a similar plot (though it would morph if you shift the story-line), and tell the Love Conquers All story.

What has to be conquered?  A lifetime as a crook, mercenary, killer, kidnapper, felon.  How do you conquer that?  Amnesia wipes it out?  Or is there Soul level karma to be addressed first?

Can Love ignite and burn away sin? 

Does Love really Conquer All?

How can there ever be an ever-after, never mind a Happily Ever After? 

Dark Matter, as a TV Series, is what screenwriters (SAVE THE CAT!) call a "Bottle Show" (the setting is inside the bottle of the ship), and a "Monster In The House" story line, as the crew doesn't know if whoever swiped their memories is still onboard.

To me, the scripts seem like a class writing exercise rather than production drafts.

But that makes it like fanfic, something so transparent you can learn from it, learn to see yourself making the same errors, learn to avoid those errors.

With all those flaws, I have to add that I like Dark Matter better than I thought I would.  The flaws I see now would not have seemed like flaws to me when I was twelve.  Going off to find clues to who you really are is a teen thing. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Your Privacy

Your privacy is my problem. It is your problem.

Disclaimer: the authors who share this blog do not knowingly or intentionally exploit other peoples' data. We do not accept paid advertisements. We do not try to track visitors. However, our host does so. From time to time, we warn you about that.

Our host reminds us (the bloggers):

"European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used and data collected on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent.

As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies, and other data collected by Google.

You are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for your blog, and that it displays. If you employ other cookies, for example by adding third party features, this notice may not work for you. If you include functionality from other providers there may be extra information collected from your users."

If you, dear readers, have the ability to go right now to check which "cookies" have dropped onto your device like deer ticks, you may see links to the participating authors' websites, and a whole raft of google urls. Clear them often. No one who monetizes "tracking" takes any notice of "Do Not Track" requests.

David Ruiz, blogging for Malwarebytes offers some helpful insights into data privacy and cybersecurity.
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2019/03/not-definitive-guide-cybersecurity-data-privacy-laws/?utm_source=double-opt-in&utm_medium=email-internal-b2c&utm_campaign=EM-B2C-2019-March2-newsletter&utm_content=laws

It's instructive reading, especially the part about the GDPR, and tracking, and collecting, and storing, using and sharing visitors' data.  Ruiz also points out what this author sees as an extraordinary loophole in Californian privacy laws. It's a "data breach" if a rogue actor actually downloads your data. If he just looks at it (presumably even if he looks at it and deploys pen and paper), it is not a data "breach". With a breach, the victim must be told, and offered a lifelock-like service for a year. If the rogue took a look, not so much.

And then, there's Spokeo.com

In 2017, this author thought that she had successfully opted out of having her information monetized by Spokeo on Spokeo.  Then, she read "Spokeo Update..."

Legal bloggers Scott Kelly, David N. Anthony, and  Timothy "Tim" J, St.George blogging for the law firm Troutman Sanders LLP share insights into the Fair Credit Reporting Act lawsuit that Spokeo almost three years after  the Supreme Court ruled that an individual who suffers no provable financial injury, but whose financial privacy was invaded... may sue.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6b3a05ad-3815-4cf8-8a89-0b3009100810&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-03-20&utm_term=

Or the original
https://www.consumerfinancialserviceslawmonitor.com/2019/03/spokeo-update-parties-settle-long-running-fcra-dispute/#page=1

Is Spokeo selling guesstimates of your credit score? You should look into it. Even if they have a disclaimer that states that one may not use the information that they sell in order to decide if one wants to employ/lend to/rent to... or otherwise make a business decision about the subject of one's Spokeo search, a skeptic would wonder why anyone would pay $39 or whatever to discover information one will not --on one's honor-- use.

For the next three years, it ought to be relatively easy to opt out, if you do not want to be monetized on Spokeo "so lost relatives and friends can find you".

Another reason to opt out is that Spokeo may reveal --free, to all-- the names of your aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, grandparents, children, siblings.  Never chose family members' names as any of the answers to those double and triple verification questions that financial institutions may think are only known to the real you.

Happy hunting.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

Last Wednesday through Saturday, the 2019 ICFA met in Orlando. As usual, it was wonderful to spend four days in Florida in March. Days were pleasantly warm, and the predicted off-and-on rain never appeared. The organization is considering changes to the date and/or location of the conference. For the first time, I attended the annual business meeting, just to hear the discussion on this issue and the results of the membership survey about it. I'm happy with the present set-up except for one point, the risk of airline delays in March. March in Florida falls in the "high season," with expensive hotel rates, so a change could save money and avoid rises in cost for members who couldn't afford to pay more. The long-time conference chair (about to retire from that role after thirty-five years—we'll miss him!) and his assistant presented a detailed explanation of the factors that go into hotel convention prices and the process of negotiating with hotels. Two major alternatives suggested were Toronto or a different venue in Orlando, with other choices also discussed. Naturally, no decision has been reached yet. The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) plans to send out another survey to get an updated sense of the membership's preferences now that more information has been supplied. Being naturally averse to change, I don't like the idea of leaving a pleasant location I'm used to, but I have faith that the IAFA officers will make the best decision for the majority. Like any change, of course, whatever happens will be good for some people and unfavorable to others, especially since U. S. residents, North Americans in general, and the smaller percentage of attendees from overseas all have different needs.

The Lord Ruthven Assembly—the vampire and revenant division of IAFA—presented its annual awards. The fiction winner was EUROPEAN TRAVEL FOR THE MONSTROUS GENTLEWOMAN, by Theodora Goss. The nonfiction award went to I AM LEGEND AS AMERICAN MYTH, by Amy Ransom. For the first time, as far as I know, both winners were present at the Saturday night banquet to receive their recognition, which was quite a thrill. Since 2019 marks the bicentennial of John Polidori's "The Vampyre"—the first known prose vampire fiction in English, the story with Lord Ruthven as the enigmatic villain—we had a panel about the influence of that work. The theme of the con was "Politics and Conflict," so the panel nominally dealt with the politics of the characters' social status and relationships but in practice ranged more widely. At the LRA evening meeting, after the business portion we screened an obscure horror film, THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST, based on or at least inspired by Polidori's tale. Only an hour long, the movie was co-written by classic SF author Leigh Brackett (who also worked on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK). It was better than I expected, actually quite worth watching. It also contains more elements from "The Vampyre" than I'd expected from reading the Wikipedia summary; these include the vampire's "death" and revival by moonlight, the hero's inability to tell anyone about these events, and his being incapacitated with a fever while the vampire, who poses as a concerned friend, courts the heroine (in this case, the hero's fiancee instead of his sister as in the original story). In the most significant alteration, the movie takes place in equatorial Africa instead of Greece and England.

The author guest of honor, G. Willow Wilson, although also a novelist, is mainly known for her work in comics and graphic novels, especially MS. MARVEL. Her after-lunch speech on Thursday was lively and thought-provoking. She reminded us that comics have always had a "political" dimension, often invisible to both creators and audiences because of its mainstream nature. In the case of her work, though, because she isn't an Anglo male writer, her very existence in the field is regarded as "political" no matter how innocuous her content may be. She described a hate-mail electronic message she received, whose sender went to the trouble of printing every line in a different-colored font. She noted that the wildly successful MS. MARVEL was expected to last only about ten issues, because its heroine falls under the "trifecta of death"—a new, female, minority character. Wilson also raised the question of who "owns" a creative product—the fans, the writers, the publisher, the parent corporation?

Guest scholar Mark Bould, who has written extensively on science fiction, delivered the after-lunch talk on Friday. He remarked, "We need better stories," and highlighted the surge in zombie films in recent years. He characterized this trope as a "disastrous, dehumanizing, deadly story." Instead, he advocates for a narrative of "less work, more life." His theme was openly political, focusing on a "post-capitalist, post-scarcity" society that would produce luxury for all. I was especially struck by his statement about the role of speculative fiction in exposing what's thought to be "natural" and inevitable as contingent and making the supposedly "impossible" seem attainable.

One unique feature of this year's event: A display of memorabilia from the entire forty-year span of the conference. It was mildly mind-boggling to contemplate the modest programs of the earliest years contrasted with the book-sized directories of more recent conference programming.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 6 - A Character Under Influence by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Conflict Integration

Part 6

A Character Under Influence

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this Theme-Conflict Integration Series are Indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/05/index-to-theme-conflict-integration.html

One of the oldest story driving conflicts is termed, "Man against himself."  But of course, today, we read that as "Person against self," stripping it of sexual innuendo.

Women can oppose their own interests subconsciously, as well as men (maybe better!)

And of course non-humans might very likely be the same.

The most interesting non-humans would, of course, lack the ability to be their own worst enemy -- in many ways, Spock was originally depicted as such an alien.

So to depict a Romance between a human who can thwart their own interests and a non-human who lacks that trait (and thus doesn't really understand it), one must first examine the issue of "Internal Conflict" and how such a conflict is resolved to reader satisfaction.

Once the writer has a clean, easily expressed theory of how humans oppose themselves internally (and why, and when), then it becomes easy to design the Alien Soul Mate for the human main character.

Concocting a Science Fiction theory of human psychology has at least two main parts:

A) Name the two parts inside humans that could possibly conflict?

B) Name the part that wins.

We have extant theories of Conscious/Subconscious, Yin/Yang, and Body/Soul.

Maybe all of them operate simultaneously -- or maybe none of them are true, just useful approximations.

Choose which maybe you want to use for your Worldbuilding.

Yes, these 3 choices for the 2 parts of humans that cause inexplicable behavior (like falling in love, for example), define 3 separate and different "worlds" you can build.  They are elements of world building, and each defines a sort of "magic" that can (or can't) work in that world.

Humans have been striving to define "what it is" inside us that gives us such trouble, as individuals and whole societies, for thousands of years.

So choose (or invent) a dichotomy to insert into the axioms defining the world you will tell your story within, and then choose the Rules of Engagement -- how they fight, why, and to what end.

The most obvious and natural one for a Science Fiction Romance world is Body/Soul.

Romance is about the sweeping force that dissolves the personality's bonds to "reality" -- to the practical, the everyday, to responsibility (Saturn) and accountability (Mercury ruling Virgo).

People swept off their feet falling "in love" behave unrealistically (Romeo and Juliet), immaturely, or as if they are ignorant of the strictures of reality (an office affair between a Boss and a Janitor, when both are married-with-children).

Romance (Neptune) dissolves common sense, and makes everything and anything possible.  The mental "executive function" becomes paralyzed.  There's nothing inside, no self-discipline, that will stop you, and no awareness of how you will feel about or deal with the consequences.

You do what you want and to hell with the consequences.

That is a favorite excuse in Romance novels for having sex with an inappropriate (or forbidden) individual.

So when Neptune transits hit full force, igniting ferocious sexual urges between a couple, Neptune wins.  There is no internal conflict because the Executive Function of the personality is not functioning.

NO CONFLICT = NO STORY

Thus the "irresistible hunk" story is not actually a story at all.  If the hunk truly is irresistible, there is nothing to oppose his advances, nothing there saying "no!"

Or vice-versa, a guy can run across a woman he can't resist.

But if he can't resist, there is no story to tell.

Story (and plot) are all about RESOLVING CONFLICT, so if there is no conflict there is no resolution, thus no satisfaction in reading about it.

So in a universe where humans are constructed with an internal dichotomy best expressed as Body/Soul, it is the physical (pheromones, physical arousal) of the Body that can (and often does) conflict with the spiritual fulfillment the Soul seeks.

You can use the "model" of Body vs. Soul to create Soul Mates whose bodies won't cooperate.

Romeo and Juliet is again a good analogy, as they were spiritually attracted Soul Mates born on opposite sides of a feud.  Hatfields and McCoys.  Israeli and Palestinian.

Throughout history there have been many political conflicts conquered by Romance.  Kings married their daughters to sons of the main enemies to settle disputes, and history records how many generations hence that settlement lasted.  Very few historical texts detail how the daughter-and-son actually felt about it.  Those novels are being written now.

The body can be born a non-human on some other planet (or space station) arriving at Earth's solar system carrying a Soul which is the Mate to a Soul born human on Earth.

Such a "love" has to conquer all the seething dynamics of First Contact, or worse, the ending of a long interstellar war.

Now we come to the Influence part.  If you choose Body/Soul as your world building dichotomy, then you must decide (sometimes by writing the whole book first) which "wins."  Or more broadly put, how the conflict resolves.

What are the options for resolving a conflict between civilizations?

Well, we have a pattern laid down for us thousands of years ago, which has repeated a few times, and may actually turn up again as we make a First Contact with non-humans.

The story is told in the Bible, and by Hollywood (Cecil B. DeMille), as THE EXODUS.

And the style of the conflict resolution writers can rip from this classic, is Persuasion.

As humans, pure physical bodies, basic primate species, we behave toward each other in a "dominance" pattern, always conquering, opposing, WINNING.  It's in video games, sports, politics, war.  You just have to win.  It starts in infancy with screaming until large hands bring relief.

Toddlers learn to insist until they get their way.  Toddlers learn that Might Makes Right because parents will oppose their insistence with forces the Toddler can't match (pick him up and just put him in the car seat.)

Sometimes, parents have the leisure to distract the toddler or just let the screaming exhaust him.  But the parent always wins.

Later, the parent may try persuasion, but by then the twig is bent and the tree growing robustly.

Basically, primates survive toddlerhood by having their Will overridden.  Toddlers who win the battle run out in the street and get run over by a car.  It happens.  All our toddlers would do that, given the chance.  Having that Will thwarted by Adults grabbing him up just teaches Might Makes Right.

After Toddlerhood, other lessons split our population into those who bend under force, and those who fight to the death.

Any given individual may choose (free will) either strategy, any combination, or invent a new one to try.

But in the end, how we influence each other comes down to a dominance exercise.  How do we get each other to behave properly?

Today's readership is swamped with discussions about violence and the use of violence.  The language of violence is used in News Headlines to describe mere words said to or about someone.  "...Ripped Into..."  "...blasted..."

This is all about one human forcing another to change an opinion or course of action.

In The Exodus story, we see 10 "plagues" (natural disasters, we'd call it today).  The conflict that makes this a "story" is between the Creator of the Universe and Pharaoh.  They vie for possession of a "people" -- the Jews.

Having granted humans "free will," the Creator first demonstrated the reason Pharaoh should release the Jews as that He was better at controlling Nature than Pharaoh's Magicians.  That went on for 5 plagues and Pharaoh tended to give in, but didn't change his opinion.  Then the Creator argued for 5 more plagues to persuade Pharaoh to change his own mind.  The Sages point out that we can learn from Pharaoh's eventual agreement that Persuasion works better than logical equations about brute force.

Of course, we also learn that Pharaoh sent chariots after the fleeing mixed multitude (which included a lot of Egyptians throwing in their lot with the winner.)  Their fate is depicted by Cecil B. DeMille even though Cecil got the "parting" of the sea wrong.

Nevertheless, original sources notwithstanding, all of your readers will probably visualize the Hollywood version of the parting of the sea and wipe-out of the chariots.  The general public has been persuaded.  The general public is under the influence of visual artists whose tools are limited.

The general public, your reader, does not fight that influence.

So, how does one Character exercise Influence over another in such a way that the influencer "wins?"

Which prevails, Body or Soul?

The human primate Body uses Force -- force of muscle, force of size, force of authority bestowed by Kings or Presidents, force of pheromones, force of intellect (strategy, tactics, blackmail), force of Power (I'll make you a star, or ruin your career).

The Body argues by making it abundantly clear that it is to your advantage to do something against your better interests.  Go along to get along.  Bend (as Pharaoh did) then snap back when attention is elsewhere.  Agree to anything under duress, defy later.

The Soul argues right and wrong, ethics, morals, living a Code of Conduct which is to the advantage of the Soul even when it costs the Body dearly.  The Soul adopts Causes, Crusades, Movements, Idealism, Aspirations.  But the Soul habitually Loves -- loves all humans, loves all Bodies, even when they are staunchly opposed to the Soul's purposes.

Which wins?

In Romance genre, including Science Fiction Romance, Love Conquers All is the basic theme, the tenet of all the worlds that belong to the genre.

Soul Mates always gravitate toward each other, like two magnets, snap!  Bodies have to accept that, even when it thwarts the body's purpose.  Souls win, if not in this life, then in the next incarnation.

Bodies, brains, minds woven of the stuff of this concrete reality often embrace "being influenced" -- which essentially means adopting the Group's prevailing opinion, agreeing with opinions shouted forcefully in public, accepting the opinion of "authority" or "experts" who know better than you do.

Souls, aware of being eternal, do not need to "fit in" to survive.  Souls strive and struggle to get their Bodies to live up to ideals, like a horse trainer "breaking" a horse -- or perhaps the wiser ones use less force and more persuasion, luring the physical body with physical pleasure as reward.

Souls resist Influence; Bodies seek it.

Humans have both a Soul and a Body welded inextricably to the physical world.  Any human will sometimes fight being Influenced, and other times adopt the Influencer's ideas as their own.  In other words, humans flip-flop between body and soul dominant.  Any given human might flip-flop on you at any given time -- and not be able to explain why they changed.

If you start a story in Chapter 1 with a Character succumbing to the Influence of another Character, the end of the last Chapter, the very last page, depicts the first Character throwing off that influence.

That is the innate structure of "story" -- short, medium or long -- the beginning is where the two forces that will conflict to generate the plot (to generate the deeds, motives, and Events) first come into contact.

Thus choosing your opening scene as the point at which one Character willingly adopts the opinion of another, you telegraph to the reader that Influence is the conflict.

The Theme is what readers read for, whether they know it or not.  The feeling of satisfaction at The End is powered by dawning comprehension of the Theme.

The master theme of Romance is Love Conquers All.  But it has many sub-themes - and in fact, almost any theme can be subordinated to Love Conquers All and still remain congruent to everyday reality.  I've never found a theme that can't fit Love Conquers All.

If the story opens with a Character Influenced by (an equal, a superior, Good, Evil), the story is about the gyrations necessary to fight off that Influence.

Once free, the Character may choose to adopt that same opinion, and might even become an Influencer disseminating that opinion.

But the story ends where the Character is free of Influence.

THEME: Humans must be free to choose.

THEME: Humans always choose wrong.

THEME: Humans can't be trusted to behave well.

THEME: Alien Values Are Better For Humans Than Ancient Human Values!

THEME: Non-humans are incompatible with humans.

THEME: Certain non-humans aren't so bad.

THEME: It's all right to be human.

THEME: It is not all right to be human.

Keep going to find your best theme that reveals the natural laws of your world and how those laws conflict or contradict each other, creating Characters who fight to exist in your world.

If the inner conflict is Body vs Soul, then the Themes can be fabricated from adages such as the proverbial, "If there are two wolves fighting inside you, which one wins?" "The one you feed the most."

So if you feed your Soul the most, practicing idealistic decision-making, then your Soul will dominate your body.  If you feed your body the most, indulging carnal appetites, then your body will dominate your soul.  Is that true in your fictional world?  Do your Characters have a choice which to feed the most?

In other words,
THEME: Humans are creatures of habit.
THEME: Humans rebel against habit, periodically.  (Uranus transit; mid-life crisis)
THEME: Humans prize freedom from the influence of other humans.
THEME: Humans prize the influence of other humans who (fill in the characteristic, sweet, kind, beautiful, rich, powerful...).

Always remember your THEME is what the main characters' thinking finally evolves into, not what they start out thinking when the conflict is joined, or before the conflict is resolved. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Scraping Your Face... Your Works

On March 12th, Eric Carter for NBC News revealed that IBM, and possibly others, are scraping social media sites for faces... to help Watson (presumably) to get really good at recognizing those faces.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facial-recognition-s-dirty-little-secret-millions-online-photos-scraped-n981921

If you have a Flickr account, your face may have been scraped.  Visit the NBC link to use their search tool to find out.

There's a small detail in the piece that caught my attention. Apparently, some academics think that they can freely use photographs that are released under Creative Commons. According to this writer's understanding of the Creative Commons system, Creative Commons licensed works (or photos) may be freely used but only on condition that full and proper written attribution is published with the works or photos.

Scraping works (and apparently encouraging users to "Upload")  is Ebook.Bike a seemingly scurrilous pirate site that has found a new host. It calls itself a "library", but libraries purchase the books that they loan out, and they pay for licenses to loan out ebooks. Libraries do not rip off authors, publishers and everyone in the writing and publishing ecosystem.

Members of the Authors Guild can use this form to send a takedown notice. Non-guild members might want to use this Google form to request that the links to their books are removed.

Another apparently bad actor is Open Library which tries to validate its behavior by making up a "premise" (CDL  aka "Controlled Digital Lending") even though other operations that have tried to apply first sale rights to digital works have lost in court, such as ReDigi.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

ICFA

This week I'm at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, the annual gathering of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.

IAFA

I'll report on the con next Thursday.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding From Reality Part 8 - Flamewars Over The Double Space

Worldbuilding From Reality

Part 8

 Flamewars Over The Double Space

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous posts in the series Worldbuilding From Reality are indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

In the various series of posts discussing the Theme element in fiction writing, we peer closely at "reality" -- the reality of the writer, the reality of the reader, and even sometimes attempt to discuss Reality itself.

The writer's inescapable Reality is that The Essence of Story Is Conflict.

And without a story to tell, you don't have a novel, TV Series, or Game.  Yes, even video games, and very much tabletop board games, are all about story.  That's what the best Dungeon Masters do -- create a story framework for Characters to negotiate toward a goal.

The story framework is the plot, which relies on the problem, the stakes, and the obstacles to lay out the Character's path through the World.

But the Dungeonmaster relies on the Game's various manuals to layout the parameters of the World through which the Characters must travel, overcome obstacles (conflicts), and achieve goals.

The Romance writer, (of any sub-genre of Romance) has to create a World to cradle and showcase her story.

Even Contemporary Romance has to be written in an artificially created world.

Art is a SELECTIVE representation of Reality, not reality itself, and fiction is an art form.

Here is the index to Art and Craft of Story Posts

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

Dialogue is not speech recorded from reality, but words crafted to tell a story.  Dialogue is the illusion of speech, not speech itself. Dialogue is the selective representation of speech.

Here is the index to dialogue posts:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

Likewise, the world that surrounds (and frustrates) your Characters is the selective representation of reality, not reality itself.

You, the writer, are the Selector.  You pick and choose, separate, combine, and even color or distort, the Reality of your reader to represent the reality of your Characters.

The fun of reading is in filling-in-the-gaps for yourself, in imagining the rest of the reality the Characters are embedded in, but which is depicted with a few, sparse, selected details, a Japanese Brush Painting suggesting a whole World behind it.

See the series of posts on Depicting different aspects of our generally shared Reality.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

All of these choices, are selections you make either on the fly as you write the story, or prior to having the idea for a story, or while re-writing the mess you made by not outlining before writing (no, you don't have to write it down, but you do have to know the outline).

The selections are not random, any more than our objective Reality is composed of random elements.  We understand our world in terms of cause/effect pairs or sequences, and that view of reality does produce salutary results.

We understand that causes produce effects -- but we adamantly disagree over which action causes what effect.

That essential conflict is the essence of the story of humankind.

Very likely, we will find that conflict to be the essence of the story of Alienkind.

"When I do THIS, THAT happens."  Is it coincidence, probability, Miracle, or just that I'm special and it only works for me?

For an example from Reality, just try this experiment.  Go onto a Facebook Group full of writers, readers, professors, engineers and especially, teachers of English, maybe a few editors.  Start a fight (conflict) with a simple declaration about how to format a typed manuscript for publication.  Make sure some of your connections on the Group are over 50 years old, and some are twenty-something.

Stand back and watch the flamewars begin.  Everyone will back their own idea of which is "the right" way to do it.

The dynamic will emerge that is recognizable (to the world building writer - maybe not to others) as identical to the political battles in the headlines today.

Humans fight. That is the nature of humanity (which gives you a good idea how to create an Alien species for your protagonist's alien lover.)

When an issue arises which "must" be resolved this way, or that way, and the "wrong" way strikes at the core of self-image, existence, livelihood, or progeny, humans fight to the bloody death.

Sometimes, the issue which brings about the necessity of obliterating the opposing human is actually a trivial issue such as Double Space After Periods (or single space after periods.)

Sometimes the issue is actually existential -- such as who commands and directs the collective Power of the Group (and thus over the Group.)

The Group can be a Couple (a marriage in which the question is who wears the pants), a family (where the children don't get a vote about moving to live on another planet), a town (where the homeless can't vote on sewage treatment options), a County, State, Country, or maybe the whole Earth (where we can't vote on another country's fossil fuel usage regulations).

Actually, it doesn't even take two people to make a fight.  All good stories are about how the Main Character's internal conflict manifests in the Character's external situation.  That is, stories are about the CONNECTION between our internal, psychological, emotional reality and our external, "objective" reality.

We (humans, anyway) are all at least two (maybe 7 or 9) people inside, a lion and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.  We love stories where the underdog (lamb) wins because we all can (but don't want to) see ourselves as the lamb.

Or maybe, sometimes, the same human has two wolves fighting for control inside -- which will win? The one the human feeds the most.

So we invent flamewars over trivia, such as whether to double space after sentence end-punctuation.

The reader may know the issue dividing the Characters, is trivial.  It is your job as a writer to lure the reader into suspending disbelief that these Characters could fight to the bloody death over two spaces.

Your job as a writer of Fantasy-Romance, taking place in an invented world, is to convince the reader that the issue is truly a matter of life or death, truly huge.  It's not that difficult a task.  Just remember, most of your readers live in a world where Causes produce Effects -- they are linked.

If you make one choice - this happens.  If you make another choice, that happens.

We believe that linkage is firm, reliable, predictable, and all you have to do to arrive at the Happily Ever After is choose the action that will have the HEA as a consequence.

Once a human has acquired a firm notion of how actions have consequences, the process (or formula) for understanding the world is inscribed in the brain's synapses.

We become inflexible with age, as we loose the ability to produce new brain cells and new synapses.  In truth, MRI can reveal how the brain shrinks with age, leaving a larger and larger gap between skull and tissue.

Or put another way, the old adage, "As the twig is bent; so grows the tree," is absolutely true of humans.  Science fiction is written by absorbing that truth, and asking, "But what could change it?"

Today, the vast majority of your readers have been "bent" to believe in cause-effect as a law of Nature.  But there is little consensus over how a cause inevitably produces a specific effect.  We know effects are reproducible -- so we are content to "make things happen."

So:
If you put two spaces after end-punctuation, your manuscript will look "old fashioned."

If you put one space after end-punctuation, your manuscript will look illiterate.

Which effect do you want to cause?

No wonder the question produces flamewars, fights to the death over what is "right" and what is "wrong."

The audience I outlined above will "polarize" along age lines more than profession or experience lines.

And they will fight over what is acceptable, and how it looks, and the fact that old people who refuse to accept new things are in the wrong because all new things are right.

Yes, that generational conflict over NEW was fought when I was a child, and again and again ever since.

What you never see in the double-space controversy unless I'm in the discussion is the REASON why double-space is correct while at the same time single-space is also correct.

That's right -- two mutually exclusive conditions can co-exist.

A single thing can be both right and wrong at the same time.

With double-space issue, it goes like this:

When linotype machines cast lead into letters on the fly and deposited them in "galleys" (frames with clamps to hold the type) to make a book page that could be printed, every published manuscript had to be copy-typed by a typesetter.

The typesetters didn't READ the book, and weren't allowed to make any changes. If they made an error, the editor and original writer would send back the "galley proofs" with markup to fix it.

To aid the typesetter in copying correctly, end-sentence punctuation was followed by TWO SPACES.

Another reason TWO SPACES were absolutely necessary is that typewriters could only do fixed-font, every letter and space exactly the same size.  (a bunch of gears, not a program)

The typesetter would SEE the sentence end, and hit a key that put in a ONE-AND-A-HALF slug, producing a space in the printed document (a blank, a space-holder).

The printed book (just like today) has one-and-a-half spacing after end punctuation if done by a desktop publishing program that has that option.

It helps the reader not get distracted by losing their place if you distinguish between sentences.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION: both sides of the argument are correct.

We need MORE space after end-punctuation to read intelligibly -- but we don't need TWO WHOLE spaces!

The change is simply moving to electronic files, publishing is now done by word processor and desktop publishing software that automatically translates double-space to one-and-a-half.  The software does what the typesetter used to do (justifying lines; adjusting letter spacing), but the software does not need the double-space to prevent reading errors.

So while the double space is perfectly acceptable in a submission to a publisher, it makes no difference in the published text.  It gets automatically obliterated.

The single space after end-sentence-punctuation likewise gets automatically translated to the amount of space the publisher requires.  The single space, likewise, gets obliterated.

In the end, the publisher decides the font, size, and translation rules -- not the writer.

CONFLICT RESOLVED -- it simply does not matter because nobody but the writer, editor, and copyeditor will ever see it.

If you are self-publishing, just pick a good desktop publisher program and it'll take care of appearance.

So both sides win the argument.

That's an HEA to a hot-diggity Romance plot.

If conflict is the essence of story -- then it follows that conflict resolution is the essence of the HEA.

Study the flamewars, beat-downs, and pile-ons you see on Twitter or Facebook, and how gangs will gather to destroy another poster's reputation or enthusiasm for speaking in public.  Look at the white-heat of emotion appropriate for a fight-to-the-death being used on an issue which is not properly defined on either side.  Notice how usually there are no sides, no either/or, no zero-sum-game, yet humans seem compelled to triumph, to win, to obliterate an existential threat where there is none.  Probe the nature of humanity, then ask yourself what tiny change would make Aliens A) loveable, B) incomprehensible, C) a serious threat.

How do you resolve a conflict with Aliens if you can't resolve a conflict over the double space?

You don't have a novel if you don't have a conflict.  But if you don't have a conflict resolution, you don't have a novel.  You might not have to know the resolution before you've written the book, but it takes months, even years, off the writing time if you do know the resolution (or at least a few to choose among.)

Take for example my Vampire Romance, THOSE OF MY BLOOD.

https://www.amazon.com/Those-My-Blood-Tales-Luren-ebook/dp/B00A7WQUIW/

While writing it, I didn't know the resolution of the Father/Son Vampire conflict. I knew who had to die, and why, but not by whose hand or how.  Heading for an HEA for the two protagonists, I knew who could not kill whom.  I was really stuck for weeks.  I think it worked out as poetic justice, but that is yours to judge.

And its sequel, DREAMSPY (about a galactic ecological war where love conquers):

https://www.amazon.com/Dreamspy-Tales-Luren-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00BFGG1RO/

There's a lot more to be said about conflict resolution and the craftsmanship required to keep the reader's disbelief suspended.  Meanwhile, practice creating conflicts from the historical changes over the generations in your well built new worlds.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Importance Of Being Registered

The Supreme Court has spoken with unanimity. If a copyright owner wishes to sue, they must first have the copyright of the work registered with the Copyright Office.

Additionally, if a copyright owner prevails in court, "full costs" don't necessarily mean "all costs".

Legal blogger Jonathan Hudis, writing for Quarles & Brady LLP, analyses the ruling, and the costs that even successful litigants may no longer hope to recover unless Congress writes new laws, in Copyright Lawsuits: Harder To Bring, Harder To Collect.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9cb449d0-1d3f-4f01-bfa9-b3b2cf47ed74&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-03-07&utm_term=

or
https://www.quarles.com/publications/copyright-lawsuits-harder-to-bring-harder-to-collect/

It's an important article.

For another thoughtful perspective, read The Supreme Court Weighs In On Copyright Matters - A Costly Decision And A Registration Requirement, by Eversheds Sutherland LLP legal bloggers Ann G. Fort,  Robert D Owen, and Anna C. Halsey.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=35c292c3-0a50-41a1-a2d9-fd3a7c2763f4&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium=html+email+-+body+-+general+section&utm_campaign=lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=lexology+daily+newsfeed+2019-03-08&utm_term=

or
https://us.eversheds-sutherland.com/NewsCommentary/Legal-Alerts/218637/Legal-Alert-The-Supreme-Court-weighs-in-on-copyright-matters-a-costly-decision-and-a-registration-requirement

The bottom line for authors is, register your work as early as possible, definitely before it is published or distributed in any form to any one.  

Authors playing catch up should be aware that it costs around $35 to register a single work, but that single work may only include the title, the copyright page, the work itself.  It is more expensive if the work contains promotional "back matter" such as a list of other works, or a preview chapter of another book.  On the other hand,  an author may register several her unpublished works as a group.

https://www.copyright.gov/rulemaking/group-unpublished/

For something completely different, Artists Rights Watch discusses the collateral damage ( ie the creators and copyright owners) when tech giants indulge in a food fight amongst themselves.

https://artistrightswatch.com/category/amazon-controls-your-food/

It's reminiscent of what happened when a publisher rebelled against Amazon contracts, and Amazon allegedly blocked sales of books by authors published by that publisher!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

The Orville

Do you watch THE ORVILLE? Now that I've caught up with all the episodes to date, I'm still not sure how successful it is at what it tries to do. It begins as an affectionate parody of STAR TREK and gradually becomes more serious, grappling with some delicate issues, exploring character development, and going to a very dark place in the double episode of the past two weeks. As much as I like the show, I wonder whether its funny and serious sides fit together or clash. (Note: There will be spoilers here.)

The jokes sometimes verge on slapstick. For instance, the advanced sentient artificial life-form, Isaac (the Spock or Data character in the cast), gets into the spirit of learning about practical jokes by cutting off a human character's leg (painlessly, in sleep). This incident barely escapes being horrific by the fact that the medical technology of that century is so advanced that the character will have a new leg within days. The pop culture references come almost exclusively from the twentieth century, a detail that doesn't bear scrutiny. Wouldn't the characters show more interest in and awareness of such things from their own era? Most glaring is the Krill (the Klingon equivalent in this universe) deity's name—Avis, the subject of many jokes. Would the average person four hundred years from now have even heard of a twentieth- to twenty-first-century car rental company? Likewise, the incident when Bortus has a change of heart about his female offspring after watching RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER is cute and rather touching, but it takes generous suspension of disbelief to accept that RUDOLPH would become a classic still popular with general audiences four centuries in the future.

Several features of the show similarly seem to follow the "Rule of Funny" with little or no concern for plausibility. For instance, Bortus allegedly belongs to an all-male species (with rare, taboo exceptions) that urinates only once a year and lays eggs. With no indication that the writers thought out the implications of these traits in advance, I can only conclude Bortus's kind must be desert-dwelling reptiles. The brief glimpse of his planet, when he returns home for his annual urination ceremony—obviously inspired by Spock's return to Vulcan in "Amok Time"—shows a desert-like landscape. In the incisive, timely episode about a planet ruled by positive and negative social media votes, a senior crew member gets the landing party in trouble by fooling around with a statue of a cultural heroine. As his own superiors point out, he should have known better, yet the audience has to accept that an experienced officer with a record good enough to justify his assignment to a delicate mission would behave so irresponsibly. Even in the more serious moments, dedicated SF fans may notice weaknesses. In one episode, two members of a first-contact party get sentenced to an internment camp because they were born under the wrong astrological sign. Wouldn't it be obvious to a society advanced enough to attempt communication with interstellar life that constellations look different from different planets, so it's meaningless to assign their astrological signs to inhabitants of a distant solar system? And even if their taboos prevented their accepting the stigmatized visitors, wouldn't it make more sense simply to ban them from the planet? As for the dark, emotionally wrenching double episode about Isaac's world, didn't the builders of the AIs consider the probable consequences of creating potentially sentient robots? If the builders had no qualms about trying to enslave the robots once sentience emerged, why weren't the artificial life forms programmed with the equivalent of the Three Laws to begin with?

I'm very taken with this series, but in my opinion it would be even better if it didn't look as if the writers were making up things as they go along, tossing in anything that seems entertaining at the moment. That said, the balance between silly and plausible appears to be shifting in a favorable direction, and after the final two episodes of the second season, I'll be eagerly waiting for the third.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt