ICFA Report

The weather for the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (see http://www.iafa.org for details about the organization and the conference) was sunny all weekend. The temperatures on Wednesday, Thursday, and part of Friday, though, were almost chilly for Florida in March. Much nicer than home (Maryland), anyway! We got lovely days in the 70s and 80s from Friday afternoon on. With the theme of the bicentennial of FRANKENSTEIN, the main guest of honor was John Kessel, author of PRIDE AND PROMETHEUS, in which Mary, the bookish younger sister in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, meets Victor Frankenstein and his creature. I love a good crossover story, so this was one of my favorite recently published novels. Author guest of honor was Nike Sulway, whose luncheon talk on Thursday included her personal experience of first reading FRANKENSTEIN as a teenager in a shelter; her award-winning story "The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club" can be read on the LIGHTSPEED magazine website. The guest scholar was Gothic specialist Fred Botting.

Author Andy Duncan introduced John Kessel's Thursday night speech. Duncan offered the most entertaining and accurate capsule description of this con I've heard: "A science fiction convention with better food, and MLA for happy people." John Kessel spoke about the ethics and aesthetics of adapting preexisting stories and characters in one's own fiction. On one level, this activity is the essence of fanfic. On the literary side, this kind of adaptation has been termed "critical fiction," implying the re-use of elements from earlier works to expand on, interrogate, and critique them. Kessel quoted some critics who condemn this practice as, among other derogatory labels, "laziness." (Really? Shakespeare, almost all of whose plays were derived from earlier works, was simply "lazy"?) Kessel drew the sound conclusion that all writers inevitably build upon the works of their predecessors. Furthermore, the high value the modern era places on "originality" (in the sense of inventing one's own content) is a very recent notion, unknown to antiquity, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance.

The Lord Ruthven Assembly, our vampire and revenant division, had its usual Friday night meeting. After the business portion, we screened ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, with popcorn. I'd seen it only once before and didn't remember much about it, so I had lots of fun watching it again. The movie drew pretty good attendance despite playing opposite the guest of honor readings. This mash-up of Dracula (Bela Lugosi himself), the Wolfman, and Frankenstein's monster contains some surprisingly clever humor as well as the slapstick. If you've never seen it, check it out.

Some sessions I especially enjoyed: The current state of weird fiction. The brave new world of publishing, with discussion of alternative publishing routes and tips on promotion. A "round table" with Theodora Goss on her THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER, another of my favorite recent novels; this crossover brings together daughters (biological or created) of famous nineteenth-century mad scientists—Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, Hawthorne's Rappaccini, Dr. Moreau—and a mystery for Sherlock Holmes. I was delighted to learn that there will be not only a sequel this July, set mainly in eastern Europe and introducing the daughter of Van Helsing, but a third book next year to conclude the series. Scientist Geoffrey A. Landis presented a slide show titled "To See the Universe Unseen," with enthralling images of the microcosm and macrocosm as viewed through microscopes and telescopes, phenomena invisible to the unaided human eye. He intriguingly declared, "The history of science is the history of instruments."

The weekend always concludes with the Saturday night awards banquet. The Lord Ruthven Assembly awards recognized THE COMPLETE SOOKIE STACKHOUSE STORIES by Charlaine Harris (fiction), VAMPIRE FILMS OF THE 1970s by Gary A. Smith (nonfiction), and MIDNIGHT, TEXAS, Season One (other media), with a special award for POWERS OF DARKNESS: THE LOST VERSION OF DRACULA, a translation of the early-20th-century Icelandic version (very different from Stoker's original) into English with critical essays and footnotes. I came home with the customary free books (given away at the luncheons and banquet) and inspiring thoughts about the realm of speculative fiction.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Business Model of Writers In A Changing World Part 3 - Choosing A Computer for Novel Writing

Business Model of Writers In A Changing World
Part 3

Choosing A Computer for Novel Writing

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous Parts to the Business Model of Writers series are:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/business-model-of-writers-in-changing.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/03/business-model-of-writers-in-changing.html

Most computer salesmen will give bad advice about which computer, and which configuration you need for writing novels.

Most computer salesmen have never written a novel, and those who have did not sell their novel to a major publisher, have it go from hardcover to paperback, to re-issue to audiobook, to self-published version, and back to sales by a reputable publisher, and on to a videogame.

Most computer salesmen (and women, you know) have no clue at all what is involved in a career in "the arts." 

Most computer salespersons are convinced they work long hours for little reward.  Which is, in fact, true, but reveals a clueless state.

Even middle-good selling books do not make more than minimum wage for the writer.  In today's changing world where minimum wage is increasing, the purchasing power of the dollar (or whatever currency you get paid in) is decreasing faster than minimum wage is increasing, the writer's initial compensation (advance against royalties) is not increasing.

However, the demands in writer's working time and price of acceptable equipment to output text to a publisher, is increasing.

Although computers make rewriting take far less than a third of the time it took when you had to re-type every page over and over (often 5 drafts), it still takes time to create and polish the words that tell your story.

The price of paperback books has increased while the percent of cover price paid to the writer has stayed pretty much stationary.  So yes, writers get a little more per book sold.  And writers get a larger percent per e-book sold.  However, the number of titles published per year (in all forms) has increased.  Nobody reads everything in a given field anymore (least of all in Romance, or Science Fiction Romance).

Books compete with Netflix and other streaming sources for the entertainment-hour (and buck) -- there are more readers but they are more selective, and tend to prioritize FREE e-books (Kindle etc.) or the 99C deals offered by writers, direct.

So the number of readers per title decreases as the number of books sold per year increases.  That means writer's compensation decreases -- you have to work harder, be more productive, and market agressively just to stay even.

Yes, the price of computing power has decreased, but a computer that can handle a writer doing a Series still costs a lot more than a manual typewriter cost in the 1950's in hours-worked. 

Inflation changes the number of dollars involved, but not the number of beads of sweat.

So how does a writer choose a computer to do "only word processing" in order to write books?

Most clerks understand "word processing" does not require much computer capacity, heft or memory.  They will sell you a student's laptop.

Yes, you can survive that career stage where all you can afford is a student version laptop, maybe a "refurbished" one.  Most successful writers today started on the equivalent of that. 

If you are forced to buy a minimal computer, you will have to pay extra for a cloud subscription such as Carbonite or Dropbox (I use both) or Apple's iCloud or Microsoft's.

We have learned not to trust the hardware on our desks as we trusted the stacks of paper boxes in our garages.  Yes, many writers have lost "everything" to a garage fire or flood. But it was rare.  If the books had been printed, there was a way to get fans to hunt for used copies, then copy-type the whole thing onto paper again (which has been done!).

Today, a paper copy is scanned and OCR'd, and you are good to go electronically, again.  All my older titles were made electronic that way -- by the unstinting efforts of a fan.

Those starting out today have to think long-term.  Don't think "write this novel" -- but "When the 14th Book in this series is published, how will I supply the previous ones to the new market which uses totally different software?" 

Paper was paper, and typewriter fonts were just typewriter fonts (Courier, that's it.)  But today writers work in a "changing world" as this series title suggests.

That is not a "changed world" but a "changing world." 

Plan on format inaccessibility, the need to spend time reformatting, finding software that can read the old stuff and create something the new stuff can read, then more time correcting typos and resisting the urge to rewrite.

In other words, a writer's career is punctuated with doing over again what has been completed and left behind forever.

There is no such thing as "finishing" a novel.

Once that idea has taken root in your vision of the future of your career, you are equiped to choose a computer to write your next novel with.

The choice has to arise from these considerations:

1) store clerks don't understand that novels must be rewritten and previous versions (5-10) kept, character and place notes kept, versions from various publishers reissuing kept, -- when you say "word processing" they think "term paper writing" at the most.  Nothing could be further from the truth!

2) you can't afford what you really need -- and very likely they don't make it yet.

3) In the commercial marketplace, there is a difference between equipment (from chainsaws and snowblowers to computers) made for "home use" and what is manufactured and sold to businesses.  Business machines cost a lot (more than a lot) more than stuff made for hobbyists, students, and grandma.  But they last longer -- long enough to make up for the price difference, and more.

4) there is no way to estimate what you will need during the useful life of a computer.  If your career takes off, you will wear your computer out long before its time, but be able to buy another.  That's fine if you've been paying for bakup in various "cloud" spaces.

5) if your career does not take off immediately, you must keep the ever-more-obsolete computer running because you can't invest more in equipment

6) the new tax law (for 2018) is supposed to let you deduct the cost of new equipment in the year you buy it -- problem is you can deduct it against what you earn that year, and publishers do not pay on time (they just don't - it is part of their business model.) 

7) the computer will die, just quit, eventually.  Home office equipment usually lasts 3-4 years (by design), and today the software field makes 4 year old programs too obsolete to use. 

So how do you make this decision of what to buy?

You want to avoid buying more than you need. 

You want to avoid buying less than you need (a career catastrophe caused by yourself). 

You can't afford what you need.

You have no clue what you need.

Nobody has a clue what you really need, least of all the experts in computers.

In other words, it's pretty much like buying a car or a house -- mission-critical but sans knowledge of what the mission is.

So what do you do? 

The truth is that you can't afford what you need because the profit margin your business model produces is not sufficient to cover the cost of producing the product.  This is true for all but the tiny percentage of writers who go to the top of the charts -- and even then, it usually doesn't last a lifetime.  Monetizing your hard work over decades takes preserving that hard work in a form that can be re-sold and re-issued.  This is not a problem specific to writing.  You find exactly the same business model problem in all "The Arts." 

I've been writing novels on computers since before there was such a thing as Microsoft Windows, or its predecessor "Presentation Manager."  And I've struggled (with massive help from fans) with re-issue issues on every title.

I learned my solution to this impenetrable conundrum of a problem from my first typewriter repairman.

I was just starting to try to sell short stories.  I went to a used typewriter store, asked for a machine to write books on, and bought a nice one.  I wore it out.  I went back and bought another, which I had to take back for repairs several times a year. Became buddies with the repairman in the back of the store.

A couple years into this routine, the guy hands me back my machine and asks, "What in the world are you DOING to these typewriters?" 

Blink.  Blink,blink. "But I told you, writing books."

6-8 hours a day, typing 80-100 words per minute, when copying text. 

THAT is what secretaries in big offices do, not what salesmen envision writers do. 

So he says, "What you really need is an IBM." And he pointed me to a monsterous gray hulk he had refurbished.  I bought it.  Wore it out a few times, had it repaired, bought another.  Eventually, I was able to afford the new IBM and an on-site service contract, but I wore that out, too.

Many years later, I saw a fellow -- a big hearted guy -- who had a chain saw in his garage. Came a big storm that downed trees on his street, so he went to help the neighborhood guys and electric company linemen chop trees and clear the roads.  His chain saw broke.  It was almost new, but it wore out.  He asked the linemen.  They said it looked the same as theirs on the outside but was made chintzy inside. 

So this marketing ploy is still in play.

What they sell mass-market to homeowners and students LOOKS the same on the outside, but inside it is different from what they sell to professionals.  This holds in every type of product line where I've tested it, including now, computers.

In this new, still changing, world, though, box-makers of computers expect businesses to have cloud backup, etc etc, and consider desktop equipment a "consumer staple" not an investment in infrastructure. 

Computers, even desktops, are like phones now -- 3-years and it breaks.  The limit is designed in. 

This year, I had a Dell business grade desktop break down, and it didn't quite make 10 years as the previous Dell Desktop I had went.  In fact, I gave away the old Dell Desktop still in working order after 10 years.  This one, an even higher top-of-the-line went after 8 years, or so.

So I am not recommending Dell business computers anymore.

Each time you have to buy a computer, look around for the business that puts the most wear and tear on the hardware in the least amount of time, and uses the most capacity.

Store clerks hear "word processing" and sell you the LEAST rugged, lowest capacity hardware they have in stock. 

But the truth is, writing FOR A LIVING is not the same as writing letters to family and an occasional student paper.

The "change" in the world that has forced a change in the writer's business model is the shift from typewriter (a 20 year investment) to computer (a 3 year consumable tool). 

What you need to find each time you must shop for office equipment is the MOST rugged, highest capacity, fastest, smartest, top of the line business office tool you can possibly get.

Once you've found what the "real" high-productivity, mission-critical businesses use, then be sure to get the version that has the biggest harddrive, the most memory, and the fastest processors.  Even if you must start your career with "refurbished" computers, pick the ones used in high-volume offices (not your Doctor's front desk).

What you are doing, as a novel writer, is more demanding of your equipment than what the worker-bees in office cubicles do.  It more closely resembles what Gamers do, or perhaps what Videogame Producers and animators do.

Look at the equipment used by Hollywood post-production companies -- that is the equipment that can stand up under the pounding it takes to produce a novel.

But even so, you still need cloud subscription backup as well as your own external harddrive backup device.  Either of those could just POOF disappear with all your data without notice.  Lawsuits and apologies, even cash remuneration won't replace novel manuscripts. 

You can't afford what you really need, so create a "make-do" situation with a solid, well thought through, plan for the upgrade your first Advance Payment will finance.

For years to come, most of what you make will go to equipment upgrades, publicity trips, and many expenses that are not deductible. 

You need to order computers online, from the manufacturer, on the website page reserved for businesses not home-users.

Watch the world as it evolves for where the heaviest usage of computing power moves after it leaves Hollywood post-production studios.  That is where you will find the equipment it takes to create novels, and keep on creating without losing and doing over. 

Only a writer understands what novel writing entails relative to what is involved in, say, Term Papers. 

You can "get away with" using bottom-of-the-line equipment for years, but when you run the figures for your business, you will find the amount of time and energy you spend keeping your equipment functioning grows over time.  If you somehow swing top-of-the-line new equipment, you suddenly find the amount of time you can devote to word-creation triples or better.

This is your profit margin.  Calculate it.  Then decide if you want to "be a writer." 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dead Authors And Defunct Publishers Are Not Fair Game

Copyright lasts for the life of the author plus up to seventy years. Most English-speaking nations, and many non-English-speaking nations have agreed to this.  (Berne Convention, WIPO etc.)

A book may be out of print, but that does not mean that it is out of copyright. A book may be available to read online on a pirate site, but that does not mean that the book is "in the public domain" and free for everyone to exploit and share.

An ebook may be in a "private collection" sold as a CD on EBay, but that does not mean that the EBay seller is conducting lawful business, or that (whatever he or she alleges in the listing) he or she owns the copyright to the ebooks in the private collection.

One of many fascinating sources of good information on popular misconceptions about copyright is Angela Hoy.
http://writersweekly.com/angela-desk/when-authors-dont-understand-copyright-law

Her recent article "When Authors Don't Understand Copyright Law" is excellent.

Of course, the same applies to music, and song-writers.

Here's a prompt for a little navel gazing.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2d51dfae-5aa8-4b0c-a12c-afa0a5c8480f&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium=html+email+-+body+-+general+section&utm_campaign=lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=lexology+daily+newsfeed+2018-03-07&utm_term=

The law blog article "Bloggers Beware...." by John Crittenden,  Lori Levine  and Peter Willsey of the law firm  Cooley LLP  raises the alarm that linking to content --that may infringe someone else's copyright-- may also be copyright infringement.

This may be an important alert to all bloggers and retweeters from Cooley LLP.  Please follow the link to find out what they have to say about the potential dangers of "embedding" other people's copyrighted images, and the possible consequences if the Goldman vs Breitbart ruling survives.

It would be improper to wonder whether the New York federal district judge departed from the powerful precedent set by the Californian Ninth Circuit judges because the (losing) defendant in New York was Breitbart, and the (winning) defendant in California was Amazon... but perhaps "improper wonderings" are grist to the author mill.

Meanwhile, for those who monetize their writing online, beware of snagging illustrations or sidebars from Facebook or Twitter, instead of paying the creator and copyright owner for a non-exclusive license to use the illustration or anecdote.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

ICFA

This week the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts meets in Orlando, Florida, and I'm there as usual. This year's theme is the bicentennial of the publication of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. The weather forecast looks wonderful. I'll report on the con next Thursday.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration Part 10 - How To Marry An Alien Billionaire

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration 

Part 10

How To Marry An Alien Billionaire

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous Parts in this 4-way integration of skills series are indexed here:

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

Applying 4 (really hard, abstract, mysterious and spiritual) skills at the same time is a job for the well oiled subconscious.  These blogs apply that oil.   

For the most part, when a writer "has an idea" -- all this "integration" work has already been done by the subconscious. Learning to write novels is the process of training the subconscious to "integrate" all these elements before telling you to write the story. 

Once the subconscious has done the integration, it believes it has done it all wonderfully well, regardless of how inappropriate the result may be.  That is why writers who first begin submitting to large commercial publishers get back arcane, incomprehensible, and just plain utterly WRONG, demands for changes.  The subconscious has finished, knows it is correct, believes in its work, and refuses to make such wrong changes.

The subconscious knows the editor does not love it, and very likely its owner (the writer) does not really love it either.  Subconscious, which does all the work for the writer, can be sullen and stubborn if rebuked by an editor demanding changes.

Most beginning writers are bewildered by such demands because they feel like rejections.  Even an outright rejection letter tagged with an encouraging P.S. on the boiler plate note of rejection does not convince subconscious it has been understood and loved.

To hit the large commercial fiction market, a work has to conform to a number of parameters -- all moving parts of an artistic composition -- that make it "marketable."

Science Fiction, which is the genre we are blending with Romance here, arose from a group of writers who -- just like the "self-publishing" writers of today -- walked to the beat of a different drummer.

For many decades, Science Fiction was boring or ridiculous to the bigger readerships Manhattan publishers had to reach. 

Very few editors or readers had the education to understand the science -- which was inserted as expository lumps -- never mind the made-up science explained in those expository lumps.  The real key to the Science Fiction readership was simply to understand that the story (plot and all) arose from a questioning of "real" science.

All the readers were assumed to know the real-world-science being used, and being challenged with a "What if...?"

What if you could go faster than the speed of light?  What premise of current science has to be proven wrong in order to accomplish that?

Well, at that time (the 1930's) every science educated person knew a set of facts taught in High School.  Research the history of science today, and you will find (if you know current science) that almost everything taught in High School at that time has been proven wrong.

Electrons do not circle nuclei in orbits.

The atom is not the smallest indivisible component of matter.

Our solar system is nowhere near unique.

Quarks, Black Holes, Quasars, and the Higgs Boson were not mentioned because the math didn't include them.

Yes, in the development of science, usually math comes first -- math is the language of science, and to write science fiction romance, you really have to know your math.

Science fiction depicted many ways to go faster than light, get to other stars, explore other planets -- each presented different premises that defied the known science of their day.  Some of the science fiction writers of 1930-1970 have now been proven correct.  Some have simply been proven to have spotted the premise that was not true -- but not extrapolated what is actually true (by today's understanding of the universe, tomorrow is another matter entirely.)

In the 1960's to 1990's another breed of science fiction writer arose -- the Sociological Science Fiction genre inventors.

These writers questioned the premises then taught in universities as "the truth" of "settled science" and built fantasy worlds based on ideas about how our understanding of "what is human" and "what government works for humans" was flat out wrong.

Harry Harrison and Poul Anderson are two leading names.

Ursula LeGuinn added many unseen dimensions to exploring social constructs -- revealing what Poul Anderson taught his writing students -- all society is rooted in and driven by the power of gender.

Poul Anderson created his aliens from animal species found on Earth, extrapolating what such a type of reproductive drive would produce for a society of a star-spanning civilization.

Also from the 1960's on, we had writers like Katherine Kurtz -- even Tolkien -- founding the new genre of Adult Fantasy.

By "Adult" here is not meant the current must-have-monkey-sex scenes, but rather Adult in the sense of taking up the life-issues of grown up people rather than the "talking animal" issues of children's fantasy.

So Adult Fantasy became about worlds where Magic is real, where threats are invasions from another dimension, Heros defend a way of life from such supernatural invaders.

Adult Fantasy of Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series were sociological-religious-Fantasy -- where a breed of human, the Deryni, had both ESP and real-magical-powers.  The Deryni were rejected for their abilities by the dominant religion, and created their own religion based on that dominant religion -- the novels talk around the concept of "The Church" of the Middle Ages, but it is very similar.

So religion and ESP were tackled head-on as social constructs.

The Deryni novels are all about who will be King.  The economic structure is based on typical Fantasy ideas of an entire government and economy modeled after the real-world year 1000 - plus or minus a couple centuries.

What would today be like if the Deryni Kings had held sway through the Dark Ages, and piloted human society into the Enlightenment?

Those modern day novels in the Deryni series have not, as far as I know, been written.

But many writers today are exploring the Unseen Worlds, Magic Is Real, or Defend From Intruding Demons, worlds that are so fascinating and scary.

Some such fantasy is pure horror - at least from some people's point of view.

Some seems to appeal on the level of, "I'd go live there if I could."

One version of the attractive Fantasy World arose in the Vampire Romance -- where a human woman would fall in love with a Vampire, and he with her, and they would attempt to solve his problem of killing humans for their blood.

All these worlds, and variations on them, have been explored at great length.  Much imaginary science has been invented to support the sociological discussion about human nature -- most of that imaginary science is not based on real-world science being systematically (scientifically) challenged, the way early science fiction writers challenged the unquestioned beliefs of science textbooks of that day.

Many writers with ideas about how Relationships might work out to a Happily Ever After ending just plunge into writing their stories based on an impression they have derived from reading many Fantasy Novels.

There's nothing wrong with this commercially!  What your intended readership wants, loves, responds to, (or ignores and doesn't care about) is relevant to what story you are telling about what Characters.

Copying what academics call the trope that has become popular is a way to sell a lot of books - and that is the goal.

But there are vast areas of human society that have remained untouched, and could make grand new ingredients in those worn out tropes.

Science Fiction started with modifying scientific "laws" to allow for Faster than Light travel to explore Alien Planets.

Then Fantasy writers challenged "science" -- with the idea that there are other dimensions to reality that science does not (can not) describe.

Ghosts are real.  Zombies can happen,  Vampires have to be dealt with. Telepaths exist.  Psychokinesis works.  The Russians were reported to be spending money on research into Clairvoyance - Far Viewing to spy on American defense plans, was that Fantasy or Science Fiction?

And of course, UFO nuts still promulgate conspiracy theories -- guess what, 2017 revealed the USA was spending millions investigating UFO's.

So where is a Fantasy writer to go to find an accepted idea, premise, or theory that can be refuted?  What difference do you base your Worldbuilding upon that will, in 50 years, be proven correct?

Look at the world of 2018 -- all around the globe -- and cut away the noise and chatter, the politics and nonsense.  You see a world in the grip of a number of very hot Religious Wars.  And even war to extinguish all Religion as superstition, hypocrisy or outright lies told to gain control of "the masses."

Now look at the world from another direction, and you see a world where the entire concept of "the masses" is being systematically dissolved away.

Google, Microsoft, Apple, -- Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking -- all of the emergent technologies are groping for control of "Big Data."  People are handled as individuals, each unique, but composed of standardized units of information (name, address, date of birth, facial recognition, fingerprint, credit rating).  Fill in each field in the form with standardized information blocks, and the resulting form is a unique composite -- an Identity.

Identity Theft has run rampant when the sociological assumption behind all the governments of the world (including the U.N.) is that government exists to control "the masses."  The assumption is that there is no such thing as "an individual" or an "Identity."  People move in masses, and all the ones with the same "label" are identical to one another (interchangeable) -- Black, White, Muslim, North Korean, Chinese -- we are our labels, not ourselves.

So we are a civilization that has been founded on governing masses by whatever force necessary, now in transition to a civilization founded on independent movement of unique individuals.  Will that transition continue to completion, or reverse itself?  How many Billionaires can this planet hold?

Yeah, that sounds  ridiculous, but look with your writer's glasses on.  Look at China and the culture that embraced Communism because they even name their children putting family name first, then personal name.

The Group is your Identity - not your personal or individual name.

That tension between Group and Individual is built into humanity.

Astrologically, it is First House opposite Seventh House -- the individuality of First House is inside you, but the Spouse/Public/Partner is ALSO inside you.  That is the portrait of the Natal Chart we all share - every one of us has a First House and a Seventh House, and we all have them in opposition-tension.

Individually, few of us could survive, never mind thrive.  In fact, most all "apes" (the animal family we sort of belong with) live in "tribes" and develop a Group survival strategy.

So, as humans, food, clothing, shelter, reproduction, raising the young, etc. all the basics of life depend on our Group affiliation.

But Groups have Structures, and even Great Ape communities have bosses, dominants, go-along-to-get-along, and humans periodically look around and declare, "We have to get organized!"  Groups don't function to survive without being organized.

So for thousands of years, some humans have spent their lives studying Organizations -- how to organize humans, how to make an organization work, which organization structure is superior to the neighbor's organization (Communism, vs. Socialism, vs. Capitalism).

Humans study animals, and that seems to work -- we seem to be able to make sense of animals and predict their behavior.  From the first spear-carrying human, we have relied on understanding animals to hunt them for food.  We can predict animal behavior.

But humans studying humans has not been all that successful, up until Public Relations became a science by applying math to human behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations

Public Relations dubs "the masses" as "the public."  These are all the people you don't know personally, but have to deal with as if they are all identical (e.g. the masses.)

There are many applications of these predictive assumptions, many of which have gone unquestioned for decades (longer than most practitioners of public relations have been alive).  Advertising is one such application.

The predictive assumptions have gone unquestioned because they have worked -- they have worked, gangbusters!

Most of Economics as taught in universities and applied using government, regulation and law, is obviously wrong.

Much math is being applied and much psychology -- all of it targeted at predicting and thus controlling human behavior on the survival level.

Ultimately, economics is about getting enough food, clothing, shelter, sex, and satisfaction, in spite of all the forces arrayed against you.

The phrase, "Dog eat dog world" -- applies today.  It is how basic humans behave.

"Standard Economic Theory" assumes people act rationally.

What if your Aliens actually acted Rationally?

Could your human Character fall in love with someone who was totally rational?

Well, look at the success Gene Roddenberry had selling the American woman on how sexy Spock is - even Sarek!  Of course, in his heart, Roddenberry did not think of Spock as really (actually, provably) rational.  Logic is not the same as rationality, is it?

Logic requires a Helenistic view of the Universe, which is based on an "either/or" or zero-sum-game choice.  Public Relations is the root of "Game Theory" -- which pits one side against the other, to produce a winner.

All through human history, survival has been a winner-take-all, either/or issue.

Maybe Artificial Intelligence, or some new application of the communications facility of the Internet will change what it takes to survive, and thus change all economic theory of humanity.

One of my hobbyhorses here has been solving the Energy problem.  Fossil fuels work, obviously - and kill us, obviously.  Energy is necessary for individual and group survival, but getting it and using it kills us all.

Allan Cole, in his Sten Series,
https://www.amazon.com/Sten-9-Book-Series/dp/B071992Q6C/

postulated an anti-matter driven galactic civilization.

Isaac Asimov predicted getting our energy from an adjacent universe (but they fought back against the theft).  Star Trek postulated an anti-matter drive.  So far, we haven't got that -- but Nuclear Fusion (far cleaner than Nuclear Fission) might be within reach.  An abundant energy source that doesn't kill us (even the smoke from caveman fires killed), would change the entire definition of "economics."

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/iter-nuclear-fusion-reactor-halfway-complete/

---------quote-----------
Earlier this month, the director-general of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) announced that construction of the project had reached the halfway point. It’s an important milestone for the multi-billion-dollar facility being constructed in southern France. The goal is to begin generating plasma, an essential component of nuclear fusion reactors, by 2025.

ITER (Latin for “Way”) is a partnership of 35 countries, all hoping to share in the scientific rewards. “This gives us confidence as we face the remaining 50 percent,” Dr. Bernard Bigot of ITER told the journal Live Science.
-------------end-quote---------

Note the size of the financing, location and staffing.  Note the source of funding.  Also note, they do not yet have a way of producing as much energy as it costs to run such a fusion plant, so it isn't an abundant-clean source of energy to run the planet (yet).

But what if Aliens arrived who knew how to do this fusion trick?  Would we reject them because it puts the lie to our beliefs about the structure of reality?  Embarrasses academics or politicians?  After all, humans were in charge of the Roman government that thought it was a good idea to crucify the guy they thought was the Jewish Messiah (mostly because he was gaining political klout).

THEME: Is there anything humans wouldn't do to defend beliefs?

Maybe it will take a first encounter with Aliens (and yes, a love affair) to change how human society organizes around economics.

THEME: If you want to know what's really going on, follow the money.

Right now, the field of Economics is split (just like the current global religious wars) around two belief systems derived from two Nobel Prize Winners in Economics, each of which did an amazing job of following the money.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/milton-friedman.asp

---------quote----------
Milton Friedman was an American economist and statistician best known for his strong belief in free-market capitalism. During his time as professor at the University of Chicago, Friedman developed numerous free-market theories that opposed the views of traditional Keynesian economists.
--------end quote------

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/keynesianeconomics.asp
-------quote-------

Keynesian economics was developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes during the 1930s in an attempt to understand the Great Depression. Keynes advocated increased government expenditures and lower taxes to stimulate demand and pull the global economy out of the depression.

------end quote------

Both concepts are being hybridized, just as Science hybridized with fiction to produce science fiction and romance hybridized with science fiction to produce science fiction romance.

But maybe these economists adding modern data-science and psychology and brain/nervous system studies and so on to these two theories are missing something?

Maybe some predictive-fantasy writer might nail that something by worldbuilding an Alien Interstellar Civilization around a THEME that encompasses human behavior (seeking survival) and yet points out where the belief systems of Award Winning Genius Scientists (which both Friedman and Keynes were) are actually flat out wrong?

That's how science fiction themes form the foundation of worldbuilding.  "What do we know for a fact is true, that we base all our very successful actions on, but is actually not true?"

Science fiction plots are built on 3 question:

"What If ...?"
"If only ...?"
"If this goes on ..."

Science Fiction Characters are built on, "What does he know that I don't know?"

Aliens know things they believe are true, that belie what humans know and believe.

Characters build worlds.

Worldbuilding is not done by the writer -- but by the writer's Characters.

Your human finds a crashed space ship with a barely living Alien crawing out of the wreckage.

Which one's "beliefs" will be proven wrong?  Maybe both?

Are they "rational" -- within the contexts of their own worlds?

Does "logic" transcend their social worlds, as a "hard science" - a "cold equations" situation?

In the 1940's science fiction tropes, the alien in the crashed space ship is an explorer or military scout (The Day The Earth Stood Still, Starman).

What if, in today's sociological/fantasy trope the Alien is a Billionaire in his own civilization -- the top of the top of the economic ladder in his world?

Maybe in his world there is no ladder and everyone wields enough wealth to be an autonomous Power in their own right?

Would complete economic independence from all others of your species make you asocial -- a loner, a maverick, not a member of the tribe?

Would such a loner, totally independent of others of his species for sustenance and success, not supervised by "government regulations" and not "ruled" by an aristocracy, not taxed, not bound by family honor, just an independent individual be a Romantic Interest?

Is Independence sexy?

How many good Romance novels have you read about marrying "up" -- to higher status, money, social prominence -- to gain happiness?

From Pygmalion to Meghan Markle's Royal Wedding -- is it money, status, power, that causes happily ever after?  Or is it changing your mind about something you don't even know you believe?  Does it rain in Spain's mountains?

The theme generates the Character, the world they come from and the world they go to during the Plot -- and the theme generates the plot, too.

Theme is the basis of all fiction.  Theme is what the story says about "life, the universe and everything."

If your theme says, "Something you (the reader) are absolutely certain about is in fact wrong," then you very likely have a science fiction story to tell.

The art behind this type of fiction, the challenge to common beliefs, is a work painted from shades of cognitive dissonance.

For example, if your Main Character is absolutely certain there can be no other kinds of people than humans, then your opening scene is the moment that Main Character meets a person who is not human.

If your Main Character believes there is no way in all creation for a space ship to go faster than light or travel back in Time -- well, he's the Air Force pilot who sees the Enterprise dipping into Earth's atmosphere, has his plane break apart, and gets beamed aboard.

The opening moment of How To Marry An Alien Billionaire has to redefine "Billionaire" using something that disproves both Friedman's theory of economics and Keynes's theory. 

To find that opening event (something dramatic, symbolic, visual, like the 1929 Market Crash featuring Stock Traders jumping out of skyscraper windows) -- read this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/17/heretics-welcome-economics-needs-a-new-reformation

------------quote-----------
Keen and those supporting him (full disclosure: I was one of them) were making a simple point as he used Blu Tack to stick their 33 theses to one of the world’s leading universities: economics needs its own Reformation just as the Catholic church did 500 years ago. Like the medieval church, orthodox economics thinks it has all the answers. Complex mathematics is used to mystify economics, just as congregations in Luther’s time were deliberately left in the dark by services conducted in Latin. Neoclassical economics has become an unquestioned belief system and treats anybody who challenges the creed of self-righting markets and rational consumers as dangerous heretics.

------end quote--------------

Note the use of language like "reformation" "orthodox thinking" and "heretic" -- these word choices are not accidental.  This article pointing out the failure of previously revered economics is explaining how authority promulgates belief systems until they become not only self-perpetuating but permeated with self-fulfilling prophecies.



Things are happening on Earth, among human societies today that belie the most cherished, heart-felt beliefs -- religious beliefs, and everything we put in place of religion and every mis-use of religion.

Faith itself, as a human cognitive function, is being challenged.  Note: Fake News.

When has "News" ever not been "Fake?"  The Bards sang songs of Grand Battles -- hardly a word being true, except there was a fight and lots of people died, this side won and that side lost -- (and even THAT might not be really true).

But we believe.

We take on faith.

We govern ourselves by rumor.

We discount "official sources."  We believe our neighbors when they relate rumors because we know someone who knows someone it happened to.

We, as humans, believe what we experience is true.

Do your Aliens share that propensity?

To create an Alien Romance, you need to identify what the couple has in common with each other, and use that as the affinity that "Conquers All."

Then you must identify the obstacle to their founding an HEA together.

Then you must show-don't-tell how Love itself, a universal force that is a property of reality throughout all creation, conquers "all."

Whatever the obstacle, however long and complex the path from initial cognitive dissonance moment to the HEA, show how Love provides the energy.

Take today's worldwide religious war -- how does Love conquer that?

Ordinarily, people fight and kill each other until someone wins and someone gives up (and/or dies).  The winner is proclaimed "right" and the loser or dead side is "wrong."  The fight is about WHO IS RIGHT, and never a word or issue about WHAT IS RIGHT.

Any dispute among humans can be settled by killing the opposition -- even if only metaphorically, overpowering by brute twitter-storm.

But what if Aliens didn't settle disputes that way?

What if the academic dichotomy now applied to our political world of Friedman vs Keynes was viewed by the Aliens as silly because neither is correct.  How would an Alien mediate such a dispute between two Economists, and persuade both of them to give up the panoply of beliefs each holds so dear they don't even know they are beliefs, not facts?

Would a human, watching that Alien argue, fall in love?  What would the human do?

Or take another dispute that's boiling over in our world -- take Israel vs. The Palestinians.  Or take North Korea vs. the USA.  Or Britain vs. The E.U.

It is human to rely -- to the death -- on a belief.

How do you persuade a human to doubt those beliefs?

LOVE CONQUERS ALL.

I'm not the only one who sees and understands the world through Love Conquers All.  It is a favorite hobbyhorse topic on chabad.org, and I subscribe to a Whatsapp daily bit of wisdom they send out.

One tiny capsule of wisdom that came in 2017 was a summation of a process I have seen work on humans over and over again in a wide variety of contexts.

I think it might seem plausible if you wrote an Alien it worked on, or who worked it on your human Main Character.

It is in that graphic at the top of this post.  No one listens to rebuke unless they believe that you love them.

I saw it used in a Hawaii 5-O episode where a terrorist captive was being questioned to little avail, but Steve McGarrett reversed the strategy and treated the terrorist as a human being -- water, food, time to pray, clean clothes.  He was rebuked by authority for this tactic, but did not accept what authority decreed (torture works).

Authority has never loved Steve McGarrett -- so he never accepts such decrees unless he's woefully out-gunned.  Then he beats a strategic retreat and lives to fight another day.

Rebuke is a tool of love.  In any other hands, rebuke is counter-productive.

Here's the Quote from chabad.org  Whatsapp.

--------quote--------
It's #ThoughtfulThursday!

Here is something to think about all day long:

Rebuke

No one listens to rebuke unless they believe that you love them.

By the time Moses returned to the scene, his people had hit an all-time low. They worshipped idols, spoke slanderously of each other, and had wandered very far from the path of their forefathers. Perhaps he should have told them off, saying, “Repent, sinners, lest you perish altogether!”

But he didn’t. Instead, he told them how G‑d cared for them and felt their suffering, how He would bring about miracles, freedom and a wondrous future out of His love for them.

As for rebuke, Moses saved that for G‑d. “Why have You mistreated Your people?!” he demanded.

If you don’t like the other guy’s lifestyle, do him a favor, lend him a hand. Once you’ve brought a few miracles into his life, then you can urge him to chuck his bad habits.

--------end quote-----------

Think about that quote.  How easy to turn an idealistic thesis into a tactic for controlling people - into a Power Grab.  Do something for a person, give them something they want or think they want, THEN contradict (rebuke) their most cherished belief and they will accept what you say.  E.G. bribery works.

Think about Keynesian theory -- the government takes wealth that someone makes, and gives it (as if it belonged to the government because the government made it and is generous) to someone (of the masses) who wants it.  Then the government tells the recipient anything the government wants the recipient to believe.

In other words, "the government" is the origin of the only forces in the world that allow humans to survive.

Now think using Friedman's idea -- there exists a force circulating among individuals that causes wealth to be created.  That force (the free market) can overturn governments, reward and punish individuals, -- a force of Nature like the ocean, to be reconned with but not stopped.

Government can build sea-walls, and maybe submarines with torpedos, but government can not stop the market.  The market will be free even if it kills all humans.

There is an old adage (you do know how much I love adages, the more cliche the better): If you've got a tiger by the tail, there is only one thing to do: swarm aboard and ride it.

That tiger is the Free Market that Keynes had seen destroy (1929) his world.  We saw it again in 2007 with the Housing Crash, mortgage fraud, international monetary fraud, and the collapse of the international banking system (because by then computers, the internet, and global markets were emerging as Artificial Intelligence is today.)

Periodically, the Free Market self-destructs, and maybe next time will take us all with it.

THEME: Given the size and nature of the Market "Ocean" with currents, monster storms, unfathomable depths, we must either build a true Titanic Economic Vessel, or stop the ocean currents and storms from circulating (using government or magic).

THEME: There does not exist any such thing as a "Market" -- it is a figment of human imagination.

THEME: humans can be "happily ever after" only if they keep shedding out-worn beliefs (such as "The Market" is "Free.")

THEME: No human can be sovereign, an individual, independent and rational.

THEME: Identity can not be stolen.

THEME: There is no such thing as "the masses."

THEME: Humans don't need to "be governed."

THEME: Humans need to govern others to be happy.

THEME: No human can survive long without a government (support group, tribe, family).

THEME: Money is not the root of all Evil; Envy is.

THEME: There is no such thing as "The Market."

How do you marry an Alien Billionaire?  As in the recipe for rabbit stew, "First Catch Your Alien."   
Would you recognize your Alien Billionaire?

How can you tell, by looking at someone, or even listening to their voice, that they are ultra-wealthy?  Are all wealthy people independent individuals?  By "marry" do you mean make the Billionaire dependent on you for emotional satisfaction?

What is wealth?  Is it the same as money?  How do humans acquire wealth?

Do all human societies need an Aristocracy of Power supported by wealth sucked from the hands of peasants (the masses).

Modern Fantasy Romance often uses a Setting of Kings, Dukes, arranged marriage, and revolution by warfare, Court Magicians and decorative Characters.  Theme generates Setting -- the presence of an aristocracy in a setting limits the range of themes possible.

If you must write in an Aristocratic Setting, you will have to create "masses" (peasants -- people who out-number the Aristocrats) to support them.  Just establishing the existence of an Aristocracy sets up your Economic System.

Human history worked through that stage of Kings and Kingdoms.  Did your Aliens also evolve through thousands of years of Aristocracy?

Have your Aliens, now an Interstellar Civilization, evolved a different kind of Economy because of their reproductive methods?  Humans are all about dominance, winning, and the Alpha Male.  What are your Aliens all about?  How could a human Alpha Female find such a male attractive?

The Billionaire image is a symbol of an individual whose will gets done.  That is, the Billiionaire has the magnitude of wealth that is sheer, unadulterated Power -- like the Market-Ocean, Power, Force, irresistible.

Is that sexy, in and of itself?  Or is it sexy only when contrasted (artistic composition) with "the masses" - who individually are powerless, but together can overcome a multi-trillionaire, in the improbable event they chose to do so.

Small wonder Kings fear The Masses.   Kings rule only by making sure that "they" (the masses) don't all know/believe the same thing at the same time and move as one.

And "the masses" (or "The Market Forces") will be much-much-much larger in an interstellar civilization.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Are Intelligent People Less Moral?

Digimarc.com sponsored a Neilsen study of book pirates, and offers a link to download the study.
https://www.digimarc.com/resources/ebook-piracy-study

It is a useful study.

Here's a link to another study: https://www.statista.com/topics/3493/media-piracy/

And another:
https://fossbytes.com/10-reasons-why-people-do-piracy-and-download-movies-shows-albums-software/

Perhaps it would not be so astonishing to learn that college graduates are more likely to feel that they have a right to circumvent the natural right of creators to earn a living from the creators' own work.

For one thing, college graduates are fresh out of education systems that enjoy limited copyright exemptions... and allegedly some institutions of higher learning encourage, facilitate and subsidize copyright infringement, including --according to an anecdote told on a news station-- by paying for wholesale photocopying of entire textbooks, so students did not have to purchase textbooks.

If my teacher does it, it must be okay. Right?

Most recent graduates, too, have grown up in an online world where piracy is the new normal. For instance, a certain venue for rampant pop-up music video piracy was founded on Valentines Day, 2005. Some musicians allege that the owner of this site makes them a take-it-or-leave-it offer of minimal income.

There are pop-up pirates on Google Sites, but to Google's credit, they make playing whack-a-mole quite easy.... but one has to play it almost daily.

Here's a pirate link that I have not yet bothered to report.  I do not recommend that you try to download it or subscribe to the site because no legal ebook or pdf or EPub copies of this work (Knight's Fork by Rowena Cherry) have EVER existed.

I made a conscious decision not to release this book in e-format, so I would know for sure that any site offering it for download is a pirate, likewise any ebay seller offering it on a CD is a copyright infringer.

https://sites.google.com/site/10m18y1/LokuHj7Gy4031

What kind of a name is "alpizar mabins"?  Three or four whacks ago, the mole was "Landrey Lebario".

https://sites.google.com/site/10m18y1/system/app/pages/recentChanges

Here's a trick with Google Sites. If you go to the bottom of the Google Sites page, you can see "recent activity" which reveals when and in what quantity this particular pirate has uploaded links to hundreds of books.  He's probably Russian judging by the " .ga " (Georgia) part of the "abbooks.ga " address you can see by hovering your cursor over the "Subscribe" link.

One would expect that the most intelligent people would ignore this sort of thing. Why subscribe, even if "subscribing" is free, when ebooks can be read free in myriad places?  Are those who infringe copyright absolutely confident in their virus protection software?

All the best,  (and in a rush tonight)

Rowena Cherry

Pro-Tech and Anti-Tech

Cory Doctorow's current LOCUS essay is titled "Let's Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech":

Demanding Better from Tech

Doctorow rejects the "anti-tech/pro-tech false dichotomy" in favor of a more nuanced analysis of the issues. As he puts it, there's no getting around the fact that "your future is going to have more technology in it, so the question isn’t, 'Should we use technology?' but rather, 'Which technology should we use?'” Is it possible to enjoy the advantages of high-tech and connectivity without losing our privacy? He urges us to embrace "the ability to separate a technology from its social and economic context," a process science fiction can help with. This article touches on surveillance, privacy, licensing agreements, advertising, the Internet age, market forces, and "neoliberal capitalism." He maintains that we can find ways to benefit from tech without surrendering our individual rights and resigning ourselves to the dominance of corporations that equate to "colony life-forms that use us like gut-flora, maneuvering us to help them thrive and reproduce, jettisoning us or crushing us if we cease to serve their needs."

The dilemma of convenience versus privacy also applies to the practice of tracking through fitness devices, which Rowena discusses in her latest blog, although Doctorow doesn't mention that issue. As for Alexa, I don't use her, but if I did, I would be quite disturbed at the idea of her betraying my trust by ratting on me to higher authority.

Doctorow suggests that "AI-apocalypses"—scenarios in which super-intelligent computers become our "overlords"—remain popular because they "resonate with our current corporate situation." Corporations, however, unlike actual gut-flora, comprise people who, we hope, can be reasoned with. So Doctorow ends with a upbeat message that all isn't necessarily lost, where personal rights and privacy are concerned, and there's hope.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt