Seizing "Snippets" And World Civilization

The Authors' Guild is disappointed that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals did not view as infringement Google's activities in copying books without permission, and publishing and distributing those permissionless copies to libraries, and publishing and distributing significant chunks of those books to all the world without permission or compensation.

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/2nd-circuit-leaves-authors-high-and-dry/

I wonder why no greater sink was raised about the definition of "Snippet". Surely there ought to be a legal definition.  In my opinion, four consecutive pages is no "snippet". It could be the bulk of an author's explanation of or insights into a topic.

In an earlier blog post, I recounted what I found when I tried to do my daughter's homework reading assignment from "World Civilization" without buying particular edition of the book that was the course requirement.

Most of what I needed was on Google Books. The rest, and indeed the entire edition of World Civ was available for free thanks to linked Google Searches that led me to a Russian pirate url.

Some musicians support the Authors' Guild, as they should. What would happen if all "snippets" of any copyrighted work are free to seize and monetize?  What if it were legal and transformative for Google to host a site that allows anyone to study "snippets" of the world's music to see if it contained "information" relevant to their needs ?  Is that YouTube?

Why are judges today so easily persuaded that art, literature, music, photography, movies and more ought to be seized and shared?

My best,
Rowena Cherry

The Language of Beasts

Many legends and fairy tales include stories about heroes who gain the magical ability to understand the speech of animals, such as Siegfried with a taste of dragon's blood. The wish to communicate with the animal kingdom is a perennial human desire. When I was little, I thought my cat, Midnight, understood me, and I tried to interpret her meows as words.

Have you heard about the Bowlingual Voice, a dog collar invented in Japan that claims to translate dogs' barks into verbal expressions of their feelings? It supposedly expresses five different canine emotions. Experts are skeptical:

Bowlingual Voice

According to specialists in dog behavior, you can probably interpret your pet's mood more accurately by watching body language than by using this device.

C. S. Lewis suggests that if animals could talk, their conversation would be dull, because they would do nothing but "talk shop." They would be interested only in practical topics such as food, mates, rivals, and territory. Interestingly, though, his talking animals in Narnia aren't like this, probably because the creatures granted the power of speech by Aslan also gain human-level intelligence.

The author of WATERSHIP DOWN creates rabbits who have language among themselves—with a limited ability to converse with other animals, but no comprehension of human speech or vice versa—yet plausibly think and act the way we can believe rabbits would. On the opposite end of the literary "talking beast" spectrum, the animal characters in WIND IN THE WILLOWS, although sharing their world with actual humans, are essentially people in animal shape, with a few token nods to their ostensible species such as mole's underground home. (Mr. Toad, on the other hand, lives in a luxurious mansion.)

Vivian Vande Velde's humorous story "To Converse with Dumb Beasts" riffs on this fairy-tale trope. The protagonist, a game warden named Kedric, saves an old woman from an enraged bear. She rewards him with a magic acorn that enables him to understand the languages of animals. When he first realizes it actually works, he's excited. He soon learns, however, that the woodland creatures don't have much to say. Birds constantly announce, "My tree," "My branch," and sometimes "Bug!" Butterflies keep up a running commentary of "sip, sip, now I'm fluttering, now I'm sipping nectar...." Squirrels and chipmunks either chortle in delight as they play or mutter obsessively about the coming winter (seven months away) and the need to store up nuts. The creatures of the wild have one-track minds; they "talk shop" and nothing else. Kedric thinks that surely his pets, being more intelligent, will carry on more interesting conversations. The dog barks, "My house!" and "My master!" In scatterbrained canine fashion, he repeatedly asks whether Master loves him and begs Master to play with him. Meanwhile, the cat coolly demands food. To his dismay, Kedric discovers that while he can understand his pets, they still don't understand him. The dog wonders whether Kedric's strange behavior means he's sick. The cat speculates that if their master gets sick enough to die, they can eat him. Finally he runs out of the house, screaming in frustration.

The dog laments, "Doesn't Master love me anymore?" The cat answers, "Don't worry. He just went to find better food."

Maybe we're better off imagining what our pets are thinking, rather than actually comprehending it.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Character Integration Part 8 - The Executive Decision by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Character Integration
Part 8
The Executive Decision
by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Here is a post listing the parts of the Theme-Character Integration Series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

I've often pointed out that the most popular fiction is based on some element "ripped from the headlines."

The part you "rip" from the headlines is the THEME.  You can't copyright theme, and nobody can sue you for your theme (at least not in the USA at the moment.)

They can sue you for much other content, but not theme.  Theme is what you are saying, the statement about life, the universe, and everything that you are making.  Theme is where you define what a human being is (and is not) and what it takes to be an admirable example of a human.

Theme is where you address issues such as the reality of Souls, Soul Mates, and Romance, the attainability of the Happily Ever After, the chances for real success in the real world by doing whatever your characters do.

Character is where you address esoteric variables such as the criteria by which we make decisions, and how our decisions impact the events that surround us.

Character is where you address such things as what it takes to "deserve" success, romance, love, life and maybe luck.

Character is where you depict the never-mentioned, never-explained worldbuilding you have done.

In depicting Character, you are showing-not-telling the Spiritual Laws of your fictional universe as well as the Physical Laws.

The Character-Arc is created by the impact of external Events (plot) upon the Character to create Story.

In real life, character impacts events and then events impact character until, by your teens, you are thoroughly embedded in "a life" that is very hard to break out of.

You have become "someone" -- you have an Identity, and that Identity is conveyed to others by what you're majoring in, what after-school-jobs you may have, what you read, watch, or what Games you play.

People find it hard to tease apart their Identity into "plot" and "story" -- and often attribute to outside influences that which is innate.  "I got fired because this Boss guy was a crook and a liar."  "I didn't get hired because I'm not a blond Caucasian."

Whatever happens in life, it's not related to what you, yourself have done.

See my series of books on Tarot Just For Writers titled The Not So Minor Arcana.  Esoterically, what you feel emotionally and what you think inside your own mind or how you choose to phrase your opinions, to whom you speak and about what, is a causative force you emit into the world.  It splashes back on you with multiplied force, in the form of Events that seem to "happen to you" rather than be caused by you.

The Artist's job is to reveal the form and function of that connection between intangible, private emotion and external events that just seem to come at you.  The Artist writing fiction depicts the reason why Characters do or do not "deserve" what happens to them.

There are objective rules built into the structure of Reality that determine what deeds cause what Events in real life.

The problem is humans are not objective creatures.  So we all have different perceptions, and thus different ideas of what the connection is between how we feel and what happens to us.

What is "my fault" -- and what is "not my fault."  For what am I to blame?  Or for what do I get "credit?"

There are endless variations on answers to those questions, so I'm presenting here one of the touchstones of modern life, an attitude shared by a majority of your readers.

It is the place of emotion in our society, and the appropriateness of where, when and how to express that emotion, how to label it, how to name it, and how to convey your character by that utterance.

Such utterances are called dialogue or worded thoughts, and they are a powerful writing tool for showing-not-telling the nature of a Character.

Here is an example from "real" life (OK, politics and email newsletters are not "real life" but they are headlines you can rip.)  Ponder the text of this email newsletter, the subject matter which is Planned Parenthood and its funding sources, and how a single spurious (unnecessary) word depicts a real-life-celebrity-figure.

BTW, this newsletter in no way distinguishes Ben Carson from any other Presidential Candidate.  They all let their hirelings phrase things this way because they assume all the general public accept emotion as the proper basis for decision making and action.

Think about this and do some meticulous worldbuilding to illustrate your opinion on where Emotion fits into the Decision Making process, and how actions taken out of an emotional motivation propagate into the world around the Character.

It's a diagram of the connecting links that make Romance and the HEA ending plausible -- or not.  Create several such diagrams,  from this plot-kernel found in a headline.

-----------------------------------------------------

I subscribe to a LOT of political and otherwise Newsletters from Far Left to Far Right - lots of "dubious" sources and trustworthy ones, just to see the contrast in how an Event is presented.  I got a   mailing back in July that explained illustrated a stark point about characterization.

It was from Presidential Candidate Ben Carson.  It said:
-----------QUOTE-----------
When I saw the video last week of a top Planned Parenthood official discussing the sale of aborted baby parts, I was so enraged that I started a petition calling on Congress to cut off all of their taxpayer funding.

In just one week, it's now been signed by over 200,000 people across America.

Now there's a second video. This time, it's of a Planned Parenthood official joking around about her need to make enough money from the sale of aborted baby parts to buy a Lamborghini.
----------END QUOTE---------

Think about how that portrays his Character.  Do you see what I see?

The mailing starts:
When I saw the video last week of a top Planned Parenthood official discussing the sale of aborted baby parts, I was so enraged that I started ....

ENRAGED?  Really?  Should a President decide to do (or not do) something in the midst of rage?

What if an executive is so immature that he only acts if someone else fires up his EMOTIONS?

That's not, how I'd portray a character I wanted readers to believe was capable of handling a management position.

This was probably written by a young flunky who has no clue what "executive" means, never mind what a President is hired to do, but Carson chose and hired this flunky, maybe even approved the message.  If you were writing his Character as a winner in a Presidential race, would you portray him this way?

Would you let readers know that he apparently has no clue that rage is inappropriate in a chief executive making life-or-death-decisions.  Or what if he discovered what the flunky had wriitten and handled the flunky -- write that scene.  Remember dialogue is mortal combat and the actual subject is rarely reflected in the vocabulary.

Then consider our real world.

Could our fiction be whittling away our good sense by glorifying characters who act out of emotion, not good sense?

It's hard to believe a Hero Character could have approved this message.

The real-world Ben Carson is a surgeon, and a good one.  Surely he wouldn't do surgery because something enraged him?  Would your fictional Character take action in a moment of rage?  If so, what would that Character "deserve" as as back-blow from that rage?

Newsletters do not allow you to write back and ask, "enraged" ??? Really??

But suppose you had a Character who did have direct access to write back.  What would that email or text say? (Think deleted Hillary Clinton emails, maybe Lois Lerner emails.)

So create a CHARACTER who is applying for an executive position and is turned down because a) a third party portrays him/her as acting out of emotion or b) he/she actually acts out of emotion or c) having acted out of emotion, can/can't handle the blow-back.

What did that Character think, feel, or do previously, perhaps in his/her teens, to "deserve" either getting or not-getting that executive position?

Answer that question and you have defined a theme that is ripped from the headlines.

Here's another article on Ben Carson describing a stump speech he's doing that pivots on emotion. Study the reasoning inside this speech.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/10/12/the-part-of-ben-carsons-national-press-club-speech-that-hardly-anybodys-talking-about

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Have You Been Pirated?

If you have been impacted by copyright infringement, you have an opportunity to fill in a survey put out by the copyrightalliance.org.

No one except the copyright alliance lawyers and editors will read your answers, but if you write something quoteworthy, you may be quoted.

How do you protect your work?

The White House is currently developing a strategic plan relating to copyright enforcement. To assist the White House with this plan, the Copyright Alliance will be sending its comments and recommendations to the White House and we need your help.

As individual artists and creators, your voice is a vital part of this conversation, and we’d like to hear from you. If you’ve encountered problems with copyright enforcement, send us your story. Please explain in detail:

·      the type of problem(s) (e.g., type of work pirated, website it was/is being pirated on);

·      any actions you took to stop the problem;

·      whether your actions had any effect; and 

·      whether and how these problems may have affected your ability to create new works and/or your business or career more generally.  

We’d like to include your story in our letter to the White House, so that the Administration understands clearly the challenges faced by individual creators like you.

 To submit your story, please go HERE.

http://copyrightalliance.org/WHSurvey

 Thank you!

The Internet of Things

Cory Doctorow discusses the Internet of Things, a term I hadn't come across before. This blog post on that topic has a link to his article in LOCUS on the same subject:

Dear Internet of Things

This concept refers to all the personal gadgets that collect information about us and transmit it to companies that compile such data—e.g., medical implants, GPS systems in cars, prisoner-tracking ankle cuffs for house arrest, etc. The process is usually claimed to be for our benefit but is often not under our control.

Doctorow proclaims that human beings should be "sensors, not things to be sensed." He makes an interesting distinction between the Facebook model and the e-mail model. With the former, the content source controls what we can see. With the latter, we decide for ourselves what we want to receive, block, respond to, or store. Not surprisingly, Doctorow advocates the e-mail model for the Internet of Things.

The main direct exposure to this kind of thing I've had is the "smart meter" recently installed by our local electric company. Smart meters keep the power company informed of each customer's energy use so there's no need for a meter reader to visit each house in person. Some members of the public viewed smart meters with alarm when they were introduced (more for concerns about radiation than about privacy, from what was reported in the news) and chose to opt out, a process the electric company discourages, naturally. Personally, I thought the advantage of having the energy provider know instantly when and where power failures occur outweighed any hypothetical drawbacks. No more ordeals of being the last remaining block in the neighborhood with no electricity after a storm and wondering if the company has forgotten our existence! We also have an intelligent thermostat, intelligent enough for two-way communication with the provider, anyhow. During heat waves, the electric company can remotely cycle off our air conditioner for brief periods (with our prior permission, and we get small discounts on electric bills for participating). Then there's the cable company, which can sometimes remotely reboot our TV set-top boxes if we're having an intractable problem—far preferable, in my opinion, to waiting for a repair technician all afternoon.

Consider how much information we already allow to be collected about us, for the sake of convenience (through credit card use and online purchases, for instance—think of cookies, without which our browsing and shopping experiences would be much less smooth). The important thing, as Doctorow suggests, is that the future of these magical devices and systems should be steered so that they serve us rather than vice versa.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 12 - Depicting Rational Fury by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction Part 12
Depicting Rational Fury
by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here's the index post for this series on Depiction:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

Last week we looked at The Flicker Men, a brilliant but purely science fiction novel.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/reviews-19-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

Not much in The Flicker Men depicted the emotional tangles that drive human relationships and therefore govern (or fail to govern) the movements of large numbers of humans.  There is, however, a great deal of emotion, and psychological truth underlying the actions of the characters.  A solid, Happily Ever After Love Story, or a genuine Romance, could have changed all those events.

For example, if the main character had been living an HEA with wife and children, with brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, family reunions, weddings, birth celebrations -- if his life were peppered with events that held deep emotional significance on the positive end of the spectrum, then when he discovered the truth behind the structure of the Universe, that this universe is just a holographic representation created by another Universe's scientists, then he wouldn't have quit his job and destroyed his life with alcohol and drugs.

Yes, his self-destruction is "realistic" -- but it is not real in an HEA universe.

What if you take The Flicker Men premise, and add the dimensions of human emotion we deal with in the Romance Genre -- that is, take a pure science fiction novel about the impact of a dark discovery on an unstable man who stands alone -- and redesign the Characters so that they interact and bond in a psychologically healthy way?

We live in a new world, with the advent of smartphones and social networking.  People growing up today will have a different idea of what a healthy relationship is and how to meet people, how to present yourself (you don't have to comb your hair before posting your first tweet of the day), how to share and thus dilute an emotional reaction.

Look at how people vent fury at a Flight Attendant or Grocery Clerk by posting vitriolic commentary, or embarrassing pictures, or scorning certain businesses by name.  And those are mostly people who grew up before smartphones.  What will the next generation think of as "healthy" psychology?

We are already seeing hints of what is to come in the entertainment media and the news media -- and in government, the military, even schools, college campuses, strip malls, everywhere decisions have to be made so that lots of people can move on through and get their objectives accomplished.

Accomplishing Objectives is what the Hero of the story does.  If your main character does not accomplish his/her Objectives, you haven't found the character whose story you are telling.  You are avoiding conflict by viewing events from another perspective than the one confronting opposition.

One neat way to re-align your thinking into that of a story-teller is to sit down with the Book of Psalms and just read it right straight through.  Most of them are by King David, a Warrior King, and most of what he discusses with God is all about Enemies, his own enemies and God's enemies.  It's all about Enemies, not about King David at all, and therefore it is about enmity in general and how to deal with it.  Then go read through the Book of Kings, the stories of the Kings with their ups and downs, just blitz through it and don't regard it as "scripture" but as a simple template for the perpetually repeated story of humankind.

So after soaking up these classic psychological attitudes of the template of the Hero Paradigm, read through some of my posts on Targeting A Readership --
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html
and how necessary it is for a writer to understand the world the reader lives in, and to incorporate that understanding into the worldbuilding deep inside and underneath (invisible to the reader) the rip-roaring just-for-fun story you are telling.

You've found the point in your main character's life where his/her story is happening.  You've found the beginning point of that story, where the Character first confronts or stirs up the force that will oppose the Character's moves to Accomplish Objectives.

You've found "the stakes" -- what will happen if the Objectives are not accomplished.

Now you have to DEPICT how the Character who is living through this rip-roaring good story actually feels about Accomplishing the Objective, about what they think will happen if they don't, about what alternatives exist, about what alternatives the Character might generate that don't yet exist, and how to go about attaining an objective that does not yet exist with tools that do not yet exist.

In other words, the Hero of the story is the person who does not "do all I can" but rather creates new abilities.  We see the yearning for this by the general readership in the popularity of the Meta-Human, Super-Hero stories on TV, and especially in fanfic even in mundane genres like the TV Series White Collar fanfic.

Look again at how King David generates new situations beyond his ability to create.  He prays.  He explains his situation to God in terms he knows God uses.  On the validity of his understanding, David then suggests what God might do, or what objective He might allow. (smite my enemies; smite your enemies).  Then look in the Book of Kings for what happened on the battlefield.

In Depiction Part 11,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/06/depiction-part-11-depicting-complex.html
we looked at depicting complex (galaxy sized) battlefields.  And we discussed the galaxy sized battlefield with the added dimension of Time in reviewing the famous Romance writer, Jean Johnson's Theirs Not To Reason Why Science Fiction, Galactic War Series (which has spinoff novels we will be discussing.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/reviews-18-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

Now look at the world around you.

You can do this real-world survey from various points of view rapidly and efficiently with the app or browser version of http://flipboard.com  -- it is a news aggregator.  Apple is launching a new News Aggregator, and there are many others around, but I am currently using flipboard where you can subscribe to a multitude of international news sources.  Just reading the headlines is instructive -- stop and read a full article or two with awareness of its source, compare the same Event covered by other sources, notice the commentary posted on blogs (yes, you can subscribe to blog feeds on flipboard), and get an idea of what "the world" looks like to your Target Readership.
You can follow my news item selections here:
https://flipboard.com/@jacquelinelhmqg

Soon, you'll be making your own magazines.  The point of making a magazine (for a writer) is to collect stories to read in juxtaposition while putting yourself into the mind and emotional framework of people you'd never voluntarily associate with.

Now, to depict a Character who is the Hero of their own story, but not necessarily Heroic by nature, you have to depict the ups and downs, the contrasts, in the Character's emotional life.

Most new writers will insert long paragraphs of multi-syllable words telling the reader all about how and why this Character feels this or that, maybe including the Character's early life story (how they were abused as a child), and go on and on about why the Character feels as they do.

Seasoned writers do it in dialogue one-liners, maybe half-a-line with lots of empty space on the page.

Here are a few posts discussing dialogue, its creation, and its use in plot-character integration:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/06/plot-character-integration-part-1-34.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-your-lovers-live-hea.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/toystory-3-analyzed-for-beats.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/expletive-deleted-tender-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/villain-defined.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/expletive-deleted-tender-romance.html

Yes, we've been at this topic a long time, but it is literally endless.  Every time "the world" changes, every year that new young readers take up a genre that had been "too old" for them, the details of how to write great stories change -- but the essence of the framework, the techniques, do not change.  They have not changed since Shamans told history over the campfire.

Study this image.  It is THE LOVER'S QUARREL done in "show don't tell."

That image shows how to write dialogue.  Characters, like real people, don't talk about what they are talking about.  That, in screenwriting (see Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! screenwriting books), is called "off the nose" dialogue.  You execute it with lots of white space on the page -- the empty space speaks volumes.

Dialogue is all about communicating.  It is not real speech transcribed.  It is point of view, conflicting subjectivities.

How a Character speaks, and how the Character speaks differently to different Characters, depicts the Character's character.

Dialogue is the writer's tool for convincing the reader that this Character whose story is being told is actually a perfectly level-headed, rational, sane person who totally understands what is TRUE (not "Truth" in that diagram but one of the shadows of Truth.)

The trick you play on your readers, the wink-and-a-nod agreement between you and your reader, lies in convincing the reader that you, the writer, know "Truth" -- all sides of it -- but understand how the Characters you are following each see only part of the truth, and the shadow of Truth that they see is True.

How do you resolve a conflict between True and True?

Also remember humans don't generally change their minds about what is True because they lose an argument.  Once the heat of the moment is over, they look again and see what is True -- and it is just that, true, therefore since it is true it can't be false!  So they go back to their old way of thinking.

Here's an example "ripped from the headlines."  Internet Security is a huge issue in your reader's world.  Since it is a huge issue, politicians have leaped in to offer to solve your problem for you (which is their business model in action).

So we have an internet supporting the "world wide web" (and a Dark Web run outside the purvue of Government).  The Internet was built via a few Universities connecting mainframes in order to share research.  It attracted graduate students who wanted to play Star Trek games, and set about improving the connections.  Off across the Atlantic, brilliant contributions created the foundation of what we call today a "browser."

All of this was created by well meaning, good people who couldn't think like criminals to save their lives.  The absolute most wrong-doing any of them might have been guilty of would have been pre-empting the credit line on a paper nobody but peers would ever read.

For years, that was the sort of person who used email and the internet.  Then commercial interests swept in to make a profit, and on their coat-tails came criminals, and after them came true nefarious actors.

Now governments want to make laws outlawing the "dark web" or outlawing encryption.

As with guns, law-abiding citizens will not have encryption but the outlaws and government-sponsored-hackers from our Enemies (think King David) will have unbreakable encryption.

Legislators want to make laws that say that software manufacturers have to leave 'a back door' in all their software so that government can break into anything (given a court order.)

The argument is that without being able to stealthily penetrate widely-used email or blog, social network software, and the backbone servers of the Internet, they can't protect the population from Terrorists.  That's TRUE.  Look at that diagram carefully.  It's true, but is it truth?

The FBI or CIA or whatever it's called in your country is probably saying what is in fact true  -- that they can't break the encryption the Enemies are using. (think King David; think Hero).

We have tasked "government" and thus the law-makers with the Objective of "keeping us safe" and defined "safe" as NO POSSIBILITY OF HARM EVER.  We are not "safe" if we feel (rationally feel) that there exists a finite possibility that we might be harmed in some way.

Is that a "heroic attitude?"

Is it a rational attitude?  Can you depict the rationality of a Character who has that attitude?

OK, now consider King David, and creating impossible alternatives that suddenly come to exist. Today we call King David's attitude, "thinking outside the box."

So let your Character who rationally chooses the objective of "no harm can be threatening my cyber-life at all, ever. I am safe online," discover another True thing, a different shape.

Again, think dialogue and white space.  An argument doesn't have to use the vocabulary of the subject matter. Innuendo and inference speak much louder.  Go watch The Godfather, or read the script.

For example, your Character discovers that the software that provides this "safety" makes his computer run unacceptably slowly.  Understanding the problem, he wants to buy a faster computer, but can't because it costs too much.  Only the very rich can afford smartphones or computers that have enough capacity to run the Government Mandated version of ordinary software.

Lets suppose that the Government backdoor lets the government snoop into your stuff, but at the same time, as a trade-off, actually does prevent malware, viruses, worms and whatever comes next.  Remember, this is science fiction, so a couple of absurd concepts have to be made plausible.

But the price is slowing hardware, or only the rich can afford to function at full speed in this new world.

Or take another situation.  Suppose the government mandated anti-encryption measure leaves you wide open to anything hackers want to do to you.  But the government mandate does allow your paltry level of hardware to run at a good speed.

Take one of those scenarios, or create a different one, and let your Main Character whose story you are telling get out of High School and come up against the Cyber-Security Problem.

Now, some Characters would major in Law and become politicians.  Others might go into Computer Science.  A few might major in Divinity and become Preachers.  Still others might major in Criminal Psychology.  Then there's the drop-out who creates Facebook or Microsoft.  A few might major in Literature and become writers.

Pick a Character, let his/her Enemy steal his Identity, or perhaps send him/her into the Witness Protection Program.  Now what?

If this is a science fiction romance book you are writing, you can go research the Cyber Security field as a whole, all the way back to its origins, and perhaps the psychological origins of the concept Security, and re-think it.  Perhaps you want to use a galactic setting, and introduce Alien Ideas about what constitutes cyber-security.

Consider, for example, re-defining "the problem" (again, think King David and generating impossible options such as "smite my enemy.").

The problem is there is an Enemy who has done you damage.

Unlike King David who voluntarily goes to a Third Party (God), here a Third Party comes along and offers to solve your problem for you, convincing you that it's their job to solve your problem.

You welcome that Third Party's solution, and pay the requested fee.

The Third Party's solution is to pepper your life with obstacles, making everything you do slower and more difficult, so you won't do anything that might let your Enemy harm you.

Meanwhile, the Enemy that is your problem has their path smoothed and sped up.

Since so much of your money went to paying your Third Party protector, and so much of what's left of your energy is expended overcoming the obstacles the Third Party created in your life to protect you, you therefore have very little left to fight your Enemy.  You are now an unarmed, sitting duck etched against your Enemy's horizon.

Note that Kind David prayed to his Third Party to smite his enemies, pledging that his Enemies were also Enemies of the Third Party.  King David requested help from a carefully chosen Third Party, made alliance, and was thus able to smite Enemies.

The Enemies felt that smiting, severely.  The target of all that output energy was the Enemy, not King David, who fought most of these truly forlorn battles before he became King and thus took over "the government."

If your Main Character is a Hero, his/her "Security" does not consist of being disabled before Enemies by Friends or Hirelings.  "Security" means Friends and Hirelings focus their smiting upon the Enemy, not upon the Main Character.

Since, in your reader's real life today, Cyber-security is accomplished by hampering the reader's ability to function without touching the reader's Enemy (hackers), you have an excellent chance of engrossing your reader with a tale of a world where the characters representing the reader's Enemy get the brunt of the smiting.

This happened when Google crowd-sourced spam filtering.  Just take a look at your spam folder on gmail.  Very seldom does a spam get through to your inbox.  At one point, it was 300 spams to 1 genuine email.

Email users' rational fury was redirected by Google's crowd-sourcing data-mining to target The Enemy, whereupon The Enemy got the brunt of the smiting.  Since a few spams still get through, and there are still a trusting few who click where they should not, spammers still try to bring down the Internet Backbone by overloading it with spam messages -- and they somehow make a profit.  Or it is possible they are paid by foreign governments to make running Internet Backbone Servers more expensive -- with the objective of bankrupting the more advanced countries.  Enmity.

Google didn't punish the recipients of spam, but let the recipients pour out their fury on the spammers.

Right now, your readers are feeling the government pouring out its fury (we must have access to your everything in order to protect you) on the readers of websites rather than on the disruptors (hackers) of web-services, web commerce, and reader privacy.  

In our real world, we practice a principle, "Don't blame the victim."  In the case of cyber security, the smartphone user, the web browsing public is the victim, but the only solution being offered is to punish the victim, hamper the victim with privacy restrictions.

Think outside the box.  Suppose, your Aliens' idea of cyber security was to equip every victim with the ability to strike back at any intruder with lethal force?  Suppose any hacker who penetrated a server had his/her equipment blow up in his face?  Suppose the target of all efforts at protection was the Enemy, not the enemy's target.

OK, that isn't possible with today's hardware, software, and the whole psychology that created our Internet.  Think King David.  Think about an Ally that can do miracles.

That Third Party, that Ally, is the "Game Changer" you insert into your Worldbuilding.

Fury that your Main Character directs at his/her true Enemy will always seem rational.

Fury misdirected at the proponent of a different version of "Truth" (see the image above) that, while different, is still true, will not seem rational.

Your Hero may have irrational moments, and in those moments do things that later cause plot-complications, and serious trouble, but to be the Hero, your Character must fix what he/she has broken or ruined.

The Hero can't remain a Hero in the reader's eyes if the Hero spews vitriol or rage at another Character's TRUE facts without searching for that central figure that joins the Hero's True Facts to the Antagonist's True Facts -- thus revealing "The Truth" to both of them.

If both Hero and Antagonist are "rational" and furious for rational (true) reasons, then discovery of "The Truth" at the center of things will make them Allies, friends forever, possibly a Bonded Pair living Happily Ever After.

If one or the other clings to what is True because of Enmity for the other, the Fury will continue in a fight to the death.

The one exhibiting irrational fury is the one the writer has to kill off to give the reader "closure."

The Hero must win through to an unrestricted field where life can be re-created freehand, reflecting the Hero's own will, a field shared only with those the Hero chooses.  That is one defining parameter of the Happily Ever After -- the ability to choose, personally and without restriction, who does or does not share your living space, how large that space is, and what it's shape is.

That means choice of profession, lifestyle, associates, and how loudly you play your music.

The writer can convince the reader of the rationality of a character's fury simply by allowing that fury to arise only against restrictions imposed by an Enemy or a Confidence Operator pretending to "protect" by "restricting."

"Happily Ever After" means you don't have to protect yourself, or pay someone to protect you, because your Enemy has been smited out of existence, and anyone with the power to harm you is your ally.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Invisible Hero

Invisibility is a great ingredient for science fiction, and for implausible action movies.

James Bond had an invisible car. Harry Potter had a cloak of invisibility. In my earliest book (Forced Mate) one of my spaceships had a virtual invisibility mode. Many science fiction movies and series have "cloaking", which is explained in various ways. Or not explained.

I'm considering paint.

A few weeks ago (maybe more), I read about fish that see colors that humans cannot see. It was in a DISCOVER magazine article.

In the last couple of days, I've been pondering how a heroine who does not know that she is not human, but an alien djinn might describe a hero whom she can see, but no one else can. Obviously, he is a color for which there is no name in the human language.

I want a type of blue, because there is an English phrase (for depression) "blue devil". Owing to my sense of humor, which is a bit blue, too, I considered her thinking that he is the color of urine trails in a public swimming pool.... but I was reluctantly censoring myself, because that is just not Romance.

Today, I saw this:
My thanks to Houzz.com and to Rhiannon L. Crane

Backyard Birds: Create a Home for American Kestrels

"The American kestrel can see ultraviolet light. It enables them to locate the urine trails left by voles..."

So, should my heroine see urine trails?

My best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Doing It Over; Water on Mars

This past weekend, my husband, my sister, and I attended our 50th high school reunion. (Technically, it was her 50th. Our three graduating classes, which happened to be consecutive, held a combined celebration.) Aside from touring our old school and observing how the building has changed (they have a swimming pool adjacent to the gym—WE didn't have a pool) and peering at name tags in search of people I knew, I was reminded of the movie PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED. The heroine, at her 25th reunion, travels backward in time to her high school years, fainting in the present and waking up in 1960 as her teenage self with her adult memories. She tries to change her future for the better, incidentally affecting her friends' futures, and avoid what she regards as the mistake of marrying her husband. Of course, she ends up rediscovering why she fell in love with him in the first place.

If you could go back to do your life over, would you? A while back, in discussion group at our church a woman around my age made a remark about wishing our children or grandchildren could have the kind of childhoods we did. I retorted that I certainly would not wish that on them. Not only because I had a mainly unhappy childhood and youth, but for the less personal reason that in most ways I think the present has so many advantages over the 1950s and early 60s. People often say things like, "I wouldn't do that if you paid me a million dollars." Well, for a million dollars, I MIGHT consider living the 1950s over again, but not for less. On a personal rather than cultural level, the prospect of correcting the mistakes of youth is tempting. But suppose in trying to smooth your path and improve your future, you accidentally made things worse? Even if you had the power to "put right what once went wrong," should you yield to the temptation? "Not even the wise can see all ends." (The protagonist in Stephen King's time travel novel who voyages into the past to prevent Kennedy's assassination returns to his own era to discover that his heroic deed has produced a horrific dystopia.) In hindsight, I recognize that my stumbles and wrong turns contributed to getting me where I am now. In trying to undo the mistakes, I might erase the good stuff too. Also, I'm not sure how I'd feel about becoming a teenager again with full knowledge of my forthcoming adult life. We often say we wish we knew then what we know now. But imagine being trapped in a child's or teen's body with an adult's mind and memories. You'd have the comfort of knowing things would eventually get better as well as the perspective of knowing the teen years won't last for the eternity they felt like the first time around. On the other hand, you'd have to put up with the powerlessness of being underage and all the Mickey Mouse restrictions of adolescence in full knowledge that they're Mickey Mouse. You'd have only a limited opportunity to make any effective use of your adult knowledge. I think I'd go nuts.

And in news of general SF interest, you've probably read about the apparent discovery of liquid salt water flowing on Mars now:

NASA Announcement

Not in distant past epochs, but right now! How exciting to contemplate the possibility of present-day Martian life raised by this discovery. Earth life includes some organisms (e.g., certain bacteria, algae, and fungi) that flourish in high salt concentrations, called "halophiles." So why not expect similar life-forms on Mars? And what about Martian life in the past? It's fun to speculate that eons ago the Red Planet might have harbored intelligent beings with an advanced civilization. As their world died, maybe they retreated to underground cities, where the remnants of their population still dwell, deliberately hiding from our probes. I don't think I've ever come across a novel on that premise.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 19 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka

Reviews 19

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka

The Flicker Men is a novel set at the intersection of math, physics, and The Soul.  It's about the nature of reality and where humans fit into reality.  

On this blog, we focus on Science Fiction Romance and Paranormal Romance, involving ourselves with the issue of Soul Mates and the Happily Ever After ending.  

The Flicker Men is about all of our topics, without being a Romance.  If you're writing science fiction romance, you need to read this novel.  Here's why. 

On the September 15, 2015 post, we focused on our surrounding "real" world and how readers who live in it are looking for the best romance books that fiction publishers are producing.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/targeting-readership-part-11-futurology.html

Readers who seek "escape" are looking to writers to lift them up out of the daily tizzy, to live in another world for a while and let their nerves settle down.  From that far vantage point, they can view their problems in a whole new light.

After a book vacation, a reader can return to the real world and make better decisions, execute better actions.  

Why do we seek escape reading?  Can we achieve escape from daily life by reading realistic fiction books?

We all live in different "realities" -- our subjective reality and some people believe there exists an objective reality.  Some people believe there is no objective reality, just shifting subjective landscapes.  We create our own lives as a bubble of illusion around us.  

Frankly, I lean more toward the idea that there is an objective reality, and it is a human's business to strive to define it, explore it, know it, master living in objective reality.  

But I also factor in the plasticity of human consciousness.  The things that really matter to us, as living creatures, matter because they are subjectively real.  The important part of reality is that which we perceive.  

There is one subject that brings the objective shape of Reality together with the individualistic, idiosyncratic, personalized subjective reality of each of us.

That subject is popularly known as the Art of Tarot, and it overlaps and interpenetrates the science of Astrology.

That is astrology as a science, an organized body of empirical observations, not astronomy which is also an organized body of empirical observations.  

Astrology is coincidences recorded, and maps out the ups and downs of our subjective reality where it interfaces with external events.  Tarot maps out the ups and downs of our subjective reality pretty as it responds to external Events.

Does that sound familiar to writers of romance books?  Your novel, or the stories you write, need a structure.  

Astrology can suggest plots, the sequence of life events that seem part of objective reality, outside the self, way out of a Character's control.  Tarot can suggest how a Character reacts to those Events consistent with character traits familiar to the reader.

For example, my first award winning novel, Unto Zeor, Forever, depicts the main character's Saturn Return as he walks through the Tarot lessons of the High Priestess and the Empress.

http://www.amazon.com/Unto-Zeor-Forever-Sime~Gen-Book-ebook/dp/B004MPRYEY

Science Fiction has been defined as the story of how discoveries in science impact single human beings, or civilization as a whole, or both. 

Who would you be if you lived in a galactic civilization with lots of aliens?  Or during Earth's first exploration of the stars, seeking First Contact?  

Reading a good book of that type can qualify as "escape."  But even better, it can qualify as another perspective on your life, your identity, and the possibilities for solving your current real-world problems to get on to the next phase of your existence.

For decades, the best astronomers accepted the mathematical analysis that said the existence of other planets, never mind planets enough like Earth to harbor life as we know it, was so improbable as to be impossible.

So Alternate Universes and Fantasy Genre became a very popular form of fiction.

Now Hubble and other imaging sources have provided proof that there are other planets, some of them within the "life as we know it" zone.  "Life" is still a big maybe, but traces and hints are turning up indicating there are DNA chains and complex chemicals "out there."  

So science fiction is coming  back into fashion with interplanetary and galactic stories such as we looked at last week with Jean Johnson's "Theirs Not To Reason Why" series.

She used an entirely plausible depiction of TIME as the basis for taking the reader into a new perspective.  Her main character, Ia, is a precognitive who can scan the life events of individuals and their descendents for a thousand years.

After the TV Series Numb3rs (available on Amazon Instant Video) popularized the practical applications of some very esoteric mathematics, we have seen more popular science articles explaining how astrophysicists are applying mathematics to unravel the fabric of space-time, defining and re-defining what a "particle" is/might be and what waves have to do with that.

Einstein's Relativity is holding up well, but there are applications where it does not seem adequate.

The part of the theory that pertains to The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka is neatly summarized here:
http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html

Here is a classic graphic showing the Earth's gravity well.  Note how as you get closer to Earth, the shape of the boxes changes, so it takes different amounts of "Time" to traverse a box depending on where you are.

Space and Time are not separate.  OK, some recent work is showing Einstein's model fraying at the edges.  It may not be the whole story, but it's very dependably real where it does apply.

Einstein didn't have any satellites to experiment with.  He came up with this idea via mathematics and physics.  It was a totally useless fantasy for his world.  It is the basis of our current space program explorations.  And it is the basis of discoveries being made in particle physics.

To understand the infinitely large, one must have a solid understanding of the infinitely "small."

"Large" and "Small" are concepts that can not be defined without using "space" (the 3 physical dimensions, Height, Width, Depth).

If a thing doesn't have "size" how can it "be?"

Well, how big is your Soul?  How much does it weigh?

We can measure the "brain" but have not yet "located" (in space) the Soul.  Therefore, people who study this kind of thing have a hard time including "Soul" in their model of Reality.

Thus reading Romance Novels is "escape" for them because the best romance novels are about Soul Mates.  Free Romance Novels are flying off Amazon's virtual shelves very likely because  spending time in a universe where Souls are real is just the escape that is sought by Romance Reader.

The most profound thing I've ever learned about Souls came via a course on Kabbalah, where I learned the soul enters the material world through the dimension of Time.  Not SPACE -- but TIME.  The Soul exists through TIME -- but not SPACE.  The brain exists through SPACE and TIME.

Another thing I learned from Kabbalah while writing the 5 books on Tarot
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20?node=4&page=1
is that the Soul descends into the body in stages, starting at conception and proceeding (I think by quantum leaps) to the threshold of sexual maturity at about 13.  This theory produces a unique paradigm for child-rearing, setting expectations expanding as the Soul gains a better grip on the animal body.  Given knowledge of what will be expected of him/her at given birthdays, and training to rise to that new level, maturity unfolds in a more steady way.

A fictional character given the advantage of such an upbringing, such an understanding of Body and Soul and their Relationship is better able to cope with the challenges of meeting a Soul Mate.

Working on the current exalted level, cutting edge mathematicians are now inventing the mathematics being used to describe and hunt for particles such as the Higgs Boson and Dark Matter and mini black holes.

Armed with great new mathematical tools, particle physicists have revved up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2015 to run  to see what happens at the smallest level.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/large-hadron-collider-could-show-parallel-universes-exist-say-researchers-1.3006998
-----------QUOTE-----------
Scientists will be watching for the existence of mini black-holes when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator becomes fully operational this spring, because the detection of those black holes could change what we know about how gravity works, according to a new physics paper.

The existence of the mini black holes would lend support to string theory, which posits that different dimensions could exist and parallel universes are possible, according to a paper by physicists Mir Faizal, Mohammed M. Khalil and Ahmed Farag Ali, published in the current issue of the journal Physics Letters B.
----------END QUOTE-------------

So the long standing science fiction premise of "alternate universes" --

Here is Jack of Eagles by James Blish (who wrote SPOCK MUST DIE many years later).  This cover

Jack of Eagles by James Blish

is from the 1982 Avon Edition, but it was probably first published in 1952, possibly based on a 1941 concept.

Here is a story description from Google:
---------QUOTE-------------
Danny Caiden is on the run - from the FBI, the SEC, the Justice Department and the Mob. Only recently, Danny was an average New York copywriter, until he suddenly found he had ESP...
----------END QUOTE-----------



The kind of ESP Danny Caiden developed had to do with "hearing" telepathic voices and leakages across universes, across Time. Other than that hypothesis, the book was pretty standard, built on what might, today, be called a book writing template.

So speculation such as Jean Johnson used in her Theirs Not To Reason Why series has been around since the 1930's, but though there has been a lot of work done in the field of Einstein's Relativity, it's only recently that hard-science experiments and long-range-observations from orbit have inched us closer to understanding Space-Time and the whole Wave/Particle thing.

Ted Kosmatka has picked up the thread started by James Blish -- even if Kosmatka had never heard of Jack of Eagles -- and breathed Soul into the speculations of mathematicians and particle physicists.

What if there are other "dimensions" -- whole universes adjacent to ours?  What if the "fabric" of space-time was thinned at some point and penetrated?  What would we learn?  What would we risk?  What has that to do with Space, Time, and Soul?

The TV Series Warehouse 13 explored this to some extent, as did The TV Series Sliders, but even more to the point, the TV Series Fringe gave us more possibilities.  These shows popularized the basic idea, as did Star Trek (the famous ST:ToS episode Mirror Mirror, and also did Time Travel).  Quantum Leap took us back in time, and focused on "repairing" or fixing things that went "wrong."  But Quantum Leap didn't dwell on the mathematics of Space and Time.

If you travel in "Time" -- you will likely land in empty space because the Earth MOVED as did the Sun.  So if you travel back in Time, you must also move through space to where the Earth was "then."  So Sliders seems to me more plausible than Quantum Leap.  But Quantum Leap dealt with the concept of Soul in a quantized universe.

All these popular TV Series have given the general public a notion about alternate realities formerly familiar only to science fiction readers, but that notion is, "It's a nice story, but I know the difference between fiction and reality."

Any scientist working on the cutting edge of these astrophysics and particle physics investigations knows the difference between objective reality and subjective fiction.  Most of these people live in objective reality, using imagination to push at the edges of human knowledge.

Most of these people are very certain the Soul does not "exist" because it has never been "found."

If the Soul has no spacial dimensions, then it will never be "found," unless we learn something about "time" that we don't know now.

So currently, scientists working at the edge of this "alternate universe" discovery are very certain about a few things they do know and they tend to be dedicated to objective reality.

One distinctive hallmark of good science fiction is that the plot turns on a discovery.  When that discovery confounds the scientist and derails the very sanity of the discoverer, you get the very best science fiction.

That is the issue that Ted Kosmatka deals with in The Flicker Men.



Kosmatka starts with a man, Eric Argus, a theoretical mathematical physicist who is renowned in his field for papers published.  Nobody knows why Argus quit, walked away, disappeared.  We meet him when he's just barely recovering from bouts of drunken stupor.  A friend gives him a job in a think tank, -- no assignment, just do some new original research, we won't tell you what to do.

He languishes around the place, meeting people seemingly at random, knowing he's on probation and has to write up something to present to the board -- but has no ideas.

He refuses to touch the work he was doing just before he walked off into a drunken haze.

Then "out of the blue" he discovers a bit of antique equipment in storage, unpacks it and replicates the classic double-slit experiment that demonstrates the wave/particle properties of a photon.  He also rigs up the detector that illustrates that an observer changes the photon being observed.

But his time-wasting doodling around with an unproductive experiment produces an odd discovery.  If it is an animal that observes, the change in the observed particle does not happen.

So he tests other scientists, and they all produce change when they observe.  He tests all kinds of animals at the zoo, and none produce change.

An anti-abortion group gets wind of the experiment, decides the difference in results of observation changing reality and decides the agent of change upon observation is the Soul.  They want to prove that fetuses have Souls in the womb and therefore must not be aborted.

Their experiment on the unborn produces mixed results.  Some fetuses produce the change, and some do not.  The results are the same regardless of developmental stage - some do, some don't.

The question then is do all adults have enough Soul to create change when observing?

So one of his colleagues takes off to test a lot of people to see if their observations change "objective reality."

The answer he finds is that no, not every adult human can observe and produce change in the observed.

This is confounding beyond belief.

The social fabric is stressed.  People try to kill him, destroy the place he works.

Against his will, Argus is driven to pick up the threads of the work he had dropped -- and we discover what scared him to the depths of his soul, left him deranged, depressed, and unable to think about the subject.

He has created a window into an alternate universe.

Things get even stranger from there.

You have to read the book to discover what Eric Argus does about all this, and what effect his actions have on his objective and subjective realities.

Is "The Soul" real?  Does it matter?  Can science detect Soul?

This is not a Romance Novel.  Eric Argus barely interacts with anyone.  He has known and related to people previously, but does not connect with them now.  He meets a lot of people now, but does not deeply connect with them though he obviously is capable of caring about others.

The story is about Eric Argus making his personal peace with the concept that The Soul is real.

The plot is about the scientific community and the general public coming to grips with the concept that The Soul is real.

The ending is about the question, "Does humanity really need to know that The Soul is real?"  That question is complicated by discoveries about how alternate universes are generated.

There's some cutting edge speculative mathematics woven into Kosmatka's ending involved in seeing our world as a hologram.  That's a subject hitting the popular press now.

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jun/03-our-universe-may-be-a-giant-hologram
Our Universe May Be a Giant Hologram
Physicist Brian Greene explains how properties at the black hole’s surface—its event horizon—suggest the unsettling theory that our world is a mere representation of another universe, a shadow of the realm where real events take place.

When we learn to model our universe as a complete hologram, we generate another Universe in the chain which causes destruction of prior universes.  Those living in prior universes naturally want to stop us from modeling the universe as a hologram, thus destroying them.  Can the Soul fix that problem just by observing?

How would you feel if you had no Soul, but others did?

There is a lot more to be written on this topic, especially in the Romance genre.

While the Large Hadron Collider is in hot pursuit of Dark Matter, is NASA in hot pursuit of The Soul?

If there is no such thing as a Soul, then there can be no such thing as a Soul Mate, and thus the Romance Genre can only write about sex, not happiness.

Do you want to escape to a world where Souls are real?  What if you had a Soul, but others don't?  What if the reason so many people don't believe the Happily Ever After ending can be objective reality is that you can't have it without a Soul?

Maybe everyone has a Soul, but not every child is raised under conditions that allow the soul to descend and possess the body?

Maybe that non-possessed-by-Soul condition is the source of all the spooky stories about Possession by demons or whatever?

If you want to write your romance novel, you should read The Flicker Men and James Blish's Jack of Eagles.

Neither has any Romance in it, but they describe a world that would be confounded by scientific evidence, undeniable proof, of the existence and function of Soul.

Think about how climate science has become "settled science" - that denying what we know presently is tantamount to being without a Soul.  Suppose the general public accepted scientific proof of the Soul with just as much fervor as we now accept man-made climate change?

What sort of an objective reality would that be?  What sort of fiction would be created to escape that reality?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg

Forced Consent

Forced Consent.  Now, there's an oxymoron for you, but that is exactly what "Consent Decrees" are--in my opinion--and I am talking about Government and big business imposing their will on writers, not old-fashioned romance.

Where is the consent when a Government-backed internet retailer decides to pay authors 0.006 per page read?  (Source: The Guardian ) (Aso Erica Verillo)

Where is the consent when Government-backed radio decides to pay music authors 0.004 per spin played?  (Source: The Trichordist )

Notice the similarity of the zero-point-double-0-digit rates!

Through "consent decrees" dating back to before most still-active musicians were born, the Government has treated songwriters as would-be exploitative monopolists, and has protected otherwise-hapless terrestrial radio broadcasters and internet music service providers by having one or two unelected, Government-appointed judges decide how much (or how little) a music copyright owner should be paid every time their music is played.

(BTW.  Consent Decrees are the reason that, come election time, a right wing politician will choose a theme song, and use it, and the left wing musician who wrote that song will object in vain.)

"...the consent decrees effectively substitute the opinion of a federal judge for that of a fair negotiation to set the rates at which those services compensate my fellow songwriters and me. After 73 years this has effectively become an unlegislated compulsory license. The consent decrees walk and talk like a compulsory license and after decades of practice they effectively are a compulsory license..."

Source: The Trichordist "Consent decrees violate individual rights..."

It's been a slow ride to the bottom for musicians, and book authors may find themselves in the same sinking boat.

The old music labels may have exploited musicians, but at least they promoted, edited, identified and groomed new talent and put out a quality product. Also, they stood up for the sale of albums as well as singles (with B-sides).

(Source: http://thetrichordist.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/)

Likewise the traditional publishers may have exploited authors, but at least they paid advances, edited, and groomed and sometimes promoted new talent.  Also, they promoted new authors by putting out multi-author short story anthologies.

The music consent decrees applied to the Labels, but it also applies to the independents.... to the musicians who have their own labels.

Since Amazon allegedly complained to the Government that Apple and the 5 major publishers were endangering its monopoly of the ebook market (some would call it a monopsony), the door has been opened to consent decrees setting the market price for ebooks.

The Government did so, that time, for two years.... but even if agency has returned, it is "modified" and the new terms are applied to small press and indies as well as to the 5 publishing houses that may have "consented" to the "settlement".

AG's more measured explanation:

As part of a settlement with the Department of Justice, the publishers signed consent decrees requiring them to use the “wholesale” pricing model, where the publishers would sell books to retailers at list price, and retailers could set consumer prices as low or high as they wanted. Each publisher was free to return to agency pricing with Amazon after the expiration of its consent decree with the Department of Justice.

For an explanation of the original musical consent decrees,which are being reviewed:
 https://futureofmusic.org/article/fact-sheet/ascap-bmi-consent-decrees

In the United States, royalties from the performance of musical compositions are collected and distributed by the Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) ASCAP, SESAC and BMI. Of these organizations—which distribute revenue to their songwriter and publisher members—ASCAP and BMI are governed by “consent decrees” originally issued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) as a means to curb the anticompetitive tendencies of the publishing sector.

Consent decrees are limitations agreed upon by parties in response to regulatory concern over potential or actual market abuses. Back in 1941, there was only one legally recognized copyright in music—the musical composition—and the balance of power in the industry was heavily tilted to the music publishers and ASCAP. At the time, ASCAP acted as a kind of gatekeeper to the world’s most valuable musical repertoires, to the extent that the DOJ took action that same year to balance the scales. The result of this intervention are consent decrees that, to this day, govern how radio, whether AM/FM or digital, licenses compositions. BMI was placed under a similar set of conditions in the same year. ASCAP’s consent decree was last updated in 2001; BMI’s in 1994.

In the old days, for musicians, the tour was the marketing strategy (or a second revenue source) and the vinyl sales were the bread and butter.  Now, musicians are forced to subsidize internet start ups such as Pandora and Spotify, they are told that touring is their bread and butter, and having their music distributed by anyone who wants to distribute it is a marketing strategy.

Upside down!

Authors aren't being told to perform on stage, but incomes are down, and they are being encouraged to allow their stories to be all but given away, and their income is supposed to come from marketing, advertising and affiliate fees. How sustainable is that?

Especially since, it appears, that the cat is about to come out of the bag regarding how effective internet advertising really is. http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-click-fraud/ (Hint, a lot of the eyeballs that "see" "traffic" are merely bots, which will never buy the advertisers' products, even if the bots click the links.)

According to the Authors' Guild,

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/the-wages-of-writing/

"Overall, the survey results showed that author incomes are down, hybrid authorship is up, and authors are spending more time marketing than ever before. In short, the business of authorship is both more varied and less profitable than just six years ago. The following document summarizes the results in more detail.
Click here to view the survey brochure that summarizes the results in more detail. "

My apologies for the somewhat disjointed flow.  I prefer to write, print out, edit on real paper.

Sincerely,
Rowena Cherry

Why We Like Animals

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN has a special "Collector's Edition" on sale titled "The Science of Dogs and Cats." (Try to find it in your local store; it's quite substantial.) Articles cover the latest research on topics such as how dogs and cats evolved from wolves and wildcats, the inner emotional lives of cats and dogs, canine and feline communication, whether animals display true empathy, whether they have anything that could be called "ethics," and whether they have a "theory of mind" (modifying their own behavior on the basis of what they think other creatures know or believe), among others. The piece on the Toxoplasma parasite especially intrigues me; that's the organism that makes infected rats attracted to the odor of cats instead of scared away from it. The effect works on the same part of the rat's brain involved in the sexual drive. A real-life biological analogy for one of the familiar fictional tropes I apply to my naturally evolved vampires—that vampires exert an irresistible allure to make victims eager to be preyed on!

"Dogs are unique in the animal kingdom because they have figured out how to join the community of an entirely alien species"—what a cool concept! The first essay in the publication (something between a thick magazine and a thin trade paperback) explores "Pets: Why Do We Have Them?" My first reaction was along the line of "duh," as this question seems to me like asking why we like to eat or breathe. As the tagline of the article says, "People have an innate interest in other species." The familiar reasons are discussed: Pets reduce stress, as proven by objective measurements such as blood pressure. Many domesticated animals trigger affection because they fit into the "cuteness" pattern of large, round heads, soft contours, and wide eyes, like human babies. Some people value pets' capacity for "unconditional love" and actually regard their dogs as "role models for a better life." As a fantasy fan and writer, however, I like to believe there's an even more fundamental motive for our attachment to animals.

C. S. Lewis says in the chapter on "Affection" in his THE FOUR LOVES, "The higher and domesticated animal is, so to speak, a 'bridge' between us and the rest of nature. We at all times feel somewhat painfully our human isolation from the sub-human world. . . . It [an animal] has three legs in nature's world and one in ours. It is a link, an ambassador. . . . Man with dog closes a gap in the universe."

Lewis's friend Tolkien in "On Fairy Stories" puts the same thesis even more eloquently, when he considers why talking animals and magical comprehension of animal speech play such a prominent role in fairy tales. He remarks on the profound human desire "to converse with other living things," a wish "as ancient as the Fall," rooted in "the sense of separation of ourselves from beasts.” He says, "A vivid sense of that separation is very ancient; but also a sense that it was a severance: a strange fate and a guilt lies on us. Other creatures are like other realms with which Man has broken off relations, and sees now only from the outside at a distance, being at war with them, or on the terms of an uneasy armistice. There are a few men who are privileged to travel abroad a little; others must be content with travellers' tales."

As I see it, the same desire to know the mind of the Other impels us to imagine talking with animals as well as communicating with trees, machines, or nonhuman aliens.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt