The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by David D. Levine:

Well, I definitely remember watching JFK's funeral, and I was less than 3 (born 2/61). My parents say they saw how I stared at the screen and said "he'll remember this."

I barely remember anything else that far back.

The thing that baffles me about those Spiderman reprints is why Marvel is doing it. These are forty-year-old comics and they haven't aged well. They were groundbreaking when they first appeared, but they're incredibly crude by modern standards. Does it really benefit Marvel to put these hackneyed antiques on public display?

My best guess is that they need to reprint them to retain copyright.

You'd think that if someone tries to do something you'd hate but bungles the job, it'd be better than if they'd succeeded. But the current administration's fiascos show that it's far, far worse.

Meanwhile, what's appearing in The Oregonian is a right-wing op-ed saying that "With the disclosure that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the initial source for Robert Novak's July 2003 column that outed CIA operative Valerie Wilson -- also known as Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador and Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson -- it is now clear that all the hype about a Bush-inspired vendetta against the Wilsons is bunk."

http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/editorial/11571549506440.xml?oregonian?edc&coll=7

In my early days we had a Selectric that was built into a desk and rigged with servos so that it could be used as a computer output device (this was circa 1978 and the computer was a CP/M homebrew with a Z-80 processor and -- gosh wow! -- a whopping 64k of RAM). We used the same typewriter for manual typing and for printing final copies of papers. I have no idea where my father found this marvel.

During this time I used Zip-A-Tone and its competitors for display type. I got very, very good at piecing together bits of uncommon letters to fill in for the common letters that ran out (e.g. use an F and an L to make an E after the real E's were all gone).

Are you equally less impressed by non-SFF writers as compared to SFF writers, for dealing solely in the real world?

Yes, actually. I'm one of those genre readers who finds "realistic" fiction boring. <irony>I mean, how much can you really say about the human condition without the extended metaphors available in SF/Fantasy?</irony>

Writing in a genre can also be considered lazy writing. If I decide to write a book about vampires, most of my work has been done for me. Readers already know about vampires, what they're like, how they act. I don't have to invent anything at all.

There's a certain amount of truth to that (as in the joke upthread, we are all building our birds from the same dirt). And those works that simply use the existing tropes, without adding anything new to them, are not as exciting as the minority that take the existing tropes and twist them unmercifully.

I refer David Levine to my exchange with Cheryl Morgan

Well yes, but if it's good it's not really fanfic.

David Levine, are you by any chance sneaking up on the "if it's good, it can't be fanfic" formulation?

Damn. I've been spotted.

Okay, let me restate and amplify my remarks for the record. Most fanfic fails for me for the same reasons most series television (and sequels, and tie-ins) fails for me: it emphasizes exploring and deepening the reader's existing relationship with existing characters rather than changing and growing the characters. But there do exist exceptional TV shows (e.g. Babylon 5) and exceptional fanfic (e.g. a rewrite of Buffy or Alien III that rewinds the original work and has a completely new take on the plot, avoiding the original creator's stupidities) that do much more than that. These I like. However, because the majority of works in both forms are unsatisfying to me, I avoid the form unless I have multiple personal recommendations for a specific work.

I would have said that lifting a fragment and incorporating it into your own work was more creatively lazy than using an existing framework to tell your own story

I didn't say that lifting a fragment of plot (while making up your own characters) isn't lazy. I just said it didn't fall within my definition of "fanfic." Forbidden Planet isn't, to me, a fanfic on The Tempest, although it snitches the entire plot. But Paradise Lost is a fanfic on the Bible because it is a new take on the established characters.

My attitude here comes from my own personal strengths and weaknesses. To me, plot is easy and characters are hard. So making up a new plot with someone else's characters would be less work than making up new characters for someone else's plot.

Although I say that writing fanfic is "lazy," I can't deny that it's hard work. One of the reasons I've never attempted fanfic myself is that I would have too much trouble working within the limitations of canon -- it's much easier to write in my own universe, where I can change the "laws of physics" if I need to.

I probably shouldn't have used the word "lazy". What I really mean is that I'm more impressed by people who do the hard work of creating a new universe and characters than by people who do the (different) hard work of creating new stories with an existing universe and characters. It's similar to the way that I'm more impressed by people who are really good at designing bridges and buildings than by people who are really good at running and jumping. Athletes certainly work hard, but I don't have as much interest in the results.

My take on The Fanfic Question is a little different from the comments I've read above. Whether fanfic is (or should be) an intrusion upon the creators' rights or not, whether it is well written or not, I personally don't read or write fanfic because I think it's creatively lazy.

I'm defining "fanfic" here as "new stories about existing characters and settings, written by someone other than the original creator or their designates." So Dave Luckett's snitch of a fragment of plot from Tolkien isn't "fanfic" by my definition.

Fanfic can be a way for new writers to learn their craft by relying on existing characters, character relationships, and settings so they can focus on plot, prose, pacing, and all the other aspects of writing. Certainly, there's no reason that such stories can't be entertaining and emotionally valid. But I find them unsatisfying for the same reason I find most series television (and tie-in novels, and many sequels) unsatisfying: because the characters and their relationships are already established, they can't grow or change much (unless the fic is prepared to violate canon to an extent that most of the fics I've read don't).

Also, many fics are weak because they rely too heavily on the crutch of the existing characters (and the reader's knowledge of those characters), sometimes to the extent of omitting character description completely. The characters become merely labels, or puppets, animated more by the reader's existing knowledge than by the writer's craft.

I'm a plot-focused writer. I want to see things happening -- things with consequence, things that change the characters' understanding of the world. Most fanfic fails for me because it is, instead, focused on the reader's involvement with the characters -- the purpose of the fic is to enjoy another hour or two with old friends, or to deepen existing relationships (often taking a non-sexual relationship to a new or more intense sexual level), rather than to create new situations and change the characters' lives.

So I have no moral objection to fanfic. But it doesn't turn my crank.

I'm amazed that the thread has gotten this far without anyone mentioning that the chorus of Bob Marley's song "Buffalo Soldier" has almost exactly the same tune as the Banana Splits theme (slowed down and rastafized).

Speaking of mildly-educational Saturday morning TV shows that hardly anyone remembers (viz. Make a Wish), I spent many years wondering if I'd only dreamed Curiosity Shop, featuring such characters as Baron Balthazar and the Onomatopoeia. But the Net is bigger than it used to be, and there is now a little information out there about it. It was one of my favorites, but I don't believe I've ever met anyone who remembers it.

Another one of my favorites that few Americans remember is Vision On, a BBC show for deaf and hearing children that was delightfully surreal.

Let me lob in a couple of data points about, um, me.

My stories have been called old-fashioned. I think this is because I grew up reading the Good Old Stuff and want to read more like it. What experimentation I do is in conversation with the Good Old Stuff rather than in rebellion against it. Another factor is that I'm not a stylist, I'm a plotter. This means that my stuff is accessible and easy to read. Put those two factors together and you get work that is acceptable to a broad variety of readers.

Now consider that of the readers to whom a given work is acceptable, some small percentage will be enthusiastic about it. So, all things being equal, the wider the base audience, the larger the absolute number of enthusiastic people. I think that this is why many works that have broad appeal but are not wildly original (original = different = not acceptable to as large a number of readers) make the Hugo ballot, which is nominated by the members of the Worldcon.

Of course, many works that are wildly original do make the ballot, because they are good enough that an unusually large percentage of the readers to whom they are acceptable are enthusiastic about them.

And speaking of first novels getting nominated, my first F&SF sale and my first Asimov's sale both made the Hugo ballot. Obviously, I must redouble my efforts to crack Analog.

Well, it's not that much of a stretch for the SCA, given that they took over Russia back in 1999...

Well, if the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics rescinds the acceptance of the paper, they can always expand it to a book, and have it "published" by PA.

If it's the WMSCI, they really had it coming. They've been spamming me for quite a while -- at one point I was receiving an email from them every couple of weeks, all addressed to "Dr. D. Levine" and telling me that "We are emphasizing the area of Virtual Engineering, mainly Agent Technologies which are related to your specific area." I wrote them last year asking them to take me off their list but the spams keep coming.

The really intriguing thing to me about the zeppelin scene in Hell's Angels was the degree to which it made the Germans sympathetic characters. Plus, it blowed up real good.

Those with the IE problem: as PNH and TNH have noted, f11 twice (fullscreen/unfulscreen) generally solves it.

I have the same problem. Actually, any change in the window size (not just maximize/restore) will do the trick.

But this doesn't help if you click on a link that points to a specific comment. In that case you only see the first few comments in the thread, rather than the specified one; changing the window size displays all the comments but leaves the window positioned where it was. There is no way to determine which of the comments the link was intended to point to. I'd really appreciate a fix!

Way, way upthread, Rob Hansen said:

I still remember my surprise on encountering the line: "then he parted the twin nodes of her clitoris". That one made me wince, and I'm not even female. As a way of signalling the protagonist is having sex with either an alien or a mutant, the line has possibilities, but this was meant to be a physically normal human woman, alas.

Actually, the writer might know too much about female anatomy, rather than too little. The clitoris does have two "legs" going down from the base, on either side of the vaginal opening, and stimulation of these nodes can be most... stimulating. But most people -- even most women -- don't know this, and to use this fact in erotica smacks of too much book-learnin'.

This has nothing to do with any of the above, but I had to share it with the Making Light crew.

Are you troubled by Arachibutyrophobia (fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth)? Or Dextrophobia (fear of objects at the right side of the body)? How about Zemmiphobia (fear of the great mole rat)? Well, The Phobia Clinic can help.

"The Phobia Clinic's 24-hour Zemmiphobia and Fear of the Great Mole Rat program offers guaranteed relief. ...each year, this surprisingly common phobia causes countless people needless distress. To add insult to an already distressing condition, most zemmiphobia therapies take months or years..."

Just go to http://www.changethatsrightnow.com/problem_detail.asp?PhobiaID=1932&SDID=732 and click on any of hundreds of phobias, and you can see the EXACT SAME PAGE promising to cure you of your fear of whatever.

Ah, the joys of ASP scripts. Thanks to Jay Lake for pointing this one out.

Thanks for a great post and a great conversation. I'll be telling all my friends about this one.

The worst rejection I've received in the last year was from a Major Literary Magazine, who crammed my MS into the one-stamp SASE (along with a form rejection letter) and sent it to me with 92 cents postage due. What part of "disposable manuscript" didn't they understand?

A friend of mine, probably in a moment somewhere between the blue form of death from ROF and the didn't grab,hold, work from JJA, has commented that if she ever became a slush editor, she'd buy twelve packs of colored paper, shuffle them, and use them to print rejections, thus forever bewildering the writers, who'd spend countless hours trying to compare and figure out what each color stood for.

I believe Argosy is now doing exactly that.

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