Stop already
Why does anyone engage Frank Church? He has nothing to say about Harlan, he drops politicized bombs and waits for people to churn about in response. Why doesn't he do this on his own blog? Oh, that way he'd have to come up with his own audience.
Don't read his "posts." Certainly don't respond. And arguing with him? What's that? Frank Church doesn't have an opinion unless Noam Chomsky or some such gives it to him.
Don't read, don't respond. Do not engage. Plenty of other worthwhile, and even Ellison related, posts to read and respond to.
It's the birthday of one SAMUEL JOHN KLEIN (even if there were two Samuel John Kleins, it's doubtful they'd have the same birthday) -- raconteur, bon vivant, soldier of fortune, and whore in the kitchen. Have a marvy day, son.
Getting back on-topic: BRAIN MOVIES
Many thanks, Jason Davis, for the update on BRAIN MOVIES. I knew CUTTER'S WORLD was heading our way, but had no idea that BRILLO was to be part of the package. Excellent, excellent news.
The only downside is that I never have time to read all these Ellison books and scripts. But keep 'em coming. I loves me a stockpile of unread HE.
Public service announcement
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!
Copy Fucking Wrong
Frank, your clever idea is wrong and extra shit-like.
You assume that we live in an ordered society.
We smarty-pants humans have a problem. We’re still base animals, and our monkey habits FORCE us to survive, which is accomplished by the three basic human instincts of lying, cheating and stealing. Murder is our go-to reaction when these other three techniques don’t work.
And I’m not even adding sex into this mix.
This thin, less than microscopic veneer of civilization is our attempt to self regulate our survival instincts. We’ve been trying to be good people for thousands of years.
And It works for a while, mostly.
Mostly.
But not always. Check the 6:00 news if you have doubts.
You may have a shiny new law, but if I want to murder or fuck you, you better run fast. Or you will be fucked and murdered by me, and I will forget about it five minutes later. I’m a bad monkey and all of the people I know are worse. The horrible people that I drive with on the 101 every day are beyond worse.
Frank, writing is the only thing in my life that I have any respect for and if you or anyone else on the fucking Internet steals my stuff, I will track you down and cut off your head. Why would I give you a break and call the cops?
I will stuff a hundred bucks into every thieving dead skull cavity in honor of your clever one hundred dollar Republican voucher program for artists.
Have a nice day, Frank.
Tim Raven
Jeopardy
Harlan's novella, ABAHD, was the subject of a double jeopardy answer tonight. Stay tuned on the west coast.
$100 voucher program
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/ip_2003_11.pdf
That's a direct link to the paper Dean Baker wrote 10 years ago in 2003.
(To get there from here:
I highlighted his name, right-clicked and selected the Google
search. When the first couple of hits didn't show me what I
wanted, I started to type in "Voucher" but only got to the "V"
when Google nicely typed in the rest of the search for me. So
at the end of the day I clicked 3 times and typed 1 character.
The effort nearly killed me, and left me scarred both physically
and emotionally, but I think it was worth it to have an informed
opinion on what Frank suggested.)
Also, Frank said it wasn't his idea. He even went to the trouble
of telling you whose idea it is. And yet you guys are giving him
the third degree on it. I know Frank doesn't need anyone to
defend him, but spewing uninformed opinions *here* of all places
is a bit much. Frank should have cited his source as well, he isn't
blameless in this.
That said, I don't agree with the assumptions Dean made, nor do I
agree with the conclusions he reached. All in all it's just a
bad idea. Of course, the current system is horribly broken as
well. But substituting one bad idea for another is not the solution. Bad initial contracts and the unwillingness of artists
to self-publish and put their own money on the line is part of
the problem. The decline in reading, and art appreciation in
general, is another.
rejoinderisms
SOOOOOOOOO the Secretary General, or whomsoever, of the United Nations, or somesuch similar governing body or other, stands before the General Assembly, if that’s what it’s called, and calls for a discussion of the rights or whatever of oil-rich African countries, as well as their obligations to their neighboring countries, or whomsoever, and the world at large, and the General Secretary, or Frank Church, or whomsoever, says, “All may respond, EXCEPT Nigeria and Algeria, or suchlike. We don’t want to hear your opinion, or whatever your response is called.”
Because, you know, that’s how good debate runs here, or at the UN, or wheresoever.
Frank,
The problem is that you're looking at this through the lens of an economist. It's not just about the money, it's about having control over your output too. A voucher doesn't give me any control over my IP, it just lets the thieves feel a little less guilty about stealing (if they have any guilt to start with).
What's to stop someone from using the work from artist "A" but pledging the voucher monies to artists "B" and "C"? Artist "A" never receives compensation, but people still get to use that artist's work. I fail to see how this fixes the problem.
BTW, it's not just China or Europe we're concerned about. Plenty of intellectual theft happens right in our own backyard.
I suspect that if you were a "creator" rather than a "consumer" you might view this whole copyright issue a little differently.
BRAIN MOVIES 3 & 4
I've just descended from Ellison Wonderland where I was given the thumbs up on BRAIN MOVIES 3 & 4. Since Harlan is sans internet, I'm delivering the news on his behalf.
BRAIN MOVIES 3 stars the two-hour pilot for CUTTER'S WORLD and also features "Who Killed Alex Debbs?" (the first of Harlan's four BURKE'S LAW scripts), "The Ship That Kills" (an unproduced segment of THE MANHUNTER from 1974), and a special section dedicated to the evolution of "Demon With a Glass Hand" including the unfinished short story "The Queer File," the first three chapters of the unfinished novel OBITUARY FOR AN INSTANT, and the initial treatment for the OUTER LIMITS episode before Harlan set the story in the Bradbury Building).
BRAIN MOVIES 4 stars the two-hour pilot for BRILLO, as well as the treatment for a second episode of the series titled "Funny Money" as well as "Who Killed Purity Mather?" (the second BURKE'S LAW script), and "Jeffrey's Being Quiet" (an unproduced episode of THE SIXTH SENSE inspired by the same moment in Harlan's life that inspired "All the Birds Come Home to Roost").
The official announcement e-mail with covers and all the particulars will be out soon. I just thought I'd pop in to give the folks hereabouts some advanced warning. If you're not on our mailing list, head over to HarlanBooks.com and sign up.
Jason
New SF: NU LUNA by Andrew Biscontini
I'm very proud to announce the publication of our first true SF work, the novel NU LUNA by Andrew Biscontini. It's a remarkable debut, and we're offering a special preview of over 20 pages from the book here:
http://newtextureblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/NULUNApreview.html
I'm NU LUNA's editor and I designed the book in collaboration with author Biscontini.
Webderlanders who secured copies of our previous release, WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH! featuring our esteemed host: Do let us know what you think of the book.
Thank you for your support and indulgence. I hope you dig NU LUNA!
Re the voucher:
1) Who sets the guidelines? The feds? Who gets to decide which artists (I'm assuming this takes in writers, musicians, painters, photographers, independent filmmakers...) may be given the voucher?
2) If everyone with a voucher decides whose work they'll support with that $100, how will that give us a situation so different from what we have now -- some artists wind up with scads of money and the ones who aren't so popular still scuffle for dimes?
3) If this system (which sounds more like a system to try a guaranteed minimum payment to the artist rather than protect the artist from theft of intellectual property) is going to make sure that the artists who meet the guidelines get a guaranteed minimum doesn't that imply a mandated maximum? Are we talking a "fair" income range for artists defined somehow in the tax codes relating to that voucher?
4) This is just me talking here, but I'll bet I'm not unique. I have some short stories up on Amazon. They've been bought by people who are not friends or relatives, and now and then I get some money from Amazon for them. If your system means that somehow tax dollars come to me rather than dollars that came from people who specifically want to buy one of my stories, and that somehow as a result people who sell more stories than I do get less money than they would otherwise, then I don't want those dollars.
Bests,
--tr
I want to float something out to the room--no, Barber and Finderdoug are not allowed to answer.
Let's say instead of current copyright laws you gave every tax payer a 100 dollar voucher, where they could give it to any artist they wanted, within certain guidelines. Wouldn't that be better than worrying somebody in Europe or China is taking your work for free?
This idea comes not from me but from Dean Baker, a top notch progressive economist of the Krugman school.
(I bet these people don't) Pay The Writer
Yet another place with illegal copies of books, Harlan's included:
www.bookos.org
Doug, thank you, I think I was fooled by the page following the preview - I didn't know we were at a point yet where it costs 4 or 9 dollars a month to access 25 million books. I didn't see the note brackets that basically says you can only actually download "selected" (haha) books.
HARLAN is popping up everywhere. I found this strip in the archives of MANLY GUYS DOING MANLY THINGS. Everyone wave to AM, and the creator of the strip gives Harlan and the IHNMAIMS game in the comments.
http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/that-pillar-was-the-closest-approximation-i-could-think-of-to-what-am-is-supposed-to-look-like
Barney Dannelke
I sincerely apologize for making the comment “Everything old is new again” on your Facebook post about the new remake of “Brillo”. CLEARLY I hadn’t realized that you are still so incensed by my asking you to join Mark Goldberg and me for a Pavilion get-together when he was in town two years ago that you would cancel your Facebook account. Please feel free to rejoin - I’m sure your Facebook friends will miss you and I promise I will never acknowledge your existence again.
James Levy: The "601" error is from the _film_ of THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN some years later, not the novel. No opinion here as to where it came from.
(I do remember a few years back, having grown up as the son of two rocket engineers and having gotten one or two tours of a launch facility, having to explain to a fellow SF movie fan that yes, reel-to-reel data tapes really DID spin back and forth like that - being multiple-tracked - and that yes, those big grids of indicator lights really DID exist and really DID convey information, readable by a trained and highly-paid technician.)
I for one think Harlan would be thrilled if we all called him with tele-posts instead of just leaving comments here. WHO'S WITH ME
Wow! - I *think* that was Jan's sense of humor at play.
"Steve, can't you post Harlan's number?"-Are You Serious???
Chrichton turned into a black helicopter nutcase near the end of his life. At least Bjorn Lumborg had a change of heart, jeez.
--------
Did you know: if India and Pakistan had a nuclear war, there would be so much dust created that the greenhouse effect would kill about a billion people.
Maybe we should have thought of that before we gave both India and Pakistan the bomb.
Hiroshima mon sickness.
Jan - Good eye with Scribd - however, the links you provided appear to be to the free previews provided by E-Reads, the official provider of Harlan's work in ebook form (and run by his long-time agent, Richard Curtis).
Just this week, Scribd and E-Reads announced a partnership to bring E-Reads work to Scribd subscribers (and E-Reads gets to use Scribd as a point-of-sale channel for full version ebooks.)
http://blog.scribd.com/2013/05/10/scribd-welcomes-e-reads-grand-master-of-sci-fi/
THAT said, if you eliminate the 30 Harlan E-Reads titles available, there are still a slew of users posting full text scans who should be flogged with razorwire-bound copies of GREAT EXPECTATIONS - such as:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/140997018/Deathbird-Stories-Harlan-Ellison
http://www.scribd.com/doc/113598587/Harlan-Ellison-Deathbird-Stories
http://www.scribd.com/doc/67353861/Ellison-Harlan-No-Doors-No-Windows (an actual rip of the e-reads edition)
And so on.
To Mr. Messer
Cool guess, but The Andromeda Strain was published on May 12, 1969. Thus, the impossibility of Crichton being influenced by the events of Apollo 11.
BTW, if you re-read that novel, you will notice that it holds up astonishingly well. If The Double Helix was one of the first (and only) books to explicate how real science gets done, then The Andromeda Strain likewise does the same for science fiction. It's interesting to note that when Watson had completed the manuscript, he ran it by Richard Feynman to see if he thought leaving in all the bad guesses and loose ends was a good idea--Feynman thought it was great and told Watson to publish the thing as-is. The sad thing is that Watson comes across int he book as a bit of a sexist jerk, which only gave ammunition to the Rosalind Franklin advocates who want to boost her contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA at the expense of Watson and Crick. Franklin was a brilliant experimenter but there is no evidence she had cracked the structure problem. Too bad all around
Steve, can't you post Harlan's number? He's been offline for days and he has no idea what's been going on here!
Maybe Susan will let him use her internet account.
--
Scribd is displaying HE books again - this is 100% illegal, says the lawyer in me
http://www.scribd.com/doc/141216543/The-Harlan-Ellison-Hornbook
http://www.scribd.com/doc/141216376/Approaching-Oblivion
http://www.scribd.com/doc/141216360/Slippage-Previously-Uncollected-Precariously-Poised-Stories
http://www.scribd.com/doc/141216560/Shatterday
etc.
Here is the news about the Boy and His Dog Blu-ray
www.forcesofgeek.com/2013/05/cult-classic-boy-and-his-dog-arrives-on.html
From the Scientific American blog: Neuroscience in Fiction: Harlan Ellison’s “I have no mouth and I must scream”
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/2013/05/11/i-have-no-mouth/
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