Asimov's Science Fiction (25 page)

The world in which we live today was born in the grim years of World War II and the atomic explosions that concluded it. Reading
City
once again, I see it still as one of the finest works of science fiction of its period, a haunting fantasy that is still capable of speaking to us today.

WHAT COUNTS?

cheer up

Last time we looked at the economics of a career in SF (Executive Summary: Difficult work, typically low pay). When I turned that column in, Sheila worried that I might be painting too bleak a picture for the beginning writer. If it's such a bad idea, then how come smart people with three names like
Mary Robinette Kowal
maryrobinettekowal.com
> and
James Van Pelt
jimvanpelt.livejournal.com
> and
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
kriswrites.com
> write? Because with the right combination of luck and talent and perseverance (and maybe some social media mojo), you
can
have a career. One of the hallmarks of our genre is that new voices are always welcomed. Check out all the tools we've developed to help newcomers find their way: writing camps for teens like
Alpha
alpha.spell-caster.org
> and
Shared Worlds
wofford.edu/sharedworlds,
> professional "boot" camps like
Clarion
clarion.ucsd.edu,
>
Clarion West
clarion-west.org,
> and
Odyssey
sff.net/odyssey/workshop.html.
>

These handholds, which those in the writing establishment built to help The Next Generation pull themselves up, point to other reasons for becoming a writer beyond success in the market economy. Non-monetary economies have always existed, but like other aspects of modern culture, the internet is transforming them.

it's a gift

In 2007,
Jonathan Lethem
jonathan lethem.com
> published a remarkable essay in
Harper's
called:
"The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism"
harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of influence.
> In it he makes persuasive arguments about copyright and intellectual property issues, the role of influence in an artist's life, and the importance of the gift economy. But Lethem has a trick up his sleeve: his essay is a collage text, the greatest part of which has been lifted from other writers. At the end of the piece Lethem attributes his plagiarisms: "This key to the preceding essay names the source of every line I stole, warped, and cobbled together as I 'wrote.'"

Some might dismiss this as a post-modern stunt, but Lethem's method calls attention to the substance of what he is saying.

Where do writers come from?
"Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses.
(Lethem by way of Lewis Hyde's
The Gift
lewishyde.com/publications/the-gift
>.
)

The works of masters as well as those of lesser practitioners can be considered a kind of cultural commons that we all have a right to, but that writers in particular can and should frequent. Yes, property rights are involved, but there are other considerations as well, because art in general, and SF stories in particular, exist in both a market economy and a gift economy.
"The cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange is that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, whereas the sale of a
commodity leaves no necessary connection. I go into a hardware store, pay the man for a hacksaw blade, and walk out. I may never see him again. The disconnectedness is, in fact, a virtue of the commodity mode. We don't want to be bothered, and if the clerk always wants to chat about the family, I'll shop elsewhere. I just want a hacksaw blade. But a gift makes a connection."
(Again, Lethem/Hyde.)

I believe that you have experienced this close connection, dear reader, this "feeling-bond." You have your favorites here in
Asimov's
and in the genre at large. Have you ever stopped to consider what makes you prefer the work of one writer over that of another? Might it be that you have received that particular writer's stories not only as entertainments but also as gifts? But wait, since presumably you paid for this magazine, how can a story published here be a potential gift?
"Yet one of the more difficult things to comprehend is that the gift economies—like those that sustain open-source software—coexist so naturally with the market. It is precisely this doubleness in art practices that we must identify, ratify, and enshrine in our lives as participants in culture, either as 'producers' or 'consumers.' Art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—is received as a gift is received. Even if we've paid a fee at the door of the museum or concert hall, when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us that has nothing to do with the price."
(Lethem/Hyde again, but also quoting David Bollier's
Silent Theft
bollier.org.
>) Recall the grim statistics on writers' incomes from the last installment, and the essential gift-ness of
Asimov's
stories is even more apparent. Ace Hardware makes a profit selling that hacksaw. Not so, most of those word workers listed in your typical table of contents.

And it is resolving the differences between the gift and the market economies that lies at the heart of our copyright dilemma. Writers and readers need access to the cultural commons because that's where new works—if not new ideas—begin.
"The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors but 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate."
(Lethem quoting Sandra Day O'Connor.) Copyright is not one of Jefferson's unalienable rights like "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but rather a grant from the government that seeks to accommodate the needs of one class of citizens, "producers," with those of a vastly larger class, "consumers." In negotiating an equitable balance, we must remember that stories that arise from our cultural commons must return to that commons, or else it will stagnate. And let's not forget that
"The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament...."
(Lethem citing a letter Mark Twain wrote to Helen Keller.)

your rep

While the gift economy runs parallel to the market economy, the reputation economy crashes into it continually. Mastering social media can't put money directly into a writer's pocket, but if
Neil Gaiman
neilgaiman.com
> tweets about a new project
,
1,798,033 followers get the message. And the reputation economy both giveth and taketh away. When award-winning British crime writer R.J. Ellory (
rjellory.com
) was outed for creating false identities to publish reviews on Amazon
praising his own books and slamming those of colleagues
guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/03/rj-ellory-secret-amazon-reviews,
> he became the poster boy for
sock-puppetry
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sock puppet_%28Internet%29.
>

Although online reputation management is a coinage that PR people dreamed up to sell more services,
Businessweek
searchengineoptimization journal.com/reputation-industry
> has declared it an official "industry." While many of the biggest players in reputation management focus on protecting their clients from attacks, individual entrepreneurs will hit the like button repeatedly—for a fee. In a
New York Times expose about reviews-for-hire
ny times.com/2012/08/26/business/bookreviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-on line-raves.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
> we learn that twenty glowing reviews posted online will set an author back five hundred dollars. In that article, a data mining expert from the University of Illinois-Chicago estimates that one-third of all consumer reviews on the internet are fake.

Of course, not all efforts to build an on-line reputation are mendacious. For example, consider writers who give their stories and, indeed, entire novels away. The virtual shelves of Amazon and Barnes & Noble groan beneath the weight of free self-published books. You may recall that we first considered using freebies to build reputation back in 2010 in a
two part column
asimovs.com/_issue_1002/on thenet.shtml
asimovs.com/issue _1004-05/onthenet.shtml
> about Chris Anderson's
Free: The Future of a Radical Price
amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp/14013229 05.
> Then and now, veteran writers grumbled about the practice of giving fiction away to get exposure. As they say, "You can die of exposure." Indeed, some regard this as a betrayal of the writing community. Typical is this
rant by Harlan Ellison
cbsnews.com/8301-505 123_162-33244046/media-site-looks-forfree-content-touts-reputation-economy
>: "The problem is that there are so god damn many writers who have no idea that they're supposed to be paid every time they do something, they do it for nothing... I get so angry about this because you're undercut by all the amateurs."

It's not only writers giving fiction away for free. Your favorite ezines are filled with great stories that cost nothing to read. These websites live at the intersection of the reputation and gift economies. Consider two prestigious online publications:
Tor.com
tor.com
> and S
trange Horizons
strangehorizons.com.
> One is a non-profit with an all-volunteer staff funded primarily by donations and arts grants.

The other is an online presence of the genre's largest print publisher. One lives undoubtedly in the gift economy; the other seeks to enhance the reputation of a corporation. In the Lethem essay, we find this assertion, quoting David Foster Wallace's essay "E Unibus Pluram": "This is the reason why even a really beautiful, ingenious, powerful ad (of which there are a lot) can never be any kind of real art: an ad has no status as gift; i.e., it's never really for the person it's directed at."

I'm not sure that's right. When the casual browser stops by either of these sites, does she really care which economy she's in?

exit

As a writer who likes to be paid but who has also posted dozens of stories from my backlist on various websites for free, I'm afraid I see both points of view in the ongoing free vs. paid controversy. Here's the argument I make to myself: If one of my
'Mov's
stories, published in 2010 or 1997 or whenever, is out of print, what good is it doing consigned to the darkness of my file drawer when it could once again fall under the light of readers' eyes?

Gift, or plug for my "brand"? You be the judge.

Death has newly become "The Discovered Country" in
Ian R. MacLeod's
suspenseful September 2013 novelette. This story of romance and deception takes us about as far into the Great Beyond as we are likely to get in our lifetimes. You'll be dying to learn how the tale turns out!

The rest of September is crammed full of short stories and novelettes.
Benjamin Crowell
shows us how uncontrolled copyright law could destroy civilization as we know it and punch "A Hole in the Ether"; an alien invasion is described from an unusual viewpoint in
Dominica Phetteplace
story about "What Changes You, What Takes You Away"; while
Jay O'Connell
lets us know that we just might survive the invasion as long as we can find "That Universe We Both Dreamed of": "A Stranger from a Foreign Ship" has a brutal adventure in
Tom Purdom's
short story;
Leah Cypess'
teens discover a new way to appreciate "What We Ourselves Are Not"; and with "The Unparallel'd Death-Defying Feats of Astoundio, Escape Artist Extraordinaire,"
Ian Creasey
wins the prize for the tale with the longest name in the issue. Fortunately,
James Sallis's
first story for us in close to thirty years is "As Yet Untitled."

Robert Silverberg's
Reflections examines the sleight of hand that takes nongenre tales and themes and creates "Translations" that resemble science fiction;
Peter Heck's
On Books includes reviews of
Other Seasons: The Best of Neal Barrett, Jr.,
and Victoria Blake's
Cyberpunk
anthology; plus we'll have an array of poetry that you're sure to enjoy. Look for our September issue on sale at newsstands on July 16, 2013. Or subscribe to
Asimov's
—in paper format or in downloadable varieties—by visiting us online at
www.asimovs.com,
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