Phew, it’s good to be back! I do apologise for my unscheduled absence last week and hope that you weren’t too desolate without the usual World Wide Wednesday post to ease you towards the weekend. Despite having two weeks of Interweb-related fun to catch up on, I’m still going to maintain the top 10 posting — will just force me to only bring you the very best of the posts out there!
Just a quick announcement first! I read through the entertaining and witty suggestions as to my absence last week and my winner of the copy of Morpheus Road is Jenni — you wouldn’t *believe* the amount of things I’ve found under my couch cushions. Jenni, please contact Justin within 5 days to claim your prize.
1) Fan Fic Rumblings
By far the biggest issue of recent days is the Fan Fic discussion that has reared its head on the blogs of Diana Gabaldon (who appears to have subsequently removed her posts on the subject) and George R R Martin. The Book Smugglers gave a series of handy links in their latest Stash and News post — also providing some arguments on the pro side of Fan Fic. Certainly this is a heated issue, with passionate proponents on both sides.
2) Author Fan Letter Blog Crawl
A number of blogs have combined forces and come up with the idea of publicly posting the Fan Letter that they wish to issue to their favourite author. Kassa kicked everything off with a handy introductory post that also gives you the schedule of Fan Letters and the blogs they will be published on — this is running throughout May, so head on over and show some support.
3) Mother’s Day
Y’all over in the States celebrated Mother’s Day recently, right? (This confuses me — over here in Britain, we celebrate it in March!) The Huffington Post therefore decided to bring us the 12 most horrifying mothers from literature!
4) Frank Frazetta
And now some sad news. We regret to announce that Frank Frazetta sadly passed away May 10th. Our own Greg has this to say: “He was one of the most successful fantasy illustrators and I have him and Boris to thank for getting me to pick up my first fantasy novels. I kinda outgrew Boris somewhat — his work, while amazing, was just a little too smooth and sexy which took away the realism — but never Frazetta. To this day I can look at a Frazetta painting and feel a thrill, like I need to be ready for a fight. I don’t think anyone else can capture the raw and violent excitement of a battle, warrior, or monster.” We pass on our best wishes and sincerest sympathies to Frank Frazetta’s family and friends.
5) Angry Robot Books part company with Harper Collins
That’s right — after a year of trading under the banner of Harper Collins, Angry Robot Books have been brought by Osprey Publishing, who, at the moment, deal only with non-fiction. Obviously this decision has sparked a lot of discussion and Adam Christopher brings us his thoughtful analysis on the sale of Angry Robot.
6) Fantasy Art — Tuomas Korpi
Dark Wolf ‘s Fantasy Reviews has given us another excellent artist interview — this time with Tuomas Korpi. Often, these spectacular artists are ignored in favour of the authors producing the stories, so it is a credit to Mihai that he constantly flies the flag for fantasy art. Also, we all need to offer Mihai our congratulations — he is going to be a father later this year!
7) A New Reader!
Along similar lines, we at FanLit want to extend our congratulations to Graeme, who is now the proud father of Hope Aleta Flory! If ever a baby were born to read, she is the one!
8) The Future of Genre Fiction
Marc Marion has conducted an interview, featuring John Ottinger III, Mark Chitty and the Smuggler girls Ana and Thea — asking questions about the future of genre fiction. Part 1 is up now (as linked) and part 2 will follow soon.
9) China Mieville wins the Arthur C Clarke award — but is it science fiction?
Well, the Arthur C Clarke award winner was announced two Wednesdays ago, and the immediate aftermath involved discussions about whether The City and The City is actually science fiction. Jason from Kamvision then discussed the nature of genres, as an oblique follow-on to this.
10) I Pity New Writers
Lastly for this week, but by no means least, Mark Chadbourn takes a sympathetic look at the lot of new writers with the advent of the Internet and reviewing sites. Be sure to read through to the comments, which are just as interesting. Mark Charan Newton (it must be something about authors called Mark!) also posted about Writers and the Internet.
And that is the lot for this week! Seemed like a very quick update to write thanks to all the marvellous content that has been posted in the last two weeks. I guess now is a good time for FanLit to express our gratitude and admiration to all of those bloggers, authors, publicists, and numerous others who are putting out quality articles and interviews that generate discussion on that subject we all love – literature.
See you next time!
The posts about the fan fiction is particularly interesting. I’m not sure how I feel about FanFic. Personally I think fans should respect the creator’s wishes and not create fiction based on their works. I think fanfic writers might be surprised by the response to a courteous letter to an author asking permission to create a noon-profit story. I think if I were to ever publish something that would garner fanfic I would request a written letter requesting my permission. Legally it prevent a lot of awkwardness, and lets the fans play around with my characters.
Actually there’s limits to the legal issues it can cause, especially when you do as Jim Butcher chose to do, which is totally awesome, I might add.
Even if authors disapprove of fanfic, I find the way some authors react completely unacceptable. Some of them are polite about it. Gabaldon basically called fanfic writers, rapists, thieves, murderers, and the sort of people who sell children into sex slavery.
No, really, she did. I’ve been following this since it began. That’s just not kosher in my book.
Yeah Butcher definitely took the best route I think. For those interested here is the new Jim Butcher FanFic policy, per his website.
A) You can’t make money from fanfic based on Jim’s work.
B) Jim still isn’t going to read it. (Wouldn’t you rather he spend that time writing the next book, anyway?) Do not send Jim your stories or story ideas.
C) You need to post a disclaimer on your fic, like this handy example: “The Dresden Files/Codex Alera is copyright Jim Butcher. This story is licensed under the Creative Commons as derivative, noncommercial fiction.” In doing so, you waive any rights to that work–you can’t sue Jim for compensation if he writes something similar.
D) Fanfic can now be talked about in places that had previously been off-limits, like our forum. We’ve created a separate “Fan Creations” section of the forum for for this purpose.
E) Ponies and ice cream for everyone!