Surreality Check A Savage Writer's Journal | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Last Month (December 1999)
What a wonderful way to start off the year. The premier of Russia resigned (and it's not nearly
as much of a surprise as the media is making it out to be), just in time for the annual
vodka production reports. Anyone who has paid attention at all to Russian-language newspapers
could infer that Yeltsin was contemplating resigning while Putin (ok, that's not how it
should be spelled, but it seems to be the standard) would at least temporarily take over.
I'm a bit disappointed. I was so looking forward to a Christmas present from the Infernal
Revenue Service. The last three years, the tax forms have arrived on December 28th or 29th to
really cheer me up. Of course, I know better than to use the preprinted sticker. (I'm a
lawyer; I'm supposed to know these little traps for the unwary.) I always have to supplement
the forms, too. My tax packages are steadily getting thinner, though; the last one was only
23mm thick. That's the biggest piece of fiction I've written in a long time.
On to serious matters. Like dinner.
This journal will be on hiatus from 5th January to about 11th January. Don't even bother
checking in during that period. I may get a couple of opportunities to surf over public
access, but I will probably be in no mood to continue with this journal until mid-month.
As acerbic as I am, I still try to avoid writing pieces that could turn to evaluation when
I'm, shall we say, indisposed. Once I get back, we'll see.
I'll try to fit one more entry in before the fifth. On the other hand, the only fifth
I should be worrying about is that partially depleted one of Isle of Jura single-malt
scotch. It'll probably be more than partially depleted before long.
Hey, lawyersespecially litigatorsare supposed to have expensive tastes in
liquor. Getting blasted on PBR is so . . . unsophisticated and uncivilized.
Neither am I a Miller High Life guy, at least as depicted in the
more-accurate-than-they-know commercials. For example, I do try to clean my most recent
victim's blood off my hands before reaching for a jelly doughnut. (Doughnuts do not need a
protein supplement. After all, what am I supposed to do with the victim's freshly dead
corpsewaste it?) Getting pleasantly sloshed on single-malt scotch is, however,
eminently respectable.
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04 January 2000
This is an update on the Deering case. I'm also going to take an opportunity to walk y'all
through the torture of the United States Sentencing
Guidelines (USSG) to give you an idea of what might happen.
First, a procedural update. Daniel Deering, the last of the defendants, has apparently decided
to read the writing on the wall (something that the "editors" at Sovereign et al. were
not competent to do) and plead guilty. (As we'll see below, this could well have a significant
effect on his sentence.) He will be rearraigned on 07 January 2000 at 9:30 before Judge
Karl Forester in Lexington, Kentucky. (Dock. 90, 91)
So, what does this mean in terms of a potential sentence? First, ignore the sentences stated
in the United States Code for the particular offenses for a moment. The plea is to violating
18 U.S.C. §§ 2 and 1341 (aiding and abetting to commit fraud; mail fraud). So, let's
see what the sentencing guidelines have to say:
All of this, of course, will be further modified by motions for upward and downward departures
based on cooperation; other criminal history that I don't know about, or that is found not
relevant at sentencing; restitution; and so on. Then it's within Judge Forester's discretion. He
has considerable discretion within the final guideline level (and the estimate of 23 is just
thatan estimate), and considerable discretion regarding departures from the guidelines.
Judge Forester can also choose to change some of the imprisonment to probation, supervised
release, and so on. The bottom line is that, if this estimate is accurate, the defendants
can look forward to a five-year vacation at Club Fed.
Then there's the fine (USSG §5E1.2(c)(3)) of not less than $10,000 nor more than
$100,000 (based on the offense level of 23).
It's as clear as mud, but it covers the ground.
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A short scam note: According to Jayne Hitchcock (the best-known of the victims), Ursula Sprachmann and James Leonardthe principals of the Woodside Literary Agencyhave been arrested for mail fraud in Uniondale, New York. This is consistent with the New York Attorney General's action against Woodside, which resulted in a finding of civil liability. This is a slightly cleaned-up version of an essay that I wrote in December 1997. I've updated a few items for news since, but this is the original venom. I strongly recommend use of an asbestos screen. We Don't Need No Stinkin' Grandmasters The SFWA needs a kick in the butt, so I'm taking it upon myself to provide one. Beware of hyperbole, rhetorical flourishes, and uncomfortable facts. The highest honor that the SFWA can award under its convoluted, self-serving (not field-serving) bylaws is recognition as a Grandmaster. The title alone implies considerable insensitivity and political maneuvering. "Master," I'm sorry to say, connotes "male" in American and British English. The term "Grandmaster" itself has a rather unsavoury past in this country, as anyone familiar with the history of civil rights since Reconstruction is probably aware. (I realize that this last comment excludes the vast majority of the SFWA, but that's not really different from the American public at large. It should be, but it isn't.) I'm not trying to imply evil intent here, just a failure to recognize what's going on. Perhaps this will become clearer by examining the entire list of Grandmasters to date [updated and current as of December 1999]:
Robert A. Heinlein (1974) With one-and-a-half exceptions, this is a list of constipated old white men. (Andre Norton is not a man; Lester del Rey was Hispanic, although he wrote under a more Northwest-European-sounding name.) That's 91%. And, looking at the list, one is left with a very troubling question:
Of the seventeen authors on this list, only four (22%) have produced more than negligible fantasy output. This by itself isn't too surprising; what we now know as commercial fantasy became viable in the US market in about 1964. There were a few works produced before then, some of which dwarf the current dreck. Their authors were mostly dead by 1974, though, so I'll let this one slidefor the moment. Only three (18%) cannot be characterized as primarily "hard" science fiction writers under the current understanding of the term. What is more disturbing is that seven of the seventeen authors (41%) cannot be called much more than hacks. Two of those seven produced one novella-length piece of exceptional writing apiece. The other five didn't do/haven't done even that well. Towering over the entire list we find Ursula LeGuin and Gene Wolfe; of at least equal staturein terms of both their individual writings and their contributions to the fieldto the current Grandmasters, we can add Kate Wilhelm, Samuel R. Delany, C.J. Cherryh, Joanna Russ, Thomas M. Disch, Vonda N. McIntyre, and a number of others. And therein lies the first bit of the rub. Even more than their whiteness and their maleness, the Grandmasters have something else in common: their pre-Sputnikness. Every single writer on the list had published a significant number of words before that fateful day in 1957. In 1973, when the awards were initiated (albeit the first award was not made until 1974), that might have been reasonable. Seventeen years isn't all that long. But by now we're looking at 40 years. Granted, the award is supposed to recognize a large body of work of long standing, so we shouldn't see any 35-year-old whiz kids selected as Grandmasters. Given the realities of publishing, a 30-year lookback seems reasonable. That opens us up to the New Wavers who began publishing significant work in the mid- to late 1960s. This, of course, points to the second bit of the rub. Although I can't claim to have known them personally, the auctorial persona of the vast majority of individual Grandmasters, and certainly of the list as a whole, is resoundingly right-wing. Approved by McCarthy sort of guys, intent on keeping the Commies out of Miami. In the early 1970s, with so many SFWAns being veterans of the global conflict and Korea, this is not surprising. Into the 90s, though, there isn't any sign of change. Some of it, perhaps, comes from the indoctrination defense workers got during the Cold War, and still get today (remember that the typical engineer or scientist from the 1950s up to today has a better than even chance of working on a DOD-funded or private defense project every decade). In other words, these authorsas a groupare more comfortable with Rosie the Riveter than with Charlie Gordon. This is not to say that "nuts and bolts" science fiction is "inherently bad"far from it. It is, however, to say that refusal to recognize the excellence of other methods is. The realities of publishing history probably skew the results somewhat. But the subtext is quite disturbing: that only people who "look just like us" can write books that Joe Sliderule can enjoy. That is what this list of "the best" says. It also says that what Joe Sliderule thinks he wants is what is good, or good for him. Surely the thirty or forty years' perspective on a writer's works should demonstrate otherwise! The ghetto walls, though, are creeping in. Everyone on the list is part of the SF Establishment, with the possible exception of Norton (most of whose work is juvenilein several senses). I'm not proposing some racial or gender quota to "make up the difference." (Due to historical educational and social pressures, that's simply not appropriate; the readership, and more importantly the authorship, will remain more white maleish than the general population demographic for quite some time.) I am, however, proposing that the SFWA get its head out of its ventral orifice and consider the following individuals for the next few Grandmaster awards. It's still a mostly male list, but not as much as the existing list. Without further ado, in this order:
Ursula K. LeGuin Of this group, only Silverberg had published significant work before Sputnik. What is more important from my perspective, though, is that they all pass the "backpack test." Like many college students, all those years ago, I carried both my classroom books and a paperback novel or two in my backpack. If I had dumped the contents on a desk while searching for the last working pen (which had certainly worked its way to the bottom), and a literature professor walked in, would I be embarrassed if he or she saw what I read between classes? (We'll assume that there's no lurid artwork on the cover, which is all too often enough to cause embarassment by itself; one edition of Fahrenheit 451 shocked one of my professors, who thought highly of the novel.) Only six of the current grandmasters pass that test. Conversely, there are several "Big Names" the Establishment would like to put forward for designation as Grandmasters who don't belong, including at least one former SFWA officer. I've made enough enemies by now, though, so I'm not going to name names. Suffice it to say that the SFWA needs to pay a lot more attention to appearances than it has thus far. Otherwise, we should propose Harlan Ellison as a Grandmaster; the Establishment deserves it. And, by the way, Harlan comes close to passing the Sputnik test. Last, but not least, is the structural problem built into the SFWA's method for awarding Grandmaster designation. That ridiculous "not more than seven times in a decade" limitation is virtually guaranteed to do two things:
The Grandmaster award thus needs two structural changes. First, the "seven in a decade" restriction should be eliminated. Second, consistent with the Hall of Fame concept, there should be a single, open "catch-up" year to recognize the pre-SFWA people. In tandem with this last change, the SFWA should establish a formal eligibility window, such as "a member becomes eligible for Grandmaster status, consistent with the remainder of the selection process, on January 1st of the year following the thirtieth anniversary of his or her first professional publication of speculative fiction."
OK. I've made enough new enemies for the month. I'll refrain from posting the rest of the essay. For now. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Not much to write about. Too much Percodan for good coordination. (Anyone watching my posts on The Rumor Mill would have noted substantially more typos than usual.) And I'm not one of those who believes in transcribing hallucinations to make stories. I have plenty of story ideas anyway, and my hallucinations aren't all that interesting. Harvey, hand me that pen, would you? Just one comment, though: What kind of drugs were the Writer's Guild of America's lawyers on when they left the suit against the Los Angeles writer's tax in state court? There is a federal constitutional issue here, guys. Get into federal court on this one, particularly since Ninth Circuit law is a lot more favorable than California state law. As a rule, state courts will not overturn taxes imposed by major subdivisions thereof, however improper; the California courts, in fact, have one of the worst track records. Cities don't have sovereign immunity, so the federal courts can hear the case. This should have been put in federal court with an application for TRO (temporary restraining order). Yes, I've read the ordinance. It is unconstitutional on its face and in application. Oh. You haven't heard about it. Los Angeles has decided to impose a tax on freelance writers who live or keep an office in Los Angeles. Does the phrase "chilling effect on free speech" mean anything? Lawyersa highly regulated professioncannot be required to pay the portion of mandatory state bar fees that supports lobbying activities, at least according to the Supreme Court. Draw your own conclusion. (That the ordinance is worded so broadly as to include people who regularly write letters to the editor, even if not compensated, should be additional food for thought.) Writers of the world, unite! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sorry about the gap. When I've been up at allpost-surgical aches and pains combined with back spasmsI've been busier than a one-legged woodpecker trying to kick down a telephone pole. Between a major editorial job that's running behind and three of my law clients having (legitimate) panic attacks, I haven't had much time to breathe. Then I got the 'flu, and wasn't sure I wanted to continue breathing. Writers need an effective "union" (although not one affiliated with any of the inherently dishonest major labor organizations, thank you [not a reflection on the individuals, but on structure and inertia]) for a very simple reason: National Geographic. Despite Tasini, despite changes in industry practice since 1994, NG is insisting on its CD-ROM "reissue." While I admire its utility for research, there's just one tiny problemthe kind that lawyers get paid for: NG is not providing any compensation to freelance authors, photographers, and illustrators for use of their work on the CD-ROM set. Some of those authors, photographers, and illustrators expressly reserved electronic rights; some of them had silent contracts (identical to Tasini); some had only oral contracts, which are not sufficient to transfer copyright. So, this is a slam-dunk, right? NG should just sigh and open its wallet, right? (Keep in mind that the National Geographic Society has a Congressional charter.) Not a chance. Instead, NG and its attorneys are engaged in tobacco-litigation tactics. I'm sure that my former acquaintances who are running Wizards of the Coast are watching carefully. And that, my friends, is why writers need an effective "union." In addition to problems with scam agents, other publishers, etc. It's not going to happen. Herewith an announcement concerning the Savage Reviews. Starting in mid-February 2000, I'll be going to a twice-monthly schedule. (I know, I know, I have a lot to catch up on.) The end-of-month posting(s) will be my normal, somewhat acerbic reviews. Mid-month, though, there will be a single feature review. For now, I'm calling it "Dumpster Diving." It will be reserved for short reviews (perhaps similar in length, albeit not in style, to Carolyn Cushman's reviews in Locusabout 200 words) of material that I found, or put, in the literary dumpster. This is partly to demonstrate that I do read a lot; partly to cover more than I can with long reviews; and partly to get away from my recent trend of only putting the effort into positive reviews. That last point is the most important. I still believe that a review source that provides only or overwhelmingly positive reviews is not a reliable review source, no matter how many reviewers "live" there. (Please review the entry for 27 August 1999.) My target is 35-40% "negative" reviews (two stars and belowthe bottom 80%), which is a somewhat generous assessment of what I've been reading. Of late, I have come nowhere near achieving that goal. There will be some positive reviews mid-month on occasion, just as there will be some negative reviews among the end of month offerings on occasion. Just to fool you. Why do I do this at all? Because I care enough about speculative fiction to try to do my part to improve it. I have fairly extensive training in literary criticism, so I'll use it. I'd like to think I have other contributions, too, but they're less visible at this time. And I will be more regular with this journal. Trust meI'm a lawyer. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This journal entry, like Gaul, shall be divided into three parts. First, a response to Myke Cole's thoughtful entry of 28th January; second, a response to Linda Dunn's thoughtful entry on outlining; and third, a comment on today's EosCon III. OK, technically it's four parts, since I have an explicit introduction. Look, I was an English major (and, later, an American major). I don't do math. Math is a four-letter word. What? Oh, yeah. I forgot about that degree in chemistry. I guess I just avoid math. Myke's entry is a perfect example of the inductive fallacy. It is certainly possible to say that an individual is ruled by fear. But I think it both excessively simplistic and logically untenable to then conclude that any coherent grouping is ruled by fear, let alone an entire society. If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's this: In human affairs, there is never only one cause. And I will inductively apply that to society as a whole. Tamela Viglione's entry for January 30th contains enough references to sink the "single cause" theory pretty thoroughly. Then there's the historical causation issue Myke raises. Yes, Western society has a Christian bent, no matter what revisionists say. But it's not solely of Christian origin. As the opening line of this meandering journal entry should indicate, there's a lot of Gauloops, I mean Roman (and, for that matter, Greek) influence on Western society. The entire French, Spanish, and Italian legal systems are lineal descendants of the Roman civil code, for example. The systems east of Warsaw (Russia, Ukraine, etc.) are strongly Christian in originbut the flavor is Eastern Orthodox, not what we insular Americans think of as Christian. And so on. But, in one important respect, Myke has an excellent point. Many inept actions probably do arise from fear of some sort. Fear, unlike love, curiosity, and most other motivations, works to inhibit rational thought and the ability to process seemingly contradictory evidence. (That is why the military is finally moving away from the fear model in basic training. Not far enough or fast enough, but it's a start.) Fear of failure, of punishment, of whatever acts to require the individual to reshape the evidence and thoughts he/she has to fit the fear factor. That is what makes fear unique among the common motivations, because other motivations are not monolithicthey will allow the same problem to be considered from more than one motivational aspect. Myke's own appreciation for Goethe's Faustan appreciation I share, particularly in Germanis itself a great counterexample to "fear is everything." Faust doesn't initially seek forbidden knowledge out of fear, but out of obsessive curiosity. (If you do read German, you owe yourself Goethe's Faust and Rilke's late poetry above all others.) This is where Myke's and Tamela's responses simply do not mesh with each other. Myke's examples are almost entirely of negative outcomes; the counterexamples are almost entirely of positive outcomes. Which, I suppose, is the point. Linda makes an excellent point about outlining. The brightest of us probably did our papers and then the outlines in high school, and maybe even in college. (And everyone on NAW is one of the "brightest," aren't we? ;-) ) This is as much because American society doesn't value teachers, and thereby gets the less than academically outstanding, with a few exceptions (like my ex-wife), as anything else. Ask yourself: How many of your teachers were National Merit Scholars themselves? I'll be the first to admit that academic record does not select good teachers (look at law school professorships); however, it's tough to teach well if one just can't keep up with the students. But, as far as outlining for book-length works goes, Stephen Leigh's comments really resonate. I've found that, even with nonfiction, a book-length manuscript teaches me something different by the time I'm halfway, a third of the way, a quarter of the way through it that makes me change my outline. And change it again and again as I progress. There's nothing wrong with that. After all, we're not being graded on our outlines any more, are we? Even the "outlines" (synopses) we submit with our manuscripts, for those of us still in the fiction slush pile, are done after the fact. Just like Linda (and I) did our high school outlines. When beginning a work, one needs only to know the desired endpoint and the immediate vicinity of the beginning. Think of it like a long tripsay, a move from Washington, DC to Urbana, Illinois, with a two-year-old boy, a pregnant mom, two black labs, and a distracted dad (gee, that sounds familiar). When starting out from the base, the driver only needs to know how to get from quarters to the main gate, the main gate to the Beltway, and the Beltway to I-70. The driver knows that, somewhere around Frederick, he'll be turning west on a different highway and driving through West Virginia. He knows that he's supposed to end up in Urbana. But he can't foresee the road construction just over the West Virginia border, or the washout in southern Ohio, that force detours. He doesn't need to; he's not there yet. When one gets to the detour, one pulls out the map and makes a plan that still keeps the destination in mind. I guess this is another way of saying that there's room to maneuver between the "big picture" and the immediate environment. So don't outline the whole book in detailjust outline the first natural segment and remember your target. As you near the end of that first segment, you're ready to look at the target, look at what has happened in the first segment, and outline the second segment. A segment is sort of like an act in dramatic writing. There are long one-act plays, but they're few and far between. Acts are seldom of uniform length, either between or within plays. Hamlet and Macbeth are excellent examples. Compare the length of the final act in each play to the second act, and to each other. See? I never would have come up with the trip example had I outlined this blathering. No comments that it would have been better off, please. EosCon III was held this afternoon and early evening on Cybertown. Wonderful concept; horrid execution. Not through any ill will, but through some lack of foresight and inconsiderate software. Pardon me, but some of us are visually impaired. Some of us have slow internet connections. So please don't use a site that has shrunken activity windows and does not have the sense to supply ALT labels or a keyboard command interface as your only portal! There was no good reason to not use an open (but still moderated) chatroom elsewhere that allows people to use the software of their choice, that works for them. Think ADA compliance. In the broader scheme of things, the panels themselves seemed worthwhile. I, for one, will really be able to judge that when the transcripts become available, so I can actually read the bloody discussions. I was able to participate in one discussion, to some extent, but was unable to participate in the others. (It would help if moderators would send a "rejected" message backthe macro to do this in, say, mIRC is trivialso that failure to receive the messages indicates a software lockout, not rejection of a question or comment. But that's a quibble.) And in one, several legal issues were raised (regarding copyright, etc.) that were not satisfactorily resolved. One of the pieces of advice issued was, in fact, legally insupportable, but I had an (unknown) software lockout. Sigh. That's virtual water under the metaphoric bridge; I'll be writing an article on the issue shortly anyway. So, I'd like to kill the asshole who teaches web designers that "graphics come first, clear and reliable function is an afterthought." Probably some marketing guru who, himself, is fooled by the fancy paintjob and label into buying one particular model of Lexus that is identical to a fully loaded Toyota Camry that costs thousands less. In case you hadn't figured it out by now, I'm convinced that most marketing efforts are counterproductive and often downright evil. Tomorrow's commercialfest (the Super Bowl, Tamela ;-) ) should demonstrate that nicely. Be seeing you. Probably Tuesday, as I am Super Bowling tomorrow, and examining the defendant's number-one witness Monday. I want information. (And if he doesn't give me the answers I already know, I get to deep-six him.) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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