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I ran across this article, and laughed at its ludicrousness. It seems that a publishing company is sweating bullets and a bunch of science fiction writers around the world are hopping mad.
Galaktika was once a respected Hungarian language science fiction magazine, closed in 1995, and later reopened. Right now it's Hungary's only printed SF magazine. The only trouble is, its publisher, Metropolis Media, took copyrighted fiction from the internet and had it translated to Hungarian and republished it, saying it was in the public domain because it had been on the internet!
They're presently in some deep trouble with professional writers and their agents. Did they really believe that, I wonder? I'll bet if it was movies they'd REALLY be in trouble!
The article is worth a read. It was written by by Cat Rambo (honest, that's her real name), an old sciene fiction writer who has won Hugo and Nebula awards, and is president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; the SFWA is a professional guild.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday October 02 2016, @03:41PM
> (honest, that's her real name)
Well, I'd never heard of Cat Rambo either. A Hugo and Nebula award winner, too, you say?
Why don't I care much about this any more? I used to be a big SF fan. Well, let's see. I got older and more jaded. I have many other things to do, including many other options for entertainment. I also have limited space, and am no longer willing to devote much to the dead tree format. I feel SF that doesn't have an understanding of the future of copyright, that even slips in pro-copyright propaganda is bad, hackneyed SF. Notable examples are the "I, Mudd" episode of Star Trek, and a Hugo Winner, Hyperion. Print SF particularly suffers from this, thanks to the medium, their proponents extreme efforts to turn back the clock, and its extremely high costs relative to digital media that must be recouped somehow. If an novel is going to speculate about the future, as is the entire point of the SF genre, the least it should do is not wallow in a bad past, an ugly fantasy of the way copyright worked before copying was in the hands of the masses. It's the same uncomfortable feeling of reading a novel such as Starship Troopers and forcing yourself to overlook the not very subtle fascist themes the author often fondled, so that you can enjoy the good parts. Steampunk has a certain attraction, but "Copyrightpunk"? Anyone want to read a comic strip featuring the superhero Captain Copyright?
So the SFWA wants to boycott this print magazine, but sort of reluctantly and gingerly, hmm? Jeez, are they ever stuck in the box. Maybe romance novelists can be excused for not getting it, but these are SF writers.
Oh, and one other plot device I am thoroughly sick of is time travel. Time travel is the deus ex machina of SF. And they hand out awards for that too. Connie Willis's Doomsday Book, for instance.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday October 02 2016, @07:26PM
So the SFWA wants to boycott this print magazine, but sort of reluctantly and gingerly, hmm?
I wouldn't call siccing lawyers on them "reluctantly" or "gingerly". And no professional writer is going to accept a thirty dollar payment for anything longer than flash fiction; the minimum for professional work is 5¢ per word, magazines like F&SF pay 8-15¢, some pay as much as 25¢.
As to your age, well, that's no valid reason for not liking SF. I'm 64 and still love the genre. As to time travel, I used to hate time travel stories and somehow wound up writing one. The thing is, stories usually write themselves. If a time travel story comes out of your keyboard, that's what you wind up with.
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