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dreamflowerWell, apparently George R.R. Martin has jumped into the fray, defending Diana Gabaldon's post.
I read his post, and a couple of pages of comments-- he was less vitriolic than DG, but a lot more patronizing, starting with the first sentence, where he put "fan fiction" in quotation marks, and then referred to fanfic writers as "so-called fans" a little further down.
And even more than DG, it seems clear that his only concern is the bottom line--
He gives several cautionary tales of writers supposedly taken advantage of by fans, among them this one:
"Let me bring up a couple other writers, then. Contemporaries of an earlier age, each of whom was known by a set of initials: ERB and HPL. ERB created Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. HPL created Cthulhu and his Mythos. ERB, and later his estate, was extremely protective of his creations. Try to use Tarzan, or even an ape man who was suspiciously similar to Tarzan, without his/ their permission, and their lawyers would famously descend on you like a ton of bricks. HPL was the complete opposite. The Cthulhu Mythos soon turned into one of our genres first shared worlds. HPL encouraged writer friends like Robert Bloch and Clark Ashton Smith to borrow elements from his Cuthulhu Mythos, and to add elements as well, which HPL himself would borrow in turn. And in time, other writers who were NOT friends of HPL also began to write Cthulhu Mythos stories, which continues to this day.
Fair enough. Two writers, two different decisions.
Thing is, ERB died a millionaire many times over, living on a gigantic ranch in a town that was named Tarzana after his creation. HPL lived and died in genteel poverty, and some biographers have suggested that poor diet brought on by poverty may have hastened his death. HPL was a far more beloved figure amongst other writers, but love will only get you so far. Sometimes it's nice to be able to have a steak too. The Burroughs estate was paid handsomely for every Tarzan movie ever made, and collected plenty on the PRINCESS OF MARS movie I worked on during my Hollywood years, and no doubt is still collecting on the one currently in development... though the book is in the public domain by now. Did the Lovecraft estate make a penny off THE DUNWICH HORROR movie, the HERBERT WEST, REANIMATOR movie, the recent DAGON movie, the internet version of CALL OF CTHULHU? I don't know. I rather doubt it. If they did, I'll betcha it was just chump change. Meanwhile, new writers go right on mining the Cthulhu mythos, writing new stories and novels."
I noticed that he dismissed H.P. Lovecraft's generosity with his creations as foolish, because even though he was "beloved", HPL died in poverty, while he praised Edgar Rice Burrough's possessiveness because he was a millionaire when he died.
Hmmm...
Being a millionaire when one dies is better than being beloved?
Hmmm...
Assuming an afterlife, which is going to be more important to the dead person? Somehow I don't think money will have a lot of value there.
And assuming no afterlife, well, dead is dead, and a dead rich person is no better off than a dead poor one.
Except that people will remember the beloved one far longer and with more affection than they will the one who was merely rich.
Now, for all I know, among his family and friends ERB might have been beloved as well-- but GRRM does not think that is as important as his being RICH!
I think about JRRT, for whom making a living was always a concern. He worked his entire life on a body of work that did not really begin to make a difference for him financially until late in his life. He worried about making ends meet, and kept his "day job" as a professor all the way up until retirement, in spite of the strain it was on him and the time it took away from his work on on his beloved Arda. Yet his expressed wish was that he could create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which "the cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands..."
He did not build the world of Arda in order to make money-- he built it because he loved it and he crafted it meticulously. That he was able to sell his stories finally was almost incidental to his creation of his body of work.
Now, decades after his death, he's a millionaire many times over. But I think that he'd have more joy in the knowledge that people still love his work.
Hmmmm...
I find myself more and more sad about how things have changed, and nothing is judged good unless it makes $$$$$$$.
I read his post, and a couple of pages of comments-- he was less vitriolic than DG, but a lot more patronizing, starting with the first sentence, where he put "fan fiction" in quotation marks, and then referred to fanfic writers as "so-called fans" a little further down.
And even more than DG, it seems clear that his only concern is the bottom line--
He gives several cautionary tales of writers supposedly taken advantage of by fans, among them this one:
"Let me bring up a couple other writers, then. Contemporaries of an earlier age, each of whom was known by a set of initials: ERB and HPL. ERB created Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. HPL created Cthulhu and his Mythos. ERB, and later his estate, was extremely protective of his creations. Try to use Tarzan, or even an ape man who was suspiciously similar to Tarzan, without his/ their permission, and their lawyers would famously descend on you like a ton of bricks. HPL was the complete opposite. The Cthulhu Mythos soon turned into one of our genres first shared worlds. HPL encouraged writer friends like Robert Bloch and Clark Ashton Smith to borrow elements from his Cuthulhu Mythos, and to add elements as well, which HPL himself would borrow in turn. And in time, other writers who were NOT friends of HPL also began to write Cthulhu Mythos stories, which continues to this day.
Fair enough. Two writers, two different decisions.
Thing is, ERB died a millionaire many times over, living on a gigantic ranch in a town that was named Tarzana after his creation. HPL lived and died in genteel poverty, and some biographers have suggested that poor diet brought on by poverty may have hastened his death. HPL was a far more beloved figure amongst other writers, but love will only get you so far. Sometimes it's nice to be able to have a steak too. The Burroughs estate was paid handsomely for every Tarzan movie ever made, and collected plenty on the PRINCESS OF MARS movie I worked on during my Hollywood years, and no doubt is still collecting on the one currently in development... though the book is in the public domain by now. Did the Lovecraft estate make a penny off THE DUNWICH HORROR movie, the HERBERT WEST, REANIMATOR movie, the recent DAGON movie, the internet version of CALL OF CTHULHU? I don't know. I rather doubt it. If they did, I'll betcha it was just chump change. Meanwhile, new writers go right on mining the Cthulhu mythos, writing new stories and novels."
I noticed that he dismissed H.P. Lovecraft's generosity with his creations as foolish, because even though he was "beloved", HPL died in poverty, while he praised Edgar Rice Burrough's possessiveness because he was a millionaire when he died.
Hmmm...
Being a millionaire when one dies is better than being beloved?
Hmmm...
Assuming an afterlife, which is going to be more important to the dead person? Somehow I don't think money will have a lot of value there.
And assuming no afterlife, well, dead is dead, and a dead rich person is no better off than a dead poor one.
Except that people will remember the beloved one far longer and with more affection than they will the one who was merely rich.
Now, for all I know, among his family and friends ERB might have been beloved as well-- but GRRM does not think that is as important as his being RICH!
I think about JRRT, for whom making a living was always a concern. He worked his entire life on a body of work that did not really begin to make a difference for him financially until late in his life. He worried about making ends meet, and kept his "day job" as a professor all the way up until retirement, in spite of the strain it was on him and the time it took away from his work on on his beloved Arda. Yet his expressed wish was that he could create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which "the cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands..."
He did not build the world of Arda in order to make money-- he built it because he loved it and he crafted it meticulously. That he was able to sell his stories finally was almost incidental to his creation of his body of work.
Now, decades after his death, he's a millionaire many times over. But I think that he'd have more joy in the knowledge that people still love his work.
Hmmmm...
I find myself more and more sad about how things have changed, and nothing is judged good unless it makes $$$$$$$.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 01:52 am (UTC)Man, I actually feel sorry for people who think of fan fic as worthless or waste of time or immoral. What narrow and boring lives they must live!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:05 am (UTC)Burroughs made his money off the movies, really. (And the lawsuits, no doubt.) But Tarzan was a heckuva lot easier to film than Cthulu would have been before computer animation!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:21 am (UTC)I mean, there are a lot of hobbies *I* don't understand and don't want to try-- bungee-jumping comes to mind, as does coin-collecting-- but I don't try to stop people who *do* like those things!
I just get so *TIRED* of the idea that you have to make money with what you write or it's useless...
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:25 am (UTC)But I suppose he thinks that doesn't matter, except perhaps to the respective authors' estates.
I still enjoy the Tarzan books; we have a number of them, though not all. But, yeah, the stereotypes make them very politically incorrect to contemporary minds.
I just found the whole tone of the post to be incredibly patronizing. Politer than DG's, perhaps, but even more grating.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:28 am (UTC)"I get paid. I am better than you."
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:44 am (UTC)It's interesting having read Kipling's interview with Twain in the middle of all this uproar, because Twain compares intellectual property to real estate and says they should both be treated the same way (the interview is available online here, for those who haven't seen it). I have to wonder, if the debate were actually over real estate, whether Martin would still defend the man who turns his land into a private Fort Knox over the man who turns his into an amusement park that doesn't charge admission.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:47 am (UTC)Sorry, but I refuse to accept that false dilemma.
Anne McCaffrey. Allowed fan fiction among her writers before the internet. As in, she endorsed the fanzines where they wrote that.
There were some stipulations. You couldn't write about any of her characters, or even the main Weyr where her things were set. But you could play in her world, and whoever wrote the best fic of the year got to name a minor OC.
McCaffrey was really, really careful about it, too. She endorsed the fan fic, but didn't read it herself because she didn't want to steal ideas from her fans. Someone else judged the fan fiction and then she would just use that one person's name.
And, for the record, no one's made a film or TV adaptation because they've always wanted to change too many things.
The point is that you don't have to be all or nothing as an author.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 03:00 am (UTC)I think it's also telling that GRRM was once in a position to take a historic stand on fair use... and he decided it wasn't worth the potential cost (http://grrm.livejournal.com/151914.html?thread=9834346#t9834346).
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Date: 2010-05-09 03:02 am (UTC)Personally, I think all of this could have been headed off if Marion Zimmer Bradley had said to that fan, long ago, "sure, lets go to court. I'll win." Because she would have, clearly. When it comes to copyright, my attitude is that fanwriters have no protection from the people who actually own the toys. If I write an NCIS story as a fan and they actually film it, all I get out of it is the joy of watching my ideas become a bit more real. If I wanted money or credit, I'd have submitted it through the official channels instead of posting it on the internet.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 03:12 am (UTC)Trademark does have to be defended, copyright does not.
Of course, the comment just below disagrees, though I notice *that* commenter conflates the two.
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Date: 2010-05-09 03:20 am (UTC)The whole issue just boils down to selfishness, doesn't it? These things are mine, and you can't have them because they're mine, and I don't want you making money from things that are mine because that money should be mine.
Ridiculous.
When you create art, you give it away. Period. Masterpieces aren't masterpieces if no one ever sees/hears/reads them. How people react to your work and how they explain and examine and incorporate that work into their lives (or not) is up to them, not you. You set your art free in the world, and you have no say where it goes from there. That's what makes artistry such a painful, wonderful, exhilarating, and terrifying process. Trying to limit that with dollar signs and bogus copyright laws is, I think, an affront to artistry. Money doesn't make art more or less real.
I don't buy this "play in the world, not with the characters" baloney, either. Authors steal stories all the time. Characters are reworked and revisited and revamped. Places are recycled and changed very slightly. Pretending that anything you write is totally original, free of any influence whatsoever, is delusional, egotistical, and above all, selfish. None of us would ever grow as artists if we never shared anything with anybody else, copyright laws be damned.
And to me, it hurts to see such a lovely community of people so disparaged. Fanficcers are, by and large, so talented, open, accepting, encouraging, friendly, and simply joyful to be sharing their passion with others. I'm offended and outraged on their behalf, that someone would be so self-centered (and materialistic) as to insult what makes us a community. I'm sickened.
A little amused that this guy hit like six or seven squares of anti-fanfic bingo, but sickened all the same.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 03:27 am (UTC)And as to the second-- I find *that* interesting, in that his lawyer wanted to make history, and he just wanted to save money.
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Date: 2010-05-09 03:32 am (UTC)And I love his whole "Yeah, but that's not fan fic!" defense of himself, too. Some of us still write that kind of fan fic, and we're more than content not to receive a penny from it, even if the 'verse were public domain.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 03:33 am (UTC)So I suppose that will lose them *my* money-- except I've never had any interest in reading either of them anyhow.
Six or seven squares? Wow!
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Date: 2010-05-09 03:35 am (UTC)Patronizing. Condescending. Superior.
Rather Sarumannish in tone, I thought.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 03:53 am (UTC)Not to mention the fact that her main character is taken from Doctor Who!
If you write fic about someone elses work it's fanfic-- whether you have permission or not, whether you get paid or not.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 04:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 04:15 am (UTC)