Nov
16th
2019
Rebirth of the author('s work) · 4:16pm Nov 16th, 2019
If a guy comes into the room holding a symbol of true kingship, the book is a high fantasy.
If he is holding a sword with pizza sauce on the blade and is accompanied by a talking penguin, it is low fantasy.
If he is holding a poorly described article that is clearly of great emotional significance to himself, but none whatever to us, and then he leaves the room without having done anything, it is a New Yorker story.
Today, I just wanted to share an article about John M. Ford.
I don't dedicate stories casually.
What was that about a talking penguin? I want to read that story because it sounds crazy awesome.
Or the New York Times. (checks) Ah, GURPS Traveler and GURPS Time Travel. I thought recognized the name.
This does bring up a point. Anybody who makes a living from writing needs to spend the money on a lawyer, even if it's for just a few hours and some standard forms. That's one thing I learned from following Sarah Hoyt and her travails with publishers. 'Rights' for your published works need to be irrevocably tied to you, return to you after a fixed period of time, and be tied to a single legal entity. (A Limited Liability Corporation if you get checks with commas in them regularly, a Sole Proprietorship otherwise.) That entity needs a chain of inheritance established where when you pass away, all rights in it go to whoever you establish as inheritor. Unfortunately, John Ford did neither. (but then again, about 80% of paid authors are in that boat)
FanFiction is the Funky Chicken of Writing. Hasbro has first dibs on our pony stories, BUT if you take a pony story and extract all the MLP out of it, you can sell it to a publisher and be the next Twilight... um... No, anything but that. Now, if somebody *else* takes one of our pony stories, extracts all the MLP out of it, and tries to sell it to a publisher... That's where the lawyers make their money. In theory, you can sue like Rowling did for Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon (Picture The Hobbit with all the main character names search-and-replaced with HP names) but you better have a good lawyer and a high tolerance for frustration.
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Also one of the greatest Paranoia mindscrews: The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues. (Recently remastered.)
Oh, a political intrigue story narrated by kids sounds hilarious. And Star Trek?
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The Final Reflection was Klingon culture until the show finally made its own attempt. (Some aspects of it still survive.) It's considered to be one of the best novels.
How Much For Just The Planet? is a musical comedy.
...no, really.
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You say that as if there's any reason not to believe you. Seriously, stupider spinoffs have been done. Also, I'm sure it can't be worse than Threshold.
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Let me rephrase.
It's a good musical comedy.
In print.
And that's hard to do.
Well. I have some books to look forward to come next year.
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I have ordered How Much for Just a Planet? and I couldn't help but notice the blue orange juice in the preview...
My relationship with Star Trek is similar to my relationship with Star Wars and MLP in that I'm usually more interested in the novels and fan-produced content than I do for canonical material. I'd back Come Not Between the Dragons and To Serve All My Days against episodes like City on the Edge of Forever in a heartbeat.
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Yeah, I've read enough fimfic to know that hardly anybody even bothers double-checking the meter.
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I am emphatically not a lawyer. However, based on my one (1) business law class, I think a few of these points may be a little off, or at least could use further explication.
An LLC is a Limited Liability Company, not a LImited Liability Corporation.
There is no legal difference between a person and their sole proprietorship; a SP is not a separate legal entity from the owner. So if an author owns the rights to their work, that is the same thing as their SP owning the rights to the work. As an author, you are a SP by default.
Based on the article, it doesn't seem to me that the problem is that Ford didn't own the rights to his work, but rather the opposite: he owned the rights, and because he didn't have a legally valid will, those rights reverted to his family upon his death. Therefore, his publisher couldn't reprint his work without their permission.
I imagine that it's probably vital for a professional author to understand the basics of copyright law and speak to a lawyer before signing any contracts. There's a huge difference between, say, selling the publishing rights to Lord of the Rings for the next decade, and selling the merchandising, movie, and video game rights in perpetuity. The more rights you sell, the more you should get in return.
Forming an LLC should probably be considered mandatory for anyone self-employed with an income larger than that of a lemonade stand. And probably even then. They're cheap to file for, they're easy, they give enormous flexibility when it comes to things like filing taxes and disposing of property rights, and they provide critical legal protection (hence the term "limited liability").
Anyone with loved ones and any meaningful amount of property should create a legally valid and executable will. As we see with Ford, and as I've seen in other instances, not doing so can cause your loved ones quite a bit of grief on top of your death if they also have to fight legal battles over the disposition of your property.
Finally, I assume you mean that Hasbro has first dibs on the profits from our pony stories; they do not "own" someone else's fanfiction. Simply sticking the word "Celestia" in the middle of a novel doesn't give Hasbro the rights to that novel. Something created by you is still owned by you (assuming no prior legal commitments otherwise). Sticking Hasbro's IP in my story no more gives Hasbro the rights to my story than sticking someone's car in my car collection gives them the right to that collection (although if I profit from a car show of which their car is a part, they may be entitled to compensatory and punitive damages for that show, on top of the normal damages for conversion).
It is also not, to my knowledge, a criminal act to use someone's intellectual property, but it IS a civil violation. In a civil suit, though, you have to prove damages. That's why it's generally assumed to be okay to write fanfiction as long as you don't make a profit from it: because it's quite hard to prove meaningful damages from a story that didn't make any money in the first place. A plushie or quilt or whatever that makes very little money may also not be worth the legal fees for a lawsuit. But if you make money off of something that uses someone else's IP, they can sue you for a portion of that revenue, or for any other damages that they can prove, in addition to (depending on the laws of that legal jurisdiction) punitive damages.
But none of that makes the work of fiction itself theirs, and like you said, you can always just remove the foreign IP, and whatever remains you can profit from free and clear. And if someone else takes an author's (fan)fiction, removes any part of it (including Hasbro's IP), and tries to profit from it, then yes, that author gets to play the part of the big bad corporation and sue for a violation of their copyright. I believe this is also the same if Hasbro itself were to rip off a piece of MLP fanfiction: if they use any part of it that isn't an IP that they already own, then they would be violating the author's copyright. This is why you sometimes see television shows cancel plans for episodes that are too much like fan-made episodes; they're afraid of a lawsuit for violating the fan author's IP by copying their plot or other elements.
Anyway. This is my layman's understanding the of the law. Especially for professional authors, most of your work is likely bound up in intellectual property and copyright laws, so it pays to understand the basics. (On top of marketing and networking and the million other things that professional authors need to know to be successful. Publishers, literary agents, and lawyers can take care of most of this for you... if you can afford to pay them.)
I think you're referring to Fifty Shades of Grey by Snowqueen's Icedragon, which is based on Master of the Universe, her Twilight fanfiction.
A great victory for fanfiction! A great defeat for good taste....
5156503 Right! (what he said) The IRS treats a single entity LLC exactly the same as a single entity, and a two-entity one as a partnership. Any more than that, you might as well incorporate as an S-Corporation (Forbes has a nice article on the rough differences. (I also am not a lawyer, but I hope to have enough sense to run for one if anybody waves a check at me)
The thing that gets most early writers tripped up is the contract they sign with the publishing company that gives up their story rights until hell freezes over or the publisher decides out of the goodness of their own heart to give them back. If this happens, as Sarah Hoyt says in, He beats me, but he's my publisher, "Ah, my dear, welcome to hell. Here’s your accordion." (Which is technically a run-on sentence, but she's a professional paid author and I most certainly am not, so she gets the slack.)
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It's been decades, but IIRC, City on the Edge of Forever was the 2 part time travel episode written by Harlan Ellison & is my second favorite episode (after The Trouble With Tribbles)
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Wodehouse described his novels as "musical comedies without the music"
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Try Witch and Wombat (Cushman)
In some ways Ford sounds like a real life Kilgore Trout
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I believe you can choose how you want your LLC to be taxed each year when you file with the IRS: as a SP, an S-Corporation, or a C-Corporation. S-Corporations are quite a bit more work to form than an LLC but provide some flexibility with things like ownership (up to 100 shareholders) and business structure; however, converting an LLC to a S-Corporation isn't that much harder than forming one from scratch. So for many people it makes to start with LLC and then convert later if need be. Where you file your LLC or S-Corp is also important since you'll be subject to that state's taxes and business laws and courts; Delaware is considered a good choice.
lol I'm not familiar with the laws regarding acting as a lawyer. That's why I try to be careful to let people know that they use my advice at their own risk.
I don't think George Lucas ever got the publishing rights to the original Star Wars back (although they should have transferred to Disney when they bought Fox, so... re-release maybe?). James Cameron sold the rights to Terminator for $1 and the chance to direct the first movie; now it's one of his biggest regrets.
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I think I still have my copy around somewhere.
Though he's much less famous, it sort of reminds me of what happened after MythrilMoth passed away earlier this year. Many were concerned about what would happen to his stories, but they're still here. Apparently, his family's cool with his horse words staying on FIMFiction. I'd like to know what the policy is about someone else continuing his unfinished work -- of which there is a lot.
Welp, there's a few more books added to my "someday" list.
I get the feeling that Estee's been a fan for a while.
The couple hired Ford to work as a “games consultant” for the Wheel of Time series, mostly to help keep him solvent. By then, McDougal and Rigney, who would eulogize Ford as his “blood brother,” had essentially adopted him.
So he's the closest literary equivalent to Paul Erdos?
John M. Ford is one of the unknown greats of SF/F, and his books returning to print is a great thing.
With the Christmas encroaching towards us, I'd recommend everyone to read his poem, "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station". (Found HERE, for example.) It's an absolute delight.
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Those are two of my Favorite Star Trek novels! It's been decades since I read them, and I'd forgotten John Ford wrote them. Thank you for the reminder.