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Mar. 10th, 2017
via http://ift.tt/2msTkgg:
marthawells:
annleckie:
freifraufischer:
Okay, some fandom history, why show writers and authors say “for legal reasons” the can’t read fan fic.
Back in ancient times in the 1970s there was a show called Star Trek the Animated Series. It was on the air as fandom culture around Star Trek was really taking route and there were many fanzines (things on actual paper that people bought) being published and the first conventions to attend.
David Gerrold was a writer for Star Trek the Animated Series who had also written one of the most famous episodes of the original series The Trouble with Tribbles. While he was around the production office for STtAS he was introduced to a couple of fans who proceeded to tell him all about their ideas for an episode–essentially a sequel to his famous episode–which it so happens he had already written a script for. When that episode aired he received a letter from one of those fans lawyers demanding “credit”. It so happened that he could prove that the episode existed before the meeting but the involvement of lawyers and a threat to sue became widely known.
Marion Zimmer Bradly was, before recent horrifying revelations decades after her death, a titan of fantasy writing. She also welcome fan fiction and published it in anthologies and in a magazine she published. One day she opened a story sent to her and the plot of the story was essentially the plot of a a novel she had nearly finished writing. More than a years worth of her work was now unpublishable because it was provable that she had read this story with this similar plot and she couldn’t prove the work on the novel existed before she saw the story. She stopped publishing anthologies and fan fiction and in particular the MZB story is the one a lot of professional writers know as representative of the dangers of fan fiction.
So when a writer says they can’t read fan fiction for legal reasons it’s that their own lawyers are protecting them from outside lawsuits.
And this is why knowing your fandom history matters.
Okay, so, I can’t speak to the thing with David Gerrold because I don’t know about it.
But the thing with MZB? Is not how it went down.
http://ift.tt/2lmEDYu
The Conflict:
In a letter Bradley allegedly wrote to Writers Digest in March of 1993, she explains, “one of the fans [Lamb] wrote a story, using my world and my characters, that overlapped the setting I was using for my next Darkover novel. Since she had sent me a copy of her fanzine, and I had read it, my publisher will not publish my novel set during that time period, and I am now out several years’ work, as well as the cost of inconvenience of having a lawyer deal with this matter.”[1. I’ve heard claims that DAW killed the project. I’ve also spoken to Betsy Wolheim at DAW, who states that this was Bradley’s decision, not DAW’s.]
Lamb’s version of events is different: “I received a letter offering me a sum and a dedication for all rights to the text. I attempted at that point to _very politely_ negotiate a better deal. I was told that I had better take what I was offered, that much better authors than I had not been paid as much (we’re talking a few hundred dollars here) and had gotten the same sort of ‘credit’ (this was in the summer of 1992).”
Finally, here is Mercedes Lackey’s version. Lackey worked closely with Bradley, and for that reason I count her as a valid primary source. “Marion had begun to write a Darkover book about Regis Hastur. She liked the ‘take’ a particular fan author had on the situations and asked to use that spin on things for her book in return for the usual acknowlegement in the front of the book. She had done this before with other fan authors.”
Bradley had indeed borrowed from fans and other writers before. From Elizabeth Waters: “Back in 1977 I wrote a Darkover story about Hilary Castamir. One of my friends knew MZB and passed it on to her, and she rewrote it into ‘The Keeper’s Price.’ Eventually it became the title story of the first Darkover anthology.” The story is listed in the Table of Contents as a collaboration between Bradley and Waters.
What really happened here was that MZB tried to use a fan’s work, and the fan refused. Because the offer was a few hundred dollars and her name in acknowledgements–for ALL RIGHTS (which yeah no, only if you’re doing work for hire) and you know MZB would be getting royalties on it.
Now, you can think the fan was being meanie pants by refusing, but they were entirely within their rights to do so. (I think the offer as described was insulting and the “better authors than you” response would just confirm for me that this was someone I wouldn’t want to work with even if they did pay me fairly, but that’s just me.) But, you know, if MZB afterwards talked about it like the book couldn’t come out because this horrible fan threatened to accuse her of copying because a fanfic “just happened” to overlap with the setting of the novel, well, you know. That’s not true.
This lie still being spread around slandering this fanfic author really irritates me. Stop.
I don’t read fanfic of my books, but not because I think anyone will jump to sue me for plagiarism. It’s because I think folks fanficcing should be free to have fun without worrying what I might think of it. I’m pretty sure there are things in existing IR fanfic that would make me go “NOPE” because that’s a thing that happens. But it’s not for me, is it. It’s for the folks who are writing and reading that fic.
Other authors may have whatever reasons they have for reading or not reading it. But if you’re not reading it because some fanfic writer ruined a novel for MZB, well, you can drop that from your list because by all accounts that didn’t happen.
This, basically. I grew up in the first Star Wars fanfic generation, and I still love reading fanfic. (I had fun talking fanfic at the last con I went to, and we explained to a friend who had never read any how to find stories on AO3.) I’d love to put links on my website to fanfic archives for my books, because people ask me sometimes how to find them, but I don’t want the writers to think I’m keeping an eye on them or anything, because I’m totally not. I want you to do anything you want, be wild, push your imagination as far as it will go and then a little farther.
The fanfic I grew up on was in print fanzines, and most of the writers were like me, and didn’t live in places where they could interact with other fans, except by sending letters through the mail. It was fun watching people individually invent all these tropes and ideas that are common now, but with their own original spin on them. Years later, I think one of the saddest things I ever saw on a fanfic mailing list was when a new writer posted her first story, and it was a kind of neat, original take on the characters. Then all these people sort of clumped on her and told her no, you can’t do that, you have to do this, and pretty soon she was writing the same identical story as they were.
Fanfic is like every other kind of genre writing: most of the time you’re playing with the same sort of ideas and situations, and what makes it worth reading is you. Your individual take on it, created by your personality and your feelings and your experience.
marthawells:
annleckie:
freifraufischer:
Okay, some fandom history, why show writers and authors say “for legal reasons” the can’t read fan fic.
Back in ancient times in the 1970s there was a show called Star Trek the Animated Series. It was on the air as fandom culture around Star Trek was really taking route and there were many fanzines (things on actual paper that people bought) being published and the first conventions to attend.
David Gerrold was a writer for Star Trek the Animated Series who had also written one of the most famous episodes of the original series The Trouble with Tribbles. While he was around the production office for STtAS he was introduced to a couple of fans who proceeded to tell him all about their ideas for an episode–essentially a sequel to his famous episode–which it so happens he had already written a script for. When that episode aired he received a letter from one of those fans lawyers demanding “credit”. It so happened that he could prove that the episode existed before the meeting but the involvement of lawyers and a threat to sue became widely known.
Marion Zimmer Bradly was, before recent horrifying revelations decades after her death, a titan of fantasy writing. She also welcome fan fiction and published it in anthologies and in a magazine she published. One day she opened a story sent to her and the plot of the story was essentially the plot of a a novel she had nearly finished writing. More than a years worth of her work was now unpublishable because it was provable that she had read this story with this similar plot and she couldn’t prove the work on the novel existed before she saw the story. She stopped publishing anthologies and fan fiction and in particular the MZB story is the one a lot of professional writers know as representative of the dangers of fan fiction.
So when a writer says they can’t read fan fiction for legal reasons it’s that their own lawyers are protecting them from outside lawsuits.
And this is why knowing your fandom history matters.
Okay, so, I can’t speak to the thing with David Gerrold because I don’t know about it.
But the thing with MZB? Is not how it went down.
http://ift.tt/2lmEDYu
The Conflict:
In a letter Bradley allegedly wrote to Writers Digest in March of 1993, she explains, “one of the fans [Lamb] wrote a story, using my world and my characters, that overlapped the setting I was using for my next Darkover novel. Since she had sent me a copy of her fanzine, and I had read it, my publisher will not publish my novel set during that time period, and I am now out several years’ work, as well as the cost of inconvenience of having a lawyer deal with this matter.”[1. I’ve heard claims that DAW killed the project. I’ve also spoken to Betsy Wolheim at DAW, who states that this was Bradley’s decision, not DAW’s.]
Lamb’s version of events is different: “I received a letter offering me a sum and a dedication for all rights to the text. I attempted at that point to _very politely_ negotiate a better deal. I was told that I had better take what I was offered, that much better authors than I had not been paid as much (we’re talking a few hundred dollars here) and had gotten the same sort of ‘credit’ (this was in the summer of 1992).”
Finally, here is Mercedes Lackey’s version. Lackey worked closely with Bradley, and for that reason I count her as a valid primary source. “Marion had begun to write a Darkover book about Regis Hastur. She liked the ‘take’ a particular fan author had on the situations and asked to use that spin on things for her book in return for the usual acknowlegement in the front of the book. She had done this before with other fan authors.”
Bradley had indeed borrowed from fans and other writers before. From Elizabeth Waters: “Back in 1977 I wrote a Darkover story about Hilary Castamir. One of my friends knew MZB and passed it on to her, and she rewrote it into ‘The Keeper’s Price.’ Eventually it became the title story of the first Darkover anthology.” The story is listed in the Table of Contents as a collaboration between Bradley and Waters.
What really happened here was that MZB tried to use a fan’s work, and the fan refused. Because the offer was a few hundred dollars and her name in acknowledgements–for ALL RIGHTS (which yeah no, only if you’re doing work for hire) and you know MZB would be getting royalties on it.
Now, you can think the fan was being meanie pants by refusing, but they were entirely within their rights to do so. (I think the offer as described was insulting and the “better authors than you” response would just confirm for me that this was someone I wouldn’t want to work with even if they did pay me fairly, but that’s just me.) But, you know, if MZB afterwards talked about it like the book couldn’t come out because this horrible fan threatened to accuse her of copying because a fanfic “just happened” to overlap with the setting of the novel, well, you know. That’s not true.
This lie still being spread around slandering this fanfic author really irritates me. Stop.
I don’t read fanfic of my books, but not because I think anyone will jump to sue me for plagiarism. It’s because I think folks fanficcing should be free to have fun without worrying what I might think of it. I’m pretty sure there are things in existing IR fanfic that would make me go “NOPE” because that’s a thing that happens. But it’s not for me, is it. It’s for the folks who are writing and reading that fic.
Other authors may have whatever reasons they have for reading or not reading it. But if you’re not reading it because some fanfic writer ruined a novel for MZB, well, you can drop that from your list because by all accounts that didn’t happen.
This, basically. I grew up in the first Star Wars fanfic generation, and I still love reading fanfic. (I had fun talking fanfic at the last con I went to, and we explained to a friend who had never read any how to find stories on AO3.) I’d love to put links on my website to fanfic archives for my books, because people ask me sometimes how to find them, but I don’t want the writers to think I’m keeping an eye on them or anything, because I’m totally not. I want you to do anything you want, be wild, push your imagination as far as it will go and then a little farther.
The fanfic I grew up on was in print fanzines, and most of the writers were like me, and didn’t live in places where they could interact with other fans, except by sending letters through the mail. It was fun watching people individually invent all these tropes and ideas that are common now, but with their own original spin on them. Years later, I think one of the saddest things I ever saw on a fanfic mailing list was when a new writer posted her first story, and it was a kind of neat, original take on the characters. Then all these people sort of clumped on her and told her no, you can’t do that, you have to do this, and pretty soon she was writing the same identical story as they were.
Fanfic is like every other kind of genre writing: most of the time you’re playing with the same sort of ideas and situations, and what makes it worth reading is you. Your individual take on it, created by your personality and your feelings and your experience.
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