Guest Post: 'Community Matters: Sir Terry & The Fandom Spirit' by JoZebedee

Yesterday, Sir Terry Pratchett died, and I’ve been moved by posts remembering the man, his warmth, his personality.

I met him twice. Once, at a signing in the 90s when I was working in a bookstore, long before I decided to finally write the darn Space Opera I’d been dreaming of for years. I’ve worked at a lot of signing sessions. Some authors were demanding, some warm, some forgettable. Terry was one of the most interested in his fans: personable, funny and warm.

The session went on a long time, as I recall. People turned up with old books and new books, bookmarks and memorabilia, and he made no difference between those who’d paid for a hardback and those who’d bought a couple of bookmarks. He stamped books with ‘Can’t cook, won’t ook’ (Nanny Ogg’s hideously funny cookbook was one of the books on offer), posed for photos, and became, for me, a Writing God in one day. 

I felt close to the community, a part of it, because I got his books:  I’d read them and laughed. In terms of me embracing the world of sff and being proud, it was up there with Tom Baker offering me a Jelly baby (I ate it, sadly. I should have kept and framed it…)

The second time I saw Sir Terry was at the end of a talk at the World Fantasy Convention in 2013. I hadn’t gone into the talk – standing room only – but waited outside in the crowd. Terry was very frail, shockingly so after I’d last seen him, but still great fun, swapping hats with the audience, telling jokes. Everyone knew, of course, about his illness, that his wouldn’t be a long sojourn with us, but there was nothing sombre in the mood, just enjoyment at his great character.

I’ve started this blog post a few times, planning to talk about the sff community, and its been a pretty soul-less affair, shelved and mulled on. I wanted to talk about how I’ve found my way into this odd little community, even though I live far from any centre of SFF. I planned to talk about websites and twitter and facebook groups, and all the reaching out on social media new authors are supposed to do. About how I have friends all around the world because of our shared love of the fantastic.

That’s not what the blog’s about, after all. It came to me that all my soundbites of advice, my mantras about ignoring the snafflements and nastiness that can abound, weren’t what I wanted to say. That this is going onto the person I know as J-Wo’s blog (because in my first, and still central, SFF community, that’s who he is) is fitting. 

We see in Sir Terry’s death – and Leonard Nimoy’s not long before – what the sff community is.

J-Wo's one of the first people I got to know outside my close circle, who managed to be welcoming and share extensive knowledge of cons and people, and didn’t care if I was a newbie, only that I was interested. That, mostly, is the response I’ve had across the community:  that rising above differences, that lack of awe and levelling of surfaces.

Despite living in the middle of nowhere (or close to it), despite not having been published in long form (three weeks, everyone say eeeee!), despite being a female writer of very soft sf with an aversion to physics, I’ve been welcomed. 

I’ve been looked after at cons, promoted, had a published author agree to do a blurb for me (and thank you, thank you, thank you if you’re reading, the amazing Francis Knight….), been mentored and supported, critiqued and edited, tweeted and retweeted. No one has been anything less than supportive.

We see in Sir Terry’s death – and Leonard Nimoy’s not long before – what the sff community is. I follow Pat Cadigan’s blog and see so much warmth and encouragement to her, it – a blog about cancer and hideous treatments and circling danger – is one of the most uplifting things I read and like.

If there are a few harder kernels in the community, if there are voices trying to cause division, I think that’s not the issue. The centre of our community is warmth, friendship, the (whisper it) slightly geeky conversations about worlds and authors and the occasional obsessive love of ray guns and the like. The acceptance of people brought together by a shared love of the fantastic.

Anyway, usually at this point I pop my blogs away and edit in a day or two but I think I’ll just send this one, in the knowledge that editing out thoughts that the loss of someone like Sir Terry brings might edit out something of the impact of that person.

Suffice to say, he was one of the first people in SFF to move me enough to feel I wanted to hang around and write the darn book and get closer, and we’ve lost one of our brightest, warmest, funniest stars. Let us keep the inclusivity he showed to his fans from every walk of life, and enjoy our place in the community, however we get to it, from whichever corner we inhabit.

Jo Zebedee writes. Quite a lot. She’s also slightly obsessed with sexy space pilots and characters with dark little edges. She blames Han Solo and Kerr Avon for this.

Her debut novel, Abendau’s Heir, the first book of the Inheritance Trilogy, is out on 31^st March 2015, from Tickety Boo Press.

https://www.facebook.com/theabendautrilogy

jozebwrites.blogspot.co.uk

GUEST BLOG: 'The Transcendent Beauty of Right-wing American Art!!!' by Randy Midichlorian

  (Spool note: regular spool readers will recall the controversy stirred when Libertarian SF author Randy Midichlorean last appeared here. With some trepidation I invite him back here again to talk about a (somewhat surprising) interest of his:  art. 

Though we may not agree with all Randy's opinions, Spool Pidgin firmly respects his right to free speech. And his collection of guns)





 I have never met artist Jon McNaughton (though no doubt we shall meet in that holy Other Place one day and raise a glass to Christ's pimped out rumpus room), but when my novels hit Amazon's #1 in the self-published christian steampunk genre, I shall commission him to paint the ceiling of my compound.

McNaughton is the Tea Party Titian, the GOP Giovanni, the libertarian equivalent of whoever it is paints those pictures of puppies in baskets and orphans with banjos. In a nutshell:  a genius.

Come, let us take a trip into his visionary world. Look upon his works, ye Maddow, and despair...

I love that the name of this painting is called Stand Your Ground.  It represents everything that the Left is against: Freedom, America, Men, Guns, Whites, Men, Masculine Strength and American maleness in all its tight-trousered pride. 'Hmm...' our subject seems to be thinking,  'is that France on the horizon? Lock and load...'

 McNaughton, like myself, is a master of near-future sci-fi. Here he imagines a utopia where liberals are forced into quarantine camps before they get a chance to make the US resemble Nazi Germany. The title? Liberalism Is A Disease.

The realism is astounding: from my time spent at protests I can assure you Michael Moore's head is the size of Matt Damon's chest and Whoopi Goldberg's feet are where her hips should be.

The horror mounts as we discover the 'zone' is that most dangerous of hellholes: gun free (in a world without ballistic weapons constant vigilance = survival). In the distance the hurricane of Obamacare looms, the Satan-owl of atheism holds court in a tree and a wind turbine inclined toward high taxation smirks at the far left. The turbine, of course, is powered by the hurricane: such is McNaughton's complex genius.

This is the first of a powerful triptych addressing our times. In 'the Forgotten Man' a man has been forgotten. Forgotten, that is, save for the founding fathers and Lincoln (tragically, a smiling Reagan looks like he's forgotten just about everything, let alone the man).

'Look,' founding father Bentford Wankfield implores President Obama, 'you're stood on the Declaration of Independence, you freak! Have you forgotten what that means?'

'Indy-who?' Obama sneers, whilst his cronies--Clinton and the Roosevelts--applaud two homosexuals on the horizon.

In the background the White House stands in full illumination. Someone must have forgotten to turn the lights off.

 

 

Yet all is not lost. Reveling in his second elected tyranny, Darth Obama has clearly forgotten the Forgotten Man. The Forgotten Man is not without his resources. Or manly tools...

He becomes... The Empowered Man!!! Lincoln and the founding fathers rejoice, founding father Bentford Wankfield invents twerking (pious twerking) and Clinton mourns his vanished homosexuals (who have sauntered off to find a handbag to put Whoopi Goldberg in).

Obama looks on. His expression may look like he's merely found a gone-off salad at the back of the refridgerator, but his hands are clearly aghast.

 'You think this shit is over, Forgotten and/or Empowered Man?' Obama asks in One Nation Under Socialism. Standing on the Declaration of Independence having failed him as a strategy, like all villains he ups his game in the sequel. He sets FIRE to the Declaration, pointing at the flames for emphasis.

Not so fast, Obamanation (as in 'abomination'. Or, if you prefer, 'Barracksphemy')! Nothing tops Jesus-power!!!

Obama now vaporized, The Forgotten and/or Empowered Man is transformed into a child of joy, Lincoln and the founding fathers break into interpretive dance and Reagan still has no idea what's going on. But he's happy.

'

'Come, Child of Joy who was once The Forgotten and/or Empowered Man,' quoth Christ (now wearing the hijab of a feminist Muslim he bested in combat), 'Let us reside in this obscure, shady forest clearing alone.'

Amen!

Guest Blog!!! Dan Gilbert: The Future Has Neither Hook-Hand Nor Copyright: Of Piracy and Distribution

High time 20th century-style mass distribution took a hit from the reality-pipe, says Dan Gilbert in this, his second Spool invasion! (BTW- If you Ctrl+C+V this, I will personally hunt you down and skin you. Seriously.).

Piracy on the High Paddling Pool

Piracy is always a fashionable topic in the piss-ridden paddling pools that make up online forums, and the blanket block on the Pirate Bay that came into effect last week sparked a fresh round of flame wars, 'I reckons', and caps lock rants. You can always tell when you're faced with a knotty problem- people will split into two polarized camps before flinging shit at one another, a form of ammunition neither side is ever short of.

The two camps in the piracy issue are equally loathsome. We have the shrill indignant types who tell you piracy will destroy art and media as we know it, and that those who download are stealing from the pockets of producers and genuine consumers alike (bullshit).

Opposing them are the digital freedom fighters, claiming they’re sticking it to The Man and attacking the establishment by watching dodgy copies of The Matrix in their Mum's basement (also bullshit).   

As easy as it is to pour scorn on both sides- and in an effort to make this guest rant at least look like an article- I'll have a stab at highlighting the actual issue, and what we can do about it.

Death to the Unskippable Finger-Wag!

The thing we have to accept is that the internet, and technology in general, dashed ahead of society before most of us even noticed, much less adjusted to it. When I was at school, computers were 'the future'; everyone told you they were going to be huge, and everyone nodded sagely, but most people didn't really give it any more credence than any of the other world-changing things you'd see on Tomorrow's World. 

Computers were the preserve of weird-looking terminal virgins; noisy, clunky, ugly things more likely to piss you off and end up in the bin rather than take over the world. Twenty years later, we have stuff that makes many SF imaginings look quaint.

As far as piracy goes, this has caused two big changes. Digi-swag is now easier and more convenient to get hold of than going to a shop and buying it legitimately, and the end product is often superior to the legitimate one. Previously, a dodgy copy of a film had to be obtained through a mate in the pub or a car-boot sale, and was usually a grainy mess copied VHS to VHS. That, or filmed from the back of a cinema with a pre-digital camcorder; you couldn't see half of the screen and you still had to suffer the noise of some popcorn-munching halfwit one row behind, asking his girlfriend what was going on every ten minutes.

Now I can download a film quicker than it takes to watch it, in DVD quality, and without the unskippable finger-wagging ad claiming piracy is akin to stealing a tank and driving it through an orphanage.

I find myself downloading cracked copies of games I've paid for legitimately because they'll work without the soon to be scratched up/lost/indefinitely borrowed CD. Other times I've downloaded stuff I couldn't afford to buy, and would have just borrowed off a mate anyway. It's not that I don't want to support the people that make the products I love; I just don't want to use antiquated, demonstrably inferior means of acquiring them.

The Future Arrives in Micro-Payments

Many in the gaming industry have demonstrated it is possible to embrace this new technology and still get paid. Turbine, responsible for Dungeons and Dragons online, was looking at shutting shop on the RPG a few years ago due to lack of customers. In a final attempt to keep things going, they switched from the traditional monthly subscription model to a free-to-play one. Essentially, they gave the bulk of the game away, and made cash through 'micro payments', where people could unlock game features quicker than they could through play. How? By throwing cash in Turbine's direction.

The end result was a 500% increase in profits, and a player base that doesn't exclude people who can't afford it. This model can't be applied to all forms of media (or even all genres of games), but it does suggest the problem lies more with our increasingly out of date business models, rather than a desire to get something for nothing.

Another example is 'Barely Political', which started out as one chap and a few mates posting parody pop songs and comedy sketches on You Tube – now they have a budget, access to studios and still maintain complete control over what they do.  No TV contract or DVD sales required (though they do sell T-shirts and other tat if that's your thing).

Down Sails, Up Periscope.

While I don't have all the answers as to what these new models will be, the one thing we can say for sure is a lot of people in-between the producers of media and their audience will no longer be required. I can't help but suspect this is the real reason for resistance to abandoning the old ways of doing things. 

It's no different from any other industry that's become obsolete, and while I don't relish the idea of putting people out of a job (most of them, anyway), if we can put more control in the hands of  people actually creating the stuff we like- and make distribution cheaper, more convenient and less demanding on resources- shouldn't we give it a go?

As for Pirate Bay, the unsinkable ship has become a submarine, and a quick search on Google will show you how to circumvent the block with about as much tech know-how as it took you to log on in the first place, a fact that has seen Pirate Bay's number of users increase since the ban. If that doesn't make you think we need to find new ways of doing things, well...  you probably manufacture and distribute DVDs for a living.

Guest Post!!! Dan Gilbert: The Yes Men cometh in my inbox

 Until I visited the US, I'd never heard of The Bank of America. Then I did. Then they treated me like a dick. So, imagine how overjoyed I was to receive this post from gad-about-Leicester (and Mievillacrum#2), Dan Gilbert, detailing how hoaxers had shown that, no, Bank of America are the dicks! Ha! As I suspected...

If there's one thing my inbox can be relied upon to do, it's attract massive fibbers. I've got Russian girls looking for me (sounds more like a threat than a promise), an African Prince hoping to borrow fifty quid in order to access his millions, a copy of my CV; that kind of stuff. I actually quite like my inbox this way- if it was even half as relentlessly grounded in reality as the filth the electric company shove through my letterbox, I'd never sign in again.

I got one the other day that stands out more than the 12” todger some Doctor in the Philippines reckons he can endow me with. The email claimed to originate from The Bank Of America, entitled 'Bank of America Announces Partnership with Taxpayers to Revamp U.S. Banking‏.' which you can read here...

http://yeslab.org/yourbofa-announce

My finely-tuned brain spotted this as nonsense straight away; partly because of the content, but mostly because I couldn't get my head around the idea of a US bank seeking the opinions of some Limey shit-muncher who isn't above recycling cigarettes from the ashtray. Sure enough, the originating website was promptly exposed as a fake by the actual Bank Of America, denouncing it as the phishing scam it wasn't: a self-serving half-truth far more in line with the kind of stuff I expect from bankers and pointless middle-men in general.

A further example of their infuriatingly unconscious arrogance dropped into my inbox shortly after, entitled 'Bank of America Denounces Hoax, Will Not Need Bailout, Warns Public Not To Be Confused By “YourBofA.com” Fraud-

http://yeslab.org/yourbofa-retort

Now there's the greedy whoremongers lefty teens get so annoyingly earnest about! I sent off a sarky comment, went back to shooting podgy adolescents in the face on Battlefield Heroes, and thought no more about it.

The plot, it turns out, was to thicken like the tinned stodge that passes for my diet these days. A third email showed up (accompanied by one from my internet provider suggesting I pay them money or forget all about receiving a fourth)-

http://yeslab.org/yourbofa

A bit of a shock, I don't mind telling you. As a long-standing trader in utter bullshit, I was a little irked some had managed to get past me- even if it was on the second attempt- and from such illustrious bullshit artists as the Yes Men.  Apparently they decided to release a hoax denouncing their hoax to ensure no journalists were fooled for very long. I reckon they were worried they'd cause a financial meltdown, not unrealistic when you look at what their Bhopal jape on the BBC did to Dow Chemical's share prices.

You can piece together all the details from their website, but the long and short of it is they wanted to get people talking about what kind of banking system they'd like to have, which is definitely a step up from the usual 'tear it all down and replace it with, er, something better' line you often get. 

It's also a great way to get people that would otherwise write it off as wishful thinking involved; a bit like getting a kid to cry by giving it sweeties then taking them away (much fun in it's own right, of course).   

Anyone interested in getting involved in this kind of japery can do so by reading more on the YesLab website- you might change the world, but more importantly, you'll get to wind up some humourless suits with more money and less practical use than you.