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Editorial Archives
Seize the Web! by Michael Gallant, April 1999, A Quantum Musings exclusive!
Somehow, some perverse compulsion to create drives us on. We push ourselves through this gauntlet of abuse and rejection out of some passionate need to express what only we can. A friend of mine described us as "heavy drinkers with a writing problem."
As much as we would like to acknowledge that we are the font of all wisdom, we can't properly accept that credit. The responsibilities are too great and the pay is pathetic. So, we'd like your input. What is it that you find troublesome in your reading? What ticks you off when you see it in print? What have you picked up in a writing course or workshop that has helped you? Even let us know what you think is wonderful. We'll continue to provide tips and comments to our readers and writers.
Writing allowed the story to move beyond the campfire. Writing allowed the story to be carried through space and time. Today, we can read Plato, and his story is still with us. Writing, when used to tell stories, proved to be a pretty good idea, but something was lost. The community that gathered around the campfire allowed the story teller to know what worked and what didn't. By watching the reactions of the audience, the story teller could improve his stories. Everyone was part of the process.
See, the problem with us creative types is, well, we're creative! We're floating around in our little imaginary lands that our paint brushes or pens like to put onto paper for us. Does Bill Gates float around in imaginary lands? I doubt it. Does he hire someone to float for him? You bet.
Alcohol humor, I mused, knocking back my drink with a practiced flick of the wrist and sweeping my finger around the inside of the empty glass before popping it into my mouth, whatever could he mean? I pondered, pensively sucking. (It would break my sainted mother's heart to waste good single malt.)
What was learned from this encounter was that literature is about evoking emotions and setting a mood against the backdrop of a plot willed with characters. Science fiction is about entertainment and new ideas, against a backdrop of fantastic settings and bizarre characters. Literature is about focusing in on the details. Science fiction is about expanding the limits of imagination.
Historically, creativity and madness have gone hand in hand. We at Quantum Muse are comfortable with that. Sanity, in an insane world, is highly over rated anyway. We are crazy enough to publish authors who are crazy enough to write.
Someone has taken Disney and sold it to Hugh Heffner. Nowhere else in the genre of fantasy will you find more vile or explicit pieces of pornography, bestiality and other sorts of nasties. Trust me, Heavy Metal won't hold a candle to it. Now before you go rushing off to verify this for yourselves and claiming it as "research", or start pointing fingers at me as a fascist, hear me out.
So you see, this is not merely an annoyance. Freedom of speech is endangered. And if it falls, we will have killed it by our whining and indifference.
So, to paraphrase my dear old dad when he would lovingly remark during long trips to the relatives (yet another holiday tradition) "Settle down or I'll pull this ezine over to the side of the information superhighway right now and whale the tar outta ya!"
The first criticism lodged against the genres is that it's just crap. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so I'll just pass on this one.
It was bad enough when the publishing industry consolidated. Fewer publishers and writers have more control of the publishing bucks. The great middle way of global corporate culture has no room for edgy experimental writing. Instead, new writers eke out a niche on the cultural fringe. They develop their craft in a different environment. They have a chance to evolve. That is why Quantum Muse is able to publish such good writers.
She was the embodiment of everything that's wrong with the current publishing industry. She was stuck up, set in her ways and totally convinced that publishing your work on the Web isn't "real". In other words, it doesn't count. In her world, anyone who's anyone is published only in paperback. Internet 'zines are a "lesser" form of publication. Oh yeah and don't even try to mention the on-demand publishing industry, such as Xlibris or iUniverse. That sneer she gave when we mentioned it nearly stuck there on her face permanently. (Mike was ready to take scalps.)
It is a warm, satisfying feeling to have come full circle on the calendar. We started with high hopes, felt our spirits soar with the joy of creation and bringing wit and wisdom to the masses. We forged on as the strain of maintaining the pace took its toll. We endured slow months, not knowing whence our next submission was coming, and felt the sting of nature's wrath, and the scathing feedback of petty minded critics. We sweated through the long, dark midnight of writer's block, and the frantic effort of getting the site presentable for the cold light of dawn. Finally, we saw our efforts rewarded, and now we roll up our sleeves to do it all again this year.
It's a lot like recovering from a savage hangover just as the bar re-opens.
If Leonardo Decaprio can interview the President of the United States, then there are no journalistic standards at all. You may think it harsh of me, but remember, I'm part of the club. I too have a degree in Journalism. I've seen how the news is made from the inside. That's why I write fiction; it's the only way to tell the truth. But I digress.
For quite a few years now, movies have sold advertising for products featured prominently. The first movie that brought that to my consciousness was ET. M & M would not pay to be featured, so the extraterrestrial was lured out of hiding with Reeses pieces. It did wonders for sales of Reeses pieces.
A few nights back, they ran Godzilla on one of those movie cable channels. The product endorsements were blatant, in-your-face examples of rabid advertisement. It seemed as if the monster attacked a container ship to get to all the Bumblebee tuna. The advertisement took over the entertainment. Of course, the entertainment value of Godzilla was so marginal that no amount of commercial content could hurt it any more than the script writing all ready had.
The sci-fi channel was added to basic cable and that's where we spend most of our time. Well, that and the cartoon channel. There are a variety of options there. The best is Farscape on Friday nights. It's produced by Jim Hensons company and there are a few Muppets, but you'd never tell. Think of it as Star Trek where no one gets along with each other. Good stories, excellent characters and enough conflict to keep your head spinning.
Bolstered with optimism and strong drink, the Quantum Muse crew made the epic journey to Burlington, deep in the People's Republic of Massachusetts earlier this month for the much touted Readercon 12, three days of phony cordiality, partisanship, self congratulation and backstabbing that would make the Republican National Convention look like Woodstock.
We've certainly moved away from the old nuts and bolts days. The "New Wave" of S/F, driven by the societal changes of the ‘60's and ‘70's changed everything. Now S/F is more likely to deal with the soft sciences rather than the hard sciences. Maybe that's just because English majors are more likely to take the occasional Psychology or Sociology course than the occasional Science course.
They started out by using paid banner advertising, which is mildly annoying, but we can all overlook it. Then they started charging $199.00 per site (non-refundable) if you wanted to submit your site to their search engine and actually be considered within a few days. Not accepted mind you, just considered. However, you can still opt to submit your site for free, wait for weeks, more likely months, and maybe, just maybe, you'll be accepted. Ok, so now it's getting really annoying, but it's still not in violation of anyone's creative rights.
If you are anything like me, you greet each upcoming fantasy or Science fiction film with a mixture of eagerness and dread. It's not your imagination, they are getting worse. It seem as if the more incredible, eye catching special effects they can find, the less they feel they need the little, inconsequential trimmings, such as a plot, character development or motivation, or dialogue that wouldn't embarrass an apprentice copy boy at Marvel Comics.
This editorial comes to you from somewhere deep in the bowels of a public school system who's name shall remain a secret to protect the innocent, the guilty and the just plain suspicious. Never, in any imagined future, would I have pictured myself in front of a classroom. Few were as happy as myself to get out of the public schools. But here I am, nominally in charge of a shop class. I say nominally, because the shop has been condemned by the state inspectors. Hope it wasn't anything I did. Instead of learning how not to cut off fingers with power tools, these kids have an hour and a half study hall. My job has been reduced from that of teacher to that of jailer. I don't teach, I prevent homicides. Sure, the administration could take advantage of my English background and let me teach English, but no, they are taking advantage of my massive size and fearsome looks to keep a shop class in order.
Transcript of a video sent to the four major news networks, 26 Dec 2000:
My name is Jason Scherer. I'm being well taken care of and my captors have not
mistreated me in any way. I am being fed well, allowed to shower at least once a
week, and have not been harmed in any physical way yet. I only say "yet"
because I worry about the mental stability of my captors. OUCH! OK, I take that
back. OUCH! OK OK - I have not been harmed in any physical way and will not
be in the future. I hope. OUCH!
I stand before you today not to command, nor to exhort, nor to implore, but to inform. The future of literature depends upon each and every one of you. We may edit and choose stories, wade through submissions and rage against the mediocracy of the conventional publishing houses, but at the end of the day it will be your finger on the mouse and your money in your wallet that will determine the outcome.
This is how the Internet works, folks, in case you're one of the uneducated. Everything is based upon a global community of sharing ideas and expressing ourselves. The Internet is here to allow us to introduce ourselves, our companies, our products, our families and our cock-a-mamie ideas to the whole world. All of this is free. If it's not free, your website will perish, eventually.
So how does anything get sold on the Net? You hear of the dot-commers making millions out there. How do they do that when everything is supposed to be free?
Internet companies are dropping faster than a discount plastic surgery job. Investors are running for the hills, or at least demanding companies produce something called "profits." The bubble has burst - over a trillion dollars disappeared almost overnight. The global economy appears to be on the cusp of a major slowdown. That's why, on the second anniversary issue of Quantum Muse, I must announce: the party continues!
I'd like to point out three items, if I may: 1. What the hell is "excessive use of the original work?" Sounds kind of arbitrary to me. 2. Both Harper Lee and Toni Morrison went to bat for the book. Morrison even gave testimony in court. Morrison is a bloody Nobel Prize winner - not exactly a crackpot, one could say. 3. The book Gone With The Wind isn't that great. Oh sure, we all love the movie - hell, even I do. But the book . . . well, it's kinda boring.
I will freely admit that many of the great sagas are worth reading. Hell, some of them are brilliant. Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Amber, The Black Company, Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, all of these I eagerly devoured and to this day reread every so often. But it seems that the same profit lusting impulse that leads to Scream 3 in the theaters drives the fantasy book trade. It's a sad commentary when you ask a friend about a series and he replies "The first six or seven books are good. After that it gets redundant."
Sanity just gives you the same old crap. It's worse than that. Sanity is the mark of stability. Stability is the mark of stasis. Stasis is death. Those of our readers who've had the misfortune to live in a "planned" society know what I'm talking about. People want to have a little fun once in a while, and not just the sort of fun our mothers approve of.
Let's face it - those of us who actually appreciate sci-fi and fantasy have wildly high expectations for our films - and this one will be the highest set of all. The Lord of The Rings isn't going to be great, no matter what they do. By that I mean it may be a great series, one of the best ever done - but it's never going to live up to our expectations. Never. Episode 1 had the same problem - how the hell do you whet the appetite of a group of fans who'd been waiting 16 years for a new Star Wars film? We can multiply that expectation by about a thousand here. The Lord of The Rings is the cornerstone of all modern fantasy. Almost everyone who's written fantasy since Tolkien has done so because they want Frodo to come back from the Grey Havens for one last adventure - they want to go to Harad, or into the wilds of the East beyond the Sea of Rhun, to see things only glimpsed at before.
So why, for the love of Spock, are we complete weenies or rabid psychos about a stem or embryonic cell?
Our little ezine feels the loss keenly, having both a Firefighter and an EMS worker on staff. We lost many brothers and sisters that day. The actions of the Police, Firefighters, EMTs and Paramedics were beyond question. The job requires that they go into danger to render aid to those in need. They understood and accepted those risks. Those of us who remain still do.
The same bunch of politicians and bureaucrats who got us into this mess want a whole new bunch of laws, even though they don't know how to use the ones we already have. They'll get them too, but that's because people are all too ready to trade liberty for security. Old Ben Franklin warned that those who would trade liberty for security would have neither. I love Ben. It's comforting to know at least one of our founding fathers knew how to enjoy a beer and a bouncy girl. I think he had something to do with that pursuit of happiness part of our constitution. I'm not happy that today's politicians are quick to remove those liberties. It seems so, so . . . un-American.
Don't worry, I'm not turning into a complete mindless coporate slave on you down here. Yeah, I'm stubborn, and you think that's how I'd react to their programming. But I'm just as cynical as always. I just never realized how big a part of my life professional wrestling was until I didn't have it anymore.
The year in science has been tremendous. It could actually be miraculous if religion were to be wiped from the face of the Earth. Stem cell research, cloning and other previously Azimovian concepts have turned into reality. Cures for aids, cancer and maybe even John Ashcroft are soon to be discovered.
Now, I'm all liquored up and I nailed the door shut, so nobody can stop me, so I'm gonna tell you the truth.
Don't read the guidelines, don't query the editors, don't buy Writers' Digest, or How to Write for Publication or take advanced classes. These will make you weak. They will make you just another sheep in the vast herd of unpublished never were's.
Big publishing houses have to answer to share holders. They must make money and hate risk. There are some great writers out there who aren't getting published because of corporate aversion to risk. Damn those bean counting monkeys!
I'm embarrassed by the high quality of submissions we get at QM. These people should be making real money at their craft. When Mike, Tim, and myself started this zine, we thought we might have to write stories under dozens of pen names, just to fill the issues. That never happened. Good thing, us being lazy and all.
The old S/F magazines are dying. There is no nice way to say it. Analog, Azimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Locus are just shadows of what they once were. It's not my fault. Sure, I helped found Quantum Muse. Yes, we are growing and the old paper mags are shrinking. But Quantum Muse and the other on-line zines didn't kill the old boys. They were dying well before we even arrived on the scene.
All great artists are going to hell, along with most of the good ones, and those who aren’t real skilled, but who’s hearts are at least in it. The reason for this is simple—because each and every one of us, over any named or unnamed God, worships Art. Does anyone, anywhere, think that Michelangelo sculpted “David” in order to bring further glory to the killer of Goliath? Or did he sculpt it because he could, because it was beautiful, for the glory of artistry, because his muse drove him to with the same invisible whip that the rest of us are driven?
Show of hands? Mmm-hmm. That’s what I thought.
We at QM are proud to announce that, after three years of sketchy adherence to deadlines, decisions made in haste, drunken debates in the wee hours, editorials which directly attack our chosen genre and industry, and stories that nobody else would touch with a ten foot rejection letter but were fucking brilliant, we now stand hailed as one of Writers' Digest's top thirty sites for new writers. We are ranked as one of Yahoo's top ten most popular science fiction web sites
As I write this, trillions of dollars are in the process of disappearing from the stock market. Trillions. Think about it. Carl Sagan, when talking about the immensity of the universe, could only work up to billions and billions. Day in and day out I deal with the products of imagination: science fiction and fantasy, but nothing compares to economics.
We already cover most of the world. I'm told Mike and I are celebrities in Russia, but that's just reflected glory from our Glen Cook interview. Glen is a god in Russia. I digress. The point is, we get around this big old blue marble of ours.
So, is it any wonder the Muse is pissed? She probably thinks that if she gives me something brilliant, it will be sold to the highest bidder, changed and manipulated to appeal to the MTV generation and wrapped in a glitzy package of fake tits and cellophane skin.
For most of its history, the human race lived a nomadic existence. That's got to be imprinted on our genes. How many of you living in cubicle land have thoughts about that? Doesn't it feel wrong to be chained to a desk all day long? Who among you doesn't at least occasionally dream of escape? Quite a few people today do live nomadic existences. They range from the highly paid consultant who jets about the world, to the 20 something, hitching rides and dumpster diving. (An honorable sport and part of the QM retirement package.)
We had a late start. Hey, even Napoleon had a hard time getting the army on the road in a timely manner. We had other battles to fight. The house needed to be winterized: plumbing drained, antifreeze poured in drains, and the power shut down. Even after we left the house, we cooled our heels at town hall, waiting to fill in our absentee ballots. Yes, dear readers, us Quantum Musers vote. Scary, isn't it?
No room at the inn. Traveling is a learning experience. We learned camping is a popular activity in Florida during Thanksgiving. It's so popular that the sign at the road leading to Manatee Springs State Park said "campground full." We ignore such signs. Lucky for us. They had a sudden opening. We didn't even have to sleep in a stable. And no, I didn't slip into the park and persuade someone to leave -for their health.
Scientists in Iowa think a little drinking and driving would be a good thing. That is, a good way to find out more behind what really goes on when someone drinks alcohol and gets behind the wheel.
Why didn't they just ask me or some of my friends? I could have saved the tax payers $5.1 million (the cost of the three year study).
Sometimes events overtake me. The shuttle breakup was one such event. As luck would have it, we were in Florida the day it was supposed to land there. Like a dog that did not bark in the night, there was no early hours sonic boom. Instead, the shuttle was busily unraveling itself over East Texas.
I recently visited that part of Texas. I know the area, some of the people, and even canoed some of its murky waters. That part of Texas is sparsely populated and heavily forested. I suspect hunters, fishermen, ranchers, and foresters will be stumbling over debris for many years to come. No doubt some parts may never be found.
Happy Happy, Joy Joy!
Is everyone ready for some good news? Quantum Muse is beginning its 5th year. That's right folks, we have been up and running since April 1999. We have survived Y2K, the blip in technology interest, the severe travel schedule of a life on the move, and a few good drinker's, I mean writer's, meetings. Among other things. Survival is a great trait.
We have the freedom to do just about any damn thing we please. We publish who we like, from countries all over the globe. We just don't care about people's politics. All we want to know is if they can write or not.
Two things happened recently. I sent out a huge pile of story rejections and a woman with a sharp knife slit my throat. I don't think those two events are directly related. I just want rejected authors to know I understand how it feels.
Unless of course, the big space faring nations find a way to keep the independents down. I've had my suspicions. NASA killed some promising launch systems -at least one of them cheap and reusable. I've heard nasty rumors that certain people in high places want to keep space expensive and exclusive. They want to keep the Riff Raff out. Maybe the rich and powerful are afraid we'll put up trailer parks on the moon?
I feel the time has come to do an editorial about our submissions. Actually, I was complaining about them and Ray suggested I could stop bitching and do something about it.
"Good point," I conceded, "Now pull me back in."
He cheerfully lifted me back in through the window and deposited me near the pile of empties beneath which, legend has it, dwells my desk.
Lately, the battle between the forces of free expression and corporate profits, which has been raging for years, has heated up to the point where we feel it necessary to sink our pint, pick up our barstool and wade into the fray. Not because we feel we can bring fresh ideas or raise the level of the debate, but because listening to it makes us want to bust some heads.
The Internet changes everything. The web is uncut heroin for information junkies.
It used to be hard to get cool and interesting information. Today, there are any number of interesting and useful bits of information. The web is full of innovative ideas.
Ah, civilization: art, music, culture, hot showers, cold beers, what's not to like?
I was hanging around the office trying to avoid work. This may sound strange, but one place the editors are not likely to be is anywhere near the slush pile. And I paused outside the door listening for broken sobs before I came in, so I was pretty sure the place was empty.
The life of a Cyber Nomad has its fluctuations. No modern traveler functions without a lap top computer. The old saying goes, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." That's hogwash, especially if the basket in question is a bit pricy. My particular lap top basket had all my business information, story submissions, works in progress, music files, DVD player, maps, contact information and other things that it pains me to think about. No, I'm not referring to porn. My life is not that simple. The latest drafts of two books in progress went the way of all electrons.
This issue marks the fifth anniversary of Quantum Muse. We’ve been doing this for a while; there must be a reason. People ask me if there is much money in being a Quantum Muse editor. Yeah…right! I had a dollar once, but it got lonely and went away. When I point out the hours involved and the monetary returns, they respond in one or two ways. Either they don't believe me or they think I'm crazy. Well of course I'm crazy, but it's a good kind of crazy.
Everywhere I go, and I go a lot of places, I see busted pay phones. Wires dangle free from broken off posts. Vandals? Horrible accidents? No, economics, or so I'm told. Phone companies are pulling pay phones out at a prodigious rate. They are in such a hurry they don't even do a good job of it, leaving more than half the hardware behind. Who'd the phone companies get to do the job? Half-trained apes with sledge hammers?
Who's doing the really cool science?
Is it the government?
Yes and no. Sure, government science can be interesting. After all, they get to raid the Patent Office for all the great stuff. Most people don't know the military has the opportunity to snag any cool idea that comes into the Patent Office. Lots of fascinating ideas never see the light of day. Government scientists have big piles of cash to work with and lots and lots of nifty toys. Problem is, it's all politicized science. It's science with an agenda. A lot of it has ultra mega super top secret stamped all over it. Much of it is channeled into better ways of killing people. Sure that's fun and all, but that certainly limits the cool factor.
Science Fiction most often deals with the future, but how far should a writer go? The near future is pretty easy. The formula is to take the present, make one scientific breakthrough, and you are on your way. The far future is pretty easy too. Assume the future technology is too advanced for us primitives to understand and just describe how it works in a superficial yet plausible way. The other route to far future tech is to bury the reader in technical details, but that's just mean to today's reader.
I sat there in a shadowy, dank room in front of a one way mirror (they assured me). The nice police officers told me to choose which out of the lecherous, fat, greasy sciffy Cons they marched out in the brightly lit line up room committed the crime. A particularly ugly Con with the biggest, fattest, swollen head I've ever seen suddenly caught my eye. The little sign it held in front of it said ‘WorldCon'.
Hi there all you sci-fi fans. "Sci-fi... sci-fi... sci-fi..." I can say that here. It is frowned upon in some circles. Gives the current WorldCon administration the heebie jeebies. Starting on a more promising note, a good time was had by this Q-babe ..and various other fans. We did enjoy the panels. Most were great and Ray and I split up to catch different ones.
I like big questions. What's the meaning of life? Is love all we really need? What happens when protons collide at speeds near the speed of light? Yeah, the big questions.
Before I begin, let me say that this is intended as an explanation, not an excuse.
The past two years have been rough ones for the Muse. I was working full time and going to school full time. I did have a brief period of unemployment, but made up for that with a second job in addition to the school and full time job.
Ray spent much of the winters on the road, with patchy Internet access, no way to get at the books, and sporadic showers. He even had to cross a few dry counties, and that is a fearsome thing for an editor.
The Gonzo is dead, long live the Gonzo.
By now, everyone knows that Hunter S. Thompson did a Hemingway. Eulogies have been written by every writer who claims to have known him. I did not know Hunter, but I do know booze and guns.
There are plenty of people out there trying to predict the future. No, not Madam Fakesky and her crystal ball, serious, logical, scientific people with a lot on the line. Investors want to have some idea where the economy is going. Farmers want to have some idea what the weather is going to be like during the next growing season. Insurance companies want to know the probability of hurricanes. Environmentalists study changes in the environment and project possible effects on living systems.
I had a lot of hope for space. The Final Frontier. A good place for humans to roam free and easy. Limitless horizons. Room to grow. The possibility of meeting sexy green skinned chicks from other planets.
Hey, I was just a kid.
Other people have dreams: people with money and power. Dreams much different than mine.
...The more they fear to change.
I don't want to seem like a broken record, but what we at QM have been saying for six years is still true. The big publishers don't love you. Pretty girls only want to date the football team, nobody gets letter jackets for Debate and there is no Tooth Fairy.
By the time this went to press, the shuttle Discovery crew was still at the space station. I hope the crew made it back in good shape.
NASA has had time to look over the launch tapes, the underside of the shuttle has been inspected, and the fleet has been grounded. Now I don't know how that makes you feel, but I'd be a bit concerned if I was a couple hundred miles up in the air and my way home was "grounded." Yep, unfit to fly. It's like driving in your car and hearing on the radio that your car's exact make and model has been recalled for safety reasons. It's like that... only multiplied by about a thousand.
Entertainment is a vast, shallow, empty expanse of the predictable, the rehashed, the worn out and the pale imitation of what was once ground breaking.
Movies are looking more and more to remakes of classics, and having sucked the film well dry, are turning to old television. Not even good old television, just old television. Television is worse. Cheap, easy to crank out reality shows dominate, and anything with wit or humor or originality dies a quick and ignoble death.
As always, the less said about popular music the better.
The paper magazine is in trouble, and it's not my fault. I know, I know, I've said it before, but it's still true.
If you go by a magazine rack, it looks like the paper magazine is doing well. The racks are full, aren't they? Full of what? Let's just say the value of most magazines would be greater if they were printed on soft absorbent tissue stock.
NASA released their plans for the space program and it's back to the future. Their new plan looks an awful lot like Apollo. What's the great big innovation? Well . . . it's bigger. Oh yeah . . . we can use some parts from the shuttle. Those worked out pretty good most of the time
I was watching the televsion series Deadwood the other day, and I had an epiphany.
The scene involved serval characters discussing a plan to provide smallpox vaccine to the citizen of the town. The publisher of the local paper was working out the announcement. He finished with "This vaccine will be provided gratis."
"Free gratis," clarified a town leader.
"That would be redundant."
Blank stare.
"Gratis means the same as free."
"So lose ‘gratis'."
Here I am, at the ragged end of 2005, looking back and looking forward. Time, in the sense of watches and schedules, is pretty artificial -an artifact of Western Civilization. We fool ourselves that we can measure it, like we measure distance or mass. Forget that. Let's just say stuff happens. Stuff will happen. Oh the hell with, let me decend into covention in an attempt to bring some clarity to this editorial. Right, like that's gonna happen.
I love a good fantasy. I read a lot of bad fantasy. As an editor, there's no help for it.
One pet peeve is this whole "magic vs. technology," idea. Some authors have gone so far as to make a point that "technology doesn't work," in their fantasy world.
That is, while there is a certain logic in the belief that there is only so much money and resources out there, and my gain must surely be your loss, it simply isn't true.
The poorest person today is richer than the most well to do Neanderthal, and a person of average means in twenty first century America has more real wealth, and lives better than the King of Spain did in 1600. That could not happen if we were just passing the same limited amount of wealth around.
Writer's create worlds. Fantasy writer's have a tough burden as their stories contain magical elements. It takes skill to convince a reader to suspend disbelief. Writers, don't make the job even harder. When creating your world, make the economics at least plausible. I want to get the sense that the writer has portrayed a functioning society, and portraying a working economy is part of that.
A friend of mine, Marcus Alexander Hart, recently published a book, The Oblivion Society, and was at the LA Times Festival of Books to promote it.
Now, Marcus, in contrast to most of us, is actually willing to go to these things, schmooze, hand out merchandise and make an effort to be civil. After half an hour at one of these things, I'm usually in a bar or the back of a cruiser.
My lovely wife has two rules that I must live by. Rule #1: No starting my own religion. For most people this isn't a problem, but I can't help it if people want to follow me. She's familiar with the career of L. Ron Hubbard and she's set her foot down.
Rule #2: No burning the house down.
Time to make me some enemies.
I don't see the point of fan fiction.
Like, at all.
Did you ever read a book and in it reference is made to other books? Then you go out and read that earlier book? Did you ever read a book review, see a current book compared to an earlier one, then go out and read the earlier? Ever see something "inspired by" and decided to go right to the source of inspiration and skip the derivative book? Did you ever see a movie then read the book?
I do that all the time.
Today, Quantum Muse stands at a crossroads. Not, surprisingly, that we may sell our souls to the Devil at midnight.
No we stand here today and wonder what the zine will look like in months to come.
Raymond M Coulombe, a founder and original editor, has bowed out of the zine. This means he's roughly 6 years slower on the uptake than Tim Goyette, but still smarter than I.
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