A rather strange complaint; Gernsbeck reprinted a Wells story in each of the first 29 issues of Amazing Stories. IF he stole it from Wells, he certainly paid Wells very well for it. Part of that was because there were so few science fiction authors back then, but Gernsback popularized Wells to a new generation.
As for Lem vs. PKD, at the time of the article, Lem was selling far better than Dick, who was barely scraping by.
Nuts. Gernsback was not “mostly harmless.” He was a monomaniac who hated literary qualities in science fiction as much as Lem hated American SF. He did not steal SF from Wells; on the contrary, he and the writers he favored were slavishly imitative of the Wells who abandoned any notion of characterization for didactic screeds. (I just read The World Set Free and I’m still shuddering.) The superscience drivel that followed was contemporary with the maturing of the mystery genre, showing that genre did not have to be sub-literary, and inferior to advances some future fiction writers had made thirty years previous. SF didn’t have to be contemptuously bad; Gernsback made it so by being dominant in his generation, just as Campbell was in his. But Campbell wasn’t a literary being, either.
SF has power. Unfortunately, it mostly seems to be the power to drive people to make insane generalizations about it. Lem is a superb example. Do his words have any staying power whatsoever? Have you ever heard anyone cite his opinions of SF? He was a crank and his blatherings have been thoroughly forgotten and dismissed. What he was not was jealous of Americans’ success. Wikipedia reminds me that Theodore Sturgeon wrote in 1976 that “Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world.”
Did Gernsback actually pay Wells? Gernsback was notorious for being very slow to pay authors who could actually turn up at his office, so I’m a little surprised if it turns out he was scrupulous about paying an author in the UK.
I can’t prove he paid Wells, but it seems very likely. Gernsback usually paid his authors – eventually. And it’s different when the person is H.G. Wells and not, say, Jack G. Huekels. Further, Wells would have gotten reprint rates, which are usually half what you pay for an original story (or less). Finally, he certainly couldn’t have continued to print Wells in 29 consecutive issues without Wells’s permission.
Gernsback was a crook who paid his authors badly but himself very well:
Makes sense. Thanks.
Mike Ashley’s The Gernsback Days goes into the Wells payment saga in numbing detail.
To summarize, I hope fairly:
Gernsback had previously bought reprints rights to a few stories and used them again for Amazing, without paying a new rights fee. This could be a misunderstanding or simply an underhanded ruse.
He did send Wells the first issue of Amazing and asked what his reprint fees would be. Wells wanted $100. Gernsback thought that too much and offered $100 for long stories but $50 for short ones.
Wells accepted this arrangement. He may have confused dollars for pounds, worth $5, a much better rate. It took him until 1928 to explicitly demand 200 pounds for a novel and 20 for a short story. Gernsback was horrified and refused. He kept reprinting stories at the old rate until Wells made it absolute. At which point Gernsback stopped the reprints altogether.
In total, Gernsback reprinted 464,000 words of Wells and paid him $2150. That’s a half-cent per word. Whether that was sufficient for a name like Wells can be debated, although the payments were for reprints and higher than he paid others for reprints. For comparison, The Skylark of Space, a first novel, earned one-seventh of a cent per word. A reprint of “The Nth Man” by Homer Eon Flint got two-fifths of a cent. Murray Leinster’s “The Red Dust” reprint earned him one-fifth of a cent.
Gernsback was not a crook in the typical sense of the word. He was tight with money, but so was every other editor and publisher, especially in the pulp world. He was bad with money, but that again was endemic. He paid himself a lot of money, though David Keller’s accusation of $100,000 per year can’t be substantiated. He went bankrupt, and that may have been financial manipulation or it may have been the work of enemies. In the context of his time he was a typical specimen.
When I first heard of the Sad Puppy slate, I thought that the moniker had been given to them by those who were mocking them and that if they called themselves anything, it was something else. Is Sad Puppies really something that they came up with? Really?
OK. The Hugo awards ARE a popularity contest. So he accused the Hugos of being Hugos.
Sigh. A silver lining might be that more people sign up to vote for the Hugos. Last year wasn’t as big a bargain as the year before, but the voting packet alone is worth the cost of the subscribing membership.
Last year the packet included: chapters from all of the novels, all the novellas, novelettes, and short stories; copies of graphic novels (comics), art work, fanzines, prozines; and miscellaneous stuff. Not quite as good as the packet from the year before, which included the entire novels as well, but still worth the cost.
Actually, last year’s packet included the full text of all the World of Time novels (!) (which were nominated as a group because the last novel in the series came out in 2013).
I was having trouble following all this drama, but some comments on Slashdot about it pegged my BS meter. I realized the commenters were using the exact same type of language and tactics as pro-GamerGate people. Indeed, now I think there is a lot of overlap after seeing pro-Puppies posters linking to pro GamerGate sites.
Then I read George R.R. Martin’s “Puppygate” post that was very helpful for my understanding. To me, it basically confirms my suspicious that it is a bunch of MRAs trying to reinstate a privilege they view as eroding and that it’s not really about so-called SJWs trying to discriminate against white males or conservative viewpoints.
Sort of. He’s accusing the Hugo awards of being a popularity contest to be the most PC rather than the most generally popular.
Correia has a chip on his shoulder because his books sell well, i.e. “popular” in some sense, but aren’t as critically well regarded (rightfully, in my opinion ).
<sarcasm>I really feel sorry for a guy who makes more money than all but a few SF writers but doesn’t also get a participation award</sarcasm>. He has an award - it’s called a paycheck. But he also wants the validation of the very peer group he disdains. The guy needs therapy more than he needs a Hugo.
Combine that with some not so hidden bits of racism, misogyny, and conservative persecution syndrome, and you get this result.
The charge of being PC is particularly silly. Over the last 15 years, the Best Novel Hugo has gone to people like J. K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman (twice), Susanna Clark, and Michael Chabon (all NYT best selling authors) as well as Lois McMaster Bujold, Rob Sawyer, Vernor Vinge, Connie Willis, and John Scalzi* (all very popular in the field).
Last year’s winner Ancillary Justice, is exactly the type of space opera they want to promote, but it was disdained because the author created a society where gender pronouns didn’t exist and the female pronoun was used for everything. This has been done before, and I find it ironic that the Sad Puppies don’t have the imagination to accept it.
What is happening is that the field in changing, and they don’t want it to. It’s the literary equivalent of “You kids get off my lawn.”
*Who seems to be the biggest target of Vox Day’s frothing at the mouth, but who is still extremely popular.
Yes, there’s lots of good stuff there. Much of the history will be unknown to those outside the fan or writing communities (which overlap, to be sure).
I also think there is much more to the history than just the Hugos. There are people online who take extreme positions against issues of sexism, racism, and white privilege in SF, just as in every other corner of the Internet. (There are people who take moderate positions, too, and those who take moderate and extreme positions on the other side.) The loudest voice naturally get disproportionate sway. I can look back 5 or 6 years and see the sides cohering. And I’m way on the outside of the Internet wars. I only read these comments when others link to them after the fact. From the inside, it’s a daily war of words and accusations. I’m not surprised it explodes from time to time.
Martin’s problem is that he wants rationality and good feelings to triumph in a war, a war of hate. It won’t happen. It won’t end until the battlefield is charred and devoid of life. He thinks he’s sad about this. He should talk to me.
Obvious typo “Wheel of Time”. Sorry
Martins latest
is a forensic analysis of the Puppygates basic thesis, left wingers have taken over the Hugo’s, and demonstrating in detail how it’s total rubbish.
My mistake. Your link is the one I meant to provide.
Nope. Torgerson has consistently presented Sad Puppies 3 as putting quality on the ballot by authors who have been overlooked or would be expected to be overlooked, because of either politics or ingroup exclusion. The SP slate had women, minorities, etc. on it. And Torgerson and others were libeled by well ove ra dozen news outlets.
Fighting ignorance sure is taking longer than we thought. It’s rather amazing how much more effort people can spend misconstruing words rather than simply reading the plain meaning.
Correia’s response to one of Martin’s posts (not the final Martin post on the topic):
You mean like when he said:
His manifesto, such as it is, is that science fiction has to stick with space opera and adventure, and any attempt to do anything more is wrong. It is turning it from the literature of ideas to the literature of same old ideas; the literature of the future to the literature of the past; the literature of the imagination to the literature for the unimaginative.
As for his supposed championing of the overlooked, it’s hard to make a case for popular authors being overlooked when the winners list in the past 15 years includes J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clark, and Michael Chabon (all NYT best sellers), plus Connie Willis, Lois McMaster Bujold, Vernor Vinge, Robert J. Sawyer, and John Scalzi, all of whom are among the most popular authors in the field.
As for his choices, popular doesn’t make a book good. If that is the basis, why isn’t he decrying the fact that Stephanie Meyer has never been nominated? I’ve seen many people saying that Kevin J. Anderson is a talentless hack. Jim Butcher is a reasonable choice, but his being overlooked is due to things that have nothing to do with politics (actually, it’s true for both – a series of novels has major disadvantages when it comes to voting).
Basically, the slate is based upon the idea that since their favorites authors aren’t winning Hugos, then they should game the system. What’s even more disturbing is that it worked in conjunction with Vox Day (who has stated baldly he wants to destroy the Hugo Awards) and his crew to achieve their goals.
It’s just plain whining. My favorite SF authors haven’t gotten Hugo nominations (e.g., Christopher Moore, Jaspter fforde, and A. Lee Martinez). They probably never will. But I don’t try to game the system to get them on the ballot.
And now, because of this, the Hugo will no longer be about what’s the best of the year, but which slate has the most supporters. Next year, there will be a Sad Puppies slate and a Rabid Slate and a SJW slate and a books by Californians slate and all sorts. The winner will be whichever slate motivates their base. And the poor author who may have written the best book of the year, but who is not picked by one of the slates is screwed.
Torgesen has wrecked the Hugos and he’s proud of his destruction.