The Past Future of Publishing.

When most writers think about the future of publishing they think about a world where the ease of e-publishing leads to the market being flooded by millions of wannabe authors. How is a new author going to get noticed in amongst all those books?  But what if the 2050 bestseller list looks something like this:

Global Best Selling List 2050

1. I Married my Pregnant Android – Bob Katter.

2. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – JK Rowling

3. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

4. Stalking Tigers – Graham Clements

5. Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

6. 9.11.2001 – Stephen King

7. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes

8. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

9. Fifty Shades of Grey – EL James

10. The Corrections – Jonathon Franzen.

What if the bestseller list is dominated by books from bygone eras? Couldn’t happen, you say. Surely we would be writing better stuff than that in the future, you say. Well I reckon it could happen and the web and ebooks are the reason why.

Every book that is published on the web is going to be there forever, or at least until civilisation collapses sometime later this century.  Harry Potter is going to be there forever. The Di Vinci Code is going to be on the web forever. That crappy story you just uploaded is going to be illegally copied onto some ewebumsucker’s website who is desperate for content and stay on the web forever even after you delete it from your website.

Before the web came along books went out of publication or were just not stocked by bookstores. A new book only had to compete with all the books in that bookstore. With the arrival of the web a new ebook has to compete with all the other ebooks on the web. I’ve already thought of that, you mumble. But wait, there’s more.

Every generation has its own books. They are usually books written that say something to that generation. That will probably continue to happen. The future will have many Catcher in the Ryes. But usually once a child matures into adulthood they start searching for particular books that inform and entertain themselves, that challenge their brains, or excite them. The future generations will do just about all this searching online. They won’t be limited to what is in their local bookshop or library (that probably closed down years before anyway). Get to the point! You yell.

As a reader searches they will discover authors new to them, but not new to the world, authors like Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Tom Clancy, Neil Gaiman, Patrick White, Margaret Atwood etc. These authors and their books will be as new to them as any new ebook published for the first time in 2050. 

What’s more the publishers of hugely successful book series will probably decide to relaunch the Hunger Games or Fifty Shades every 15 years or so, so a new generation can get excited/sucked in by them. After all, it will only cost the publishers the price of marketing and royalties to the estates of the authors.

So in the future a new book’s major competition might not come from other new books, but from all the classics and million sellers of yesteryear. Good luck to any new author trying to compete in that market. 

I’m sick and taking multiple drugs to get better, so I have an excuse for any typos in this week’s post, unlike all my other posts. I also have an excuse if my ramblings on the future of publishing don’t make any sense.

A review of the Russian novel - Roadside Picnic.

Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, has one of the most interesting and original premises I have read. Aliens land at several locations on Earth. They have no interest whatsoever in humanity and use alien barriers to ensure they are not bothered by humans. The aliens only stay for a short time and after they depart, they leave alien trash scattered around the locations, as if they were a bunch of bogans on a camping trip.

Some of the trash has amazing properties, like batteries that never run down. But much of the trash is dangerous, and many who venture into the areas are killed. So the authorities fence the areas off, making them no go areas except for those desperate for the money that retrieving an alien artefact brings. These people are called stalkers.

The novel takes place in an unnamed country, but most probably the US, at an undated time. Its main character, Redrick Schuhart, is a stalker, who at first retrieves items from the prohibited areas for a local university to study. I found him a difficult man to empathise with as he had no qualms about the potential consequences of what he was doing, even though he did it because he needed to support his wife and genetically deformed daughter. He needed the money, and everyone else including fellow stalkers, but except for his family, didn’t matter.

The book was originally written in Russian and then translated into English. It has a strange atmosphere to it, like they are living in a bleak totalitarian regime that is waiting to pounce on them, with little hope for the future. It actually reminded me of the atmosphere of 1984.

The alien artefacts don’t seem to offer a great future for humanity either. In the hands of more right-wing writers, the trash would have either been a great boon or great threat to humanity. But in this novel it is like the trash is neutral, leave it alone and no harm will come, but some people just need the money.

There is little joy in the lives of the characters. One of the authors admits in the afterword that they were trying to make capitalists appear unhappy, but the unhappiness of the characters, to me, was more a reflection of the downtrodden Russian society at the time the book was written in 1971.

The prose itself is bleak and unpoetic. I found the climax clouded as hope lead to deadly delusions of a better world.

But if you are after a novel that is different in both premise and style, Roadside Picnic is worth a read. I have seen it on a list of the 50 best modern science fiction novels.

Speculative fiction I have been watching.

If much of the time you are too tired to read or write science fiction, like me, the next best thing is watching it, or some good speculative fiction. Fortunately I have Foxtel and an ipad, because if I had to rely on commercial television for my science fiction fix I would be one unhappy trekker.  

My favourite speculative fiction show at the moment is a toss-up between Eureka and Misfits. I always seem to make time to sit down on Tuesday nights and watch Eureka on Foxtel, and after watching the last episode of the first series of Misfits, I immediately downloaded the first episode of the second series.

Eureka

Eureka, if you have not watched it yet, is set in a top secret town devoted to science and geeks. Each week someone’s science experiment seems to have unforeseen consequences, or the scientist involved decides he wants to be noticed. The main character is an unscientific sheriff who is more into intuition than science in preventing these experiments becoming disasters. It is very tongue-in-cheek and real pop-corn stuff, but I am addicted to its light-hearted exploration of way-out-there science ideas.

Misfits

Misfits is more fantasy than science fiction. It’s a British show where five twenty-somethings are doing community service for various misdemeanours. One day a shower of small and seemingly harmless meteors lands in the river beside the community centre they are working in. As a result, they all develop semi-super powers that accentuate some element of their personality. For example, one guy who doesn’t fit in and is ignored by others, can turn himself invisible. Another who is a track athlete can travel into the future and influence it. In the hands of an American writer these characters would immediately become crime fighters taking on evil super dudes, but not in this award winning show. If you have an isomething, you can download the BBC app and, last time I checked, watch the first episode for free.

The Fades

I really enjoyed the six part horror mini-series The Fades which was recently shown on ABC2. The spirits of the dead can no longer ascend to wherever they are meant to go, so they hang around on earth. No one can see them except for a group of special human angels, and a teenager. The dead spirits discover that if they eat human flesh they can return to human form, something the angels and teenager try to stop.

Doctor Who

I have been disappointed with Doctor Who ever since Russell T. Davis stopped producing and writing much of it. Since he left they seemed to have dumbed it down for kids, where the thing that really struck me when it was remade, was that it a lot more adult than the original series. But maybe I have just seen too much of it.

I think one of the major problems, besides its lack of suspense these days, is the Doctor can’t die, so at the end of each episode you know the doctor will save the world/planet. In the X-Files they often did not get or even stop the baddy, not in Doctor Who. In The Walking Dead just about any of the main characters could die, without any fanfare, during an episode, not in Doctor Who. Eureka has a lot more suspense than Doctor Who. In Misfits they might accidentally kill their supervisor. Nothing surprising seems to happen anymore in Doctor Who. The last episode of Doctor Who I really enjoyed was the first one of the current interrupted series with the Dalek who thought he was human. It was more slowly played, had a bit of suspense, and surprised me by allowing me to empathise with a killing machine.

Defiance

And then there is the really bad. A new series has started on Foxtel called Defiance. It is set on the Earth after a war in which the planet was terraformed by aliens. Eventually the surviving humans and multiple alien races called a truce, and live in an uneasy peace.

The main character (Aussie Grant Bowler) is a scavenger of resources. About ten minutes into the pilot episode I thought this guy is going to drive into town like Clint Eastwood, and be asked to save it, which he will decline and leave, but then decide to come back and save them. And WTF?, that is exactly what happened. It is just a western with aliens instead of Indians, Star Wars on Earth. Each week we will have a story about a scramble for power between the town and various baddies, with the man with the biggest gun and/or American righteousness winning. Whoopee. Right-wing crap.

You are better off watching Hell on Wheels if you want to watch a western series, or Game of Thrones if you want to be engrossed in the politics of power.  

A Dishonest Life?

I was listening to radio national yesterday and the memoir, A Fortunate Life, by AB Facey was mentioned. Those who watch First Tuesday Book Club would have seen A Fortunate Life come in at number three on their Ten Aussie Books to Read Before You Die list. If I remember correctly they said it was not very well written, but it really showed the horrors of war experienced by Facey. At the time, I thought it might be a book worth reading to get an accurate picture of what it was like at Gallipolli. 

Evidentially, Facey claims in the memoir that he was one of the first soldiers ashore at Gallipoli, and came under heavy machine gun fire.

But according to historian Chris Roberts, a retired Brigadier, Facey’s account only perpetuates one of the myths about the landing at Gallipoli.  In Chris Robert's book The Landing at Anzac 1915 he writes that the landing "was not a bloody landing under murderous fire", and that the beach was "not an inferno of bursting shells and barbed wire". In fact the first troops to land at Gallipoli only had to withstand sporadic rifle fire according to the diaries of a few soldiers who were actually there.  Evidentially the film Gallipoli also perpetuates the myth.

Roberts then says that Facey's account of his arrival and wounding at Gallipoli is a fabrication. War records reveal that Facey arrived on the 7th of May, 12 days after the first landing. Facey also writes he was horribly wounded, his records reveal no such injury. If this is true, how much more of the memoir is a fabrication? If this is true, shame on you AB Facey. Myths about war only perpetuate war.

I recall watching a Four Corners program, many years ago about Gallipoli. In that program it said that the invading Anzacs troops at Gallipoli on the first day, suffered little resistance and rushed inland, but then they stopped for the day instead of taking the high ground. I particularly remember an interview with a pissed off New Zealander, blaming lazy Australians for stopping. But then, we like to blame the British.

In the radio national program, Chris Roberts confirmed that the troops stopped before reaching higher ground. The Turks then finally arrived and set up their machine guns on that higher ground. If the Anzacs had kept on going and dug in on the high ground, then Gallipoli might not have been the military disaster it was.

Chris Roberts is a retired Brigadier who served in Vietnam, he later commanded the SAS Regiment and Northern Command and holds an honours degree in history.

Anyway, I won’t be reading A Fortunate Life. I am sick of soldiers and politicians lying about war. If all children were taught the truth about war and why they happened, then they probably would rarely occur. Instead we see them dragged along to dawn services by their parents so they can earnestly parrot to any media that “they died so we could be free.” Which has me yelling at the television: besides the second world war, which other war was our freedom threatened?

Confessions of a Tired (Aspirational) Writer.

As per usual, life has interfered in a major way with my writing so far this year. I went on holidays for ten days, I have had problems with my broadband, I have had problems with Divine, and a medicine I rely on went out of stock which made me even more tired than usual.

 Tired From Illness

A couple of weeks ago week I joined a Facebook page for people, like me, with ulcerative colitis or Crohns disease.  I found that those with either disease usually have other chronic health problems. I seem to be one of the “lucky” ones. Since “catching” ulcerative colitis about 15 years ago, all I have had to suffer was kidney stones and cataract surgery on my eyes, as well as low-level asthma, and being diagnosed with diabetes a couple of years ago. Others in the group have had much worse, including major bowel and colon surgery and nearly dying from their illness. But one thing is consistent, just about all of them, like me, report being constantly tired.

I exercise a lot; far more than the average person I reckon. For most of the past 12 years I have swum three kilometres three times a week. I also lift weights on three of the other days and do exercises, as well as walk around 25 kilometres a week. I also spend about an hour a day in the garden. So maybe it is all the exercise that is making me tired.

My Recent Writing.

I just finished writing chapter 94. I have now written 185,792 words of the novel and I am positive I have less than 10,000 words to write. But since I completed National Novel Writing Month in November last year, with a respectable, if rushed, 50,000 words for the month, my word total per month has dropped drastically:

December: 11459

January: 8069

February: 4621 (although I was on holiday for ten days)

March: 4671

That is not anywhere near enough for someone who aspires to being a published author.

Writing for Divine.

I have also written one article for Divine this year, although I have had two published:

·         Obstacle free footpaths

·         Medicine Shortages

I have started researching another article on famous historical Australians who had a disability. I have been very surprised with who and how many famous Australians had a disability. But any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I have spent a bit of time trying to promote Divine to the world, including setting up a community for Divine on Google+. Joining Google+ has caused me to spend a lot more time on social media.

Other Writing.

I have written a blog post every week this year, except for one. I have been trying to make the posts more interesting, which has required a bit more research and thought for each post.

I have not critiqued anything this year. How can I expect others to critique my work when I don’t critique theirs?

I am reading nowhere near enough. I have only read four books this year. The problem is I am too tired at night when I do all of my book reading.

It’s Time to Wake-up.

So I have just started a gluten-free diet in an attempt to see if gluten might be contributing to my tiredness. I went gluten-free for nearly a decade before I came down with ulcerative colitis and I rarely remember feeling tired then, certainly not this tired.