eugenefischer

[eugenefischer]

A Contract Is A Wish Your Heart Makes

The Science Fiction Writers of America had a press conference today, calling out the Walt Disney Company for failure to pay a writer’s royalties. News that a quarter-trillion dollar company is doing something that screws over individual artists isn’t particularly shocking, but the nature of Disney’s justification in this case is wild.

Background: Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox used to be big, independent media companies. Now they’re part of Disney. Since Disney bought them, they now own the Star Wars and Alien media franchises, each of which contain a teeny-tiny crumb made up of novels.

Alan Dean Foster wrote the original novelization of Star Wars, and a sequel novel, Splinter of the Minds Eye. He also wrote the novelizations of Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3. Apparently, all five of these books are still in print. But, while the books are still for sale, Alan Dean Foster is no longer receiving royalties. Disney has explained to the Science Fiction Writers of America that this is all fine:

Disney’s argument is that they have purchased the rights but not the obligations of the contract. In other words, they believe they have the right to publish work, but are not obligated to pay the writer no matter what the contract says.

SFWA president Mary robinette kowal

I thought I was already maximally cynical about the habits of megacorporations, but I’m actually astonished at how brazen this is. I mean, I’m sure there’s a deep, rich body of legal theory that I’m about to ignorantly stomp all over, but: isn’t the entire point of a contract that you don’t get to pick and choose after the fact which parts apply?

I’d be shocked if this went to court. I suspect #DisneyMustPay will result in Foster getting what he’s due, if only because I can’t imagine the legal fees being less than the royalties. If this did go to court, though, I would assume it was because Disney has purchased “the rights but not the obligations” of so many contracts that it was worth the legal fees. And Foster’s experience does make one wonder: has Disney been paying royalties to any of the authors whose books came along with those acquisitions?

Also, is this a fight that Disney really wants to win? They license a lot of IP. Do they really want it to be possible for someone to just buy up a licensee, then carry on selling Mickey Mouse-branded red wine or whatever without paying any more fees? Because, by their own argument, that seems like it should be a-okay. Would that really be better than just paying authors the rounding error on your books that is their royalties?

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2020/11/18/a-contract-is-a-wish-your-heart-makes/ ]

[eugenefischer]

Medium’s Big Rights Grab

I’ve had “The New Mother” up on Medium since 2015.

I took it down today.

In 2015, Medium was a fairly new platform, one that made it very easy to put lengthy things online in an attractive, easy-to-read format. It integrated nicely with Twitter, which I still used a lot back then. It had a comprehensive statistics page for tracking engagement. It seemed like a great place to put “The New Mother” to get it some more attention. And it was; hundreds of people who might never have otherwise read the story scrolled through that entire page over the next few months.

Eventually, attention dwindled, as I knew it would. But I figured I might as well leave the story up until some compelling reason came along to take it down.

Over the years there were changes to Medium’s platform (the establishment of a filtered paywall, subscriptions, the Medium Partner Program), but nothing I couldn’t opt out of. The licensing setting on the page was set to “all rights reserved.” That was enough for me, as the Terms of Service always contained language roughly equivalent to:

You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium.

By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission.

Medium.com Terms of service, march 2016 – August 2020

That language is going away at the end of the month. Effective September 1, 2020, Medium’s new Terms of Service will read:

You retain your rights to any content you submit, post or display on or through the Services.

Unless otherwise agreed in writing, by submitting, posting, or displaying content on or through the Services, you grant Medium a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid, and sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your content in all media formats and distribution methods now known or later developed without compensation to you.

medium.com terms of service as of september 2020

That is a very different set of things Medium suddenly wants permission to do with my story.

I don’t know many fiction authors interested in giving away the right to publish their work royalty- and compensation-free, anywhere in the world. Not only does Medium want license to do that, they want it “sublicensable”—they want to be able to give other people the right to publish my story, too.

And what about “derivative works?” Does Medium want carte blanche to, say, hire someone to write sequels to my story? Because I don’t see anything in here that stops them from doing so. It’s a nonexclusive right, so they couldn’t sue me if I also wrote and published a sequel, but that would be a very small comfort if a global publishing platform started promoting alternate versions of my characters.

This is a huge rights grab. The minute I read the new ToS, “The New Mother” came down.

You can still read it, though. It’s right here on my website now, where the only one who decides what happens to it is me.

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2020/08/18/mediums-big-rights-grab/ ]

[eugenefischer]

Lee Mandelo on the Crucial Importance of Generous Reading

Easily the best thread I’ve seen about the the most recent fiasco of SFF Twitter is this thread on literary criticism and heterogeneity of marginalized experience by Lee Mandelo. It’s so good that, with Lee’s permission, I’m reproducing it here in its entirety, in case my prayers are someday answered and Twitter actually does burn down and fall into the sea.

Art does not exist to be evaluated on a scale of “harm” to “uplift,” and if we want to talk dog-whistles, that right there is a huge one: it’s deeply anti-intellectual, and it centers a form of toxic individualism that evacuates solidarity/difference in favor of moral purity. Also, relevant from other recent intra-community trans Discourse: the fact that something triggered or hurt you, personally, is real— but that doesn’t actually make it bad, or wrong, or Harmful ™ because you *are not the center of the universe.* Other trans folk who have different experiences of gender and the world might be deeply seen by the art that you think is morally bad and harmful personally.

To some extent, we know why this is common: traumatic stress forces your focus to be survival oriented, internal, and evaluative. It’s hyper-vigilance! However, what it is *not* is healthy or productive— especially when turned relentlessly outward to hold others responsible for your bad feelings as opposed to processing them, or saying “ouch, not for me.” Which is not to say artists shouldn’t be cognizant of other people’s pain and the larger social implications of their work, so please don’t reduce what I’m saying here to “fuck it, who cares.”)

The other huge flaw with “the story harmed me” or flat harm-critique is the lack of acknowledgement that, if we’re using that metric, then your insistence on the story harming you is EQUALLY harming to the other trans folk for whom the piece was a revelatory story, or productive. It’s powerfully self-centered and not feasibly sustainable. This is where the whole “criticism is an art itself and has theory” thing comes in. Because Sedgwick wrote re: queer theory’s internal failings a long ass time ago about “paranoid” vs “reparative” reading practices.

What we saw here was a classic case of destructive/paranoid readings that (1) FORCIBLY OUTED A TRANS WRITER and (2) caused a lot of misery and stress across the board for everyone… but that stress has been processed unevenly. Paranoid readings are also a valid understandable response to a violent world that seeks to harm us! But they close in on themselves and each other like a fucking bear trap. Reparative readings are open to pain as useful and potential, and are by definition attempting generosity. Generosity in critique MATTERS. And furthermore, here’s where I get mad as hell: direct-effects audience theory has been discarded for like 40 years for a reason, but it HAUNTS twitter discourse like a hideous revenant. This framing of art and culture is very conservative, pretty fucked up, & spooky to someone who does this stuff professionally. If your replies are full of people saying “hell yes this is critical theory RUN AMOK” I want you to think hard about that.

And regarding some subtweets: it is, in fact, some people’s job—a job for which they have trained extensively!—to do critical work. That does not mean your opinion doesn’t matter, but it does mean (as I teach students every semester!!) that when doing heavy lifting with art, perhaps the metric of “who is allowed to speak about rhetoric and discourse” is not *solely* an identity based category. That’s a dangerous game. All of us can read badly, or be missing the background that a piece is speaking from, and being trans is NOT a guarantee against that. I’m exhausted and upset by the idea that we can’t have things that dig into more than 101 level exploration of gender, or our pain and tropes and violence, because it won’t be perfect for Everyone. And a queer woman who has the background to engage with what rhetoric and discourse and criticism do, weighing in specifically on those things, is not out of line— and neither is a trans person speaking to their identity experiences. Both can coexist and be discussed with an ethical approach to critique that is not infuriating.

I’m extremely tired and frankly feel violated by the level of anti-intellectual rhetoric and vitriol that cropped up in this discussion, and I’m not talking about fair critiques of a story’s functions or failure to fulfill those. Shit got personal quick, in unproductive ways. In short: harm-based critique of art sounds reasonable on the surface but its application & implications are intensely problematic and almost impossible to ethically or properly deploy, particularly when applied not to, like, egregious hate speech, but affectively difficult art.

Lee Mandelo

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2020/01/18/lee-mandelo-on-the-crucial-importance-of-generous-reading/ ]

[eugenefischer]

Things I wondered after viewing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Emperor Palpatine:

What the heck was his long term goal anyway? I mean, literally what did he want to achieve? If he wanted to rule the galaxy again, he already had the tools necessary: a fleet of mini Death Stars and a loyal military to use them. Why did he bother waiting for Kylo Ren to show up before making a move? Why did he leave the ships hanging out on his planet where they’re most vulnerable? What was he trying to accomplish militarily/politically?

If Palpatine’s Plan A for regaining youthful vigor was for Rey to strike him down in anger, thereby making herself susceptible to the dark side and subsequent bodily possession by Palpatine, why did he tell her about it? She was there to kill him. If he just kept his mouth shut, or goaded her into avenging her parents, he would have won. Why did this arch manipulator galactic puppetmaster turn all Republic serial villain just in time to make Rey hesitate?

After Palpatine discovers that he can use the power of the Force connection between Rey and Kylo to heal his own body, why does Palpatine act like Rey is a threat? Sure, he has a Plan B now that doesn’t involve stealing Rey’s body, but Plan A should still work, right? The only thing that’s changed is Palpatine is stronger and Rey is weaker. So when Palpatine is attacking the rebel fleet with Force lightening and Rey pops up to try to kill him again, why doesn’t he just keep blowing up x-wings and let her kill him if she wants to, as per the original plan?

Having inexplicably decided to fight Rey, why does Palpatine keep shooting Force lightening after it starts ricocheting and tearing his face off? I mean, I get why he does this in Episode III; he is manipulating Anakin while keeping Mace Windu from decapitating him. But here he’s not trying to manipulate anyone by looking helpless, and, until the last five minutes, getting decapitated by Rey is what he has desired the entire movie.

Luke Skywalker:

If Luke knew that Rey was related to Palpatine, why didn’t he tell her? I seem to recall Luke was displeased when his own Jedi Master concealed his relationship with Darth Vader.

Why, during the many years Luke apparently spent looking for the two MacGuffins that point the way to Planet Sith, did it never occur to him to look in Emperor Palpatine’s room on the Death Star? Shouldn’t combing through that wreckage been one of the first things the New Republic did after the Battle of Endor? Isn’t the Emperor’s sock drawer the first place someone searching for Sith artifacts would think to look?

Kylo Ren:

Speaking of the MacGuffins, if Luke couldn’t find one despite years of looking, how does Kylo Ren track one down so easily? He makes it seems effortless. (Apparently the official companion publications say that Kylo finds MacGuffin 1 on planet Mustafar, inside what used to be Darth Vader’s fortress. So Luke spent years hunting for these things, but didn’t look in Emperor Palpatine’s room or Darth Vader’s house.)

Why does Kylo Ren bring MacGuffin 1 to Rey when he’s trying to stop her from finding MacGuffin 2? His whole deal at that point is forcing her to rely on him to find the Emperor. He even destroys MacGuffin 2 so she can’t possibly use it. So why did he bring another one along with him?

This gets even weirder when you consider that he crashed his first ship earlier in the movie. Are we to understand that Kylo wired the MacGuffin into a ship, crashed that ship, retrieved the MacGuffin from the wreckage, wired it into a new ship, and then flew that ship straight to Rey?

(The two ships do look the same, so I suppose it’s possible that he just has, like, a garage of identical pointy black ships. But then why did he pick the one with a MacGuffin in it to chase Rey? At first I thought maybe he still needed it so he could take them both back to Planet Sith, but later it’s a major plot point that anyone who knows the way can fly there, no MacGuffin required.)

General Pryde:

When General Pryde is watching the rebels ride warthog-horses across the top of his spaceship to break his very important antenna, why does he not just tilt the ship and tip ‘em off?

Lando Calrissian:

Why was Lando on Pasaana, anyway?

How did General Lando recruit an enormous fleet of reinforcements, when all previous rebel distress calls for the past two movies have gone utterly ignored?

Finn:

How did Finn fail to notice an entire extra spaceship? Either the transport he watched Chewbacca get loaded into had already taken off while he was getting Rey and he missed it, or else the one that Rey accidentally blew up was the first to take off and Chewie’s ship was still just sitting there where Finn left it. Either way, how do you miss an extra spaceship in the flat open desert?

Sith Knife Maker:

How did they know the exact shape that the wreckage of the Death Star would make when viewed from a specific cliff with enough accuracy to make a knife with the same outline?

Dead Jedi:

Why wouldn’t they talk to Rey all the earlier times she was trying to get in touch with them? Seems like every Jedi who ever lived was willing to chat at the end of the movie. So what changed?

Rey:

Why symbolically lay Luke and Leia to rest on Tatooine of all places? Luke hated it there, and Leia’s experience of the place primarily consisted of being enslaved to a giant slug monster.

Other:

Why bother pretending to kill Chewbacca when you’re not going to allow the characters to respond to his supposed death before learning that he’s actually still alive?

What narrative purpose is served by taking us to Poe’s planet, introducing us to Poe’s old friends, blowing up Poe’s planet, then quickly revealing that all of Poe’s old friends miraculously survived?

Why tell the audience exactly how C3PO’s sacrifice is going to be reversed before he even makes it? Sure, C3PO thinks R2D2’s memory banks are notoriously unreliable, but the audience knows that’s not true, so it doesn’t even work as a misdirection.

Are there deleted scenes in which Rose gets to actually do anything?

That split-second lesbian kiss at the end lampshading the widely criticized lack of LGBTQ representation in the series, was that a Legend of Korra-type thing where the parent company literally forbade the creatives from doing more, or was that the extent of directorial efforts to address the issue?

Was the entire script reverse-engineered from a checklist of fan service moments?

Is this the most perfunctory event movie I’ve ever seen?

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2019/12/23/things-i-wondered-after-viewing-star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker/ ]

[eugenefischer]

The Joker and John Wick

Todd Phillips’ move The Joker isn’t out yet, but critics have seen it. While many have given it glowing reviews, others have said that it glorifies real-world patterns of violent behavior. Plot synopses have led some to worry the film might normalize the beliefs of the incel community, which has produced several murderers already.

Todd Phillips responded to that criticism in an interview, saying,

The movie still takes place in a fictional world. It can have real-world implications, opinions, but it’s a fictional character in a fictional world that’s been around for 80 years. The one that bugs me more is the toxic white male thing when you go, “Oh, I just saw John Wick 3.” He’s a white male who kills 300 people and everybody’s laughing and hooting and hollering. Why does this movie get held to different standards? It honestly doesn’t make sense to me.

This comment has gotten a lot of attention on Twitter.

I’ve seen some people argue that it’s a faulty comparison because John Wick’s victims provoked him to kill them, by attacking him and killing his dog. Others are saying that Phillips has a good point, and those critical of violence in media shouldn’t get to pick and choose which violence they abjure.

The people who say it’s a bad comparison are correct, but not for the reasons given.

It’s not a bad comparison because of who gets killed, or the motives of the main character. It’s a bad comparison because the movies operate in two different rhetorical modes. Or, to put it another way, because not all fictional worlds are the same.

The John Wick series are solidly action fantasy movies. The copious violence is choreographed and balletic; combination fist/gun/knife/car/axe fights that would be impossible in reality. The main character belongs to an international secret society of genteel super-assassins, with its own baroque customs, currency, and global infrastructure. This is a fictional world that is blatantly unreal. No one worries about John Wick inspiring copycat crimes because it would be literally impossible. Behaving as John Wick does requires living in a world that doesn’t exist.

The Joker, from its marketing and reviews, appears to be working in the rhetorical mode of psychological realism. This is the same mode as a great deal of mainstream literature—fiction which concerns invented but believable people, doing things that didn’t happen but believably could have. Phillips admits this in another interview, saying, “I literally described to Joaquin at one point in those three months as like, ‘Look at this as a way to sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic book film.'” So while the world of The Joker is, as he says, fictional, this depiction of it is striving to be realistic. That’s why people are criticizing it in a way they don’t criticize John Wick.

John Wick 3 valorizes a kind of violence that doesn’t (and can’t) actually happen. The Joker, according to some critics, valorizes a kind of violence that does. Those critics may turn out to be wrong, but they aren’t hypocrites for treating the two movies differently.

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2019/09/26/the-joker-and-john-wick/ ]

[eugenefischer]

Armadillocon 2019 Schedule

If you’ll be in Austin this coming weekend, you can find me at the Omni Southpark hotel for Armadillocon. Here’s my schedule:

Friday, Aug. 2, 5:00 pm — Art of the Short Story — Ballroom F

Saturday, Aug. 3, 8:00 pm — What Sciences Haven’t Been Used in Science Fiction? — Southpark A

Sunday, Aug. 4, 11:30 am — Author Reading — Southpark B

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2019/07/30/armadillocon-2019-schedule/ ]

[eugenefischer]

Online Class on Writing and Selling Short Science Fiction

On August 13th, 7:00-9:30pm CST, I’m teaching an online class through The Writing Barn for people getting started with science fiction short stories. We’ll be talking about elements of craft, as well as how to publish your work. If you are an early career writer of SF, consider signing up!

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2019/07/24/online-class-on-writing-and-selling-short-science-fiction/ ]

[eugenefischer]

Kawhi Has a Great Idea For a Novel, Just Needs You To Write It and Split the Money Fifty-fifty

I mean, not quite. But it’s close. Kawhi Leonard used to have an endorsement deal with Nike. Now he has an endorsement deal with New Balance. Also, Nike and Kawhi are suing each other, both claiming authorship of the logo that was on Kawhi’s stuff from Nike. The linked article has an image:

corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture

A Klawmedy of Errors

—Act 1—

Nike: [Gives Kawhi a swimming pool full of money for seven years of endorsement rights.]

Kawhi: Cool, thanks. Maybe my logo could be, like, my hand, and also my initials, and also the number 2 that I wear on my sports shirt when I am being a professional athlete?

Nike: Sure, we employ designers who can do something with that.

Designer: [Spends years in training, maybe gets a degree in graphic design, builds a portfolio, is hired by Nike to create brand marks that will be worth millions of dollars. Uses this expertise to turn Kawhi’s vague notion into an actual professional logo.]

Nike: Cool, thanks. Here’s your paycheck, we own the logo now.

Designer: Yes, that is my job.

Nike: [Spends more money marketing Kawhi and making the logo recognizable, recoups that money by selling products featuring the logo.]

—ACT 2: Seven Years Later—

Kawhi: The contract for selling products featuring my logo has expired. I am arguably the best at my sport in the world now, so a new contract will require thirty-three swimming pools full of money.

Nike: That is too many swimming pools.

Kawhi: I must leave where I am and go to a new place.

New Balance: [Gives Kawhi all of the of money pools.]

Kawhi: Now New Balance is allowed to sell products featuring the exact logo that Nike paid a designer to create and spent the past seven years marketing.

Nike: Oh Kawhi, you are such a joker.

Nike & Kawhi: [Both laugh because Kawhi made a very good joke. The laughter sounds entirely natural.]

—End—

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[eugenefischer]

2020 Democratic Primary Candidates

There’s a lot of time for my opinion to change, but I want to document where I am right now on the candidates for the Democratic nomination.

Firstly, I will vote for any of these people over Donald Trump. I’ll advocate for a specific platform during the primary, but the 2020 general election is about defeating a GOP that has embraced racist authoritarianism. Any of the Democratic primary candidates is preferable to the wannabe dictator currently in office.

Here’s broadly what I want from the Democratic candidate for President in 2020:

Progressive policies — I want a candidate concerned with causes like income inequality, climate change, universal healthcare, mass incarceration, women’s rights, regulatory capture, a taco truck on every corner, etc.

A meaningful record — even if a candidate’s stated positions are all ones I agree with, I’m disinclined to support them without a record of efficacious action on those positions, preferably on a national scale.

Experience with pre-Trump Washington — there is so much rebuilding to be done in the wake of the Trump administration’s dismantling of governmental structures, I want a candidate already familiar with what has been destroyed.

Preferably not an old white dude.

One of the thresholds for participation in the primary debates is polling at 1% or above in three or more polls. These are my preferences among the candidates currently meeting that threshold:

Elizabeth Warren — She has a long, progressive voting record. Her policy proposals are more detailed than those of the other candidates. In creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she is responsible for more actual redistribution of wealth than anyone else in the race. She has been incredibly consistent and vocal about getting corporate money out of politics. She correctly identifies domestic policy as the origin point for foreign policy. Judging people by their enemies, the financial industry hates her with a special passion. (Note: I have donated to the Warren campaign, largely because I want her to qualify for the primary debates, a result currently in doubt on the fundraising side.)

Bernie Sanders — Has a very lengthy record of progressive policies and votes. Unabashedly identifies as a democratic socialist. Supports most of the same policies as Warren, and co-sponsors legislation with her. Has the drawback of being an old white dude. Has a poorly-behaved fan club.

Kamala Harris — Good, though short, voting record in the Senate. Is in favor of the Green New Deal, expanding the earned income tax credit, increasing teacher salaries, decriminalizing marijuana. Said good things during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. But her record as Attorney General of California is troubling.

Kirsten Gillibrand — Has a good voting record, but no stark policy positions. Most notable for championing #MeToo.

Amy Klobuchar — Fairly mainstream liberal politics. Good on women’s issues, statehood for Washington D.C. Is reportedly verbally and sometimes physically abusive to her employees.

Cory Booker — Seems like a nice guy, but is overly cosy with pharmaceutical companies and the finance industry. Likes charter schools. Fairly centrist.

Julián Castro — He was the Mayor of San Antonio, my hometown, and then HUD Secretary. He’s fine, though doesn’t have a lot of policy substance, and has no national voting record. After he gave the keynote speech at the DNC in 2012 it seemed like he wanted to be Hispanic Obama, but the moment passed him by.

Beto O’Rourke — I voted for him for the Senate, as he’s massively preferable to Ted Cruz. He’s socially liberal in some laudable ways. But his voting record in the House is more conservative than average for a Democrat; in last two years he’s been in the top fifth of congressmen voting against their party’s majority position. He’s campaigning on an outmoded idea of bipartisan appeal. A Washington Post profile makes him seem like kind of a jerk to his family.

Joe Biden — Old white dude who proudly identifies as a moderate. Senate voting record is not remotely progressive. Oversaw the Anita Hill hearings. Openly disdains Millennials. Running primarily on Obama-era nostalgia.

Pete Buttigieg — No national record at all. This reading of his book makes him seem like a centrist elitist pretending to be a progressive populist.

Andrew Yang — No political record at all. Supporter of universal basic income, but with few clear policy details. Tech startup guy. Weirdly obsessed with malls. Disturbingly favored by the alt-right.

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2019/04/09/2020-democratic-primary-candidates/ ]

[eugenefischer]

¡Gracias, Manu!

My favorite basketball player ever is getting his jersey retired by the Spurs tonight. There will be a ceremony after the game against the Cavaliers, and I fully expect to get weepy watching.

Here’s a page on nba.com about his remarkable career, with testimonials from teammates and coaches. Here’s another with video retrospectives of key moments. ESPN put up a clip about how he changed the game by popularizing the euro-step. The classic article about him is probably still Zach Lowe’s “Welcome to Manu’s Basketball Familia,” well worth revisiting. And evergreen is Michael Lewis’s aside about Manu in his 2009 piece on Shane Battier and basketball statistics, “The No-Stats All-Star:”

The San Antonio Spurs’ Manu Ginóbili is a statistical freak: he has no imbalance whatsoever in his game — there is no one way to play him that is better than another. He is equally efficient both off the dribble and off the pass, going left and right and from any spot on the floor.

I saw him for the first time in 2002, in person, at a Spurs game I attended with my high school girlfriend. He came off the bench and was immediately enthralling. I was screaming “Ginobili!”—a name I had to find on the roster to figure out who #20 was—before the game was done. He continued to amaze me for the next sixteen years.

What I loved most about him was that, while among the most creative and unpredictable players in the league, his intelligence wasn’t limited to basketball. Off the court he was curious and engaged, an inquisitive soul who would educate teammates about the placebo effect, engage his twitter followers on amateur astronomy, and write ecotourism articles. He was the first player I ever heard use the phrase “regression to the mean” during a postgame interview, and in a more statistically advanced NBA culture he would have been a perennial All-Star despite coming off the bench.

His willingness to give up individual stats for the good of the team, when he could have been James Harden before James Harden, remains one of the most astonishingly selfless things I’ve ever known an elite athlete to do. In his prime Manu was one of the very best basketball players in the world—he lead the Argentinian national team to the Olympic gold medal over Team USA, the only time another country has won gold in basketball since NBA players started competing in 1992. But he legitimately cared about winning more than individual accolades, something many stars claim but few demonstrate. It’s impossible to imagine Kobe Bryant sacrificing individual stats for the good of the team, but Manu (whose per-minute productivity was just as good) spent his whole career doing just that. It limited his awards, his earnings, the public perception of his talent, but it got him the thing he wanted most: through sixteen NBA seasons he won 72.1% of the games he played, the highest percentage in league history for players with over 1000 career games.

There’s never been a player I had more faith in with a game on the line. For my whole adult life I’ve gotten to watch Manu Ginobili do whatever it took to get the win. Timely steals, impossible passes, contortionist layups, game-sealing blocks, and buzzer-beater threes. Where Tim Duncan was steady and unshakable, Manu was the perennial X-factor, turning himself into exactly what the Spurs needed over and over again. When we thought we’d seen everything, he’d invent something new. The only sure thing was that, whatever he did, it would be remarkable. Popovich put it best:

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2019/03/28/gracias-manu/ ]

[eugenefischer]

Online SF Workshop at The Writing Barn in 2019

I’m teaching another class for The Writing Barn. This one will be a six week writing workshop for science fiction and fantasy. It runs weekly from March 21 through April 25. Here’s the description:

Are you a writer who dreams of other worlds? Fantasy and science fiction stories let us leave realism behind to explore new viewpoints and experiences. They offer storytelling tools to match the infinite possibilities of the imagination. Learn how to use those tools in this six-week course, where author and educator Eugene Fischer will lead students in workshopping stories and examining the mechanics of genre. Whether you’re just getting started or polishing work for publication, this class will help you bring your worlds to life.

If you want to be one of the fifteen students workshopping with me in the spring of 2019, you can sign up here.

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2018/11/26/online-sf-workshop-at-the-writing-barn-in-2019/ ]

[eugenefischer]

2018 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Anthology: The New Voices of Fantasy

I woke up to the lovely news that The New Voices of Fantasy has won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology!

Congratulations to Jacob Weisman and Peter S. Beagle and everyone at Tachyon for creating this wonderful book, and to all the other authors whose stories made it such a delight.

If you want a copy of this newly award-winning anthology, which includes my short story “My Time Among the Bridge Blowers,” head on over to Tachyon’s site and pick one up. 

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2018/11/05/2018-world-fantasy-award-winner-for-best-anthology-the-new-voices-of-fantasy/ ]

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Scintillation 2018

Above is the view from my hotel window on the 45th floor. I’m in Toronto, en route to Scintillation in Montreal. It’s my first time in the city and I’ll soon be heading out to explore. But for anyone else headed to Montreal this weekend, here’s my con schedule:

Saturday, 2:30 pm — Reading

Saturday, 9:00 pm — Panel: So What’s a Short Story, Anyway?

Sunday, 11:00 am — Panel: Our Real Influences and Why We Lie

Sunday, 4:00 pm — Panel: Where Are the Books Like Pandemic?

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2018/10/02/scintillation-2018/ ]

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Long article on Bryce Milligan’s treatment of Hailey Johnson, Denise McVea, and Gabrielle Marcus

The front page of the San Antonio Express News today carries Lauren Caruba’s article “Unwelcomed Inspiration: Women recount disturbing encounters with SA’s ‘muse poet.'” I was interviewed for and am quoted in the piece, as are my parents and several other of his former students. If you want a thorough overview of his years of skeevy behavior toward young women, this is the link for you.

I recently heard that his house in the King William district is now on the market. Wherever he’s headed next, may his reputation precede him.

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2018/08/19/long-article-on-bryce-milligans-treatment-of-hailey-johnson-denise-mcvea-and-gabrielle-marcus/ ]

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Class on Writing and Selling Short Science Fiction at The Writing Barn

On September 13 at 7:00 pm CST I’ll be teaching an online class on writing and selling short science fiction for The Writing Barn. This is a course for writers new to science fiction publishing, and will examine topics of both craft and commerce. If that sounds up your alley, click through and sign up! You might also want to check out the many other classes that The Writing Barn offers, ranging from half-day events like mine to full, six-week courses.

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2018/08/11/class-on-writing-and-selling-short-science-fiction-at-the-writing-barn/ ]

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My GenCon Schedule

GenCon is coming up in a few days, and I’m going to be there. Here’s my programming schedule. Last time I checked the first two were sold out, but there were still tickets available for the rest.

Thursday

12:00 PM Boston Artificial Intelligence and Speculative Fiction 1:00 PM Atlanta Convincing Aliens 4:00 PM Atlanta Using the Scientific Method in Spec Fic

Saturday

12:00 PM Boston Dealing with Professional Envy 3:00 PM Ballrooms 3-4 The Long and Short of Fiction

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2018/07/30/my-gencon-schedule/ ]

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WisCon 42 and the Tiptree Award

WisCon 42 has come and gone without my writing about it, but it was a lovely time. After spending a year on the Tiptree jury I intentionally kept my schedule for this con programming-light. I ran a fiction workshop again, something I always enjoy, and did two panels talking about the process of judging the Tiptree and the works we selected for various honors. I got to reconnect with several friends, including Nueva Madre translator and current Tiptree Award juror Arrate Hidalgo, and longtime con buddy Brit Mandelo whom I hadn’t seen in several years. Much missed though were many friends and WisCon regulars who were unable to attend this year. At the end of the weekend I played a role in the award ceremony for Virginia Bergin, pictured above with her commissioned art piece and flanked by myself and 2017 jury chair Alexis Lothian. Virginia is a delight, and getting to know her was a highlight of my con. I hope I get to see her in Madison again in the future. Her winning book comes out in the United States in November from Sourcebooks under the title The XY.

[via WordPress https://www.eugenefischer.com/2018/06/04/wiscon-42-and-the-tiptree-award/ ]