Well, he is not really that old. He's 65. He could use some exercise though.. For his own health of course, not that I am selfish. :unsure:
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Well, he is not really that old. He's 65. He could use some exercise though.. For his own health of course, not that I am selfish. :unsure:
As long as it was done right. By that I mean the way that Christopher Tolkien did with the Silmarilion and Children of Hurin. He has meticulously released all of the notes his father left behind and written detailed explanations for why he made the choices he made when compiling them into a workable book. It is a transparaent project and I can respect the finished product.
The flip side would be the Hacks Twain that churn out al those crap McDune books. They claimed they found a stockpile of FH's notes, but refuse to make any of them public and release a series of lackluster cash-in books that are obviously not what FH was intending and in many ways go against the core of what Dune was about.
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Er... if KJA= Kevin J. Anderson, then shouldn't it be Frank's notes they supposedly found? Frank Herbert clearly didn't expect Dune to get that big.
Indeed it should, I'll correct it. Talking about McDune has a way of clouding my mind.
Indeed it should, I'll correct it. Talking about McDune has a way of clouding my mind.
Indeed. My friend got 1 or 2 of the BH/KJA books which were published earlier, and he.... didn't have a good impression of them.
Anyway, on Christopher and his father's works, it is a bit mind-numbing that a son can spent his entire lifetime editing and publishing his father's unpublished stuff. John had a high standard (apparently what stopped him from publishing more during his lifetime), but... yeah.
Technically speaking, in US Copyright law it does not matter whether or not someone is making money. It's copyright infringement even if no money is made. There are a total of four factors that courts use to determine whether or not something is fair use, the relevant one here is 17 USC § 107(4):
"the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
The keyword there is potential. The copyright holder does not have to have exploited the market in question or even considered doing so. What that means is that if GRRM could make money off of a grand strategy GOT game he could argue that an unlicensed user mod would have a negative effect on that game's potential market and value.
Of course, that someone is actually making money off of infringement is what often triggers the ire of copyright holders and triggers the lawyers to act. One reason for that is that copyright holders often don't think its fair that others make money of their works. Another reason is a practical legal reason. Copyright holders have the burden of proof that an infringement negatively effects their potential market. When money is being made, it makes their case much easier to prove in court.
Sorry, just an attorney and copyright nerd's opinion of what is going on. The bottom line is that as most people know most authors don't sue fans for fan created work even when and if they could. It just normally doesn't make good PR or financial sense. But, when those fans start earning money from the copyright infringements, a C and D letter is likely coming at some point.
Feast massacres are a very common event in world history, really. It certainly would be a fine addition - maybe something a Cruel or Ruthless ruler could do when inviting people to a Feast?
It is common, but most instigators will be able to pull it off once only. Word of such deeds do tend to spread far and wide, not to mention the embellishments along the way.
Even modern history, our fearless leader likes to launch drone strikes at wedding feasts.
I wonder if they will get nicknames like "cruel", "greedy", "liar" and so on in the future...
But we seem to have gotten away from the tendency to give monarchs nicknames in the past few centuries. I mean "Honest Abe" is basically the only historic American president where I could use the nickname in general conversation and expect someone to have a clue who I was talking about. Maybe more recent ones people will remember nicknames for, but do you really expect in a few decades people will hear "Slick Willy" or "Dubya" and associate them with Clinton or Bush?
Most leaders get used to being called names (I could give you an earful of expletives about Bush the Lesser at the drop of a hat); they don't tend to last in popular memory. How many people who aren't history buffs remember "His Fraudulency" Rutherford B. Hayes?
It's perfectly understandable for his writing style. He's (boy, I keep bringing this up a lot on debates lately) a very improvisational writer from what he has revealed in interviews, not really a plotter. That means that he has a lot of information and ideas in his head that he just wouldn't be able to do justice by putting them on paper. I know many writers who work the same way, and it's always troubling for them to hear alternate takes on their stories because all the 'what ifs' are mostly things they themselves have already argued about with themselves, crossed off, and never want to hear again so they don't influence their own creative process.
In addition, from his point of view he is also right about it being poor practice. Improvisational writers are focused on crafting a great world first and foremost, and style and technique are secondary. Therefore, taking someone else's setting achieves little in making a better writer from that point of view. I very much sympathize and agree to an extent.
I write more or less the same way so I get where he's coming from at least. Though I tend to prefer hearing alternate takes on things myself because others will always notice something that I missed. Granted I'm only doing it for roleplay with others and not for commercial releases.
I write more or less the same way so I get where he's coming from at least. Though I tend to prefer hearing alternate takes on things myself because others will always notice something that I missed. Granted I'm only doing it for roleplay with others and not for commercial releases.
True, that kind of comes down to how secure you are as a writer and how confident in your own setting - I think for him it's less the worry that he might be influenced and really more the opposition to fan fiction on principle, which I suppose is a stance that one can take, even if I don't entirely agree.
Given something that was linked earlier(or was it elsewhere...), I think it's at least partially to avoid lawsuits. It happened to another author who used to be friendly towards fanfiction...