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njc wrote:Then you should like George MacDonald.
Still, the subject of contemporary fantasy and its state of actual nothingness is avoided. Any Christian apologetics written a century and a half ago is not on point. You might as well suggest C.S. Lewis Narnia which also rests upon an established doctrine of already accepted principles - not truly what I mean by 'fantasy' which must exist within an aether of incomprehensibility composed by a rational author-guide.
Charles_F_Bell wrote:njc wrote:Science Fiction and Fantasy both rest on the writer's creation of an alternate world,
All fine. But my objection is to the co-opting of the word 'fantasy' to mean something that it is not and thereby leaving no place for writers of fantasy, as it really means, to go to sell their stories. One may suggest that such stories of fantasy -- perhaps we might mean something along the lines of Jacobean farce, but updated, Gulliver's Travels, Alice in Wonderland, etc. -- are of an extinct art form or even that books and art have little to do with each other any more, but culture which has settled into set genres is itself a dying culture
njc wrote:Within these 'sub-created' worlds, the characters, with such burdens and powers as they may have, are human enough that stories about them can be understood and appreciated with the same facilities and faculties that are employed when reading stories about human beings.
And I suppose that is what I object to most. It's dressing up the same boring plots and themes.
njc wrote:Science Fiction and Fantasy both rest on the writer's creation of an alternate world,
All fine. But my objection is to the co-opting of the word 'fantasy' to mean something that it is not and thereby leaving no place for writers of fantasy, as it really means, no place to go to sell their stories. One may suggest that such stories of fantasy -- perhaps we might mean something along the lines of Jacobean farce, but updated, Gulliver's Travels, Alice in Wonderland, etc. -- are of an extinct art form or even that books and art have little to do with each other any more, but culture which has settled into set genres is itself a dying culture
njc wrote:Within these 'sub-created' worlds, the characters, with such burdens and powers as they may have, are human enough that stories about them can be understood and appreciated with the same facilities and faculties that are employed when reading stories about human beings.
And I suppose that is what I object to most. It's dressing up the same boring plots and themes.
vern wrote:Charles Bell wrote:By the way, given that 'fantasy' means : "imagination unrestricted by reality"
Charles Bell wrote:What do you guess has happened since the 17th century that has made writing fantasy impossible
According to the definition you provide, exactly how is writing fantasy impossible? Take care. Vern
I did not say or imply what you say I did. I consider my Remembrances and Reconciliation a romance-fantasy to a degree beyond what I have read on TNBW in "romance" and "fantasy" categories, though John Hamler is making an undisciplined approach to fantasy. The question I asked is more in tune with "why do not writers and readers today, for the past two centuries or so, appreciate fantasy?" Or even better - why isn't Homer's Iliad to modern readers the best 'fantasy' ever written? Why is the commercial genre "fantasy" - magic and dragons? Even if magic and dragons is to most people "of imagination unrestricted to reality"-- that they do not actually exist -- authors and readers want them very nearly plausible. The plot premise of Remembrances and Reconciliation is not only implausible but impossible and for that it is likely to be condemned rather praised for being fantasy.
njc wrote:That will depend on your definition of Fantasy, and of your standards for writing. Do you consider George MacDonald's novels Fantasy? What about Zelazny's two Amber series? The multiple modern reworkings of King Arthur? How about LeGuin's EarthSea series? I'm partial to Elizabeth Willey's three-volume series, but it's out of favor and out of print. Still, for anyone who's read it: is it Fantasy?
How about Dracula? It's horror, but it could also be called Fantasy.
I thought of Earthsea as fantasy when I read the books as a teen, but I'd have to read them again to judge as I do today. I remember an implausibility factor like Gulliver's Travels and Tristram Shandy and relation to satire/social commentary that today's "fantasy" does not have. Stoker, Lovecraft - horror, and I would put Lovecraft in fantasy/horror but with no relation to satire/social commentary (that is to say: entertainment with little literary merit beyond excellent use of words). To answer my own question as to why modern writers do not write fantasy is to say commercial fiction is now bound too tightly to scientific materialism and naturalism to be real fantasy. In this latter sense, Atlas Shrugged is "fantasy" but also not because Rand made the fiction too plausible, but her deliberate literary style to reject naturalism (in favor of a neo-romanticism) makes it closer to fantasy than contemporary 'fantasy' is. Of MacDonald and Zelanzy which single book I could read do you suppose makes your point?
njc wrote:Yes well, Gulliver's Travels was Fantasy. It also made a number of points. The same could be said of Dante's Inferno.
Other than Tolkien, who has written fantasy since?
njc wrote:Fantasy that has no rules and no boundaries doesn't go over well. The rules must be made, and any changes must be reveals of things already heralded. At some point, I'm going to have to explain how Kirsey does at least some of the things he does. But I've established that there is a mechanism to sorcery in my story and I have to stick with that, even if it means that certain things go unexplained. These must serve as the axioms of the system.
The nearest thing to 'anything goes' is probably the arguably SciFi Dr. Who, in which each story (and especially the novels) seems to select a different subset of rules. But the stories did sell.
Dr. Who is just dumb, campy sci-fi as much as Superman is. Not that that is not entertaining, but so are pratfalls and fart jokes. What do you guess has happened since the 17th century that has made writing fantasy impossible. Tolkien, or perhaps Christian medievalism generally, is in category on its own- in many ways also not real fantasy, too.
njc wrote:In the case stated, 'Pa' as a diminutive of 'Patrocles', it is a separate word and a proper noun, a homonym (and likely homophone) of 'pa'. If the rules of that family would allow the son of James to address James as Jim, then you are right. But if it does not, then 'my pa' uses the common noun, not its special-case homonym, even if they are also homophones.
Perhaps from the author's omniscient POV, but in those inline reviews for which the reader-reviewer does not read the whole story first to survey the story but digs right in to catch five grammatical mistakes -- I know this never happens, but suppose it might -- he will see "Your Pa has been kidnapped." and nails that bad author. Even from your acceptance of 'Pa' here as a proper noun, how can it be so easily spotted as such from "Your Pa has been kidnapped."? Suppose the author never explains overtly that 'Patroclus' is a honorific in that long form the character (referent to 'your') never uses, but he always uses 'Pa' , like Sal Mineo's wife never used 'Salvatore', while at the same time 'Pa' is his father thereby being the homophone you suggest. Is such a fantasy of unexplained mystery too cruel to the reader?
njc wrote:I don't know where I found Dan Koboldt's site but Google didn't find the site name here, so I'm guessing it was somewhere else. There are a lot of articles--over 60--on everything from viruses to the history of warfare and medieval occupations open to women. They're not very deep, but they seem good enough to make the writer smarter. And it looks like a new article is added every few weeks.
By the way, given that 'fantasy' means : "imagination unrestricted by reality" who needs the fantasy world to be realistic? Or debunking those things in 'fantasy' as impossible, but in which people may believe nevertheless, is pointless, right? So that, in reality, a world suffering from 'climate change' going from catastrophe to catastrophe a century hence is 'fantasy' and not sci-fi, and the sci-fi on the same subject of climate events a century hence is a story of how it is now, and no catastrophe, pretty much the same.
njc wrote:Actually, I didn't learn that rule in school. I did learn to respect and appreciate grammar and punctuation, and anyone who's been a victim of one of my reviews can tell you I use the knowledge freely.
Oh Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be commas ...
It's easy enough to remember as child learning the English language that 'your ma' is not capitalized but plain 'Ma' is. The stated rule is a complicated generalization not so easily remembered.
Suppose a father's name is 'Patroclus,' would his son call him 'his Pa' or 'his pa'? Salvatore "Sal" Mineo's wife might have called him 'her Sal', right? So Pa's son's father is 'his Pa' to him. Therefore, the rule is wrong, and the son's pa, Pa, and his son are right.
TirzahLaughs wrote:Charles_F_Bell wrote:njc wrote:If you bring dough to a baker, and pay him to bake it, and then sell the resulting bread or pastry, and if that bread or pastry turns out to be harmful, is the baker to be held responsible when what he contributed was not harmful?
Yes. It can be a hard case to make, but it can be done. Just as matter of right and wrong, why would/should a baker just take your word on its contents? Moreover, a more accurate analogy is -- like Amazon/KDP facilitates the purchase (in every way) and essentially puts its name on it, the baker holds and sells your cake in his store with a sign: Created by John Smith but baked right here by expert hands. They must therefore share responsibility.
Its more like you rented the kitchen from the professional baker. You made cookies. Your cookies gave people belly aches because you put cabbage in them. The baker is not responsible that a cookie eater got a belly ache for eating cabbage cookies. He rented the kitchen. HE's not tasting the cookies or even giving a recipe. He just has minimum use requirements for his kitchen.
In the same way Amazon is giving a writer a platform with minimum usage instructions. You can make cabbage cookies or chocolate chip...but Amazon has nothing do with the quality of the product...only the format.
No. Nothing is being 'rented' from Amazon. The author and his publisher, Amazon, share profit from the book published, distributed, and sold by Amazon. That Amazon is careless in not exercising any editorial control is its problem here - no intention of harm to third-party entities but intentionally negligent with known decreased costs and increased profit like GM intentionally and with full knowledge for over a decade installed malfunctioning from poor design, not 'defective,' ignition switches in many of its models.
njc wrote:Charles_F_Bell wrote:"To hold third parties responsible who have no involvement in the speech" -- but they do, and in a far broader way than the assumption they are just photocopiers.
If you bring dough to a baker, and pay him to bake it, and then sell the resulting bread or pastry, and if that bread or pastry turns out to be harmful, is the baker to be held responsible when what he contributed was not harmful?
Yes. It can be a hard case to make, but it can be done. Just as matter of right and wrong, why would/should a baker just take your word on its contents? Moreover, a more accurate analogy is -- like Amazon/KDP facilitates the purchase (in every way) and essentially puts its name on it, the baker holds and sells your cake in his store with a sign: Created by John Smith but baked right here by expert hands. They must therefore share responsibility.
njc wrote:The question of defamatory speech bears little legal resemblance to the question of responsibility for damage due to a release from a well, nor to the question of keeping and bearing arms for self-defense. On the latter question, I suggest you read the opinion(s) (including concurrences and dissents) on both the Heller and MacDonald cases.
The implication of your response re: Congress ban on tortious negligence against gun manufacturers is false, and President Bush and Congress saved the gun industry from death by lawsuit (irrespective of the later Heller and MacDonald decisions), as indeed eventually the alternative publishing industry would have to seek such a legislative ban on its tortious negligence liability eventually in spite of some early success in court, but I suggest that the individual right to keep and bear arms is constitutional and the right to defame and plagiarise is not.
"The harm from a spill is evident and demonstrable" is not relevant - it is only to include the deeper pockets of a segment of an industry that is refusing to take responsibility for checking defamation, plagiarism. etc. because it obviously would be expensive for them to do.
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"To hold third parties responsible who have no involvement in the speech" -- but they do, and in a far broader way than the assumption they are just photocopiers.
njc wrote:The PLCAA was written to block lawsuits which would probably be lost in court, but which would be very expensive to defend, especially if brought en masse. This decision is more akin to holding a bus company harmless if one of its passengers uses the trip to approach a place he is going to rob.
Tobacco suits were losing until state legislatures passed laws to allow them to win. Ditto for gun-manufacturing. The magnificent defense of the U.S. Constitution, and the right of the individual to keep and bear arms, was accomplished this one and only time by President George W. Bush and the GOP Congress versus an activist judiciary and -- with the defense of this country to create a period of 7+ years in which no civilian American was ever killed by a jihadist after 9/11 -- was a great accomplishment.
TirzahLaughs wrote:Charles_F_Bell wrote:njc wrote:The court's view was that because Amazon et al do not exercise any editorial control whatsoever, suing the platform would be like suing the owner of a self-service copy machine.
I'd say that any other decision would have destroyed the Indie publishing marketplace, because nobody could do a print run without exercising editorial control. The freedom-of-speech and freedom of the press implications are larger. Freedom of the press, it is commonly said, belongs to those who own one. In practice, that means one who owns or rents one. But who will offer one for rent if he will be held responsible for the words peinted?
That Amazon et al. don't exercise editorial control within their publishing empires is like saying BP et al. don't exercise control over where crude oil may go into the ocean.
Yes, indeed, blameless lying, stealing, and malicious action might not "destroy" a sector of the economy which holds itself above all that expensive self-policing action.
In my head, the judge had no choice but to rule what he did. Amazon is not guaranteeing anything about their Print on Demand other than they require the author to format it within specs. They make the writer promise that all materials belong to them. They are not responsible if the writer lies...as they are not a publisher, not really.
Sure, if indeed BP had been given the power through the judiciary to excuse themselves, or those contractors working in their behalf, from bad behavior... they're not oil-spill cleaners, after all. They drill it up and distribute just like Amazon "prints" it up and distributes it. Negligence is negligence, and no one can create and sign contracts to abolish any and all responsibility.
njc wrote:As to various forms dying in a generation, that may happen in the hands of the shrinking number of traditional publishers, but the success of authors such as those of the Mad Genius Club suggests that a market will remain.
Like defending rap/hip-hop as being a kind of music.
njc wrote:The publishing platform services are not publishers because they do not select or reject manuscripts based on content.
They are publishers who do not select or reject manuscripts based on content. It is fair for government to entertain negligent torts against entities which profit by their negligence. "You signed a contract that allows us to not give a damn about harm by you to others we have facilitated." is not a valid contract. Remember that Congress had to specify in law that gun manufacturers are except from civil suit as for any harmful purpose of gun ownership. ]The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act], so if Jeff Bezos's K street lawyers want such exemption, they can work on Congress, for there is not a chance he will succeed on up the court system, but for now the little guy with his little grievance against some jerk improperly using his property suffers.
njc wrote:Take a look at #mswl where agents present their 'wish lists'. It's loaded with calls for the fad de jour. How large is the market, really, for transgendered lesbian vampire fiction?
That's a different topic. I predict the 'novel' and substantive short story will be dead in the next generation.
njc wrote:In addition, this court decision does not only benefit Amazon and B&N's indie platform, but Smashwords and any similar platforms.
Comparison of today's self-publishing/vanity press to "one step beyond photocopying" is a facile argument. The author does not pay a "printer" to print his manuscript in book format and then toss it up on the corner for sale (old vanity press). They fully distribute, store, and provide limited marketing and full selling services. How is that not being publishers even if, as noted, they offer the author more liberal retention rights? Because an author may have two publishers in BN and Amazon does not absolve either of traditional publishing responsibilities on content.
njc wrote:The court's view was that because Amazon et al do not exercise any editorial control whatsoever, suing the platform would be like suing the owner of a self-service copy machine.
I'd say that any other decision would have destroyed the Indie publishing marketplace, because nobody could do a print run without exercising editorial control. The freedom-of-speech and freedom of the press implications are larger. Freedom of the press, it is commonly said, belongs to those who own one. In practice, that means one who owns or rents one. But who will offer one for rent if he will be held responsible for the words peinted?
That Amazon et al. don't exercise editorial control within their publishing empires is like saying BP et al. don't exercise control over where crude oil may go into the ocean.
Yes, indeed, blameless lying, stealing, and malicious action might not "destroy" a sector of the economy which holds itself above all that expensive self-policing action.
Janet Taylor-Perry wrote:Actually makes sense.
...if you think government giving an economic-competitive edge to one entity over another in the same business makes sense. Amazon, etc. can now act like and make money like publishers but not have the same liability and responsibilities. Even if as a consumer, that is my preference -- just like sales taxes are often not collected through online stores versus always from brick-and-mortar stores -- when corporations with banks of lawyers and lobbyists say: all we want is what is best for the consumer, they are lying, and when the judiciary claims it is just being 'fair,' acting according to the rule of law, and not 'arbitrary' (as it may need to be from time to time) it is no less oligarchic than any planation owner of old.
Temple Wang wrote:Let's hope this doesn't trigger a rant from our resident misogynist and Drumph acolyte...
Having eaten all of the stray cats in her palace, Empress Wu returns among the peasants to teach us modesty.
njc wrote:Charles_F_Bell wrote:njc wrote:Newton showed that the laws of physics in the sky are the same as those on earth; I'm arguing (on much less rigorous grounds, to be sure) that our learning of people-society-culture is of the same kind as our learning of hard-soft-hot-cold-safe-dangerous.
...
As a generality, I disagree, but my reasoning is from a complicated understanding that there is in reality no such thing as determinism -- except within a narrow context of classical physics -- which is why you'd have to reach out to Newton to support your assertion. Every horror of Man against man is brought by thinking that all we have to do is teach the individual that X is wrong, even if we have to kill him in the process. ...
Whether X (where X is nothing like landing a lunar module) is a right or wrong thing to do can be ascertained by looking through the prism of morality and not utility, and 'morality' is to an individual's actions as kinetics is to an individual molecules's actions.
I'm not sure I know how to evaluate your last claim, so all I'll say is that I wasn't addressing that point. I was addressing how we learn in the two realms, and to what degree the methods and mechanisms are comparable--if they are at all. I believe, on the basis of subjective experience and the Principle of Parsimony, that to a large degree they are. But of formal proof I have none. (Argument by analogy is an important mode of legal argument, and I believe it also plays a role in much moral reasoning, particularly in in considering what is just in a particular circumstance.)
Implicit in my point (but not occult) is that learning matters, ie. that morality and social regard of others is largely learned behavior.
The hardest part to fathom is the moral sense not the rules is not learned behavior -- like language. Trained in socialist thinking, or rather prior to the 18th century, neo-Platonic, so many people believe that neither language nor any moral sense is intricately woven into the brain, not in any intrinsic way; i.e., in toto intact from birth, but of an inevitable working of the brain from birth to 18-24 mos. The particulars of communication of all concepts, whether of morality or utility, can and will be intersubjectively exchanged so long as the brain is functioning normally. Those are by the rules of intersubjective communication, first in language, then in everything else. However, if there is so much of the mind, including the private language itself, that works on its own irrespective of any teaching (purposeful intersubjective communication), teaching lies on the periphery of human existence, not the forefront. I therefore then make the leap that a culture of the taught is a dying or dead culture.
njc wrote:I will indulge in a parting shot, then, and suggest that rejecting my analogies also rejects the idea that people learn about people by mechanisms alike to those by which they learn about things.
To those who might still be listening, I ask whether there is so great a sacred-profane divide between our human environment and our physical environment that our learning processes of them must have nothing in common.
Newton showed that the laws of physics in the sky are the same as those on earth; I'm arguing (on much less rigorous grounds, to be sure) that our learning of people-society-culture is of the same kind as our learning of hard-soft-hot-cold-safe-dangerous.
As a generality, I disagree, but my reasoning is from a complicated understanding that there is in reality no such thing as determinism -- except within a narrow context of classical physics -- which is why you'd have to reach out to Newton to support your assertion. Every horror of Man against man is brought by thinking that all we have to do is teach the individual that X is wrong, even if we have to kill him in the process. After all, we teach a lunar module to land with sufficient efficacious precision, don't we?
Whether X (where X is nothing like landing a lunar module) is a right or wrong thing to do can be ascertained by looking through the prism of morality and not utility, and 'morality' is to an individual's actions as kinetics is to an individual molecules's actions.
Dill Carver wrote:Charles_F_Bell wrote:Dill Carver wrote:Okay I’ll get digging, but please understand that my understanding of racism is;
A person who believes that a particular race is superior to another.
No. A black person may just feel he doesn't like white people generally; and vice-versa.
However, a fictional white lawyer may feel superior to black folk because he is as far he knows better educated and cultured, and as for any other people who are neither white nor male, they could be equal but also the exceptions which prove the rule.
That is the philosophy of scepticism in your thinking that definitions are subjective and the very foundation for the political-philosophy behind racism. You are a racist because you think like a racist who by no reasonable definition must think one race is superior to another race..
Brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers endorses Trump
So, my understanding of racism is a 'no'.
That is correct. Racism is a prejudice of an individual based on that individual's race. That's it.
Dill Carver wrote:A person who believes that a particular race is superior to another.
A white supremacist or black supremacism are based upon non-racist ideologies?
Your understanding of 'racism' is so blithely incorrect as to force you to use a completely different word-concept to cover up your error. In point of fact, 'supremacism' has nothing to do with racism, per se, or certainly, one needs to particularize the term to its context, such as a Jew/Roman Catholic/Muslim who thinks his people of their faith are the chosen people of God is a supremacist.
Dill Carver wrote:Yes, I see that now.
I'm sure that you don't.
njc wrote:So if I grow up surrounded by black people who are the product--or wreckage--of inner city schools, and I am surprised to find a black doctor in the emergency room, who rapidly computes dosage for a body weight and reels off alternative drugs and their side effects like the street kids name their half-brothers, am I a racist, or just exhibiting the limits of my experience?
If you believe any social-determinist political propositions, which is to say, all sociology-derived truisms, yes, you'd be surprised and basically a racist, like all sociologists.
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