ARE SPACE JOYRIDES JUSTIFIABLE?

Courtesy of Blue Origin

Space tourism is an expensive game, the playing field of billionaires. We witnessed the proof of that in recent weeks as first Richard Branson rode his Virgin Galactic space plane VSS Unity to the edge of space, 53 miles (85 km.) above the Earth on July 11th, and then Amazon’s Jeff Bezos traveled 66 miles up (106 km.) on July 20th in the first of his Blue Origin company’s New Shepard spacecraft to carry humans. The fact that both billionaires traveled aboard the first flights of their respective craft to such heights is either an exceptional testimony to their faith in their companies’ technology or, if you’re a cynic, a powerhouse marketing ploy. Now Virgin Galactic is selling seats aboard future flights at a quarter million dollars each, while Blue Origin may send up two more tourist trips this year at an unspecified price tag (but there are reports of tickets auctioned off at $28 million).

Were Branson and Bezos hailed as heroes? Maybe by some, but there was also immediate loud and high-profile criticism of the joyrides with the predictable message that the money could be better spent helping to fight climate change or any of the other serious environmental or humanitarian crises you could name. And Bezos bombed big-time with his remark before his flight thanking Amazon customers and his (reportedly badly underpaid) Amazon employees for making his flight possible.

So, the question is, are such joyrides by the world’s wealthiest justified?

First of all, as long as capitalism remains our predominant financial system, we’ll have billionaires. In fact, the gap between the planet’s richest and poorest citizens continues to grow. And if money burns a hole in the pockets of anybody who has it, how much more true is that of those who have more than they could ever possibly need? So billionaires will blow big money on big toys and projects that many will consider foolish. If you don’t like billionaires and their lavish spending habits, you’ll have to change the system.

Having said that, is space travel a boondoggle, wasteful and worthless?

Well, the benefits of space tourism might not be immediately apparent (though its supporters hope it will inspire future generations), but it is a means to fund other, more productive, space-related efforts. Branson hopes Virgin Galactic’s spaceplanes can develop into an alternate form of high-speed business travel. Bezos is a proponent of moving polluting industries like chemical manufacturing and energy production off the planet. We already know that many manufacturing processes, including the making of pharmaceutical products, can be done with much greater efficiency in the low gravity of Earth orbit with its abundance of solar energy. That list of potential space industries will grow exponentially as the cost of lifting materiel and personnel out of Earth’s gravity well decreases. And that decrease in cost is why Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX company have put so much effort into developing reusable rocket boosters that can land safely and reliably.

As I’ve mentioned more than once, we need to explore and exploit space beyond Earth.

We owe it to our planet: The more we can move polluting industries out of our fragile ecosystem, and the less we have to ravage the Earth’s surface for diminishing mineral and other resources, the better.

We owe it to our fellow Earth-life: Every day there’s a new story about a species extinction or an environmental disaster caused by humans’ rapacious industrial and agricultural practices. Whatever we can shift out into space, including meaningful numbers of human beings, will reduce the terrible cost being paid by wildlife and vegetation.

We owe it to our fellow humans: Wild animals aren’t the only ones who suffer when climate is altered and green spaces and clean water are depleted. If we could create attractive human habitats in orbit, in outer space, or on other planets, we could make living conditions better for every human being.

We owe it to Life itself: We still have no evidence that life exists anywhere else in the universe. Until we do, we must act as if Earth is the only cradle of life, and right now that cradle is incredibly fragile. Even if we don’t render the planet into an uninhabitable wasteland like Venus through irreversible climate warming, or irradiate the whole surface by nuclear war, life here could still be wiped out by a cosmic collision, a nearby supernova, or a catastrophic event within our own Sun. We have a responsibility to make sure that all of Life’s “eggs” don’t remain in just one basket.

Do these lofty space dreams really begin with billionaires and their expensive toys? The jury is out on that one, but let’s face it, government bureaucracies aren’t the most efficient way to get things done, whereas corporate for-profit approaches do seem to be more productive (provided that meaningful safety regulations are in place).

(If we look to science fiction, especially the so-called “Golden Era” of the early 20th Century, it’s not uncommon to find millionaires and billionaires as the driving force behind space ventures, some of which save humanity. One that springs to mind is When Worlds Collide in which millionaires fund the spacecraft that carries survivors from a doomed Earth when governments refuse to act. Of course, SF probably features an even larger number of billionaires who want to rule the world and wreck the planet, so….)

My own view is that, regrettably, government-driven space ventures can’t be counted on to save us from the threats mentioned above, not just because their bureaucracies are inefficient, but even more so because their funding (and therefore their very existence) is subject to political whims, about the most unreliable force in the universe! If that means our only alternative is to endure the grandstanding of billionaires as a step toward more meaningful progress, I can live with that.

PERSONAL PROGRESS WHILE THE WORLD'S ON HOLD

By now, no one expects anything very “normal” from the year 2020. The past few months have seen me spending most of my time building and doing repairs on the cabins and sheds of the property where I live. That might be normal for some, but I’m a writer for a reason—the only power tool I’m proficient with is a computer! Each day is like a new comedy of errors.

Outside my little domain the world at large is still turning, but in fits and starts. I’m sure parts of your life feel “on hold” while the coronavirus pandemic rages. Even so, things happen. Developments arise.

A lot of the interesting stuff in my life and career recently is thanks to my longtime writer friend Mark Leslie Lefebvre (who writes as Mark Leslie). He’s been keeping me busier than I’d otherwise be, first by recruiting me to be the narrator of his A Canadian Werewolf In New York series, which includes not only the full novel of that name, but also the origin story One Time Around and the sequel novella Stowe Away. They relate the adventures of Michael Andrews, bestselling author and transplanted Canadian in the Big Apple who also happens to be a werewolf, which gives him superhuman abilities in the days around a full moon. When Mark decided to produce new editions of the stories, including audiobook versions, I was happy that he thought of me. Mind you, I was a career radio show host for more than 30 years, and I’ve recorded lots of audiobook-related material. Along with my current writing career, I work as a freelance voice talent.

Mark was not only thrilled by the result but inspired to knuckle down and finish writing the next book in the series. As a lifelong voice talent and book lover, narrating audiobooks is a perfect fit for me, and I urge you to check out Mark’s stuff. (http://markleslie.ca/bibliography/) He’s also publishing another anthology of short fiction called Obsessions from some great writers, and I’ve narrated a couple of stories for it too.

But the voice work wasn’t our only collaboration. Mark and I are both from the city of Sudbury in Ontario, Canada, and both of us learned a lot about writing from fellow Sudburian Sean Costello, a writer of internationally successful horror and thriller fiction often compared to Stephen King. Last month Mark came to us with the brilliant idea of publishing a small collection of stories from the three of us. It’s a treat (no trick) for me to be published with these friends and talented writers, and just in time for Halloween too. Strange Sudbury Stories features ghosts, monsters, and the supernatural, as well as some dark science fiction tales from me. It’s now available in ebook format, with print editions coming any day now (http://books2read.com/strangesudburystories), and if I know Mark, he probably has an audiobook version in mind.

Recording audiobooks for Mark has shamed me into recording audio versions of some more of my own work, so the first example is an audiobook edition of my three-story anthology called BEYOND: The Stars: three exciting stories of space travel.

A solo pilot in deep space risks losing his sanity when his ship is invaded by disembodied thoughts.

A marathon runner on a dangerous desert planet discovers that it may not be uninhabited after all.

The crew of a survey ship encounters a powerful being with an injury that will test their every belief.

Previously only available as an e-book, you can now listen to BEYOND: The Stars in your car, on your bike, or wherever you like. It’s in the pipeline and will be available any day now wherever you buy your audiobooks.

All of this hasn’t left me much time to write, but I have sent a novel manuscript off to my frequent editor in the hope that we can whip it into shape for publication in 2021. I don’t know about you, but I see way too much writing that’s just plain bad because the authors didn’t work with an editor. So I refuse to do that, even though it means I can’t crank out half a dozen books a year. I hope you’ll feel that my books are worth the wait. The SF-thriller The Primus Labyrinth is available everywhere and is being compared to Michael Crichton’s work (one of the greatest compliments you could give me). The next one is an alien contact tale that’s almost like a superhero origin story. I can’t wait for you to see it.

In the meantime, I can’t say I’m looking forward to Winter, but at least the snow will bring an end to my construction attempts and give my battered thumbs a rest!

IS COVID-19 A SCIENCE FICTION SCENARIO?

The quick answer to the title of this post is: of course!

Science fiction doesn’t try to predict individual events. It looks at societal trends and tries to envision the implications of those trends. Epidemics and pandemics have happened many times in human history, but the more we improved our means of traveling from place to place, and the more interconnected our global society became, the more we increased the potential of a disease outbreak affecting every human on the planet. As this trend became apparent, fiction writers took to it like a virus to a growth culture. So there have been lots of stories featuring pandemics although, to my recollection, not as many that take place during the spread of the infection. Movies seem to have dipped into that well more often, including some nail-biting examples like 1995’s Outbreak and the one everyone’s watching on Netflix lately, the 2011 film Contagion. A much larger number of novels take place before or after the pandemic. The “befores” range from vintage thriller The Satan Bug by Alistair MacLean to one of the first great technothrillers, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. “Afters” are too numerous to mention, but some standouts include Stephen King’s The Stand, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. A fictional pandemic is a convenient way of creating a post-apocalyptic setting with a drastically reduced human population and a devastated social infrastructure—a perfect environment for lots of gritty and emotional drama.

It’s a little harder to understand why so much of pandemic fiction involves plagues that turn people into zombies. Examples include I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and World War Z by Max Brooks. It’s a sub-genre in itself, but aren’t real pandemics scary enough?

It can be fun imagining the chills and challenges such a bleak setting can provide. It’s no fun at all actually living through a scenario like that. Like Covid-19.

Every story’s a little different, but it’s possible to list some of the things that pandemic fiction predicts will happen, and compare them to what we’re really seeing:

People will flee the cities: There’s been no mass exodus yet. However, where I live in Ontario, Canada, many people have left their city homes to isolate themselves at their vacation properties. Sensible, at first glance, except if they do get sick or injured, the health care facilities in such places will be overwhelmed.

Governments will be unprepared: Real examples are everywhere. Most are just from a lack of foresight, but some responses, like from the Trump White House, look more like criminal negligence.

Food and other essential supplies will quickly become scarce: So far only toilet paper! (What in hell is that about anyway???) Supply chains are holding up well to this point, except for critical medical supplies like masks and ventilators, but if the crisis is prolonged and even more stringent lockdowns are necessary, some rationing might become necessary.

Looting becomes rampant: It’s easy to see why this would be expected, given that so many businesses are temporarily abandoned. But I haven’t heard about it going on. Maybe it’s low priority news, or perhaps police are keeping quiet about it, but really, who are thieves going to sell the stuff to? When so many people see themselves as potential victims of this, I think most folks will alert the police rather than rewarding lowlifes who take advantage of a pandemic to rob the unfortunate. Hopefully, too, governments’ support of people unable to work will keep them from having to steal out of necessity.

Powerful people will act like warlords, hoarding and creating their own fiefdoms: There is some hoarding going on, but mostly it seems to be misguided morons hoping to make money off people’s fears. Fortunately, governments are cracking down hard on these people (as they should) and there’s no need to take their bait. As to survivalist compounds and the like? The reality is that trying to hide from the infection as a group would not be smart. All it would take is one carrier to get in and suddenly your protected compound is like a cruise ship. Much better to isolate ourselves individually. Whether that value equation could change if food becomes more scarce is anybody’s guess.

It’s every man for himself: I guess we SF writers are a cynical lot, or maybe it’s just inherently more dramatic, but the greatest danger from a fictional pandemic (once the disease has run its course) is from other humans. People turn violent, fighting over every scrap—to hell with friendships and any sort of benevolence toward our fellow beings. Of course, the reality we’re seeing is the opposite of that. People are eager to help others, friends, family, and strangers, especially assisting the elderly with visits and deliveries. Not to mention the selflessness of front-line health care workers, first responders, and so many people in every kind of service industry doing their part. It’s truly heartwarming and inspiring and, believe me, we writers would love to continue to be proven wrong!

We’re also seeing a lot of things I’m not sure any writers predicted. The weird stuff includes a rise in street-racing (because traffic is so sparse), shoppers emptying the toilet paper aisles in grocery stores (you can’t eat toilet paper, people!!), and some misguided religious leaders blithely ignoring calls to avoid gathering in groups. Stupidity is not a blessing.

On the good side, who could have predicted how businesses like restaurants are adapting to lockdown restrictions? Or that manufacturers would re-tool their factories to produce ventilators and even invent better ones, while idled fabric workers sew masks for hospitals? Who would have thought that neighbours would do communal exercising in their front yards across from one another, or have parties by sitting alone on their front steps talking to each other on the phone? Who knew that artists and performers would offer free online concerts, readings, theatre shows; that experts would provide free lessons of every kind; that teachers would provide home schooling resources and parents so diligently share them? In fact, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the way online socializing and sharing has soared—it’s a new phenomenon peaking at just the right time. Ain’t human ingenuity a wonder? And kindness. Let’s not forget kindness.

There’s even some evidence that this unplanned wrench in our collective plans is giving our planet some much-needed relief from our constant abuse.

So while relatively few fictional pandemics turn out well, there’s good reason to hope that the real thing will have a much happier ending.

Do your part. Help where you can. Stay home as much as humanly possible.

After all, there are lots of great books to read!

(P.S. Here’s a Goodreads list of Popular Pandemic Books!)

HOW FAR WILL ADVERTISING GO?

When science fiction stories describe a world of the future, it’s the story that grabs and holds our interest but it’s the little details that bring that world to life. How do the characters entertain themselves when they’re not battling to save the world? What do they buy and how do they buy it? What information systems tell them how to navigate their lives?

A few of those questions got me thinking about advertising.

Once upon a time, word-of-mouth was everything if you provided a product or service to a special clientele or the general public. At some point, some cynical soul decided it might be a good idea to put a sign that said “Blacksmith” above his door, just in case the smell of the forge, clang of iron, and giant anvils standing everywhere weren’t enough to clue people in. And then, if there were two smith’s in the same town, a family name on the sign would distinguish it from the competition, and maybe something like “official smith of His Lordship, the Duke” wouldn’t be amiss either.

Advertising really took off once the printing press became widespread. Even Will Shakespeare couldn’t count on an audience magically appearing—they had to be told where and when a performance would take place, along with a little sales pitch to draw them in. Before long, it wasn’t enough to just tell people that you provided a service, and why yours was better than others—you could actually create a market for your deliverables by persuading people they needed what you were offering, even if they didn’t…um, I mean, if they’d never realized it before. Snake oil salesman of all stripes have taken that to heart ever since, and advertising has become as slippery as politicians (who took to it with a vengeance, naturally).

Flyers and newspaper ads weren’t enough—they could be ignored—so some genius came up with the idea of interrupting content on radio and then television with commercials. It became a pact between advertiser and audience: free entertainment in return for paying attention to the ads. Not a bad deal, really. And it worked so well that before long we were subjected to ads attached to content we were already paying for (movie theatres, I’m looking at you). By then, billboards had been blocking scenery for decades, buses and other vehicles had become moving billboards, and even gullible people blithely allowed themselves to become mobile signage by wearing brand names on their clothing, somehow believing it gave them membership in the cool crowd.

The advertising bargain had broken down by then, and we never noticed. We no longer had to implicitly agree to be subjected to it—we had no choice.

Whoever gave advertisers the right to fill our every view, every moment of sound, everything we experience with their messages? It’s like the frog-in-a-pot story: heat the water slowly enough and it will never realize its danger until it’s cooked.

Defenders of advertising will tell you it’s a public service: informing people about products and services they might want. I don’t know about you, but if there’s something I actually need to buy, I can look up where and how to buy it in about thirty seconds with an online search. I don’t need, or want, somebody interrupting my life to tell me what they want me to want. My wife and I only watch streaming and pre-recorded content at home—no commercials. We mostly listen to public radio—no commercials. And we’ve opted to receive no flyers in the mail. Do I sometimes miss flipping through them? Sure. But my impulse purchases have gone way down.

What does all this have to do with the future? Well, as technology becomes ever more pervasive and invasive, so does advertising. Do you think it will be cool to walk past a billboard and have it address you by name and show an ad for stuff you really like? In fact, it’s already happening whenever you surf the internet or use social media, and personalized ads show up. Think about how much some company has to know about you to do that. Just add facial recognition and gait recognition capability to the billboards, and you’ve got a sales pitch just for you…that everyone walking nearby can also see. Watch out for the lamppost! Oops, too late. And forget about just enjoying the ambience of a neighbourhood street, because the next billboard will call out to you just as insistently, and the next, and the next. If regulators don’t prevent them, the billboards will send urgent messages to your phone telling you about the big shoe sale a block ahead. Might be kind of cool, you think? Until you get twenty such messages in a ten-minute walk to your favourite coffee shop.

Forget about movie stickers on bananas; what about when each section of orange, slice of melon, cross-section of cheese is imprinted with slogans? When your toaster etches your slice of bread with “30% Off Sale Today at…!” When your shampoo contains fluorescent glitter micro-particles that coalesce into product placements for everyone to read. So far, you’re allowed to turn your TV to a channel that doesn’t play commercials, but what about when your TV forces you to watch ad messages first whenever you turn it on?

I’ve written a novel about internet-capable brain augments. One of my speculations is that unscrupulous advertisers will figure out how to use them to directly stimulate the vision and auditory centres of the brain. Suddenly you see a giant bottle of [insert your favourite cola brand here] floating in front of your eyes and hear their latest jingle in your ears. I’ll leave you to imagine the results if it happens while you’re riding a bike, crossing a street, or about to descend some stairs.

Far-fetched, you think? Absolutely not, I promise you. We’ve already allowed ourselves to be subjected to advertising in virtually every aspect of our lives, in increasingly intrusive ways. If a method arises to directly access the minds of consumers, it will be used. Unless we act to prevent it. And I’m not talking about writing to your local politician (although it wouldn’t hurt)—it’s your money that talks. If you want to send a message to advertisers that it’s all too much, stop buying the products and services of the companies that use advertising methods you don’t like and tell them why. Shut off all the personalized advertising functions of your social media. Cancel all your rewards programs accounts. Boost privacy settings on all of your electronic devices.

I’m expecting too much, right? You like a lot of that personalized advertising, not to mention rewards points. And buying things gives you a buzz.

Yeah, I know. Which is why intrusive advertising has come this far, and will go every bit as far as we allow it to.

Do you feel the water getting hot yet?

CAN DYSTOPIAN FICTION BECOME FACT? IF WE LET IT

As I write this, Donald Trump is in his second week as President of the United States. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has told easily-disproved lies with the boldest of faces. But then, Toronto’s The Star newspaper is now keeping a running list of the false claims Trump himself has made since becoming President. And Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway has cited a “massacre” that never happened as a defense for the travel ban against seven Muslim countries. Along with Conway’s use of the term “alternative facts”, it’s inevitable that people would be reminded of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. No surprise, then, that the 1949 novel has suddenly become a bestseller again, selling out at Amazon and elsewhere.

The totalitarian government of the country Airstrip One that Orwell describes in the novel rules with an iron fist over a mostly uneducated lower class population, and seeks power above all. But the element of the novel that resonates the most this week is Airstrip One’s Ministry of Truth which is, of course, about anything but truth. Its work is to revise history to make it match the party line, to erase troublesome figures and events from news and historical accounts. The Ministry’s “Newspeak” is official language that mostly obscures the truth and encourages “doublethink” requiring citizens to embrace opposing concepts, such as “black is white” (if the government says so). Alternative facts, indeed. The citizens of Airstrip One have no freedom and no privacy—almost all of us are familiar with the famous slogan “Big Brother is Watching You.”

In these days when the National Security Agency in the U.S. has surveillance powers that beggar belief, and even corporations know virtually everything about us and our movements thanks to reward programs, facial recognition, and our ever-present smartphones, the Big Brother concept is barely fiction anymore.

Of course, Nineteen Eighty-Four is only one of the best-known dystopian novels, but others are also disturbingly relevant to current events. Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World describes the year of 632 A.F. (“After Ford”) in which humans are produced in test tubes conforming to a very rigid class structure by genetics. Citizens’ behaviour is controlled through sleep-conditioning. And the masses are pacified by an all-purpose feel-good drug called soma, so that personal freedom can be sacrificed for the cause of social stability. Huxley was pretty familiar with mind-altering drugs, but he didn’t know the distraction value of television, the internet, social media and text messaging. I feel sure he would have recognized all of those as perfect means to keep the general population from looking too deeply into their governments’ actions and motives. Modern-day leaders have certainly embraced the sleight-of-hand techniques that technology offers them to keep the voters’ attention elsewhere.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 envisioned another totalitarian world in which books are banned and even burned (along with their owners!) in a deliberate attempt to pacify and control the general populace by keeping citizens from thinking for themselves. Orwell also thought such a government would ban books, while Huxley feared people would simply lose interest in reading all on their own (a circumstance that many believe is coming true). Although there’s been no move to ban books in general, many means are being used to diminish the effectiveness of the media that are most people’s main source of information about the state of their own countries. Leaders like Trump (and before him Canada’s past-Prime Minister Stephen Harper) have very combative relationships with the media; they portray members of the media as dishonest; they try to muzzle scientists and administrators (I have to think Trump got the idea from Harper, who did it first); and “false news” sources have sprung up like bad weeds all over the internet. These all have a similar effect to banning books: keeping people uninformed and more apt to believe what they’ve been told by “official sources” (the louder, the better) rather than form their own opinions.

In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale a fiercely right-wing Christian movement has overthrown the American government and returned all women back to the status of being the property of men. That may seem quite a distance from Trump’s attitude toward women, including his executive order banning any federal money from going to international groups that perform or provide information about abortion. But obviously the many millions of women who marched in protest in the U.S. and all around the world the day after his inauguration don’t think so.

A huge number of dystopian novels feature totalitarian governments, religious and cultural oppression, and the suppression of individual rights. They’re not far-fetched—it has happened in the past. And today’s technology—the omnipresent internet, computer hacking, electronic surveillance techniques, plus the constant distractions of smartphones, social media, and other entertainment—makes the modern world more fertile ground than ever for the rise of such movements. The desire and the means are already in place. All we have to do is to keep ourselves ignorant, apathetic, and distracted, and the rest will take care of itself.

Regimes like that can happen if we allow them to happen.

It’s interesting that novels like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent and others have been among the most popular books read by young adults. You have to wonder how many of the warning signs young readers recognize in the world around them. Far too many of their elders don’t seem to.

READ TO YOUR KIDS...IN YOUR FUNNIEST VOICE

Want to save yourself big money on medical bills and parental leave days?

Read to your kids.

OK, that’s simplifying things a bit, but the American Academy of Pediatrics has now strongly suggested that doctors prescribe “reading together as a daily fun family activity”. It’s a position the Canadian Paediatric Society has held for some years. Basically, the better your reading and writing skills, the more likely you are to get well-paid employment, and having a better income makes it much easier to get and stay healthy. The doctors offer up lots of data, and point out the importance of literacy to national economies, too—you can read a good overview here—but it doesn’t take a hundred studies to know that we all love stories. That sharing stories is one of the oldest forms of communal entertainment there is. That reading to little kids can a be real blast, for everybody involved.

I suppose, as a science fiction writer, I’m expected to forecast that within a hundred years there’ll no longer be any books and we’ll all just passively suck up video entertainment instead. But I don’t believe that. Reading is just too good a thing to ever go away, although the future of literacy does depend on showing our kids how much fun it can be.

What’s in it for you?

For one thing, reading to your kids gives you a great chance to practice those cartoon character voices and foreign accents—you know, the ones you do while singing along to the radio in the car. Your fellow motorists have never truly appreciated them, and traffic cops can get downright hostile, but your kids will think they’re great. Or at least they’ll have a lot of fun rolling their eyes and saying adult things like, “Oh Daaad.” I used to randomly throw in a Donald Duck voice that I’d perversely refuse to do when requested. And if you take it further and “re-imagine” the story as you go (as the Hollywood producers would say), the kids get to fine-tune their persuasion skills as they beg you to “read it the right way.” The paediatricians call these parent-child bonding experiences. I call them fun. They’re even cheap—compare a trip to the library to the price of an amusement park ticket or weekly violin lessons. In case you need help getting started, there are websites galore to offer advice, like this one from Reading Rainbow.

If you want to instil a lifelong love of science fiction, try sharing some of the SF novels of the classic era once the kids get a bit older. Maybe you can’t name every different car model you pass on the way to school, but you can be the cool parent who knows about things like black holes, the three laws of robotics, and the Ringworld. Another good thing is that Clarke, Asimov, and Bradbury rarely included sex scenes that you’ll have to skip. Niven, well….

As a bonus, you just might rediscover the great stories that made you fall in love with reading. Like the best of old friends, they’re still there waiting for you.

Canadian Copyright Bill C-32 Has Serious Flaws

As a Canadian writer I’ve been very concerned lately about a proposed new bill in our Parliament that would change the Canadian Copyright Act. Copyright must be a big concern for all writers—it’s the only thing that ensures we get paid for our work.

The Copyright Act is in serious need of an update to catch up with the times—no-one disputes that, but some of the proposed changes in Bill C-32 will harm writers and could cripple much of our native publishing industry. Seven of Canada’s largest writers organizations cooperated to send a brief to the federal Industry and Heritage Ministers, and that brief outlines the most grievous concerns of Canadian writers very well. Even if you’re a writer in another country, if your work is published in Canada you should be concerned. You should also make sure your own government doesn’t make these same mistakes.

A new proposal to include “educational purposes” under the “fair use” of copyrighted material could save money for educational systems, but only by taking the money out of the hands of the writers who created these works, already among the most underpaid professionals in the country (with an average annual income under $20,000 from their writing). Perhaps even worse, it will become much less profitable for publishers to produce books for the education market if schools can just copy the parts of a book they want. Where will schools get Canadian text books, novels, and poetry to study if it’s no longer worthwhile for the publishers to produce them?

Another proposal would allow anyone to use part or all of an existing work within a new work, as long as it’s not for commercial purposes (so-called “mash-ups”). Since the new work could be freely distributed over the internet, this could completely destroy the market for future sales of the original work, or any sequels created or authorized by the original author. Would you allow a home inventor to use a company’s patented technology in a gadget of his own, and then give the gadgets away to thousands of people? Certainly not.

Bill C-32 also expands the existing exception for “interlibrary loan” to allow digital delivery directly to the computer of a reader. This would essentially allow people to get free e-books from libraries, which they could share with hundreds of thousands of others, the way music files are currently copied (illegally) with peer-to-peer programs. With the traditional publishing industry facing tough times, authors and publishers look to the sale of e-books for their future earnings.

Similarly, Bill C-32 would make it legal for an individual to make any number of copies of a digital book for unspecified “private purposes” without any payment to the author. Again, this plays into the hands of those who would share files over the internet for free, and there would be little that an author could do to protect a work that might have taken them years to produce.

Bill C-32 has some clauses that are obviously intended to address some of the above examples, but they’re not strong enough because they’re too open to interpretation.

The Industry Committee of Parliament has been tasked with studying Bill C-32 further. The clerk of that committee has received a copy of the above-mentioned brief from me (and probably many others!) But you owe it to yourself to write to your Member Of Parliament and make your concerns known. Whether you’re a Canadian or not, you could write to the committee on Bill C-32 at CC32@parl.gc.ca .

Whenever Bill C-32 is passed we’ll be living with its consequences for a very long time.