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SF Writers Sting Supposedly Traditional Publisher
deeptrace writes "A group of SF writers all submitted purposely awful stories to a publisher that purported to publish only selected high quality works. They created the worst story they could come up with, and it was accepted for publication." Their press release is pretty funny -- and if you'd like a sample of their insane prose, it's available through the book's Lulu site. (Where, Yes, you could also buy the whole thing.)
An earlier effort by 25 Newsday staffers produced the 1969 best seller Naked Came the Stranger.
I worked with a guy once who fancied himself a writer of love poetry. I thought it was pretty awful, saccharine stuff myself, but he had a couple of fans on some amateur poety website. Who was I to criticize?
I always felt bad, though, because he put together a book and found some vanity publisher to publish it for him. He apparently didn't know how the publishing business worked, though, because he was convinced that he was being published for real, and that the book would be his ticket to fame and fortune. I remember him being very excited when they "accepted" his book, and would publish it as soon as he came up with $4000. He then started hitting up everyone he knew to "invest" in his book, which he was sure would be a bestseller. I never had the heart to explain to him that real publishers pay you when they put out your book.
This is an example of the brilliant hoax first devised by "Naked Came The Stranger" (first link in Google), where a group of reporters wrote a book deliberately designed to be bad to show the crap and lack of taste that was coming out of the trashy romantic novel genre. At least 2 explicit sexual acts per chapter, the more deviant the better. Good writing and grammer were to be thoroughly sponged out of the book. They hired the sister of one of the writers I think to play the author and go around on TV shows saying rediculous stuff supposedly to promote the book.
The funny thing was that the book was published and then became so popular and the money grew so much that they spilled their guts and told the world about the hoax.
Pain. .
Whispering voices.
Pain.
Pain. Pain. Pain.
Need pee--new pain--what are they sticking in me? . .
Sleep.
Pain.
Whispering voices.
"As you know, Nurse Eastman, the government spooks controlling this hospital will not permit me to give this patient the care I think he needs."
"Yes, doctor." The voice was breathy, sweet, so sweet and sexy.
"We will therefore just monitor his sign's. Serious trauma like this patient suffered requires extra care, but the rich patsies controlling the hospital will make certain I cannot try any of my new treatments on him."
"Yes, doctor." That voice was soooo sexy! Bruce didn't care about treatments. He cared about pain, and he cared about that voice, because when he heard the voice, the pain went away, just for a few seconds, like.
I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
some posters above give the speculative fiction answer, but i read a long time ago (and i wish i could remember who wrote it) that SF was used by (serious?) science fiction writers to distance themselves from SciFi movies about giant brains attacking people.
The Washington Post also has a very interesting article on the likes of PublishAmerica at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25187-20 05Jan20?language=printer
You clearly have never been the subject of the traditional rants of the written science fiction community about how they do not write "sci-fi" or "skiffy", which is the domain of bad '50s monster movies. They write "science fiction" or "speculative fiction", which is SF if you must shorten the term.
To understand, think "Linux" vs. "GNU/Linux".
Associated Press has an article about it and points out: "Some writers organizations will not accept PublishAmerica authors or offer only limited memberships. Those organizations include the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Mystery Writers of America and the Authors Guild, whose members include Stephen King and Scott Turow. The organization gets about 50 membership requests a year from PublishAmerica authors. All are rejected, said executive director Paul Aiken." Here is the link to the article: http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/Stories/0,1413,2 09~23371~2682604,00.html
Sun and Fun
I think parent is thinking of the Sokal hoax, in which Alan Sokal, a physicist at NYU, wrote a completely non-sensical physics paper and submitted it to Social Text, the leading journal of postmodern pseudo-intellectuals. Social Text accepted the paper and published it, thereby demonstrating their complete ignorance of modern science, which they purport to understand and be in a position to critique. Sokal then exposed their foolishness in a piece in Lingua Franca (sadly defunct). He has links to the hoax article, his Lingua Franca article, the statements by the editors of Social Text, and much other material here
Use http://www.sfwa.org/members/aburt instead, has manuscript, blurbs, more info.
You're a real SF fan if you consider good SF to be "stfnal," but only a died-in-the-wool fan (like me) knows that that's because Hugo Gernsback referred to it as scientifiction.
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This is, of course, a very inaccurate characterization of the so-called Sokal Affair. Wikipedia does much better, as usual.
A more accurate characterization is that Sokal, through deliberate fraud,and playing on his legitimate reputation within physics, got the _Social Text_ editors to publish an article that they themselves did not think was of high quality. But the editors felt that allowing a professional physicist to publish positions--which they presumed he was expressing, because he said exactly such--informed by his background in Physics.
It's true that LitCrit professor are not physicists. Nor do/did they claim to be. They deferred to someone who really was in a position to share expert knowledge, and put it in a context of postmodernist theory.
I am a legitimate expert in a number of things, for example. I could certainly get journals or magazines concerned with other subjects to publish my deliberately misleading characterizations of those subjects I know, particularly if they were journals in other areas that had an interest in cross-discipline discussion. So what? You can lie and deceive, and still get published. Big deal!
It's true that Sokal doesn't really understand modern science studies and postmodernism. But the crude caricature he's formed of the area is unlike his simple, traditional and positivistic notions of science. And for whatever reason, it was easier for him to get a big chip on his shoulder than it was to learn about another area of knowledge. Hence the whole affair.
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The Complete Guide to the Publishing World, by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
You have to scroll down a bit, and there's a lot there to read, but believe me, it's worth it. Teresa knows what she's talking about.
I think you are referring to the Sokal Hoax. The Sokal Hoax was more important, IMO, because it took place in the heart of academia, and was an attack on the abuses of post modernism, or at least on some of the people who practice such abuses. In the words of Alan Sokal (a physics professor at NYU):
If for no other reason, this hoax is important because it points to the deep cultural divide between the Sciences and the Humanities. I think that it's also a terrific flame war, taking place on the pages of the New York Times, newspapers around the world, as well as academic journals. (Sure, the Empire of Meow is great, but did they ever cross post to the NYT?)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Yes, I am one of the thirty-odd writers who collectively make up "Travis Tea," a pseudonym (and a pun -- say it outloud). :-)
Here is some background on this wacky collaborative sting project that we cobbled together.
Several months ago, in response to a claim by a certain publisher that writers working in the SF/F genre believe it "does not require believable storylines" or "does not need believable every-day characters," genre writer James D. Macdonald got approximately 40 mostly science fiction and fantasy writers to cobble together an intentionally horrendous monstrosity of a novel (read it here as an FTP download in RTF and PDF format) and then submit it, in order to display the less than discriminating tastes of that same certain publisher in regard to the kind of work they accept for publication.
Earlier last week, the sting has been revealed, the publisher fell for it (retracting the acceptance as soon as news spread, of course), and I proudly own up to having authored Chapter 13 of ATLANTA NIGHTS by Travis Tea .
Here's a bit of an excerpt from my chapter:
Yes, you can even buy your own copy at Lulu.com to read for gut-wrenching hilarity and educational purposes (lessons on how not to write can be derived from the perusal of this book). Here is the stellar lineup of blurbs from the back cover. And that's just the ones that fit the back cover. There are twice as many additional blurbs inside the front matter of the book. Some of them are truly classic....
I predict this will replace THE EYE OF ARGON as midnight panel reading material at science fiction conventions. This book, is purely and genuinely bad. So bad that it's great. In all seriousness, The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest should give it a special achievement prize. :-)
For more detailed coverage, including a list of contributors, of the ATLANTA NIGHTS atrocity -- or should we say, travesty -- see the Cold Ground blog , and Tor Books editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Light . ..
Also, looks like the LA Times has picked up the story .
Vera Nazarian
http://www.veranazarian.com/