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Was This the First CC Community-Edited Novel?
Odinson writes "In late 2005 I released a draft of a science fiction novel under the by-nc-nd CC license. I started accepting edits in the hope of polishing a manuscript for submission to a publisher. A publisher never materialized, but after thousands of comments the draft started getting really solid. So a couple of months ago I decided to buy an ISBN and sell hard copies from Lulu. While doing research for a press release, I was unable to uncover the first community-edited, CC-licensed work of fiction. I strongly suspect that my novel is the first. Can anybody point to a prior example? How about under other licenses? If someone has traveled this road before, I'd like to ask them how it went. I would also like to vet this question here before staking a claim to be the first."
There certainly existed community-edited novel-length fanfiction before 2005, although I don't know if you would count them as "real" novels.
:)
Also the license terms for fanfiction are generally rather murky
I hereby releese this post under the by-nc-nd CC lisense. Feel free to submit ne changes you would like to c. Am I teh famous now?
Sure that's such a good idea?
Pg. 147
"As Ja Rool climbed out of the skies CLAIRE IS T3H AWESOME of Planet 142, in the yellow smoke trails he caught the glint BUCH SUCKS of an enemy spacecraft. Maneuvering his nimble XPJ-134, JAMES LOVE CINDY."
Cheers!
--
Vig
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
So I tried to download the book... and its going at a few bytes per second... I think we slashdotted his poor server. :(
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Aren't they somewhat contrary?
Infinite number of monkeys = Entire works of Shakepeare.
'Tens of thousands' = Thicker than blood.
And the community didn't say anything about naming the main character "Joe"?
This perhaps?
The Rifter series was released circa 2001 or so and is available at rifters.com for free under a CC licence IIRC. However, I'm fairly sure Watts used a publisher for the back end stuff.
Congrats, and thank you for looking to publish in this manner.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
I hereby proclaim the internet (which I invented) and all data stored therein under the rule of by-nc-nd CC license. Feel free to comment towards its betterment and send me the royalties!
It's been done before, in fact it happened to some friends of a friend of mine, they didn't like each other very much and were made to write a story together, alternating paragraph by paragraph... it went something like this:
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth -- when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.
Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.
You total $*&.
Stupid %&#$!.
There must be tons of alternative endings. Makes me think of those adventure books where every paragraph you decide yourself which turn the story is taking.
How can a community edited work be published under by-nc-ND? The nd means "no derivative" which means that the public can't distribute modified works. When he says, "community edited" does he mean a private community? Also, according the the website, they are selling this book, which you can't do if it is by-NC-nd, where the NC means non-commercial. If it was community edited, you would need permission from every copyright holder (which might mean a lot) if you want a different license.
With so many things left unanswered, how can we answer this guy's question?
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
There have been a number of collaborative works published in the past (though not in the precise way you're decribing). In 1969, a couple of dozen reporters at Newsweek each wrote a chapter for a novel, "Naked Came the Stranger." (it was however, a spoof designed to demonstrate that it didn't matter how lousy the book was, if it had a lot of sex in it it would sell). Author was listed as "Penelope Ashe."
A similar spoof book, Atlanta Nights, put together by a bunch of science fiction writers to demonstrate that a vanity press Publish America, would print anything, was eventually self-published through an on demand publisher, Lulu.com
Isn't using nc a de facto CC violation because the author is selling the book for profit?
Perhaps the oldest Community Edited work of fiction is the Bible...not sure that it is CC licenced though.
Okay, so we all know that Rembrandt didn't colour in his entire canvas and just did the hands, faces and really very fiddly bits of cloth.
And authors have editors who hone and tweak their prose.
And from a conceptual point of view I genuinely am fascinated with a community-driven work of fiction...
But still, saying that the draft became solid after the help from thousands of others... doesn't that speak volumes?
Stuart Slade wrote The Big One and other books in that timeline as a series of chapters on a message board. People would then comment on it and so forth. He once explained why the print version had so many typos in it, but I forget what the reason was.
There are still stories being written for it, too.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Wouldn't that be the Bible? = )
The King James Bible was created by committee - perhaps the only example of a worthwhile achievement implemented by one. (Though, in fairness, they didn't make it Creative Commons.)
Folktales, Fairy Tales, Myths, Urban Legends
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
http://bittornado.com/torrents/Thicker-Than-Blood.pdf.torrent
Sorry about the off-topic reply, just trying to help people w/ their slow download.
Before it was put down in written language, the story of Beowulf was passed down as oral history through several generations. Each generation probably had a hand in changing an aspect of the story, til it became the Beowulf we know today.
/.'s 10 Millionth
Me and a bunch of friends wrote a story on Fidonet, must have been around 86. Never got really 'published' though...
Brandon Sanderson (the guy finishing up the WOT series) published one of his books, Warbreaker, under a CC license. I think there might be some community editing, but his site is blocked from where I work.
Great book, by the way!
The Bible is just one of the oldest legends that had a distro.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
"The flip of a switch gives Joe, an ordinary mechanic, superhuman abilities. He discovers his new powers after his aunt saves his life with restricted nanites. When the corporation sanctioned by the military to control all nanotechnology discovers his secret, everyone he knows is thrust into a world of deception and treason. Can Joe give the people of the world life-saving superhuman powers, or will the attempt claim his life."
Dude. Seriously?
Djangobook.com
A really great book. Under the GNU FDL, not CC. And the authors maintained pretty strict control over incorporating user comments (i.e. not like wikibooks), so progress was kind of slow, but the quality is good. Last I checked some sections were still unfinished, but it's more than enough to learn all you need to get started with Django.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
I didn't use a CC license though the one I drafted for myself is pretty similar. In particular I insisted on reserving print rights for myself. CC seems a bit more intent on making information free than reserving the possibility of future conventional publication.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Back in 1997, I and my brother had an idea for a short story, which then, over the course of the years, became a sort of novel (link in sig). I decided to make it public once I knew of a CC license, since my idea was roughly like TFA, while I was considering the idea of publishing (I'm on Lulu too, but I haven't got an ISBN - yet).
Although the idea was to get an input from the community, in the end I almost got zero input, perhaps because of the target people (they mostly come through my illustrator's web page). I found that a certain number of people liked it quite a bit, but very few (if any) decided to speak up and write comments (currently like 1% of the total site visitors have commented, if I exclude people I know who said things to me in person).
So I can say that overall I'm quite disappointed, although I fully acknowledge that there must be some reason why people aren't saying anything about it.
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
No, really, who wants to read the -STABLE version anyway?
"What? You mean like, here on slashdot?" James ejaculated, running his hand along the tapestry bindings of Helena's Prada chaise longue. "Because if we are, I am absolutely convinced that everyone who is anyone shall consider it a tad incestous!"
Toaster Books is an imprint of The TankTopToolKit Corporation.
All rights reserved - cue that exciting David Newman fanfare from the start of 20th Century Fox Movies.
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couple of thousands comments...congrats!
an ongoing similar attempt with respect to videos @ www.vodes.net/lovecake
the storyline is firm, commnunity input is about "little things" (e.g. sound effect, camera angle). though its about little things, they spice up the video. like salt does to food. size does not always matter.
whats new?
perhaps how we distribute the earnings. if there are not enough earnings to cover all contributors, vodes are rewarded in order of its creation date. first create, first serve.
there is a general reward formula (reward = time * knowledge * quality(rating); expressed in vodes: CV = LV * IV-xxx * q) applicable to all tasks (e.g. people who have helped shooting and editing the video).
one of the nice things of the formula is that it allows a pluralistic community (team beta tester representing the 5 main stakeholder (production and consumption functions) to collectively and efficiently set certain key wealth distribution values (like the value (in Euro) of time/LV)
people who invested little time and posted a creative idea get one 1 ID-V (Idea Vode). each idea which makes it in the final version of the "community edition" is being rewarded. how much precisely (in euro) this little grain of salt is worth depends on the outcome of important economic decision_x by team beta tester.
more on the background @ www.vodes.info (in beta stage)
P.s.: there are IF-o positions open.
I guess the issue is that monkeys aren't true random letter generators. Otherwise, I suppose I'd have to go with it, but I still wouldn't like it.
..the Bible?
Elonka Dunin, the cryptography one who has been headlined here more than once, did a similar thing with her "The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms". It has a different title in the UK. The majority of the book was community created and edited, I was one of the ones that took part in it. She used a Wiki to keep it all together and editable. As far as I know everything went great. I never actually picked up a copy of the book though.
Yeah.. I see the previous posts now..
If you mod my original post up for insightful comments, mod this one down because of how poorly proof-read is was.
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http://www.scribd.com/doc/34504/Thicker-Than-Blood
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Let me introduce you to alt.Devilbunnies , founded in 1993.
It started as a Usenet newsgroup devoted to nonsense. But sometime around 1993, people began generating a consistent storyline within the newsgroup. (The particulars involved intelligent, man-eating rabbits and their quest to enslave humanity, but that's not important for this discussion.) Before very long, the writers in alt.devilbunnies were creating novel-length stories, often with over a dozen contributors, and all set within an internally consistent shared world.
The Devilbunnies phenomenon continued from around 1993 to around 2002, when the authors slowly abandoned the newsgroup. There were multiple attempts to bring the Devilbunnies to the web, or to publish their shared stories. But every time someone began such a project, someone in the community would oppose it for one reason or another. Because the copyright on the devilbunny universe was shared between everyone involved, there was no way of publishing or continuing it if even a single person vetoed the project. So those who wanted to make it bigger eventually gave up. Now the devilbunnies are nothing more than a group of friends who fondly remember stories they wrote together but which will never -- *can* never -- live again in any other format.
I believe alt.Devilbunnies is the first internet-powered collaborative story group. (There are many pre-internet efforts, going all the way to Beowulf and beyond, as others have mentioned.)
It is also my considered opinion that the fate of Devilbunnies awaits any collaborative story project, unless it is a small, close-knit group who have been told in advance that the project is intended for publication and been given clear rules for how it will be done. Copyright laws are strict enough, and legal expenses great enough, that a single bad egg can ruin an entire collaborative fiction project. So be careful, and don't let what happened to alt.Devilbunnies happen to you.
Or in other words, keep an eye on your toes, because those wabbits will eat them if you give them half a chance. And keep your fireaxe handy.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
We did the same thing online in 1991 at my university(technically 1985 or so - way before I got there). We had a 20-30 college mini net - a BBS system of sorts where all of their VMS machines were linked together. Vax Notes it was called.
Of course there were collaborative forums - it worked identical to Usenet Newsgroups.
http://www.byeday.net/assets/documents/Camelot%20of%20Collaboration%20Patti%20Anklam.pdf
This was the very first attempt at something like this. Way before you even had any of the other forums/web/etc. Most people were still grinding away at 300 baud with modems on BBSs and they were running a full Newgroup/chat forum between thousands of people across the world.
The system still exists as a lot of universities still have an old VMS machines running somewhere. For email and notes, they still work great.
This is what should be in your article, IMO, as it's fascinating and much more than a simple attribution.
I forgot to add a couple of points of data/history.
The VMS Notes system ran on most every major original university and institution at the time on the original ARPANET. The university that I went to had a dedicated cable running from it 60 miles to U.C. Berkeley where it tied into the rest of the system(this was done way back in the early 70s when the university was created). As such, we could go to their library computers and reserve books and so on as well, and send inter-campus email. Long, long before you even had what we consider to be email today.
When the Notes program was created, you could all would participate in the forums, which was unlike a typical BBS in that it worked like a modern forum. Hopping from one forum to another wasn't very hard and nearly every California State and U.C. campus was linked together this way.
Usenet came much later as a commercial version of the same idea.
But within this group of VMS systems were created many online novels and works of community fiction, just like you typically get on a forum at most websites today. Some grew into actual published works and were often posted in chapters every few weeks to Usenet writing groups, most notably ones like rec.games.frp Fantasy and science fiction made up the vast majority, of course.
Unfortunately, modern internet archives only go back to about the mid 90s so virtually all of this has been lost.
http://www.peldor.com/intro.html
Some, like this still exist. It started out as a collaborative effort for the first few chapters but then he took over and posted online on Usenet until 2000 or so.(about ten years). His work wasn't the first, though - just a notable example that still survives today.
Nation Novel Writing Month has been around for almost 10 years and the authors that participate have been releasing lots of novels under CC for almost all that time. And several of them have been allowing edits along with way as well. How you would find them or search examples I don't know; I suppose you could just ask in the NaNoWriMo forums to see.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
Here's his contact info: Anonymous Coward 123 Fake Street Anytown, USA 12345 Or call him at 867-5309
I believe that THE TRUTH ABOUT CHUCK NORRIS was originally a list that was edited and collaborated on by the Internet community (a slightly immature one, but a community)and later published by some opportunistic bastige!