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J.G. Ballard Dies at Age 78
jefu writes "J.G. Ballard, an author (of science fiction and other fiction) has died. His works include some of the strangest and most compelling novels ever, including 'The Crystal World,' 'Crash' and 'The Atrocity Exhibition.' For a truly weird read, try his 'Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race," compared with Alfred Jarry's "The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race.'" Here is Ballard's obituary at the BBC.
The clock should start from date of first publication. A few thousand dollars isn't much spread over 10 years if your project is profitable. If your next project will take an unusually long time to complete and you can't afford to finance it yourself then you'll have to convince people to invest in it.
I would also support the principle of some form of limited moral rights law, requiring the producer of derivative works to acknowledge their source, unless this right is disclaimed by the source. The devil is in the details for this, though, and if we are not careful, we could end up with a monster.
This is an absolutely ridiculous proposition. Improved distribution methods mean jack-all when it comes to determining the length of copyright. This is honestly like saying "Transportation is more efficient these days, so cake mixes ought to be less fattening." That makes about as much sense as your assertion.
Your note regarding the determination of value on copyrighted works is preposterous. How, precisely, do you plan on assigning a valid value to works that wind up being regarded as classical works in their respective fields? Short term interactions? How about long term respect?
You use a whole lot of buzzwords, but don't appear to have thought this matter through thoroughly. 14 years sounds reasonable to me.
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aliens with "weird" numbers of eyes, limbs, methods of communication, etc., most of which are weird simply to be different. It is amazing how rarely anyone gives any explanations for why an alien life form evolved the way it did.
Take The Mote in God's Eye -- weird for weirdness' sake is fine, I think, as long as it's interesting. Yes, it does discuss why they evolved to be that way -- but more importantly, it discusses what the implications of that weirdness are -- beyond the obvious ones of "that extra limb sometimes gets in the way."
So many things seem to come out of a magic black box, never really explained, and just taken for granted in the universe of the particular story.... Again, these things fall out of the realm of science fiction an into fantasy.
Ah, the old debate of soft vs hard science fiction. A quote that I really can't seem to source: You are allowed to predict the automobile, if you also predict the traffic jam.
That is, while it helps to envision science that's actually plausible, given our current knowledge of the way the universe works -- I love that there's no sound or faster-than-light travel in the Firefly universe, for example -- what really makes a bit of science fiction interesting or not, in its scifi elements, is how well thought out they are, not in terms of mechanism, but in terms of consequences.
If you think about it, quite a lot of scifi has elements of mysticism -- even Firefly, or Dune, will have things like psychics, prescients, things that really haven't been explained, and might not be possible -- but make for amazingly fun "what if" stories.
I'm not sure where you draw the line; where that becomes fantasy. I don't really care much -- I'd rather read good fantasy than bad science fiction.
And in both cases, weird-to-be-weird can be fun, but it's not whether the weirdness has an explanation -- for example, it really doesn't matter precisely how a stilsuit works. What matters is what kind of a culture might evolve among those who spend most of their lives in one -- the Fremen, for example. And the sandworms are cool both because of how weird they are, and because they're deified (Shai Hulud; Shaitan), and because the Fremen have learned to ride them.
If the story just described giant sandworms, and how you can have that whole ecosystem work on a planet with so little water, and gave precise schematics for how to build a stilsuit, I don't know that it would improve things.
That said, I must note that this is NOT a commentary of J.G. Ballard's work. I have not actually read any of his work, and therefore can make no comment.
I must admit the same thing.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Classic. The parent post gets modded offtopic because some mods don't agree with my position. Meanwhile, the GP post gets modded up because it fits with their version of fantasy. God, I love Slashdot sometimes.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.