Just in time for your holiday shopping, The Magic Battery and Spells of War are now available from Amazon in paperback!
For some time I’ve known it’s dangerous to criticize the Chinese government on some American campuses. Emerson College investigated a student group that dared to criticize the Chinese rulers and then suspended it, and as far as I can tell it has never backed away from its contemptible decree. Mark Wrighton, president of George Washington University, declared he was “personally offended” by posters criticizing China and would “undertake an effort to determine who is responsible.” He backed off when he found himself facing more publicity than he bargained for.
Fandom gets a large proportion of its new people from college students and recent graduates. If they learn there that they should shut up about China while on campus, they may carry that habit over into their fannish activities. This, I’m sure, is one reason for the lack of widespread calls to boycott the Chengdu Worldcon. But how widespread is this effect? Are Emerson and GWU outliers? Lately I’ve looked into the ways China intimidates Western educational institutions and found that varying levels of intimidation are common.
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Walter Donway has written an enthusiastic review of Spells of War. It’s always nice to see these. Give it a mention if you’d like to help my sales. If you haven’t gotten Spells of War yet, I hope this review will push you to buy and read it.
With the explosion of Mastodon use, some people may have come across Bookwyrm, a federated network that uses ActivityPub protocols. It’s supposed to be something like a decentralized alternative to Goodreads. I was excited about it at first, but fortunately was quickly warned about its license. It’s unsuitable for me, for independent writers, and for advocates of freedom. I thought about whether I should even mention it, but decided I should post a brief warning.
The problem is write at the top: “This is anti-capitalist software, released for free use by individuals and organizations that do not operate by capitalist principles.” Software licenses that restrict who can use the software and for what purpose are almost always a bad idea, even when the restriction isn’t inherently bad, as it is in this case. Open-source code which only some people are allowed to use isn’t open-source.
Most obviously, it implicitly excludes publishing houses and self-employed authors. Organizations that aren’t employee-owned are explicitly excluded. That’s worse than senseless. Depending on how you read it, it could also exclude people who live by capitalist principles, such as giving value for value and rejecting governmental control over what can be published. 🚩
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My latest article for Online Library of Liberty, “Authority and Oppression in Verdi’s Operas”, is now up for your reading enjoyment. I’m especially proud of the research that went into this one.
Till recently, I hadn’t paid much attention to the gay rights issue in China. It’s not as bad as in some countries, but it’s poor and may be getting worse with this year’s changes in the government. That’s a major issue for many fans, yet I haven’t seen any discussion of it in connection with the 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu.
The good news is that homosexuality isn’t illegal in China. However, same-sex marriage isn’t recognized, and same-sex couples aren’t allowed to adopt. This shouldn’t directly affect visitors, but it’s one more reason to question the choice of China as a host country for the Worldcon.
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As I’m writing this, the FIFA World Cup is about to start up in Doha, Qatar. Many people have called for a boycott on human rights grounds. I agree, though my focus has been on a different boycott: the 2023 World Science Fiction Convention in Chengdu, China. It’s interesting to look at the arguments for and against the Qatar boycott and see how they apply to China.
The case against Qatar is strong. Migrant workers building the infrastructure have been ill-treated, and the number of deaths has been put in the thousands. Homosexual sex is illegal in Qatar, with a penalty of up to seven years in prison. The law is actively enforced. Human Rights Watch has reported multiple cases of “severe and repeated beatings and … sexual harassment in police custody.” Detainees have been subject to “physical abuse, ranging from slapping to kicking and punching until they bled.”
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Originally I wrote this piece, in a slightly different form, for a non-public journal. If you’re a writer who’s looking to add Mastodon to your communication and publicity resources, you might find it useful.
Mastodon is a federated system for making brief, usually public posts. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, the system doesn’t belong to any one owner. Anyone can set up a server (also called an instance), and it’s fairly easy and cheap if you have a little tech knowledge. It’s like FidoNet from the days of BBSes, before the Internet was open to the public, or like Usenet.
Mastodon is built on open-source software and is part of a larger system called the Fediverse. There’s a video sharing system of sorts, but it hasn’t really caught on. Hosting video is much more daunting than hosting messages and images.
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David Friedman is the son of economist Milton Friedman. While he isn’t as famous as his father was, he’s respected in libertarian circles. On November 8, he reported on his blog that Amazon has terminated his KDP account, taken his books offline, and denied him the right to collect outstanding royalties.
Update: Friedman reports Amazon has reinstated his account.
Apparently KDP, Amazon’s self-publishing arm, terminated my account in September, sending me a message I missed. They claim I had multiple accounts, why I have no idea, and also that “this account is related to an account that was terminated due to violations of our Content Guidelines.”