
They Took Our Myths - AndrewDucker
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/06/they-took-our-myths.html
======
Bognar
This isn't relevant to the main point of the article, but the paragraph about
the power of mythology reminded me of Frank Herbert's _Dune_. The book does an
excellent job of dropping you into a new universe starting with the very first
pages. Herbert relentlessly uses new terminology from that universe without
explanation, but you gradually learn what the words mean through context. For
me this is an immense aid to immersion since you are surrounded by the new
universe, similar to learning a new language by living in the country that
speaks it.

If you haven't read _Dune_ , go pick it up. It's a great piece of science
fiction with a mythical element like the article describes.

~~~
Jtsummers
Ursula Le Guin does a similar thing in all the novels of hers I've read. Even
character/race descriptions sometimes are only provided piecemeal over the
course of the novel rather than all up front. Allowing you to reexamine what
you thought you knew or understood about the world and its peoples.

~~~
johnchristopher
Personally I think it's a cheap story-telling trick.

[http://english.bouletcorp.com/2010/05/21/fantasy/](http://english.bouletcorp.com/2010/05/21/fantasy/)

------
bhickey
The article doesn't explain _why_ Lovecraft's works are in the public domain.
Lovecraft's intention was that R.H. Barlow serve as executor of his literary
estate. My recollection is that this was never properly carried out, so
control over the estate devolved to his aunt, Annie Gamwell. Gamwell turned
Lovecraft's papers over to Barlow who deposited most of them in the John Hay
Library at Brown University. Throughout all of this, the copyright remained
vested in Gamwell.

In the 1940s, Derleth approached Gamwell's survivors and requesting permission
to reprint his work and later fraudulently asserted copyright over the entire
literary estate. Derleth also bought out the reprint rights for volumes of
Weird Tales that contained Lovecraft's work, but Lovecraft had retained
copyright for all stories in Weird Tales published after 1926. His output
between 1924 and 1926 amounts to six stories as far as I can tell. Derleth may
have legitimately obtained the copyright on these stories, but I can't say
with any certainty. S.T. Joshi probably knows for sure. As for everything
published after 1926, Gamwell's survivors never renewed the copyright on
Lovecraft's work, so the body entered the public domain.

 __Edit: __I 'll add that I'm disappointed that Lovecraft's letters aren't
freely available. Arkham House hasn't printed his collected letters in nearly
40 years. If Brown were willing to make digital copies of his correspondence
freely available, I'd be willing to contribute toward their digitization.

------
aaron695
> It's very easy to see that this trend has developed and accelerated over the
> last 30 years. In 1981, 7 out of 10 of the year's top-grossing movies were
> original material. In 2014, it was 1 out of 10.

The best reason for this I've seen is repeated material plays well in the
Asian etc markets. The initial movie becomes essentially an ad for the
squeals.

Because of the huge copyright infringement in these markets, ads are to
expensive to run to the whole population to get them to the movies.

But once the first movie is out the profit by sheer numbers in these markets
on squeals makes it worth while.

~~~
e12e
I'm more interested in what those 20 movies are. I found:

[http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=1981](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=1981)

    
    
       1 Raiders of the Lost Ark
       2 On Golden Pond
       3 Superman II
       4 Arthur
       5 Stripes
       6 The Cannonball Run
       7 Chariots of Fire
       8 For Your Eyes Only
       9 The Four Seasons
      10 Time Bandits
    

Of which I guess 2, 3, 8 isn't original.

[http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2:w014](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2:w014)

    
    
       1 American Sniper
       2 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
       3 Guardians of the Galaxy
       4 Captain America: The Winter Soldier
       5 The LEGO Movie
       6 The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
       7 Transformers: Age of Extinction
       8 Maleficent
       9 X-Men: Days of Future Past
      10 Big Hero 6
    

Of which only 10 is original.

~~~
iclelland
Big Hero 6 isn't original, if that's what you're saying there -- it's drawn
from the same Marvel universe as Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hero_6_(comics)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hero_6_\(comics\))

Heavily adapted for a different audience, certainly, but still not an original
story.

~~~
e12e
Oh, didn't know that. That means 0/10 for 2014 then.

~~~
aaron695
American Sniper is?

But it drops off the list I think when you look internationally. Your links
are domestic.

[http://deadline.com/2015/03/big-hero-6-600-million-third-
big...](http://deadline.com/2015/03/big-hero-6-600-million-third-biggest-
disney-animated-film-ever-international-box-office-1201388358/)

[http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Hunger-Games-Mockingjay-
Par...](http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Hunger-Games-Mockingjay-
Part-1-The#tab=summary)

[http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/American-Sniper#tab=summary](http://www.the-
numbers.com/movie/American-Sniper#tab=summary)

~~~
e12e
No, not in the sense of not using copyrighted material published in other
channels -- it's based on several books. I don't think the screenplay could
have been legally used without agreements with at least some of the authors
there.

------
vacri
> _It 's very easy to see that this trend has developed and accelerated over
> the last 30 years. In 1981, 7 out of 10 of the year's top-grossing movies
> were original material. In 2014, it was 1 out of 10.

Most articles on the subject tend to treat this as a mistake. The assumption
is that Hollywood executives are greenlighting these projects because they're
"safe". I'm really not convinced by that._

Big-budget movies are a business, and are more expensive than ever. If you're
going to be looking at the top 10, then yes, you're going to find 'safe'
titles. A better analysis would be looking at all movies.

------
rayiner
Nothing stops storytellers of today from releasing their works as creative
commons or public domain. And nothing stops the public from taking up these
public domain works instead of the for-profit products released in movie
theaters or in print.

~~~
normloman
Their publishing company / record label / film studio stops them from
releasing their work as CC / Public Domain. Because the middlemen of the
entertainment industry want to ensure a profit. They're also the one's
lobbying the government to make the copyright term longer and longer. So
changing this is beyond the means of the lone storyteller or fan embracing an
alternative. We need shorter copyright terms.

~~~
waterlesscloud
You don't need a publishing company / record label / film studio.

You might use one to finance your work. Or market your work, which is their
best talent these days.

But you don't _need_ them. You _can_ produce and release your work freely
without them.

~~~
tjradcliffe
Sure you can, but no one will read them. My novel "Darwin's Theorem"
(available on Amazon for a nominal price in e-book format, a less-nominal
price in paperback) is published under a CC license but that doesn't mean
anyone will read it.

The fundamentally borken part of the indie ecosystem is marketing/discovery.
Publishers still act as gatekeepers for the reading public. Most people don't
read and what they do read is almost entirely determined by the amount of
marketing done for it, and while marketing is a learnable skill (I've run my
own consulting shop, so done a lot of it) it is difficult to do on the kind of
budget most indie authors have available for what amounts to a hobby.

The indie music industry has done a better job of discovery but that's in part
because music is consumable in much smaller pieces than novels. The solution
to this in writing has been--to some extent--to return to serialization, but
while that has worked a bit in non-fiction (people write blogs they turn into
books) it has so far seen only one or two successes in fiction, and they have
been... not notable for the quality of writing, for the most part.

I've experimented with a couple of alternative forms to see if this can be
overcome, but no luck so far. One was an illustrated serial prose format
(finished version here:
[http://www.siduri.net/songsofalbion/songs_of_albion.html](http://www.siduri.net/songsofalbion/songs_of_albion.html)),
the other an somewhat informal poemed illustrations format
([http://www.siduri.net/cindylooyou/index.html](http://www.siduri.net/cindylooyou/index.html))
that appeared on the artist's blog and developed as a kind of jazz work as we
tossed themes back and forth. The latter actually got a bigger following,
although we promoted the former a lot more heavily. Go figure.

So far it looks like conventional serial narratives--probably pod-cast--are
the best bet for the indie author. Some kind of serial pod-cast will likely be
my next move, more in the spirit of exploration than anything else. I'm
fortunate to have some training as a voice actor, but the number conditions on
an idie author to be successful are many, and the difficulty for readers in
discovering work they might enjoy is considerable.

~~~
thenomad
Writer of the original article here. I've been avoiding commenting so far as
the discussion's made most of the points I'd want to make, but I thought I'd
chime in on this one.

Speaking as someone in the same position as tjradcliffe but in the movie (and
now comics) world rather than prose, his analysis is spot-on. Discovery's the
problem.

In the indie narrative film world - which is in a much, _much_ worse position
when it comes to discovery and distribution than the self-publishing world in
most ways for reasons somewhat too complicated to go into in a short comment -
there's an aphorism about the current situation that I'm hearing more and
more.

"There's never been a better time to make a film, and never been a worse time
to get anyone to watch it."

Like tjradcliffe, I'm experimenting with ways around it. And like him I've
ended up settling on serial works - both Carcosa, which is mentioned in the
article, and other stuff that I'll be bringing out shortly. But that's far
from a complete solution to the problem.

------
thwest
Pinning a massive culture shift away from ancient mythos on something as
particular as copyright law seems absurd. The move away from historical
knowledge in general and towards a permanent-present is evidenced across our
media, from entertainment to news to politics.

~~~
zyxley
> pinning a massive culture shift away from ancient mythos on something as
> particular as copyright law

I don't understand how you got from the article to this. The article's claim
is more like there isn't _enough_ of a culture shift, because ever-extending
copyright terms means nothing is ending up in the public domain anymore.

------
arifos1977
Remember when this site was about tech?

~~~
DanBC
Please could you post an archive.org link to the site when it was about tech?
Maybe a link to an old version of the guidelines before they said "anything
that good hackers would find interesting".

