The author John Updike died last night. I won’t write much about him, but he did an interview with the New York Times in October last year (as part of the promotion to his novel “The Widows of Eastwick“, the sequel to “The Witches of Eastwick“). The talk was part of the Times Talks series and is available as a podcast. Be warned, its a one and a half hour talk and the MP3 file weights in at 82MB. But it interesting enough for me to remember it months later.
And when the 532-page ebook is free, I suspect that the author is trying to be very correct and get his point across. Partly to stop himself being sued by George Lucas no doubt. The book is question is The Secret History of Star Wars which skews from the Lucasfilm version of history.
According to the “Frequently Asked Questions” part of the book’s site, Michael Kaminski wrote the book to fill the perceived knowledge gap (or at least lore gap) between the observed history from the fan’s perspective, and the official history according the Lucasfilm.
To be honest, I don’t care enough about the politics of the Star Wars movies (or the Jedi religion) to be worried, about the book’s content. But the existence of the book is interesting.
Essentially this book is a compiled collection of sources to create a history of the creation of six highly influential movies; a series which continues to generate controversy. And is of course unauthorised.
When an unauthorised biography is compiled, the person at the heart of it can sue for liable, as long as the accusations (if any) in the book are false). This book is not about George Lucas, but about the creation of a series of products. Which means that is possible to sue for copyright violations in much the same way that a lawsuit was perused against the creators of a printed Harry Potter Lexicon (which was settled out of court). Its not just reputation at stake here, but a multimillion empire. By being a free download, the author manages to avoid at least part of the consequences (financial gain) and given that this 3rd edition of the book came after the above settlement, it is possible that a few discrete alternations may have been made to prevent the “too much of my work” arguments.
There are of course two reasons as to why Lucasfilm has not sued.
1) Suing your fans is not a good idea; you need them
2) Lucas has a Pirates Dilemma problem. Yes its is a derived work, but its taken the history of the series in a direction which LucasFilm never would. While they are unlikely to support it, it would be a bad idea for them to try to destroy it. Because its something they can build on (or at least with).
Could someone who cares about the series and can confirm the truth of any of the books details contact me? Also in the unlikely possibility that someone from LucasFilm is reading this, is there an official response to the book? I can confirm that the author cares enough about copyright to disable copying and pasting from the PDF file.
Still behind the scenes shenanigans are always interesting.
take care,
Will Knott
p.s. I’m waiting for The Secret History of the Babylon 5 series (or at least the collected Hyperion archives). Have I missed them?
An old one from DJ Earworm a.k.a Jordan Roseman, the mash-up artist that wrote the book, the creator of the “United State of Pop” and the video skills of KJ Kline yield us “What’s My Name?. This is a mash-up of 22 songs, namely
Ace Of Base – All That She Wants
Mamma’s and the Papa’s – California Dreamin’
Brandy and Monica – The Boy Is Mine
Aaliyah – Try Again
Britney Spears – Oops! I Did It Again
Beyonce – Naughty Girl
Donna Summer – I Feel Love
Maroon5 – This Love
Eminem – My Name Is
Alicia Keys – You Don’t Know My Name
Destiny’s Child – Say My Name
Snoop Dogg – Who Am I? (What’s My Name?)
DMX – What’s My Name?
The Who – Who Are You?
Madison Avenue – Who The Hell Are You?
Eurythmics – Who’s That Girl
Peter Gabriel – I Don’t Remember
Irene Cara – Fame!
Kanye West – The New Work-out Plan
Lynyrd Skynyrd – What’s Your Name?
Jason Mraz – Eyes Open (Remember My Name)
Phil Collins – Take Me Home
Why do I bring it up? Well apart from the fact that it’s an excellent mashup, Jordan Roseman really did write the book; “Audio Mashup Construction Kit: ExtremeTech” (ISBN-10: 0471771953,ISBN-13: 978-0471771951) so he’s an author as well?
Well I can see that the book is mostly a PC based one (and an apparent Acid Pro lovefest) but I’m a PC boy. Given the low “used” price, I have to wonder… is it worth it?
Would you be willing to donate time you already spent, to help give people more time to live?
This is international breast cancer month. It’s why I actually started putting up the pink images here. At the time I joked about what would be done with Bowel Cancer Awareness month. Bowel cancer does not have any glamour to it. We are talking about a part of the body which we tend not to think about until something goes wrong.
Two things occured this week and it sparked an idea. One where I’ll need your help.
A book of Irish bloggers (which means Bloggers in Ireland, from Ireland or about Ireland) by Irish bloggers doing what we do best. Talk and blog (same thing really).
This is about being a patron, not being patronising to a cause.
Would you be willing to donate a blog post for inclusion in a book which would be sold in aid of bowel cancer?
Would you be willing to donate time you already spent, to help give people more time to live? And would you buy the book? And get your friends to buy the book?
Its a press release, but it might be of interest… Cork City Libraries has begun to extend the resources of the Local Music Archive. The archive will collect two copies of recordings by Cork singers, musicians, groups, choirs, quartets, bands and orchestras across all genres of music : pop, rock, indie, jazz, traditional, classical, operatic, etc., plus 2 copies of music books and scores of Cork interest. we would be grateful if any individual, musician, group or music shop would alert us to any new material by Cork artists.
In addition to new material, the Local Music Archive will retrospectively collect material by Cork artists already released in an effort to make the archive as comprehensive as possivle.
I suppose all those mobile phone videos and bootlegs of the gigs at the Cork Midsummer Festival or the Live at the Marquee event (or anyone with a bootleg of the now ledendary Nirvina concert at Sir Henry’s) should get in contact. I’m sure IMRO won’t be contacted… but I haven’t asked. You might want to.
I’ll admit that having worked in mobile telecoms, the idea of a cell phone turning people in to ghouls or zombies in a 28 Days Later (and soon 28 Weeks Later) way seemed an interesting way to create a panic. If something happens, you’l call the emergency services. If something happens on the street, you’l use your mobile phone… and become one of the infected. Silly of course, but an interesting idea.
In the 1970’s the defining moment of the disaster movie was the moment things went wrong, usually at the 20 minute mark after you get to know the main players in the disaster.In this book the main character, a young comic book artist, Clayton Riddell is introduced at 3pm (EST) having made a deal and waiting for his wife to get home around around 3:45pm so he can call her and tell her that he’s closed a major deal. At 3:03pm “the pulse” which plunges the hero in to action starts. You don’t get to know him until after the explosion start.
Then the movie quickly becomes a zombie flick, then a road movie, then “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (or “The Tommyknockers”), then a stalker type thriller with shades of “Children of the Corn”, then … It changes a lot.
Which is actually the theme of the book.
Which is part of the problem.
An aside to this is that Stephen King is turning his “Dark Tower series in to a comic book / graphic novel. This is probably why the lead is no longer a novelist. It’s also why this book is a let down. Cell looks like being this next Dark Tower…
I’ll spoil it for some people when I say that the book does not end. It stops. It ends on what could be described as a cliffhanger. It waiting for a sequel. This follows a book which has changed it’s coat so many times, almost not too sure what it wants to become, that it feels plain wrong.
The first half is brilliant and driving. Then after all the coat changes, it splutters out and crawls to a stop.
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