George Martin on the SFWA

George R.R. Martin has chimed in with quite an interesting response to the ongoing SFWA copyright problems :

"One of the unfortunate side effects here, however, is that I see a lot of people slagging on SFWA as a result. The ones that disturb me most are the posts from young writers, an awful lot of which say something like, 'well, I'm not a SFWA member, and now I'm glad,' or 'after all this, I've resolved never to join SFWA,' calling the organization stupid or clueless or out of touch or... well, I don't have to rehash it all here, the fight is being fought on a dozen different blogs right now. Read the posts, and weep.

The part that really makes me gnash my teeth is where I see young writers saying that they don't see what they can get out of joining SFWA, so why bother?

Maybe it's a generational thing, I don't know... but as I see it, SFWA is not about what you can get out of it, and never has been. Damon Knight did not form the group to boost his career, way back when. Robert Silverberg, Jack Williamson, Poul Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, Joe Haldeman, Jane Yolen, Roger Zelazny, and so many more did not give up time and energy they could have devoted to writing novels and short stories to serve as SFWA officers because they thought they'd benefit from the networking, or get higher advances, or win a Nebula. It was all about improving the field. Writers helping writers. Paying forward. Heinlein said it best. You cannot ever hope to pay back the people who helped you when you were starting out, so instead you pay forward, and try to lend a hand to the ones who come up after you."

What I think is interesting about this post is that I don't think it actually makes much sense.  I think that he's running together two different streams of argument, both of which make sense on their own but don't make sense when strung together.  In fact, I actually wonder if this isn't intentional as one of the lines of argument is actually pretty scathing about other SF authors.

The problem with Martin's argument is that it's trying to point out that the neophyte writers who are saying they'll never join the SFWA are missing the point because being a member of the SFWA is all about paying it forward and helping out the next generation of authors.  But the problem is that these neophyte authors who make Martin gnash his teeth should be the people who benefit the most from the SFWA.  But they see no value in membership.  This is a serious problem, but to suggest that they should join up in order to pay it forward is a bit like criticising people who are poor for not contributing enough to the tax system... they're the beneficiaries of the system, there's no one less well of than them that they can pay it forward to!

So I don't think that Martin's argument makes sense.

However, I think that within his argument there are two different problems he is raising, both of which make sense.

Firstly, we have the problem that neophyte writers who would most benefit from the emergency medical fund and legal advice that the SFWA offer see no value in joining the SFWA.  This is because the only things they know about the SFWA are that they're the copyright bullies that Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow complain about.  Hell, the SFWA's so bad that Scalzi even stood for president in order to clear the whole thing out.  This is an internal SFWA matter as it means that EITHER neophyte writers are not seeing the benefits they should thanks to the "paying it forward" of other writers OR the SFWA's PR is now so disastrous that they could offer salvation and immortality and nobody would care because BoingBoing has been slagging them off.

This is clearly a problem and I agree, neophyte writers and SFWA functionaries are not aided by Stross et al's decision to take all of this public.

Secondly, we have established but "young" authors who should be members of the SFWA because it's morally right for them to be supporting the next generation of writers.  However, rather than having solidarity they're complaining so loudly about the slight that was done them that they're actually discouraging people from joining the SFWA.  Not just that, they're putting off the people that would MOST benefit from the SFWA's help.  In other words, they're selfish and by complaining publicly about how the SFWA has made them look bad, they're putting their own reputations above the possibility of neophyte writers getting medical and legal aid.  To these people one can say that being a member of the SFWA is not about what's to your advantage... it's about paying it forward to the younger writers who do benefit from the SFWA, the "young" established authors who complain about the SFWA have lost sight of this fact.  "I'm alright Jack, pull the ladder up" if you will.

While I don't think Martin's post makes sense prima facie, I think that if you disentangle the two streams of the argument you have two very good points.  In fact, they're points addressing a problem that I raised when so many authors reacted negatively to the SFWA's claim that by releasing free stuff online, they were like scabs because they were devaluing paid fiction markets that they might not need but other neophyte authors desperately do.

I think the problem is that the agenda of established authors is not the same as the agenda of neophyte ones and that the SFWA seems to worry first about the neophyte authors but does so in a way that not only alienates the established authors but actively winds them up.  Giving Burt his job back after he made such a public blunder at the expense of certain established authors clearly is a slap in the face.  The question is whether it's due to incompetence or an actual matter of principle.  Despite the fact that I actually sympathise with the SFWA, believe them to have their hearts in the right place and that nobody, least of all the neophyte writers, is served by such an ugly and public airing of grievances, I can't help but think that while the established authors are being selfish and short-sighted, the SFWA really should do a better job of keeping its established authors on side.  Young aspiring writers are always going to listen to established authors before they listen to their union rep and by antagonising these established authors, the SFWA management structure seems to be cutting off its nose to spite its face.

Comments

[Jacob Martin]

I was thinking whether Australian writers could even join SFWA but now that I've heard about the problems it could put me through I'm not so sure about it. I released four free e-books of a prose serial for free, with moderate, but not financial, success. People were reading it, but I wasn't seeing any money out of it, because the collected editions of the serial would be the stuff I'd charge for. However, if I get labelled a scab for putting out free material that boosts my presence in the book world, how would that encourage me to join SFWA?

The perks of membership sound good, but if I can't give away free promotional stuff, because it supposedly devalues the market, how is membership going to benefit me?

Now I'm confused...

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Well if you're selling stories and books then you'd benefit from emergency health care and free legal advice as well as other stuff. That's the reason why a working Sf writer who is starting out would want to join.

As for calling you a scab, they'd point out that actually, it's not clear how much free publicity a free book give-away actually provides for new authors and that by giving stuff away for free rather than selling it, you might very well be cutting your own throat by undermining the markets that you really want to be a part of. I don't think it's necessarily that cut and dry but unlike the established authors who poured scorn on the "pixel drenched techno-peasant" concept, I think that the SFWA's case isn't obviously wrong and even if it was wrong it would be wrong for the best possible reasons.

[Jacob Martin]

What I want to know is that if I can't afford to join the National Writer's Union in Australia yet, what should I do?

First of all I'd have to finish editing and illustrating my first novel, then I could think about it.

[Farah Mendlesohn]

Just a small correction; it is not the neophytes who tend to claim from the medical fund. They often still have jobs. It's the older writers who have become dependent on that next book (and sadly, almost all literary careers, like political ones, end in failure).

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Hi Farah :-)

Thanks for the rectification. That would mean that there's kind of an inverted bell curve of usefulness to the SFWA. when you become a writer you'll need the expertise and the legal advice but you'd still have a day job but when your output slows and if you've never quite made enough to have a nest egg or you've mismanaged your money you then need the medical aid.

I think there's still grounds for suggesting a two-tiered system though with the haves on one side and the have-nots on the other. It just means that in addition to harming the new writers who would benefit from the legal advice etc, the established authors flinging much at the SFWA also endangers the older writers by endangering the finances of the organisation.

[Elio M. García, Jr.]

"the SFWA's claim that by releasing free stuff online, they were like scabs"

I will note that this was not the claim of the SFWA. This was a claim made by a single member of the SFWA, the outgoing Vice President of the time, Howard V. Hendrix, and he was making it in his capacity as another member of the SFWA instead of as some sort of official policy statement.

It is a really big problem that, repeatedly, the blunders and opinions of a few are implicated as being indicative of the whole group. It adds to the bad public reputation when people fall into this so easily.

Hendrix's views are certainly indicative of some small part of the SFWA population, but given the response from writers (SFWA members and non-SFWA members), I am quite certain it is in fact a small part of the population.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

He did it from the SFWA's platform and I don't remember the SFWA working particularly hard to distance themselves from the remarks (though I may be wrong).

I'm sure that loads of their members disagree but I was addressing how the organisation and its officers saw the role of the SFWA. Given that the most vocal critics of that view were not officers of the SFWA, I don't think their views are anywhere near as representative of the views of the organisation's executive than even an outgoing officer's.