Here’s an interview I conducted with the Fastforward Radio podcast about my last novel, Makers.
Monthly Archives::
February 2010
Here’s an interview I recorded with the Beyond the Book podcast, about my Publishers Weekly column about book pricing.
I’m doing a live chat tomorrow (Friday) for Internet Evolution about my latest ACTA article at 11AM Eastern/8AM Pacific/4PM UK.
I’m speaking at the next Ignite London, on Mar 2. It’s a free event; other speakers include Russell Davies, talking about Newspaper Club, and 16 others presenting on topics as varied as the Hacker/Maker Revolution, The History of Colour and The Journey of a Metal Jew. Lots of other Ignites in the UK: Cardiff, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool; and all over the world as part of Global Ignite Week.
My latest Guardian column, “Ducks, Nazis and Disney: well, that’s one way to get a TV transition,” tells the unlikely story of how a duck based on a rehabilitated Nazi rocket-scientist helped create the American color TV transition in the sixties:
There was one source of ready-made colour material that could have gone out over the airwaves: Hollywood had been shooting feature films and accompanying short subjects in colour for decades and had amassed a prodigious back-catalogue of material that might have jumpstarted the colour TV transition.
There was another problem, though: the studios hated TV, feared it, and would like to have seen it dead and dusted. It was the competition.
Until Walt Disney decided to build Disneyland, that is. The Walt Disney Company came through the second world war as a publicly listed firm, and Walt spent the next decade chafing against shareholder control and squabbling about spending with his brother Roy, the adult in their partnership. When Roy refused to open the company coffers to him for the $17m he needed to embark on a mad scheme called Disneyland, the company instead raised millions by opening their vaults to ABC, a broadcaster.
Ducks, Nazis and Disney: well, that’s one way to get a TV transition
Here’s the second installment of “Clockwork Fagin,” a young adult steampunk story commissioned for a Candlewick Press anthology edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. The story runs to 12,500 words and should take about a month to read for the podcast.
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a full-time self-employed audio engineer, producer, composer, and sound designer. In his free time, he makes beer, jewelry, odd musical instruments and furniture. He likes to meditate, to read and to cook.
On Feb 27, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Symphonic Band and Wind Symphony is giving a concert based on sf/f films, video-games, and books, which sounds awesome. And I’l honored that the prof who organized it, Kevin Collins, cited my last couple of novels as inspiration for the theme.
“I think that it’s fair to say that this program was especially inspired by (Doctorow’s) “Makers” and “Little Brother,” Collins said. “I find myself fascinated by his descriptions of the contemporary popular sub-cultures, and the creative culture of modification and personalization that has developed around new technologies.”The concert will begin with the Symphonic Band performing excerpts from “Symphony No. 1, Lord of the Rings,” by Johan Demeij. The work is based on the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, not the more recent Peter Jackson film trilogy. Those selections will be followed by “New Moon,” Alexandre Desplat’s score from the popular movie Twilight New Moon.
The combined Wind Symphony/Symphonic Band will turn next to a suite from the Batman film, The Dark Knight, by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard.
Following an intermission will be “Howl’s Moving Castle,” a symphonic fantasy by Joe Hisaishi created for the popular children’s anime classic.
The evening will close with “Video Games Live Suite,” an arrangement by Ralph Ford of six musical selections from video games: “One Winged Angel” from Final Fantasy VII; “Myst III Main Theme” from Exile; “Bounty Hunter Theme” from Advent Rising; “Halo Theme” from Halo; “Coronation and Baba Yetu” from Civilization IV; and “Kingdom Hearts.”
First Fantasy: Music from Video Games, Anime, Fantasy Films and Fiction
My latest Internet Evolution column, “Copyright Undercover: ACTA & the Web,” talks about the absurd tea-leaf-reading exercise that we have to engage in to figure out what’s actually happening with negotiations for a far-reaching, secret copyright treaty that could change the face of the web, privacy, creativity, competition, and commerce.
As the seventh round of secret negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) concluded last month in Guadalajara, Mexico, the radio silence on the negotiations was near-total. Like the Kremlinologists of the Soviet Union, we’re left trying to interpret the clues that leaked out from beneath the closed door.
Here’s what we know: The idea that major copyright treaties should be negotiated in secret is losing traction around the world. Legislators from all the ACTA negotiating countries are demanding that this process be opened up to the press, activist groups, and the public.
In response, trade reps are making the bizarre claim that none of the treaty language will result in major changes to their countries’ laws, only the other countries will have to change. (Since all these countries have irreconcilably different copyright systems, someone is lying. My money is on all of them.)
Finally, we have some idea of how ACTA’s masters view public participation: During the bland “public meeting” held before the negotiations got underway, an activist was thrown out for tweeting an account of the assurances being mouthed by those on the podium. As she was led away, she was booed by the lobbyists who are able to participate in the treaty from which mere citizens are excluded.
This issue is an embarrassment for all concerned, a naked bit of crony-capitalism that has so much more at stake than mere copyright. It needs to stop. Read on for how it came to this, and what you can do to stop it.
