Eugene Fischer

Category: Writing

Medium’s Big Rights Grab

I’ve had “The New Mother” up on Medium since 2015.

Today, I had to take it down.

In 2015, Medium was a fairly new platform, one that made it very easy to put lengthy things online in an attractive, easy-to-read format. It integrated nicely with Twitter, which I still used a lot back then. It had a comprehensive analytics page for tracking engagement. It seemed like a great place to put “The New Mother” to get it some more attention. And it was; hundreds of people who might never have otherwise read the story scrolled through that entire page over the next few months.

Eventually, attention dwindled, as I knew it would. But I figured I might as well leave the story up until some compelling reason came along to take it down.

Over the years there were changes to Medium’s platform (the establishment of a filtered paywall, subscriptions, the Medium Partner Program), but nothing I couldn’t opt out of. The licensing setting on the page remained “all rights reserved.” That was enough for me, as the Terms of Service always contained language roughly equivalent to:

You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium.

By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission.

Medium.com Terms of service, march 2016 – August 2020

That language is going away at the end of the month. Effective September 1, 2020, Medium’s new Terms of Service will read:

You retain your rights to any content you submit, post or display on or through the Services.

Unless otherwise agreed in writing, by submitting, posting, or displaying content on or through the Services, you grant Medium a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid, and sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your content in all media formats and distribution methods now known or later developed without compensation to you.

medium.com terms of service as of september 2020

That is a very different set of things Medium suddenly wants permission to do with my story.

I don’t know many fiction authors interested in giving away the right to publish their work royalty- and compensation-free, anywhere in the world. Not only does Medium want license to do that, they want it “sublicensable”—they want to be able to give other people the right to publish my story, too.

And what about “derivative works?” Does Medium want carte blanche to, say, hire someone to write sequels to my story? Because I don’t see anything in here that stops them from doing so. It’s a nonexclusive right, so they couldn’t sue me if I also wrote and published a sequel, but that would be a very small comfort if a global publishing platform started promoting alternate versions of my characters.

This looks like a huge rights grab. The minute I read the new ToS, “The New Mother” came down.

You can still read it, though. It’s right here on my website now, where the only one who decides what happens to it is me.

Online Class on Writing and Selling Short Science Fiction

On August 13th, 7:00-9:30pm CST, I’m teaching an online class through The Writing Barn for people getting started with science fiction short stories. We’ll be talking about elements of craft, as well as how to publish your work. If you are an early career writer of SF, consider signing up!

Online SF Workshop at The Writing Barn in 2019

I’m teaching another class for The Writing Barn. This one will be a six week writing workshop for science fiction and fantasy. It runs weekly from March 21 through April 25. Here’s the description:

Are you a writer who dreams of other worlds? Fantasy and science fiction stories let us leave realism behind to explore new viewpoints and experiences. They offer storytelling tools to match the infinite possibilities of the imagination. Learn how to use those tools in this six-week course, where author and educator Eugene Fischer will lead students in workshopping stories and examining the mechanics of genre. Whether you’re just getting started or polishing work for publication, this class will help you bring your worlds to life.

If you want to be one of the fifteen students workshopping with me in the spring of 2019, you can sign up here.

Nueva Madre Nominated for Premio Ignotus Award

Nueva Madre, Arrate Hidalgo’s Spanish translation of “The New Mother,” is on the final ballot for the Premio Ignotus award, an honor voted on by members of the Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror, its partner organizations, fans who opted into an open enrollment period for participation, and members of the Hispacón convention. I’m in the category for Best Foreign Story, which as I understand it is for any translated work shorter than novel length that was first published in Spain in the past year. The other nominees for the category include familiar names Rachel Swirsky and Aliette de Bodard, an author named Michael Wehunt with whom I wasn’t previously familiar as he seems to write mostly horror, and one other.  The fifth nominee, to my astonishment, is Louisa May Alcott, for the Spanish translation of “The Abbot’s Ghost.”

Never in my life did I expect to be able to say I was in competition with Louisa May Alcott for a literary award (though Nueva Madre certainly offers a new take on the notion of little women). So for that novelty, as well as the nomination itself, I’m grateful for all the Premios Ignotus voters.

Reviews for Nueva Madre en Español

Editorial Cerbero’s Spanish edition of “The New Mother” (translated by Arrate Hidalgo) has been out for a few months now, and Nueva Madre‘s reception by its Spanish readership has been supremely heartening. The Goodreads responses—which I’ve never felt a desire to read for my publications in English, but discover I’m fascinated by now that I’m in translation—have been consistently positive. My most common reason for signing into Twitter lately has been to see if Arrate has flagged a new review for my attention.

The first one I can recall seeing was David Pierre’s review on his personal site. Machine translation informs me that he recommends the book, and says, “Nueva madre is a short science fiction novel that, in a masterly way, poses a future that seems odd to us, but that could destroy us as a society.”

Miriam Beizana at A Librería is not a frequent reader of SF, and seems skeptical of novella-length fiction, but seems to have enjoyed Nueva Madre despite those reservations. She says something that Google thinks means:

I have read many precious short novels that I will recommend ad nauseam. Virginia Woolf is an expert in this format, I could also quote The Hours of Michael Cunningham; or in a more indie look There are no fair men left in Sodoma by J. Font and the wonder of O derradeiro book by Emma Olsen by Berta Dávila. I can not avoid making a comparison between these titles and Yabarí , Mud or Chlorophilia . While the first ones remain as a reminiscence in my head, the seconds have a more fleeting life in my memories.

I have to say that with New Mother , maybe, maybe, I have found in this little book what I hope to find in a novel of these characteristics. Noting, that yes, that the 187 pages indicated in the technical sheet would be about 100 in a more common A5 size, which the achievement is even greater.

Ester Barroso Jaime wrote a review that I actually have a human translation of, thanks to my mother posting it on Facebook and getting a reply from a bilingual friend. They write:

Not all writers are so brave when it comes to writing, but Fischer is in The New Mother. With mastery, the author puts the finger on the sore spot, he makes the reader wonder and question things; he leads him, page after page, to think about the possibility that he has created. To what we give for granted and normal, he gives it a whole turn demonstrating that the meaning of “normal”, in any field, is arbitrary. And what is worse: the things that humans are capable of doing in order to maintain that structure called “normal”. Who are the monsters then? The “normal” ones who prefer to walk on the safe side or those who suffer from this pathology? Survival in its pure state is served.

It’s lovely to see a new group of readers engage with my story. Gracias a todos ustedes que compartieron sus reacciones a Nueva Madre.

Andy Duncan recommends “My Time Among the Bridge Blowers”

Among many other excellent things on his long list of 2017 science fiction, fantasy, and horror worthy of people’s attention, Andy Duncan was kind enough to include “My Time Among the Bridge Blowers” from The New Voices of Fantasy. I’m grateful to have a recommended reading list from someone who seems to have read so widely from last year’s publications. When it comes to fiction from 2017, if it wasn’t nominated for the Tiptree Award then I didn’t have a chance to read it. I’ll definitely be revisiting this post to catch things that I’d’ve otherwise missed. So for both the list itself, and my story’s inclusion thereon, thanks Andy.

Cover reveal for Nueva Madre

Here’s what the Spanish edition of “The New Mother” is going to look like. It’s the work of Cecilia García, and I adore it. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen an image of Tess, and she looks so much like she did in my head. I love the press badge, and the little picture of identical GDS siblings on her phone, and her wavy hair, and I especially love the uncertain look on her face. The bustle and blur of the city rising behind her is perfect, suggestive of the complex interplay of social forces Tess tries to navigate as she moves through the story. And that bright, full moon dominating the human skyline and framing the main character is symbolic of the themes in ways I’m sure don’t require elaboration. I’m also very pleased to see not just my name on there, but also Arrate Hidalgo’s, without whom Nueva Madre would not exist.

This beautiful thing will be available from Editorial Cerbero in November.

The New Fantasy anthology from Tachyon

Look at that gorgeous cover. This book is going to be amazing, and I’m pleased to announce it will include a new short story of mine, “My Time Among the Bridge Blowers.” I’ll have more to say about this story once it comes out, but for now I’m just thrilled to be a part of this collection with so many other writers I admire.

You can pre-order the anthology from the Tachyon Publications website here.

“The New Mother” in Science Fiction World

2016-09yiwen“The New Mother” was translated and published back in September by China’s (and the world’s) largest circulation science fiction magazine, Science Fiction World. In fact, given the circulation, it’s entirely possible that more people will have read this version of “The New Mother” than the one I originally wrote.

Now the contributor’s copies have made their way across the ocean to me.  Looking through it, though I can’t read the text, I notice a lot of interesting things.

  • My name, when translated into Chinese, is 尤金 费雪. I’m told this contains characters for both “gold” and “snow.”
  • There are many translation footnotes, most commonly for elements of the story dealing with acronyms and initials. All acronyms and initials are rendered in English characters in the text, then contextualized below. There is one footnote that, from context, is clearly explaining why, in English, a group with a condition called HCP might name their news magazine “The Hiccup.” More common acronyms, like DNA, are still printed in English, but not footnoted.
  • In the English version of the story, the journalistic passages that made up every other section were distinguished from the narrative passages by italics. In the Chinese version there is clearly a typeface distinction going on, but I don’t know how to characterize it. I want to say that the parts that were italicized in English are here rendered in sketchier, less blocky looking characters. I don’t know if that’s just same typeface’s equivalent of italics, or something more like a different font.
  • There’s a fantastic, manga-style illustration to open the story; a double page splash of angry people shouting across a hospital as young girls are pulled away from their mother, while in the center a religious figure with hooded eyes reads from a book while standing beneath a sign that says “KEEP QUIET.” Here’s the best scan I was able to get:

SFW Illustration

The Coode Street Podcast with Jo Walton and Me

itunescoodestreet

At WorldCon in Kansas City I got the chance to join Jo Walton on the Coode Street podcast, hosted by Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe. We talked about writers that characterize different eras of science fiction, how science fiction differs rhetorically from fantasy (more detail on that here), and whether there’s a difference between the kinds of literary experimentation in the past and what is pursued today. As tends to happen, I fell a little bit into just listening to Jo be enviably clever, but I did get a chance to talk about the Iowa Writers’ Workshop’s modern support for genre writing, and contemporary writers who inspire me (going on for a bit about  Carmen Maria Machado and Meghan McCarron and Carola Dibbell). You can listen to the episode on the Coode Street site, on your podcast player of choice through iTunes, or via the embedded player below.

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