Eugene Fischer

Category: Fiction

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.

Interviews: Nathan Ballingrud, Kelly Link

In the last couple of days two great interviews have hit the net. The first is a Weird Fiction Review interview with author Nathan Ballingrud, whose collection North American Lake Monsters is getting wide acclaim and is sitting next to my bed this very moment, probably making every other book in the room nervous. In the interview Nathan talks about his artistic goals, and lists a ton of favorite pieces of horror fiction.

With the stories in North American Lake Monsters, I wanted to write pieces that hurt. I wanted to write about people we’re conditioned to regard as contemptible, or dull, or even as villains, and get to their humanity. If I can get a reader to feel some empathy for somebody on the cusp of joining a white supremacy movement, or an ex-con who treats his own family with the same hostile suspicion he felt for other inmates, or a man who turns his back on his mentally ill wife, then I’ve succeeded in my intent. I have no interest in redeeming any of these characters, necessarily. But we live in a society that encourages us to view each other in simplistic and tribalistic terms, and that leads to an erosion of empathy, which is destructive to the human condition – to our ability to live successfully in an integrated society. It’s important that we look at people we think of as evil or irredeemable, and find the thing inside them that can still be loved. We’re doomed, if we can’t do that.

The second is Meghan McCarron interviewing Kelly Link for Gigantic Magazine. The talk about Kelly’s love for The Vampire Diaries, and pattern in stories, and Kelly’s forthcoming collection Get In Trouble. Click through for two of the most brilliant people I know riffing on what kinds of storytelling are exciting them these days. Also, Kelly’s favorite contemporary vampire stories!

I’m no longer watching television in which middle-aged men figure out how to be men. I’d rather watch shows about teenaged girls figuring out what it means to be a monster. I like coming-of-age stories, ghost stories, horror stories. I love stories about doppelgangers.

New Writing: Ted Chiang, Ben Mauk, Carmen Machado

New things for you to read!

A Lot of Good News

To begin, other people’s good news:

  • First, and long run most important, Mary Anne had a baby!  Howdy, Anandan.  Welcome to the world.
  • Paul Berger sold one of his Clarion stories, “Small Burdens” to Strange Horizons.  It should be showing up next year in the Spring, and it is a marvelous piece of work.
  • Meghan McCarron also sold a story to Strange Horizons.  It will also be showing up next Spring, and is titled “WE HEART VAMPIRES!!!!!!”  My personal connection to Meghan is tenuous–I met her at WisCon and was probably creepily excited to do so.  But every one of her stories I’ve read has blown me away, so this leaps onto my list of eagerly anticipated works.
  • Sarah Miller put in the legwork to compile a list of Clarion ’08 publications.  It’s still incomplete, but we’re tallying in email, and it seems that in the slightly more than a year since we disbanded, we’ve sold 25 stories, 10 of which were written at Clarion, and 7 of which are to pro markets.  This counts as meta good news, in a “lots of my friends are doing awesome things” kinda way.

And now, my own good news.

  • I got a job.  After stringing together two consecutive months without losing a day to debilitating intestinal pain, it was time to stop living entirely off my parents.  I will be teaching the GRE for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions.  This is part time work, and how much work is available depends on student demand.  I’ll find out how much of my costs this will reliably cover after I finish training.  I may end up needing another job in tandem, but after being on my back for most of a year, this is an awfully heartening development.
  • Another heartening development — I sold a story to Asimov’s!  It’s a hard-SF story titled “Adrift,” (I never was able to think up a better title for it than my working title.  It’s kind of boring, but whatever.) and I haven’t yet been told when it will run.  But when it does it will be my first publication that I can point at in a bookstore.  I’m pretty excited about that.
  • My website is working again. Hello website.

“Advertising at the End of the World” by Keffy Kehrli

Keffy’s last publication was in the print magazine Sybil’s Garage, so I couldn’t link to it.  But this one is online at Apex Magazine.  This was another of Keffy’s Clarion stories, and has one of the best first lines that showed up that summer.  It is also, as so many of his stories are, suffused with dark, understated humor.  Go read “Advertising at the End of the World.”

Stuff I’m Doing and Reading: A Miscellany

So I’m paying hosting costs for this site, right?  I bought a domain name and everything.  I should do something with it.  Here’s what I’m doing right now:

Tiny Hamburgers

I’m in a bar, lurking in corners with my laptop and munching tiny hamburgers.  Creepy and delicious!  Even more exciting than what I’m doing right now: things on the internet that I have recently enjoyed.

First up, Leonard Richardson’s story “Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs” just went live on Strange Horizons.  The story is precisely what it says on the tin, and the world is a better place for it.  I haven’t met Leonard, but he was one of the editors of Thoughtcrime Experiments, which has been pretty awesome every time I’ve dipped into it.  I should note that this is a story written in the infernokrusher idiom, the description and discussion of which at the link are supremely entertaining reading in their own right.

Next, a review of Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Nicholas Whyte.  He is one of my favorite sources of thoughtful writing about science fiction, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has been one of my favorite SF novels for years.  It’s one of those books I buy copies of to give away.  Nicholas’s review almost perfectly reflects my own thoughts about the book, except if I were writing it there would probably have been a little gleeful gushing about the awesomeness of people hurtling between planets in jury rigged tin cans.  But then I think I’m more of a gusher than he is.

Just got word that there is a birthday party I need to be at.

Exuent.

Know Your Foe: TNF-alpha

The following is a classified communique, smuggled across the blood/brain barrier from counter-insurgency leaders in the cortex.

—————

*URGENT MESSAGE FOR PARTISANS OF THE DEFENDERS OF THE DIGESTIVE TISSUES*

It’s been a long battle.  No one knows better than we do how entrenched and seemingly unstoppable are the rogue forces within the immune system that persist in waging their psychotic war against the innocent cells of the alimentary canal.  And no one knows better than we do the sacrifices our allies have made in the ongoing effort to protect and preserve the digestive tract for future generations.  Up until now, our only weapon against the autoimmune offensive has been the cortisol flood.  Our adrenal compatriots have been valiant in this matter, but we all knew it was never more than a stopgap measure.  Overproduction of corticosteroids takes too much of a toll on us all to be a long term solution.

But soon we will have a new weapon.  Our enemy’s weak point has been identified, and we are poised to attack.

tnfa_crystal_structureThis is our target: tumor necrosis factor alpha.  This cytokine has been identified as the molecule the enemy is using to regulate its illegal inflammatory actions.  Without TNF-alpha, the insurgents will be unable to continue clear-cutting our villi and ulcerating our viscera.  Their hidden macrophages will be rendered impotent, their detestable engines of apoptosis will grind to a halt.  We have the intelligence we need to end this war.  And, soon, we will have the means to act on it.  But we can’t do it alone; to strike this blow, we will need to accept help from an unusual source.

Your tireless counter-insurgency leaders have for some time now been in communication with extra-corpus agents.  We are aware that the idea of opening our borders to mercenary elements may be unsettling to some, but the reality of our situation is that such an alliance is our only path to victory.  The negotiations have been long and difficult, but, thanks to these efforts, we will be able to mount a new counter-offensive within one diurnal cycle.

humira-moleculeThe operation, code named “Project Humira,” will involve the introduction of an extra-corpus produced molecule called adalimumab.  It is an antibody designed to target TNF-alpha directly.  We currently lack the means to manufacture this antibody ourselves, but we have negotiated what we believe will be a steady supply, to be introduced into the circulatory system from without.  It is our belief that, with this antibody at our disposal, we can downregulate the insurgents’ inflammatory activity and finally end their destructive madness.  The unique and irreplaceable tissues of the digestive tract will be preserved for the appreciation and benefit our daughter cells and their daughter cells after them, down through the generations.  We will know homeostasis in our time.  Victory will soon be ours.

—————

Not for distribution within active inflammation zones.  Denature after transcription.