Naturally, I strongly encourage all y’all to get your own shots in as soon as you can (allowing for previous vaccine schedules and/or previous infections). Take care of yourself out there, because at this particular moment, the US federal government isn’t gonna do you much good.
*cracks knuckles* I haven't done a con report in since forever, and my memory's not what it used to be, but I will try my darnedest...
These are a mix of what what said both days, because it can get fuzzy, also I was front row for a lot of this and it would have been rude to physically take notes. (If you were there, I was the middle-aged pirate in all black with the knee high boots. Fuck, I was sexy tho...) All photos are from Sunday's panels, and free for any use if you want them. Happy to provide high res on request.
It’s come ’round again, the anniversary of the first day I sat down and wrote something here intended for daily(ish) updating, twenty-seven years ago, long ago enough that AOL was still a viable and ongoing concern and that blogs weren’t called “blogs,” they were called “online diaries” or “online journals.” Because I was a former journalist and also a bit of an ass, I spurned both those titles (as I would the word “blog” a little later), preferring to say that I wrote an “online column.” Over time, I have become rather less precious about this, especially now that “blog” is a concept that now hearkens back to a cretaceous era of the Internet, before social media and algorithms and the concept of being “terminally online.” If only we knew then what we know now. We might all go running into the night, never to return.
Be that as it may, Whatever continues, and I still post here regularly, along with my daughter Athena, who was a couple months from being born when I started this whole thing. At this point in time, she actually does more here than I do; she posts almost all the Big Ideas, and writes as many of the longer pieces here these days than I manage. This partly because so much more of my professional life happens offline these days — in the last week or so, as an example, I wrote a short story, a script treatment and some of my novel, and then traveled to Portland for a convention, and starting Monday I embark on a two-week book tour — and partly because Athena is writing cool and interesting stuff and I’m really happy about that. The Whatever is better for having her as part of it, and it’s been fun watching this place grow from my personal soapbox into a two-person shop. I like that 27 years on, this site is still evolving.
I am very really happy with what’s going on in my professional writing life at the moment (I have some very cool stuff going on right now I absolutely cannot tell you about yet, but when I can tell you, I think you’ll be excited), and one side effect of that is that at the end of the day I often don’t have it together to post more than something short here. I don’t think this is a tragedy, but I would like to write slightly longer here than I have recently. I have some ideas how to do this, but a lot of that will have to wait after the book promo season I am about to find myself in. In the meantime, there will be views out of a hotel window, posts about cats, and more cool stuff from Athena.
And so, onward — for Whatever and for me and Athena. I like where everything is with Whatever, and I look forward to where we go from here. Another year awaits.
Our newest addition to the Scamperbeast clan continues to be friggin’ adorable, and also his personality is beginning to show more. He is rambunctious, which is to be expected in a kitten, and also a bit of menace, since he discovered that he enjoys both the stairs and being underfoot, which is a dangerous combination with one is trying to navigate the stairs at night and suddenly there is a kitten. There are reasons why, when I turned forty, I trained myself to start reaching for the railing on the stairs, and this kitten is definitely one of those reasons.
In terms of the other cats, Saja continues to be an annoyance to Sugar and Spice, the former of whom still wants nothing to do with him, and the latter of which has come to grudgingly accept that he might be on the bed at the same time she is. Smudge is more congenial to him and the two of them tussle on a regular basis now:
This is lovely for us, as it reminds us of when Smudge was the kitten a Zeus was the one tusslin’ with him. It’s nice to know the tussle reaches over generations. Charlie and Saja also continue to get along famously. It’s as good an integration at this point that one could hope for.
The one real annoying thing Saja will do is try to eat my face, which he does every night between three and five am. He’s probably not actually trying to eat my face, he’s probably trying to nurse, which will not avail him of anything, alas for him. This will continue until I grab him, take him downstairs and then plop him in front of a cat food bowl, at which point he goes, oh, right, that’s where the food is. I’m hoping he grows out of this; I would really prefer to sleep through the night. We’ll see.
++ I don't have Internet/cable for one day and I miss quite a wild day with politics, huh?
++ Although I was aware of it as it was happening, just reading about the kinktober shenanigans that happened a while ago, from the various posts summarizing it to the jokes, not only was I baffled and amused it also got me thinking that this is the kind of fandom nonsense I much prefer reading about. Less exhausting fandom wank "discourse" and more just pure ridiculousness.
++ It was recently announced that Life Is Strange is getting a television series adaptation. This technically isn't news as fans of the game have long been waiting for it since the initial announcement about a television show being made since 2016, however aside from that there were no further information of anything going forward so most assumed that this was yet another project either silently dropped or in development hell. With Amazon acquiring the rights to produce the show, this makes it more likely to become a reality.
We’ve made it to another Friday, and here is a new set of books and ARCs that have come to the Scalzi Compound. What here is piquing your interest? Share in the comments!
SFWA President Kate Ristau: Tasting Notes from Recent Advocacy, Education, and Outreach
Some days, the publishing industry is like a nice cup of tea: warm, supportive and just the right amount of comforting. Other days, it burns your tongue and scalds your hands. It’s overly sweet or way too bitter.
Let’s take the metaphor one step further and spill the tea, shall we?
This week, the judge in the Anthropic case ripped apart the proposed settlement in the class action lawsuit. When his reasoning came through, I saw echoes of Jason Sanford’s Genre Grapevine. Sanford discussed how the settlement works off minimal definitions for which books to include in the class.
The class leaves some authors with an empty cup.
I am personally one of those authors, holding traditionally published books in my hands that were never copyrighted by my publisher. (If you’ve been wondering about copyright and how it works, you’ll want to check out the latest piece by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Presents, Protecting Your Intellectual Property, which covers the basics, the myths, the scams, and more.)
Sanford and Strauss are concerned about copyright and liabilities, and so are we. The judge read those same tea leaves, and he argued that the settlement is being “forced down the throat of authors.”
That is tough to swallow.
I want to assure you that, at SFWA, we hear that complaint, that frustration, and that gross tea. We are meeting with our own counsel to discuss the gaps in the class definition, while also working on informing eligible class members about their eligibility. We don’t want any authors to miss out on being compensated for the use of their work.
While all this shakes out, we’re also heading to Washington, D.C., where Isis and I will be meeting with congressional staff and lawmakers to discuss how these cases impact authors, in addition to other concerns such as book bans and the future of publishing.
When we are there, we invite you to join us for Tea in D.C. this Monday, September 15, from 5-6PM at Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse, 201 F St NE, Washington, D.C.
I’ll pour your first cup. We’ll chat about copyrights and claims. And importantly, we will talk about the work you are doing and how SFWA can help you!
It’s going to be a great weekend on the East Coast. Make sure you check out the full lineup of SFWA events at the Baltimore Book Festival.
I’ll leave the tea metaphor to steep for a bit and just say that this situation is complicated. We think your work never should have been stolen. We know this is impacting thousands of SFWA members. We want you to be paid for your work.
So, for now, make sure you fill out the contact form if eligible for the class action, and join us in D.C. if you can. Some tempests can’t be contained in their teapots, but we’re here for you in any storm.
Keep writing – and we’ll keep putting the kettle on.
The word “sonder” refers to the realization that every other person is living their own, whole life outside of what you see. For author Ren Hutchings, she has experienced this with side characters in media, wondering about their lives outside of the story. Expanding on this idea, she ended up writing An Unbreakable World. Follow along in her Big Idea to see how this companion novel focuses on characters who are outside of the spotlight.
REN HUTCHINGS:
I’ve always had an interest in the relationship between history and folklore, a theme which has influenced so much of my speculative writing. I’m most intrigued by a close, individual perspective, viewing the past as a moving tapestry of small lives and stories, rather than a series of big, significant events.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve often found myself invested in a seemingly insignificant side character in a book or movie, that person who only pops up for a brief encounter and says three lines of dialogue. I’d be wondering about where they went next, or if they had a family, or what the rest of their life was like. Because of course they must have had a whole life that existed outside of that one time when they happened to cross paths with the heroes!
And so, when I set out to write a new novel set in the same universe as my debut, Under Fortunate Stars, I found myself pulled toward the stories at the outer edges. The result is a standalone novel that’s in many ways a companion piece to my first book, but in other ways its opposite. Because while Under Fortunate Stars was about a group of unexpected heroes who famously stopped an interstellar war and saved humanity, An Unbreakable World is very much about those folks on the periphery. In a vast galaxy fraught with intrigue and turmoil, this story asks what was going on with the people who didn’t become historical heroes.
The protagonists in this book are people whose names and deeds won’t be remembered in songs or poems. They’re people whose most important choices will never be known to history, whose motivations will never be examined by future biographers. The point-of-view characters are each struggling to find a meaning in their own lives, and looking in all the wrong places for an ever-elusive sense of purpose.
Almost everybody you meet in An Unbreakable World is experiencing deep isolation. Page is a petty thief who woke up from stasis without most of her memories, and while she searches desperately for any shards of her missing past, she closes her mind to the possibilities that the present is offering her. Meanwhile, Maelle has dedicated years of her life to plotting a long-game revenge scheme, and she’s likewise been ignoring every opportunity to take a new path.
On a distant world, Dalya of House Edamaun is an anxious young heiress growing up in a restrictive, sheltered society, on a planet that has intentionally cut itself off from the United Worlds of Humanity. She’s struggling with spiritual and existential questions, crushed by the weight of a responsibility she doesn’t feel ready for… until she comes to realize that she actually has more choices than she thinks. In forging small, intimate connections with others, each character finds the shape of their own story becoming clearer.
Both of the Union Quadrant books touch on themes about storytelling, memory, and the historical record. But the thing I really wanted to explore in An Unbreakable World is the way our search for a bigger meaning often begins with our most personal choices.
Most people will never do any epic deeds, or perform incredible galaxy-changing feats. And some people whose actions do have far-reaching effects won’t even realize it. Indeed, most of us will never know exactly how our lives will affect the fabric of history, or how far the ripples of our decisions travelled. But we can make choices about what’s important to us, about what we want to stand for and believe in. We can choose which things we find meaning in when our future isn’t clear and everything seems hopeless.
Sometimes, the journey to save yourself – and to accept that you’re somebody worth saving – can be just as monumental as a heroic quest to save the galaxy.
Copyright is a complex subject about which there are many misconceptions.
I was reminded of that this week, thanks to an email from an author who discovered that several of their books were included in one of the databases of pirated works used by the AI company Anthropic for AI training. The author wanted to know whether they were eligible to be part of the gigantic $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic has agreed to pay to compensate writers for its misuse of their intellectual property. (You can read more about the lawsuit, and the settlement, here.)
One of the criteria for eligibility, set by the court, is that copyrights to the pirated works must have been properly registered with the US Copyright Office before Anthropic downloaded the databases. And indeed, the author’s books were all registered in a timely manner…but not with the Copyright Office. Instead, the author used a website called Copyrighted.com, which offers a kind of faux registration using timestamps and its own certificates.
I had to tell the author that no, they weren’t eligible for compensation for their pirated books. In the United States, there’s no equivalent or substitute for the US Copyright Office’s official registration process. The author couldn’t even use the materials they’d gotten from Coprighted.com as prima facie evidence of copyright ownership. Again, only official registration provides that.
In this article, I’m going to cover the basics of copyright, offer some warnings, and dispel some myths. I know that much of what follows will be familiar to a lot of readers—but as the example above shows, knowledge gaps not only exist, but can be damaging…and as always in the writing biz, knowledge is your greatest ally and your best defense. I hope even the most copyright-savvy readers will find something useful here.
Copyright Basics
Copyright, literally, is “the right to copy.” It guarantees the authors of creative works—including books, stories, artworks, films, recordings, and photographs—the exclusive right to copy and distribute the works, or authorize others to do so, by whatever means and in whatever media currently exist. It also ensures that works can’t be copied or distributed without the author’s permission.
The international source for copyright law is the Berne Convention, adopted in 1886 and revised and amended several times since. In the 181 countries that are currently signatory to Berne, including the US, copyright ownership is automatic the instant work is fixed in tangible form—the paint applied to canvas, the musical notes recorded, the words written down. Creators don’t have to do anything else to make that happen.
Contained within copyright is the entire bundle of rights that creators can utilize themselves or license to others. For writers, this includes the right to publish in print and digital formats, to make translations and audio recordings and dramatic adaptations, to create derivative works, and much more—a list that continues to expand as technology makes different forms of publication and distribution possible.
When you sign a publishing contract or agree to the Terms of Service of a self-publishing platform, you grant the publisher or platform permission to publish, sell, and distribute your work for profit, in exchange for a share of the income. Because you own the copyright, granting rights doesn’t mean you lose or abandon those rights: merely that you authorize someone else to exploit them for a time. Eventually, once the contract term expires or the publisher takes the work “out of print” or you terminate the contract yourself, those claims on your rights lapse, leaving you free to re-grant them or to use them yourself, as you choose.
You can’t lose your copyright unless you specifically agree to give it up (as in work-for-hire contracts), and no transfer of copyright is valid unless it’s in writing and signed by the copyright owner. But copyright does expire eventually. For written works, the Berne Convention sets the duration of copyright for individual creators as a minimum of the creator’s lifetime plus 50 years, ensuring that copyright can be passed down to descendants like any other form of property, but also that works will eventually enter the public domain. Many of the countries that have adopted Berne have extended that term: in the US, the UK, and most of Europe, it’s the creator’s lifetime plus 70 years.
In addition to the economic rights described above, Berne invests creators with moral rights, intended to protect authorship by ensuring that works are published with the creator’s name (the right of attribution) and can’t be amended or altered in ways that would damage the reputation of the creator or the work (the right of integrity).
Most Berne signatory countries recognize moral rights. The US is an exception, at least for written works, having decided when it adopted Berne in 1988 that other laws provided equivalent protection. Moral rights really only become significant for US writers when contracts demand that they be waived—a decision that shouldn’t be entered into lightly. (I’ve written in much more detail about moral rights, and the implications of waiving them, here.)
Registration
The Berne Convention ensures copyright protection without requiring creators to take any additional steps, such as registering their copyrights. As a result, many Berne countries have no official registration process.
Others, such as Canada, offer voluntary registration schemes, with registration providing prima facie evidence of copyright ownership—important for legal purposes, because you don’t have to waste time proving ownership if you ever go to court.
The US is unique in making copyright registration a prerequisite for any kind of copyright-related court action (there’s a complex history on why this is the case, despite the stipulations of Berne). Registering, which must be done via the US Copyright Office, doesn’t increase your protection—by law, you have that already—but you can’t defend your copyright in court unless you’ve previously registered.
If you’re a US author, when should registration happen? Contrary to much misinformed belief, there’s no need to register at the submission stage. Theft really is extremely unlikely at that point. A good agent or publisher won’t want to risk their reputation by stealing, and anyway, it’s a whole lot more trouble to steal your manuscript and pretend someone else wrote it than it is just to work with you. As for a scam agent or publisher, they aren’t interested in your writing at all, only in your money.
It’s not until your work is published—and exposed to a wide audience—that theft becomes a concern. At that point, registration is important.
Contracts from larger US publishers require the publisher to register copyright on the author’s behalf, at the publisher’s expense (though you should always double-check; see the Resources section below). For self-publishers and writers with smaller presses that often leave registration to the author, registration is easy to do online and costs $45 to $65. If you register before the infringement begins or within three months of first publication, whichever is less, you can recover the full range of statutory damages (up to $150,000, depending on the circumstances). Registration also provides prima facie evidence of copyright ownership, as long as it’s done within five years of first publication.
Writers from countries other than the United States can also register with the US Copyright Office. If your work will be sold and distributed in the US, registering is a good idea.
What about authors of short works—stories, articles, blog posts, and the like? The US Copyright Office offers a handy group registration option that allows you to register up to 50 published works at a time, for a single fee of $65. Registration makes sense even if the works are published as part of anthologies or periodicals. Such publications register collective copyrights that protect the publications as a whole but aren’t necessarily adequate to protect individual works.
An Alternative for US Creators: The Copyright Claims Board
Bringing a copyright suit in the event of infringement can be ruinously expensive and is far beyond the capacity of many creators (the Authors Guild estimates the average cost at $400,000). In the US, there’s a recently established low-cost alternative: the Copyright Claims Board.
Approved by Congress in 2020, the CCB allows creators to bring lower-dollar infringement claims (monetary damages are capped at $30,000) without having to hire an attorney or make a court appearance (proceedings are conducted entirely online). Fees are modest—just $100 for a basic claim, only $40 of which must be paid upfront—and as with any US copyright-related legal action, you must at least have applied to register your copyright.
Given that it’s such a new resource, Writer Beware has been keeping a close eye on CCB proceedings since it started accepting cases in 2022 (you can see our collection of posts about the CCB here). So far, and somewhat to our surprise, literary claims are very much in the minority.
Schemes and Scams
In countries without an official registration scheme, how do you prove authorship?
In addition to drafts, notes, outlines, contracts, correspondence, and the like, there are online services that provide timestamps and certificates or other documents that may help to prove authorship. They can be pricey though, and some try to bamboozle you with claims of super-sekrit encryption to prevent tampering or hype about registering on the blockchain. Mostly, they just boil down to the same timestamps and self-issued certificates you can get from websites that use fewer buzzwords.
Unfortunately, there are also many “bewares” in this area: from self-publishing service providers that submit US copyright registration applications as an add-on at a much greater cost than you’d incur if you registered on your own; to faux registration services like the Copyrighted.com site mentioned above, which don’t make false claims but use vague language to obfuscate the fact that what they provide isn’t equivalent to official registration schemes; to scams that falsely present as if they actually are official registration schemes, such as the IP Rights Office and its claim to be “the Copyright Registration Service for the United States.” Not only are these a waste of money, but what you get for your cash may not be anything you can actually use.
Be aware also that there’s no such thing as “international copyright registration” or an “international copyright seal” or an “international book seal”. Scammy publishing/marketing companies (especially those from overseas) want you to believe there is, so they can charge you thousands to supposedly obtain it for you—but it is a completely fictional product whose sole purpose is to drain writers’ wallets. It’s also unnecessary. Per Berne, your US copyright is fully recognized by all other Berne signatories, and vice versa.
Here’s what one of these fake registrations looks like. It’s modeled on real registration certificates from the US Copyright Office, with a bogus International Copyright Office seal and fake signature.
Copyright Myths
At the beginning of this article, I mentioned misconceptions. Here are a few that I often encounter in my work with Writer Beware.
You don’t have copyright protection until you’ve registered with the US Copyright Office. False. As noted above, you own copyright from the moment you write down the words. Registration is an extra step that gives you additional legal benefits.
You own copyright on your ideas. Also false. Ideas are not protected by copyright law, only their expression. Ideas are part of the public domain, and no one has a monopoly on them. Five novelists may come up with a similar idea, but they will produce five different books.
Manuscripts have to include a copyright notice or symbol for copyright to be effective. At one time, the US did require this, but that became obsolete in 1989 when the US joined the Berne Convention (Berne does not require either a notice or registration to effectuate copyright). A copyright notice can sometimes be useful: for example, including a copyright notice with work published online makes it harder for infringers to weasel out of damages by claiming innocent infringement. But it’s not needed for copyright protection.
When submitting work to agents or publishers, it’s smart to deter theft by including a copyright notice. This is an instance in which a copyright notice is not useful. As mentioned above, theft at the submission stage is highly unlikely. Reputable agents and publishers don’t want to risk their reputations that way. Just as important, agents and publishers assume you know this. A copyright notice on a submitted manuscript marks you as an unreasonably paranoid amateur.
Poor man’s copyright is a substitute for copyright registration. According to this theory, placing your manuscript in an envelope, sealing it, and mailing it to yourself is equivalent to formally registering your copyright, as long as there’s a postmark or delivery receipt and you retain the envelope unopened. But not only is that not the case—only registration counts as registration—poor man’s copyright probably wouldn’t be useful even as a secondary way of proving authorship, since it’s easy to fake. You could mail the envelope empty—and fill and seal it later.
Copyright Claims Board: a low-cost small claims court for copyright actions that offers an alternative to expensive copyright lawsuits.
US Copyright registration portal. A single work can be registered online for between $45 and $65, and on paper for $125. There’s also a group registration option for short works, for $65.
Copyright Basics. This circular from the US Copyright Office explains the basics of copyright, including what’s protected, the rights of copyright owners, the benefits of registration, and more.
US copyright public records system. Here you can look up works to find out if they’ve been registered…including your own. Part of the unwelcome fallout of the Bartz v Anthropic lawsuit has been authors’ discovery that many publishers failed to register their works, even though their contracts required it. It’s always wise to double-check.
Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware®, is the author of nine novels for adults and young adults, including the Way of Arata epic fantasy duology (The Burning Land and The Awakened City), and a pair of historical novels for teens, Passion Blue and Color Song. She has written hundreds of book reviews for publications such as SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere.
She received the 2009 SFWA® Service Award for her work with Writer Beware, and in 2012 was honored with an Independent Book Blogger Award for the Writer Beware blog. She’s webmistress of the Writer Beware website, which she also created, and maintains the Writer Beware database, blog, and Facebook page.
Shows: SGA Rec Category: AU - no Stargate (well, no Stargate yet, in their experience) Characters: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, John's parents Categories: M/M Words: 1327 Content Notes: They're both in their later teens, but the same age. The author doesn't warn for underage. Author on DW:epiphanyx7 Author's Website:Epiphanyx7 on AO3 Link:Do Not Mock the Children of the Night on AO3 Why This Must Be Read: John and Rodney meet at a therapist's office, and hit it off immediately despite John's parents' disapproval. John's acting out by going through a Goth fake vampire phase, hence the title, and he and Rodney of course get up to mischief. Funny and sweet - also, Rodney's therapist is great!
Welcome to the September edition of the SFWA Market Report.
Please note: Inclusion of any venue in this report does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA. Those markets included on this list pay at least $0.08/word USD in at least one category of fiction. This compilation is not exhaustive of all publication opportunities that pay our recommended minimum professional rate. Additionally, SFWA adheres to our DEI Policy when making selections for this report. We strongly encourage writers to closely review all contracts and consult our resources on best contract practices.
The SFWA Market Report is compiled by David Steffen, editor of Diabolical Plots and The Long List Anthology series, and administrator and co-founder of the Submission Grinder. The Long List Anthology Volume 9 ebook is now available! You can order it now at Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and others! You can support Diabolical Plots and the Submission Grinder on PayPal or Patreon or by buying books or merch.
Wondering about some missing publications? Check out our July 23 update on Must Read, the publisher of Analog, Asimov’s, and F&SF. Our partner, Submission Grinder, is currently not listing these magazines, the first two of which are open for submissions and the latter of which is rebuilding its workflow.
SFWA remains in open dialog with Must Read to support the ongoing development of best practices for contract language, and to serve as an ally to all creators striving to improve the writing ecosystem for authors.
If you have questions about the contracts you receive from any SFF publications, please write to the Contracts Committee to learn more about what is and is not common/ethical practice in our industry.
All is fair in love and war. But what if instead of a bloody battle, wars were games to be played? Author T. A. Chan brings us a near future world in which violent wars are a thing of the past, and games usher in a new strategy of fighting each other. Follow along in the Big Idea for her newest novel, One Last Game, to see how the cards play out.
T. A. CHAN: Big Idea: Must there be consequences? My 21st Century Anxiety-induced Roman Empire has consisted of two things the past couple years: 1) Knowing Earth is a ticking time bomb from irreversible climate disaster at the rate things are going and 2) The ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza and other international conflicts. One Last Game was my attempt of channeling those dreads into a more hopeful future where the climate disaster has been resolved and international conflicts are settled in a non-violent play-by-the-rulebook sort of way. Despite my attempts of creating a grounded utopia, I have somehow ended up with a world that is both so much better (yay for eco-friendly civilization practices!) and also so much worse (nay for lethal board games!) than today’s state of affairs. And it all started with how “ethical warfare” might look like in the future…So welcome, and enjoy the ride! Why are we so predictable? And I don’t mean “we” as in you and me and them on an individual level, but rather “we” as a collective human society and our habit of settling major conflict via some sort of warfare, whether that be of the economic, psychological, or conventional variety just to name a few. It’s almost like there has to be consequences for anything to be taken seriously. For the purpose of this Big Idea, let’s focus on conventional warfare.
What makes war bad? I mean, obviously the list is loooongggg — from destroyed infrastructure to loss of lives, from environmental damage to the trauma imparted on whole generations. And yet even over the course of thousands of years, we haven’t been able to escape using “war” as a way to resolve conflict between tribes/kingdoms/nations/etc when verbal communication fails. In a perfect world, all global disagreements could be resolved with talking and votes and things of that nature. But if history is anything like a crystal ball, a war only ends when the cost to continue the engagement can no longer be afforded and/or justified.
But what if we minimize the cost and harm of war? Imagine this: The year is 2145. Through the desperate will to survive, humanity has painstakingly implemented eco-conscious measures over the course of decades and restored Earth back to its healthy, environmental glory. Having barely escaped extinction of the human species, there’s a very strong consensus that minimizing environmental damage and protecting existing resources is Good. Thus, bombs are banned, chemical warfare is banned, scorched-earth policy is banned, hell anything that leaves a scratch on a tree is banned. Human-on-human interactions have been tempered as conventional warfare is done away. Debilitating injuries, famine, home displacement, and painful deaths are relics of a bygone era. The outcomes of international conflicts are settled simply: with a gameboard and players representing their respective countries.
What’s stopping countries from disregarding the outcome of a silly boardgame? Yeah, I get it. Letting a game of chess determine who gets territorial claim over a highly contested shipping route does seem rather ludicrous. Even nowadays, international agreements and treatises are broken with the implication–and occasionally, execution–of consequences ranging from economic sanctions to retaliatory acts. See Exhibit A: Paris Accord and Geneva Convention.
And so, herein lies the heart of the Big Idea: Must there be consequences for anything to matter? I’m inclined to say yes, particularly with a grounded spec-fic set in the near future. And the consequences must be universal enough that it carries weight, no matter what culture or class you come from. In the particular case of One Last Game, this translates to human lives. After all, human conflicts should only affect humans, right? And death is ubiquitous and serious enough that no entity would want to wage needless war when there are less drastic methods of reaching an agreement between states. Imagine this: It’s the year 2145 and you’re surveying the aftermath of a battlefield that took place in a city. All the skyscrapers gleam under the sunlight, unscathed and standing proud. Verdant leaves unfurl from oak trees in the parks while squirrels argue with pigeons over a slice of cheesy bread that missed the compost bin. It’s quiet, but you know by the end of the week, the streets will once again be bustling with civilians going about their day. On the news broadcast, a reporter discusses how Country A has formally ceded control over shipping routes to Country B after its latest game loss–along with the lives of citizens unlucky enough to be in the randomly selected city. Their deaths were quick and painless. Just like falling asleep.
But is it ethical? Is this the best we can do? Must there be consequences? In conclusion, I don’t have a conclusion to the question of “is there an ethical way to conduct warfare?” But I know we can do better. Humans are messy and so the solution will be messy. And I have hope that the collective we will strive to understand and recognize an individual’s humanity in all its messy glory, and find a better way forward.
Fun fact: John Darnielle, the leader and songwriter of The Mountain Goats, went to high school in the same town I did (different schools, though) and share friends in common with me from that era. However, we did not meet each other in person until about a decade ago, at Nerdcon, run by John and Hank Green. What a strange, small and weird world it is. I am glad to know him now, of course. The above song is from the band’s upcoming album, which you can read about here. Enjoy the song, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.
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scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-14 07:14 pm
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Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
