Teleidoscope

Mon, May 28, 2007

Book Clubs

Posted at 11:25 am MDT to Miscellaneous

One effect of the internet is greater transparency of businesses and increased (though often one-way) connections between customers and the people involved in the business.

I'm a little worried at the moment. The conglomerate that ultimately owns the Science Fiction Book Club and a number of other book clubs engaged in a night of the long knives a week or two ago and reportedly gutted their New York operations. The book club operations were reportedly profitable, but the publishing conglomerates have been trying to commit suicide out of greed for at least the past 20 years, so it is not really surprising that they decided to squeeze profitable portions of their operations even harder, ignoring the risk that they would squeeze them out of existence.

I have been a member of the Science Fiction Book Club for more than 30 years -- I joined in college. Past upheavals in the club were annoying because of reduced choices (or reductions in the proportions of offerings I found interesting), but the organization involved was largely faceless. But in recent years I have become acquainted with Andrew Wheeler through USENET's rec.arts.sf.written and more recently through his blog, and his name and Ellen Asher's have appeared in the monthly club catalogs.

I'm not just worried about the service, this time, I'm worried about the people... I hope Ellen Asher and Andrew Wheeler both come out of this all right. I'm worried about Andrew's mood: he just published an article on his personal blog which he described as having been self-censored in the past, which suggests that he is depressed or angry enough -- or both -- to do things he considered reckless when he was thinking more calmly. This is not a good sign.

I believe the Computer book club I still technically belong to is part of a different conglomerate. I really wouldn't mind if that club went away, however. I haven't bought anything from them in ages: they don't carry O'Reilly reference books and these days most technical info is so out-of-date by the time it reaches hard copy that the books aren't worth the shelf space. (Google is our friend.)

Many of the non-science-fiction books I buy come from the Quality Paperback Book Club, which is related to the SFBC, I hope they survive. The Mystery Guild and the Military Book Club, which I have been a member of in the past are also part of the same organization. I have occasionally contemplated rejoining one or the other, (handling the memberships on-line makes this feasible, even when I am travelling so much) but I think that now I will need to hold off for a while and see how things shake out.

I've been wanting to get back to writing TechLands for a while. I know some later parts of the story, but need to get a chunk of political stuff sorted out before I can write the fun stuff that comes later. The more I hear about how things work in the modern publishing industry, the less I want to have anything to do with them except as a customer. I deal with enough corporate stupidity in my regular working life.

I don't want to "Be an Author", I want to have the audience I need to get the stories inside my head to come out, and the internet gives me the chance to do that without dealing with conglomerates that consider story-telling to be fungible.

permanent link || trackback || 0 comments || Add a comment

Salaryman Kintaro

Posted at 12:06 am MDT to Media

"Salaryman Kintaro" is an anime series, based on a manga series, that is very different from what American companies do with comics and animation. It is available on DVD subtitled, but without an English dub.

It's the story of a former leader of a biker gang who is hired by a construction company and begins rapidly working his way to the top because of his integrity, charisma, unwillingness to back down from a fight, and unfamiliarity with and unwillingness to tolerate the normal sleaze of the business world and local bureaucrats.

One interesting aspect of the series, and a contrast to the way Americans would tell a similar story, is the mixture of charcaters. There are people from all walks of life shown as good (or at least able to respond to Kintaro's wake-up call), bad, or complicated. Working people, the rich and powerful, yakuza...and the salarymen and officers of the Yamato Construction Company.

Americans would also probably not have the hero senteced to 6 months in jail at th eend for inciting a riot, while simultaneously making it clear that he had won, at least to the extent that some of the worst corruption was being cleaned up... partly though the intervention of some of the rich and powerful people who had come to take an interest in Kintaro. It's a much more complex and layered finale than one sees in most video entertainment.

permanent link || trackback || 0 comments || Add a comment