Comments on: Tiptree Longlist Controversy

By: Stephen Uitti

Stephen Uitti — Mon, 22 May 2006 14:16:39 +0000

One could argue that modern Wizard of Oz stories, like Son of a Witch, are fan fiction, paid, published, excellent or not. Oz is public now, so legality isn’t an issue. The only thing that matters to me is Is it any good? So far, the Star Wars books i’ve attempted haven’t been worth finishing, even when there’s nothing else to do on the airplane. No spark of an idea, shallower than a puddle in a Death Valley drought. Sales must be based on, Oh i saw episode 4, and it’s six hours to LA. Feh. I could not care less. If i’d written Harry Potter and someone wrote something interesting about Neville, i’d be flattered. Don’t wait until i’m dead.

By: Capitano Keyark

Capitano Keyark — Sun, 21 May 2006 08:20:55 +0000

Fanfic authors should change the names of everything in the fanfic. Every character, every organization, every planet, every ship, every alien race, absolutely everything. Then if someone wants to read the fanfic as a fanfic, all that person has to do is pull it up in a word processor and run a find-and-replace on each name, which could be conveniently listed as a cast of characters at the beginning of the story. After all, Paramount might get bent about a fanfic about Commander Riker and Counselor Troi aboard the starship Enterprise, but what can they possibly say about Commandant Kirre and Counselor Roye about the spacecraft Doingstuff?

By: Mur

Mur — Sat, 20 May 2006 03:09:54 +0000

Thanks for the information, it’s enlightening. The process of awards longlisting (and shortlisting, for that matter) is always interesting. Your point about keeping legality in mind during award decision is excellent, and I’m sorry I didn’t keep that in mind. I had assumed that “longlisted” meant “had a reasonable chance of winning”.

Thanks again for the post, it’s great to get some official response.

By: Debbie Notkin

Debbie Notkin — Fri, 19 May 2006 22:41:21 +0000

You’re making an awfully big jump here. As the chair of the Tiptree motherboard, I had nothing to do with the decisions about this year’s long list (or any year’s long list, short list, or winner, except for the year I was a judge, in 1991).

I can assure you that my day job is as a publishing contracts manager, and as such I can be absolutely confident that the Tiptree Award is aware of issues such as what would happen if a writer received prize money for fanfic. The issue of fanfic winning has never arisen: longlisting a work is _not_ an indication that the work was considered to win; it is simply an indication that one or more jurors found the work worthy of attention (for a very broad definition of “worthy of attention”).

You need not worry that either the Tiptree Award or the legal situation of fanfic has been tarnished by this longlist entry. We welcome the excited discussion around the blogosphere; and especially feel that the conversations which pertain more to gender than to genre are fulfilling our mandate.