Star Wars on Trial

by David Brin

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: I see you quote Mike Resnick saying that novelizations teach writers to be lazy; does Mr. Resnick characterize James Blish (author of more than ten volumes of Star Trek episode tie-ins) as a lazy writer? Do you? How about Joe Haldeman, author of the Trek tie-in World Without End? How about Greg Bear (author of Star Wars: Rogue Planet)? Sean Stewart (author of Star Wars: Dark Rendezvous)? How many more top-rate authors would you like to have the opportunity to personally insult?

  LOU ANDERS: Just one.

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Let me direct your attention to this statement of yours: "By contrast, when you read a novelization, not only are you getting exactly what you are expecting, you are almost certainly not getting a writer's best work." First, as any self-respecting Star Wars fan will tell you, you're just flat damned wrong on the first point; any reader of the New Jedi Order will have at least three novels in that list (one of them, most likely, Traitor, by Your Humble Counsel for the Defense) that he will tell you contained elements that shocked, dismayed, surprised and/or stunned him. On the second point, well-you're not a novelist. Let me put it this way: if you were a writer whose books sell, say, thirty-odd thousand copies, and you had a chance to write a novel that you knew, from the start, would sell a minimum of half a million copies, and would introduce you and your writing-and your concern with serious fiction-to millions of fans (because those books get passed from hand to hand as well), would you piss on the chance and hold back your best work?

  LOU ANDERS: You are correct; I am not a novelist. What I am is an editor. And speaking in my capacity as an editor, who reads and evaluates hundreds of manuscripts a year, if the Star Wars novelization I read in preparation for this anthology is indicative of the respective author's "best work," I would hate to read his own original material. I gave up on page 188, having endured the shameless padding and horrendous transgressions of the most basic rule of writing-"show, don't tell"-far longer that I would normally tolerate, for the purposes of this essay. Furthermore, I am also a consumer, who has as much right to vote with his dollar as anyone else, and more of my own hard-earned cash won't be going to LucasBooks anytime soon. But that's just me. Have a happy Life Day!

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Shameless padding? "Show, don't tell"? Is that all you've got? No wonder you're an editor instead of a writer. That's the most pathetic excuse for a personal insult I've ever heard. I get better than that from the semi-literate wannabes on the Web.

  "Stover makes Dan Brown look like Tolstoy."

  "Heroes Die is the kind of book a demented third-grader might finger paint in his own vomit."

  "The only way Blade of Tyshalle could be any worse is if it had been edited by that pseudo-intellectual human pimple from Pyr."

  As trash-talk goes, Mr. Hundreds-of-Manuscripts-per-Year, yours barely makes it to the level of a stuck-out tongue.

  (Reaction in the courtroom)

  DROID JUDGE: Order! Order! Mr. Stover, you are out of line!

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: What else is new?

  DROID JUDGE: Do you have an actual question?

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: No, Your Honor. I'm finished with this son-of-a-ah, witness.

  DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover, you are to treat all witnesses with respect. Please don't make me warn you again. You may now call the Defense witness.

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Actually, I have three witnesses on this charge.

  DROID JUDGE: (severely) You know only one witness per charge is allowed.

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: I ask the Court's indulgence in this case. There are multiple charges here: that Star Wars is unfairly crowding out other books, that Star Wars novels are not as good as original novels, etc. I'd like the freedom to address these charges.

  DAVID BRIN: If I may, Your Honor. Each of us needs to give a little. After all, the topic is popular culture. Mr. Stover has permitted me a bit of speechifying, during cross-examination. In return, I've been relaxed about his-colorful language. We can give way on this point, as well.

  DROID JUDGE: Very well, Mr. Stover, I'll indulge this. Please call your witnesses.

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: My first witness is fantasy writer Laura Resnick, who will discuss the realities of the bookstore shelves. My second witness is novelist and Star Wars writer Karen Traviss, who will discuss the literary merits of Star Wars novels. My third witness is Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a science fiction and fantasy writer who will explain why Star Wars is just what the genre needs.

  EVERAL YEARS AGO, a heated debate raged in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a respected national organization, about whether or not work-for-hire novels should be eligible for the Nebula, the prestigious annual literary award voted on and presented by the SFWA. Some members argued that such books were as well written and worthy of recognition as any other kind of novel; other members argued that the very nature of work-for-hire should exclude it from Nebula consideration. And in a particularly memorable written statement, one prominent SFWA member dismissed work-for-hire novels as something that any braindead chimpanzee could write. In other words, work-for-hire books emerged as a controversial issue among science fiction and fantasy writers, one that provoked fiery arguments and open insults in a professional forum.

  A work-for-hire novel is a book on which the novelist is a hired hand, so to speak, rather than the original creator and exclusive copyright owner of the work. One very common form of work-forhire-a form which you may well have read without even realizing it-is the ghostwritten novel; this is a novel written by someone other than the purported author. For example, the well-muscled, golden-haired, Italian-born model Fabio did not write the romance novels that bear his name. Those books were written by a ghostwriter. (I apologize if this revelation comes as a terrible shock and you feel your innocence has been irrevocably destroyed.)

  However, a ghostwritten book is merely one type of work-for-hire. Many work-for-hire novels are actually written by the person whose name is on the cover. The distinguishing feature of a work-for-hire novel is not who wrote it or who's taking credit for writing it, but rather, who owns the intellectual property rights to the work.

  When a novelist thinks up an idea and writes the book (for example, my next novel, Doppelgangster, due out in December 2006), she is the sole creator of the work (unless she turns out to be a plagiarist, in which case we have a moral obligation to dismember her slowly with rusty implements), and she owns the intellectual property rights to that work (unless she signs a really bad contract). Such a novel is referred to as an "original" novel. This doesn't mean the author had a brand-new, never-before-explored idea or has produced a staggering work of breathtaking originality; it means that the author is the exclusive creator and copyright owner of the material.

  As copyright owner of the work, she (and, later on, her heirs) has the right to license the novel for publication. This is habitually referred to as "selling" a book; but, in fact, novelists don't actually sell books in most instances, despite that common phraseology. We typically license publication rights to a publisher for a specified period of time. For example, my original novel Fallen from Grace (a romance novel which I wrote under the pen name Laura Leone) is licensed for exactly three years from the date of publication. (Most licensing arrangements are much more complicated than that, but I can't imagine that you really want the tedious details.) After three years, the publisher of Fallen from Grace will no longer be entitled to keep printing copies of the book; and at that point, I will be entitled to "sell" it to another publisher. (Whereas if I try to resell the novel prior to expiration of the licensing agreement, the publisher can sue me for breach of contract.) And if, by some chance, I become internationally famous after death, my heirs will able to sell Fallen from Grace again, this time for a blue fortune, and toast my memory with Dom Perignon. (It sounds improbable, I know. But, hey, look at what happened when T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats was adapted for the stage, years after the poet died. It became Cats, the long
-running international hit musical with the prophetic motto, "Now and Forever." And Eliot's estate became one of the richest in publishing history.)

  In addition to such vulgar considerations as mere money, copyright ownership also means that, unless I sign a really bad contract, I have artistic control over my material. No editor or publisher can make substantive changes to my text without my permission (which-editors everywhere, please take note-will never be forthcoming). For example, no one can legally rewrite one of my characters as a raccoon. I mention this because it actually happened to a friend of mine who signed a really bad contract. (I'm not kidding.)

  None of the above, however, applies to a work-for-hire. Instead, a novelist is contracted to write material to which someone else owns the intellectual property rights. She may be treated with deference and her written work scarcely altered by anyone; or she may be dropped from a project 100 pages into the book, and her positioneven the material she's written for the project-offered to someone else. I mention this because it happened to me on the only ghostwriting project I ever worked on. (And, as is often the case with ghostwriting, I signed a confidentiality agreement, so I can say nothing about the book or who hired me. However, I was paid fairly, treated courteously, and I agreed with the decision to drop me from the project on the basis that my writing style wasn't right for it.)

  As previously mentioned, ghostwriting is just one kind of workfor-hire book. The most common type of work-for-hire in the science fiction/fantasy genre is known as the "media tie-in" novel. This refers to any book whose creative origins are derived from a media entity, such as cinema, TV or gaming. Examples of media tie-in series in SF/ F include Star Trek, DragonLance, Highlander, The X-Files, Roswell and Tomb Raider books. And, of course, the single most successful and prominent media tie-in series ever to flood the bookshelves is probably Star Wars.

  The specific characters and universes of these various series are the intellectual property of the media conglomerates which own the rights to the films, the games or the TV shows that are the basis of the books. If I tried to publish and profit from a novel about the frankly dysfunctional Skywalker family of the Star Wars universe without getting the written permission and legal cooperation of Lucasfilm, I would almost certainly be ruined by the massive lawsuit they'd bring against me to protect their intellectual property. Del Rey Books, a division of Random House, can publish Star Wars books because it has a licensing deal with Lucasfilm to do so. And the novelists who write and deliver these books to Del Rey are engaged in work-for-hire; they are neither the original creators of the Stars Wars characters and universe, nor do they control the intellectual property rights to these books. Additionally, their artistic control of the Star Wars novels they write is limited by Lucasfilm. A work-for-hire novelist may wish with all her heart to kill off Han Solo permanently in her book, for example; but unless Lucasfilm agrees to this (which seems unlikely), the book will never get published (and the author will never get paid). Han Solo is not the novelist's character, and his destiny is not under her creative control.

  Such books are at the heart of the debate that led one SFWA member to publicly describe a number of his colleagues as "brain-dead chimpanzees." Quite a large number of his colleagues, in fact: hundreds of media tie-in novels written by dozens of SF/F writers have been published over the past decade or two. And Star Wars alone accounts for a large percentage of that figure, since it has endured as a popular publishing phenomenon longer than any other series (with the possible exception of Star Trek, which began its tie-in publishing venture back in the late 1960s, though there was a definite lull for a decade or two after that brief flourish).

  Like most other media tie-in series, Star Wars probably hit its commercial peak in the 1990s, which was when media tie-ins became a notable fiscal force in SF/F publishing, as well as a notable physical force, taking up a lot of shelf space in the SF/F section of bookstores. Since that peak period, the phenomenon has receded a bit, but it has by no means faded away, nor does it seem likely to do so in the foreseeable future.

  And "shelf space," far more than Nebula Award recognition, is the key issue in the debate about media tie-in novels. A question posed often among SF/F writers (and not always in the most rational, re spectful terms, it must be admitted) is whether the shelf space inhabited by media tie-in novels should instead be reserved for original novels. (To reiterate, "original" means that a book-whether brilliant and innovative, or shamelessly cliched and derivative-is the artistic creation and intellectual property solely of its author.)

  It's worth noting that no one ever seems to argue that original fiction should be eliminated entirely from SF/F shelves in favor of media tie-ins. (Writers have expressed fear that this will happen, but no one ever proposes it as a jolly good idea.) All debate on this subject seems to be about whether SF/F shelf space should be allotted entirely to original fiction, and media tie-in novels either eliminated completely (in an ideal world); or their shelf space reduced considerably; or the books all moved to some other part of bookstore, opening up their shelf space in the SF/F section for original fiction. And when I say there's "debate" on this subject, I mean there are passionate but probably pointless discussions among writers. Bookstores, after all, have made their decision clear by shelving SF/F-related media tie-in books in SF/F sections nationwide for two decades. So I don't think they're debating this a lot.

  Bookstores are retail businesses, and they allot so much shelf space to media tie-in books for one good reason: there's a demand for the books. If readers didn't buy media tie-in books, then the books would be given little or no space on bookstore shelves. The shelving of media tie-ins isn't a plot to destroy original fiction and forcibly turn the world into Star Wars-reading zombies; it's just business.

  Similarly, if publishers didn't get a lot of orders from distributors and head buyers for media tie-in books, they'd stop publishing them. Publishing is a business with very narrow profit margins, and those margins are made still narrower by the large chunk of the sales profits that media conglomerates typically demand in exchange for licensing their publishing rights. Therefore, the only media tie-in series that keep releasing fresh books are those that are selling well. If your favorite media tie-in series has disappeared from the shelves, that's because it ceased to be profitable enough for any publisher to renew the licensing agreement.

  This is also why the suggestion, sometimes made in a plaintive wail, that publishers might start acquiring and publishing more orig inal SF/F fiction (or at least invest more in marketing the original fiction they acquire) if they'd just stop acquiring and publishing so much of that damn media tie-in fiction, is naive. Publishing houses publish media tie-in novels for the same reason that booksellers order them: there is a market for them. If a publishing house closed down a profitable tie-in program, this would not improve the fiscal resources of the house; and it takes fiscal resources to finance the expansion of any publishing program (such as increasing the quantity of original SF/F fiction that the house acquires). If you don't believe me, go buy stock in a publishing house that's restructuring or starting to expand its publishing program. You'll learn quickly.

  Therefore, it's more logical to assume that, if anything, the existence of a profitable media tie-in program at a publishing house is a good thing for its original-fiction program, because there are probably some profits flowing into the house; if not, though, the tie-in licenses will not be renewed. Indeed, despite the precarious climate of the current publishing market, Del Rey, which publishes the popular Star Wars tie-ins, is currently expanding its original-fiction program in SHE

  So, okay, publishers and bookstores are businesses, they're in this for the profits, they publish and shelve media tie-ins because they make money doing so. But what about the writers? Are they braindead chimpanzees churning out this talentless stuff simply in pursuit of a profit? What about readers? Are they the real brain-dead chimpanzees, gobbling up formulaic novels about movie characters instead of reading wort
hy original fiction?

  Well, first of all, brace yourself for a shock: although I don't know any writers who got into this business for the money, we all need money and like money. Some of us sometimes even write something strictly for the money. Or, as my father, science fiction writer Mike Resnick, has been known to say on occasion: "It's noble to starve for your principles, but it's chicken shit to make your wife and children starve for your principles." I myself have occasionally written something just because I wanted the money. And I imagine that a few media tie-in writers have written a few books (perhaps even a few Star Wars books) just because they wanted the money.

  However, most media tie-in writers enjoy the work and are pas sionate about doing it. I know, because they're always saying so (firmly, loudly and sometimes belligerently) when original-fiction writers accuse them of doing it just for the money, or because they don't know any better, or because they lack principles, or because they're not as talented as we are, yada yada yada. Many tie-in writers are fans of the TV shows and movies they write about, and they thoroughly enjoy writing novels set in those universes. Many of them are good writers, and most of them also write their own original novels when not busy writing tie-ins.

  Despite the fact that writers like and need money just like mere mortals, no one ever got into this business for the money; we write because we like to write. (Or we at least have a love-hate relationship with writing.) And we generally write what we like to write, too. I write fantasy instead of horror because I like fantasy and I don't like horror. I don't write tie-ins because I'm not interested in tie-ins, but I write essays because I am interested in essays. In this respect, I'm not unusual: I am much better-and much more successful-at writing what I like to write than at writing what I do not like to write.