Recently, the BBC reported on new research that tries to quantify the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy.

The study was called “A numerical testbed for hypotheses of extraterrestrial life and intelligence” by D.H. Forganal, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh. The article abstract reads:

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has been heavily influenced by solutions to the Drake Equation, which returns an integer value for the number of communicating civilizations resident in the Milky Way, and by the Fermi Paradox, glibly stated as: ‘If they are there, where are they?’. Both rely on using average values of key parameters, such as the mean signal lifetime of a communicating civilization. A more accurate answer must take into account the distribution of stellar, planetary and biological attributes in the galaxy, as well as the stochastic nature of evolution itself. This paper outlines a method of Monte Carlo realization that does this, and hence allows an estimation of the distribution of key parameters in SETI, as well as allowing a quantification of their errors (and the level of ignorance therein). Furthermore, it provides a means for competing theories of life and intelligence to be compared quantitatively.

The findings of the research paper mean that there should be at least 361 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy and possibly as many as 38,000.

But, while researchers often come up with overall estimates of the likelihood of intelligent life in the universe, it is a process fraught with guesswork; recent guesses put the number anywhere between a million and less than one.

“It’s a process of quantifying our ignorance,” said Dr. Forganal, the University of Edinburgh researcher who carried out the work.

But here’s the part that always bothers me: SETI researchers are always at pains to point out (as Dr. Forganal does) that, “Even if alien life forms do exist, we may not necessarily be able to make contact with them, and we have no idea what form they would take…Life on other planets may be as varied as life on Earth and we cannot predict what intelligent life on other planets would look like or how they might behave.”

So my question is this: if there are alien civilizations but we can’t talk to them or even potentially recognize them as intelligent then what good is it to us to know of their existence? Isn’t it the ultimate cosmic tease to have them out there but not be able to do anything about it?

I’ve often heard SETI-minded folks give as a rationale for their work the line that’s usually used in STAR TREK plots: that discovering there are other intelligent lifeforms in the galaxy would mean humanity wasn’t so alone and would make us rethink fundamental concepts of our civilization…

But I don’t know if I buy that. Don’t get me wrong: I certainly hope there’s intelligent life out there amongst the stars; I certainly hope the SETI folks are wrong and we can and do make contact with it. I think communication (hopefully frequent) with alien life would indeed make us rethink some of our stupidity and short-sightedness.

But knowing they’re out there but we can never, ever talk to them? What is that supposed to do? Isn’t that a bit like suggesting that even though you’re in solitary confinement you should take heart that there are at least other people somewhere in the prison where you can’t see or hear or interact with them?

– S.

Loads of great writing advice from some of the biggest and brightest in SF can be found here, courtesy of the good folks at SF Signal. Included in the list is advice from my WOTF buddy and current Philip K. Dick Award nominee, Jeff Carlson.

Check it all out here.

– S.

Kudos to Amazon.com, the makers of the Kindle 2.0, for doing the right thing.

As reported on Friday by the Associated Press, Amazon.com said it would allow copyright holders to decide whether they will permit their works to be read aloud using the second-generation Kindle electronic reader’s new text-to-speech feature.

The move comes nearly two weeks after The Authors Guild expressed concern that the feature–reading text in a somewhat stilted electronic voice–which was intended to be able to read every book, blog, magazine and newspaper out loud, would undercut separate audiobook sales.

Amazon said in a statement that it, too, has a stake in the success of the audiobook market, and pointed to its Brilliance Audio and Audible subsidiaries, which publish and sell professionally recorded readings.

“Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rights holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat,” the company said.

Amazon is working on the technical changes needed for authors and publishers to turn text-to-speech off for individual titles.

I think this is the absolute best solution to this issue. After all, it was never the contention of the Authors Guild (or anyone, I think) that the Kindle 2.0 should not be able to read Text-to-Speech. Rather, the issue was that authors and publishers should have the right to decide whether this feature was in their best interest as regards individual books, and not have their rights (and a potential revenue source) cut out from under them with no consultation.

In the press release (which follows below, in full), Amazon.com said “publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is.” I, for one, hope that Amazon.com is right, that the Kindle is the ‘next big thing’ and that it gets people reading and buying more books, in whatever format. That will be good news for everyone.

– S.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Statement from Amazon.com Regarding Kindle 2’s Experimental Text-to-Speech Feature

SEATTLE, Feb 27, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.

Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rightsholders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat.

Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is.

Customers tell us that with Kindle, they read more, and buy more books. We are passionate about bringing the benefits of modern technology to long-form reading.

Here’s the text of a letter sent by SF Canada to the Canadian writer community last week regarding one of the clauses in the official rules for CBC’s Canada Writes Contest. Apparently, even if you don’t win and are not paid for your entry it may still become the exclusive property of CBC:
==============================

Dear members of the writing community;

CBC has long supported the arts with various programs including contests. Last year I noticed a contest for a poem on Mark Forsyth’s BC Almanac (Radio One). But when I read the rules and regulations CBC asked for all rights, including moral rights. I thought and hoped that this might just be an error, not to be repeated.

However, this year, CBC has been advertising Canada Writes, geared specifically towards writers. The full rules and regulations can be found at: http://www.cbc.ca/canadawrites/rules.html. The paragraph that concerned me was found under 4. Registration:

Entry forms become the property of CBC, free of any compensation or charges, and will not be returned to contestants. All submissions must be original and not infringe copyright or the rights of any other party, individual or otherwise, including but not limited to any person, group, entity, or company. By entering the contest, each participant shall waive any and all moral rights over his/her entry and grant CBC an irrevocable licence to use of the work on-air or online: the entries may be read and aired on CBC Radio One in whole or in part, or online, on any websites or platforms related to the CBC, without any compensation being payable to the participant. (Emphasis mine)

While it is not uncommon for some contests to ask for all publishing rights in return for a contest prize, it is highly unusual to ask for moral rights. Any reputable publisher will not ask for such rights and CBC taking this precedent is dangerous. The issue of rights is a complicated and often confusing one. I am no copyright lawyer but as a writer and artist I am concerned with this requirement by CBC. Below is a definition of moral rights:

http://www.nolo.com/definition.cfm/Term/D4718204-9904-42DF-8A5C84A64827173D/alpha/M/
In copyright law, rights guaranteed authors by the Berne Convention that are considered personal to the author and that cannot therefore be bought, sold or transferred. Moral rights include the right to proclaim authorship of a work, disclaim authorship of a work and object to any modification or use of the work that would be injurious to the author’s reputation.

This is of such concern to me that I cannot conscionably sit back as either a writer or as the president of SF Canada without bringing it to people’s attention. On January 19, I emailed CBC expressing my concerns. I heard nothing. Again I wrote on January 30, asking for a response and should I not receive one by February 6 I would contact as many Canadian writers’ organizations as possible. (If you would like to see a copy of those letters, please contact me and I will send them.)

If we ignore this, we set up a precedent for artists losing moral rights, where their works can be altered or attributed to someone else at the whim of the owner. If your organization has already been in contact with CBC and has any news on this issue, I would be interested in hearing what is happening.

Over the years, in various ways writers’ works and rights have been jeopardized. With a united voice I believe we can stop this trend and educate people before it becomes entrenched. I must say on a personal level that I am shocked and saddened that CBC would stoop to this level and I sincerely hope it is just the work of overzealous lawyers and can be circumvented.

I look forward to talking more with you and finding a solution.

Regards,

Colleen Anderson
President
SF Canada

Today’s New York Times has an op-ed piece by Roy Blount, Jr., president of the Authors Guild, entitled “The Kindle Swindle?” about the Kindle 2.0’s ability to read text-to-speech (TTS), which I’d been talking about earlier this month.

The Authors Guild has also put up a web page with demos of the Kindle’s text-to-speech feature here.

The scary thing is just how good the Kindle’s TTS already is. When the president of Amazon.com was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart earlier this week he made it sound like the Kindle’s TTS ability was akin to that of Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer: cold, artificial, not something you’d want to listen read to you for extended periods of time. But I don’t think he was being entirely honest (maybe because he realizes the implications for Kindle’s business at the expense of author’s rights and royalties). Because in the YouTube clip on the Authors Guild site of the Kindle 2.0 reading–it’s not perfect (the timing and emphasis is still a bit weird) but it’s pretty good and the voice at least sounds human. I could imagine listening to it for an extended period and not being bothered.

Just below the YouTube clip are clips of old TTS software (old–as in 2004) reading the same passage of “The Gettysburg Address” as the Kindle 2.0: suffice to say these older voice synths sound like Stephen Hawking. But that was only four years ago and the Kindle’s new voice has come light-years. It really won’t be long before the Kindle’s voice is just as good as a voice actor’s.

This should be of HUGE concern to authors who hope to make any money from the audiobook rights to their work in the age of the Kindle…

– S.

One final reminder, gang–you’ve only got one week left to make your Hugo and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer nominations.

Both awards will be presented at Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Montréal, Quebec, at the Palais des congrès de Montréal from August 6th – 10th, 2009.

Yours truly is eligible for the Campbell Award, which is given annually to the best new science fiction or fantasy writer whose first work was published in a professional publication in the previous two years. For the 2009 award, the qualifying work must have been published in 2007 or 2008–and you may recall I’ve had three publications in that window. You can see my Campbell eligibility profile over at Writertopia.

The Campbell Award uses the same nomination and voting mechanism as the Hugo, though the Campbell Award is not a Hugo. The award is sponsored by Dell Magazines and administered on their behalf by the World Science Fiction Society.

To be able to nominate a writer for the 2009 award, you must have either been an attending member of the 2008 Worldcon in Denver or be a supporting or attending member of the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal.

Nomination ballots must be received by March 1, 2009–that’s this coming Sunday! Please see the official nomination ballot (in PDF) on the Anticipation website.

Thanks for your consideration!

– S.

Cool news recently in New Scientist: the hitherto smallest known planet around a star other than the Sun may be even smaller than first thought.

Initially, the team that discovered the planet–the oh-so-cleverly-named MOA-2007-BLG-192-L b–believed that the planet’s host star was a brown dwarf, a class of objects too puny to sustain nuclear fusion, as normal stars do. That suggested MOA-2007-BLG-192-L b weighed 3.3 Earths.

But now, after more recent observations and some recalculation, the team believes the parent star is actually a red dwarf, and thus heavier than first thought (those pesky dwarfs with all their confusing colours…)

The implication is that if the star is heavier then the planet is lighter: significantly so, in fact, weighing in at around a mere 1.4 Earths. In size terms, that makes it a near twin of our own planet, closer in mass than any known planet except Venus.

So good news: we’ve found a planet much closer in size to Earth than other exoplanets we’ve found to date.

But bad news: it’s still around 3000 light years from Earth, made mostly of rock and ice, and if it has any sort of atmosphere it’s likely to be composed primarily of hydrogen. So if we do somehow discover FTL and ever get there no smoking, okay?

More details can be found here.

– S.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 2009 Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy will be held Saturday, June 6, 2009, in Toronto, Ontario, at the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, one of the most important collections of fantastic literature in the world.

We invite proposals for papers in any area of Canadian science fiction and fantasy, including:

* studies of individual works and authors;
* comparative studies;
* studies that place works in their literary and/or cultural contexts.

Papers may be about Canadian works in any medium: literature, film, graphic novels and comic books, and so on. For studies of the audio-visual media, preference will be given to discussions of works produced in Canada or involving substantial Canadian creative contributions.

Papers should be no more than 20 minutes long, and geared toward a general as well as an academic audience. Please submit proposals (max. 2 pages) by email or hard copy to:

Dr. Allan Weiss
Department of English
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, ON M3H 3N4
aweiss@yorku.ca

Deadline: April 1, 2009

Appropriate for this Friday the 13th…

Coming to bookstores near you this April, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. That’s right: the classic Regency Romance now with ultraviolent zombie mayhem!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As the story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton–and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers–and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of (undead?) fans.

More information can be found here.

– S.

Today on his blog Robert J. Sawyer asks something very interesting about the Kindle 2’s ability to read books aloud: what’s going to happen to audiobook rights?

As Rob points out, Kindle 2’s ability to read any book aloud turns every book into a de facto audiobook…which probably isn’t a big deal for most Kindle users but is a very big deal for creative types who subsist on royalties from their work, including payments for subsidiary rights like audiobook versions. Amongst his other revenues for 2008, Rob points out in his post that he made five-figures just from audiobook rights, so you can see how this is a substantial amount of money.

Now, Rob’s career is (no pun intended) light-years ahead of mine but his kind of success is something I aspire to. But I’m forced to wonder (yet again) whether we’re coming to the end of the era when writers can earn a living from their writing and its royalties. That era really is a new and perhaps short-lived phenomenon, dating back (so far as I can tell) to around 1886, when the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works was signed.

Before that artists of all kinds had to rely on patronage of a royal court, an aristocrat, or some bored rich person with a lot of money and an interest in the arts. Once authors did start to be paid royalties by publishers the patchwork of copyright laws then in place meant that just because your book was published in one place it wasn’t protected everywhere.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Samuel Clemens for the novel I’m planning and this makes me think of him. Writing as Mark Twain, Clemens was one of most popular authors of his day, but he didn’t make his living primarily from his writing. Partly this was because he married rich, but he was terrible with money and burned through his wife’s inheritance rather quickly. And when he did publish articles they were either quickly picked up and reprinted in other newspapers without pay. Clemens hated Canadians because a publisher in Montreal would produce pirated copies of his latest book in Canada (then under British copyright law) and flood the US market (under American copyright law) with cheap copies and undercut Clemens’ legitimate sales. He rightly blamed the illegal Canadian edition for the poor sales (and poor profits) from the first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He took to personally arranging simultaneous British editions of his future works so that his rights would be assured against pirates hiding in the far-flung corners of the Empire.

As Ron Powers relates in Mark Twain: A Life, his wonderful biography of Clemens:

“If I can make a living out of plays, I shall never write another book,” he advised Moncure Conway as Christmas [1876] approached. He had convinced himself that copyright law would never protect him; and there was no point in emptying out his soul for the profit of Canadian thieves. (p. 397)

Twain did turn to the theater as a source of cash, but mostly he made his several fortunes (he kept squandering them) as a public speak and lecturer. Though he grew to hate the constant travel and time apart from his family, Twain nevertheless had to continue his speaking tours for decades simply to make a living. Indeed, the only way he could clear the debt from a series of disastrous business ventures was to spend 10 years in European exile living cheaply, and another year doing a round-the-world speaking tour.

But with the rise of digital and the easy replicability of everything–be it music or books–the ability to pirate copies or to use copies in way not originally covered by publishing and/or rights agreements is easy and widespread and likely to get worse. And so I wonder if we’re not moving backwards to a kind of digital wild frontier time in copyright like the one in which Clemens lived.

Will writers in the (not too distant) future get a flat fee or a flat royalty rate for any and all rights associated with their work? And given the theory of the long-tail, will those rights be signed away in perpetuity? Will we need to find rich patrons of the arts to fund us and our work again?

I’d better brush up on my public speaking…

– S.