-Caveat Lector- http://www.ansible.demon.co.uk/writing/uniconze.html
1990 Dave Langford convention speech excerpts This is where I'd better be careful with my words. I keep hearing the terrible, vulture-like flapping of lawyers. It hadn't occurred to me that when he sent up Whitley Strieber back in Interzone 25, good old Tom Disch might actually have been risking a lawsuit. Yet he did sort of dwell on the remarkable coincidence that Strieber had been looking into a book called Science and the UFOs by Jenny Randles and Peter Warrington, which describes a "classic" UFO experience... and then, mere hours later, he was supposed to have had the strangely similar experience which was so profitably immortalized in his Communion. Badly drawn aliens with enormous eyes and faces made of putty removed his underpants and thrust their video cameras where no man had gone before. Or something like that. Jenny Randles, who's a professional UFO author and researcher, made the mistake of joking about this suggestive sequence of events when speaking on the radio. Having been sent a tape of the programme by his UFOlogical colleague Stanton Friedman, Strieber immediately threatened a libel action. Randles lacked the funds to resist and had to grovel in public. Nobody messes with Whitley Strieber. It was, by coincidence, Jenny Randles who first noticed something familiar about certain pages of Strieber's new aliens-are-among-us novel Majestic, which is billed as fiction, but a fiction closely based on coff coff quote true incident unquote. The news reached me through the grapevine: two pages of this heavily hyped epic are a detailed rehash -- a condensation rather in the Readers Digest style -- of the central narrative in my own UFO spoof, complete with names and dates. Not wishing to be unfair, I suppose this might have just have been a remarkable case of synchronicity, or telepathy, but because I'm a small-minded bastard I complained to Strieber's publishers anyway. I must say that, although I lack huge riches for lawsuits against anyone who irritates me, I would rather have enjoyed a grovelling public apology from that great man Whitley Strieber. Instead, I merely got a lofty assurance from his American publishers that -- by lifting the story not directly from my book but from a gosh-wow compilation which had ripped it off without permission from me -- Strieber behaved entirely properly despite not getting permission from anybody. (As I understand this precedent, you can therefore steal a plot from, say, Joe Haldeman with absolute safety -- so long as you don't read the book and just get the details from a friend.) Furthermore, the editors at Putnam said in reply to a slightly malicious request, Whitley and they were not going to grant permission for me to quote the version of my story which appears without my permission in Majestic. (I suppose I could ask if they'd let me paraphrase it....) As for an apology, or maybe even $50 worth of permission fee, forget it: to offer either of these dreadfully expensive things would be to admit liability, and of course we can't have that. I can only hope for a credit on the next edition's copyright page. [This duly materialized, at least in Britain.] The UFO world is complicated. Only after all this, and after writing about my exciting spiritual relationship with Majestic, did I learn that I might have been walking on awfully thin ice... when Jenny Randles explained to me the perils of so much as hinting that Strieber could ever have been influenced by any other book whatever. She also let slip that she was again being sued, this time in earnest, by Strieber's aforementioned pal Stanton Friedman. ------ Samantha <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
