H.P. Lovecraft vs. The Public Domain

The other day I had a conversation via text with my friend Ben about the legal status of the Lovecraft copyrights. As one does. That caused me to go down a rabbit hole that led to this article, and made a couple of other forks.

1) The "estate" of Lovecraft, Lovecraft Properties LLC, who tried to get publishers and authors to acknowledge them as rights holders to Lovecraft's works had been dissolved by the state of Rhode Island in 2007. A collection of Lovecraft's works I have from 2009, and published by Barnes & Noble, acknowledged the estate, as did a few other works around the same time.

And internet search found the registration with Rhode Island, and that the registration was ended by the state for not following the rules (without stating what rules were violated). The best I can ascertain is that they didn't do a required annual filing with the state of Rhode Island. This could be because I don't think they were ever very successful at getting anyone to pay them for the rights to Lovecraft's works.

2) In a lawsuit filed by Donald Wandrei in 1973, contesting the will of August Derleth and the ownership of the rights held by Arkham House because they hadn't been paying Wandrei royalties on the various Lovecraft books they had published, the lawyer for Arkham House and Derleth took a unique approach to why they didn't pay any royalties to Wandrei: no one had ever actually renewed the copyrights to Lovecraft's works, so that meant it had all lapsed into the public domain. Because of this, Wandrei had no rights that required the payment of royalties from Arkham House.

The fact that a lawyer said this in a courtroom is pretty amazing:

Insofar as the copyrights are concerned, I can testify that there are no renewal copyrights for any of the H.P. Lovecraft stories that were signed on October 9, 1947 to August Derleth and Donald Wandrei.

and:

Moreover, Lovecraft died in 1937 and while he left a will, the evidence will show that none of Lovecraft's copyrights were renewed. The forty-six (46) Lovecraft stories contained in Exhibit "B" were not renewed by the assignees nor could they do so under the copyright law. Thus all of the stories are now in the public domain with the result that there are no rights contained or effective under the agreement between Donald Wandrei and August Derleth, dated November 8, 1955.

So, from 1973 until 1986 (when Wandrei finally won his lawsuit against Arkham House) the lawyer for Arkham House argued that Lovecraft's works had in fact lapsed into the public domain. Despite this, Arkham House publicly claimed ownership of the rights to Lovecraft's works during this time, to get fees and licensing money.

For nearly the entire part of the second half of the 20th century, people argued about the copyright status of Lovecraft's work, while no one knew that the lawyers for Arkham House/Derleth's estate made these arguments in a courtroom. The judge declaring Lovecraft's works in the public domain would have been outside of the scope of the trail, so I am not surprised that there was no ruling on that. But, considering how intellectual property rights have to be fairly rigorously defended most of the time, I am really surprised that the legal representative of a company that otherwise vigorously defended these rights would say something like this in a public record. It doesn't really make any sense, but I am not a lawyer.

I had read up on all of this over the years, and never once before now had I seen a reference to Wandrei's suit, or Arkham House's defense that the rights had lapsed. Even Joshi's writing on the subject of the copyright status of Lovecraft's works didn't mention this, and I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't have known.

Originally I wrote this up as a post on my Facebook page, but I figured it deserved a more public sharing so I rewrote it a bit for this blog post. Nothing is this post should be considered to be legal advice, but it does contain links that you likely could run past an actual lawyer for actual legal advice.

In case you're wondering, this link is what my friend sent me that started my tumble down the rabbit hole of H.P. Lovecraft vs. The Public Domain.

Influential Books And Authors

So there's a thing going around about influential writers, and I thought that I would give it a stab. I was going to write this up as a Facebook post, but it turned out longer than I thought and posting to my mostly unused blog also means that I can share it more places than just Facebook.

Few things have influenced me quite as much as the Beat writers: William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Ginsburg and Burroughs were my introduction to queer literature, and Burroughs showed me that SF writing can be a tool to get at political and social issues. Kerouac just opened up the world, and like a modern William Blake his visions illuminated the world.

John Dos Passos was a turn of the (previous) century author who turned me on to experimental writing, and his works are hauntingly modern and presaged the works of J.G. Ballard. Track down a copy of The 42nd Parallel. It is worth it.

With poetry my tastes are often Imagist, but the Romantics can make a strong showing as well. William Blake was an amazing poet, who likely suffered from mental illness, but was a better fantasist than many fantasy writers. T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" and "The Lovesong of J. ALfred Prufrock" have influenced my gaming, my design work and even my world view at times. William Carlos Williams would have loved the shortness and precision of Twitter, I think. He was a Doctor who wrote his poetry on the backs of prescription pads in between visits to patients in their homes. "This Is Just To Say" is so much better than "The Red Wheelbarrow." Of course Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are must read American poets. Other must read American poets include Amiri Baraka, Gregory Corso and Diane Di Prima.

Jorge Borges and Gabriel García Marquez should be read by everyone, although it might be too soon for a read of Love In The Time of Cholera. Borges' Ficcones is brilliant, and his work as an editor and anthologist brought to my attention a number of writers that I probably would not have otherwise read.

Borges brings me to Michael Moorcock, because Moorcock was a huge fan of his work as well. Stories by Borges would influence a number of Moorcock's works. He is my favorite fantasy author, and probably one of my favorite authors overall. But as much as I enjoy his fantasy writing, he really came alive for me in his later period when he became more of a Romantic writer (in the classic sense), and you started to see more of an influence of writers like Blake, Percy Shelley and Byron on his writing. There was always a pretty strong Byronic influence on Moorcock's writing, though. I don't think that we would have gotten the sundry Eternal Champion characters without Lord Byron. His fingerprints are all over Moorcock's work at all stages of his life. This is also what makes having a grounding in literature so important. Yes, you can read all of the genre classics, but those genre classics were often inspired by more than just other genre writers.

Moorcock was also my passage into the British New Wave of science fiction and fantasy writing. As much as I enjoy cyberpunk literature, the New Wave writers will always have a bigger place in my heart. Plus, without the British New Wave we wouldn't have had cyberpunk anyway. The science fiction establishment was still recovering from the New Wave when cyberpunk came rumbling over the hill in the late 70s and early 80s. I don't think that there is a science fiction writer as good as J.G. Ballard. The movies of Crash and High Rise, while good, don't hold water for the original novels, and works like The Island and The Atrocity Exhibition are ground breaking and mind blowing. Like Burroughs, Ballard's influences would extend out of the worlds of writing and extend into film and music. If you can find a copy of Judith Merrill's England Swings SF anthology, it is well worth getting. Besides the various New Worlds anthologies, it covers a lot of the bright lights of the British New Wave, and writers like Pamela Zoline, Angela Carter (who was really only passing through the New Wave) and John Brunner. John Brunner is probably one of the most influential SF writers that you've never read. Harlan Ellison's groundbreaking anthology Dangerous Visions also covered the New Wave, and the American Auxiliary of authors like Philip Jose Farmer as well.

Yeah, cyberpunk. Gibson and Sterling and Rucker and Shirley and Shiner are all awesome, but my favorite is still Pat Cadigan's Synners. That and Lewis Shiner's Deserted Cities of the Heart are the literature of the 1980s for me (along side of Brett Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero, as big of a dick as he became).

The trinity of paranormal romance fiction for me are Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series, Devon Monk's Allie Beckstrom books and Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson books. If "trinity" meant four, then I would include Gail Carringer's Parasol Protectorate books as well. One thing that geeks really need to get over is the idea that romance books are only for women. If there's one thing that I've faced the most pushback for from nerds over the years, it would be my loving paranormal romance fiction. The genre has become for me what most standard fantasy fiction is for a lot of other gamers and geeks.

This is probably just the tip of the iceberg, and doesn't even go into my love of comic books. Without the influence of comic book super-heroes (and my mom), I wouldn't fight for the causes that I fight for today. We are, each of us, a big tangle of influences. The things that we read. The movies and television shows that we watch. The music that we listen to. All of these are factors that inspire and influence other aspects of our lives.

Dorkland Rumblings

I've decided to give the world of online newsletters a shot. Starting sometime during or after the holidays, I will start up Dorkland Rumblings, which will be more or less random things that I want to get out, but don't want to do a full blog post, or put them out onto social media.

Don't expect a lot of inbox clutter from this list, we will probably all be "lucky" if I remember to use it once a month. It will, however, contain adult content (most likely adult language), so if that sort of thing bothers you you might not want to join it. The newsletter will likely also be more plug heavy than other sources, as it will be the place that I will more actively talk about what I'm reading, listening to, etc.

There will also be a box on the sidebar that will allow people to join at any time. I hope that some of you will give it a try.

Angry Robot Books To Publish Numenera And Strange Novels In Conjunction With Monte Cook Games

This is some pretty good news for fans of Monte Cook Games' Numenera and The Strange game lines. MCG has announced a deal with Angry Robot Books to publish and distribute fiction based on their games, including the previously announce Numenera novel The Poison Eater by Shanna Germain and further novels from Monte Cook and Bruce Cordell.

If you aren't familiar with Angry Robot Books, you should check them out. They have published novels from authors with gaming credentials like Matt Forbeck (A-Mortals [no longer in print at Angry Robot Books but worth finding a copy of]), Chuck Wendig (Blackbirds) and Dan Abnett (too many things to list). They are top flight publishers of great genre fiction.

Hopefully this will also end in better representation of games from Monte Cook Games in places like Barnes & Noble, where Angry Robot Books already has a strong shelf presence.