In addition to writing and doing a thrice-weekly comic strip, I have been known to act. I just wound up cast in a local production of The Taming of the Shrew that happens (eek!) in about a month.

That means lots of very long rehearsals with very little time for breaks. Which means I need guest strips for my comic, FPK.

If you or someone you know might be interested in providing a guest strip, here’s what I need.

• FPK switched formats around strip #430, so if you’re looking to use characters common to the strip, that’s where to start reading. But I’ll also accept strips in the style of old FPK, which was pretty light on recurring characters.
• I’ll accept comics any time from now through July 4, but ASAP is much better.
• Comics will run first-come, first-served on the days I usually update.
• The comic generally runs about PG - PG-13 for content.
• You can email your guest-strips to cglenwilliams (at) gmail (dot) com. Make sure you mark the subject line with “FPK GUEST STRIP.”
• Let me know if you have a page or webcomic you want me to link to, and anything you’d like me to say about you as a guest artist.

If you or anyone you know can help me out as my schedule suddenly explodes, I’d be very grateful for the assistance.

The Oculus Rift (definitely not pictured) is a brand new attempt at a home Virtual Reality system — and probably the first one to actually stand a chance of making VR a genuine standard in the household. Unlike its predecessors, it’s engineered for maximum comfort to the wearer, delivers high-quality visuals, has genuinely effective motion tracking, and — I can’t stress the importance of this enough — is genuinely affordable.

People who have used the Oculus Rift are already declaring it a phenomenal experience, even without many fully-fleshed “games” available to play. Instead, Oculus Rift users are largely viewing context- free experiences. It’s much like the beginning of the movie Brainstorm, only without the whole going-down-a-waterslide-with-bikini-girls bit (so far).

Oculus Rift users are experiencing what it’s like to pilot a spaceship. They’re going on spacewalks. They’re flying over magical kingdoms.

And they’re getting a sense of what it’s like to be beheaded by a guillotine.

It’s that last one that the media is paying attention to.

But I think it raises an interesting question about virtual reality and the traditional video game experience. I just spent the previous weekend hip-deep in Bioshock Infinite, a game where — I don’t know if you guys were aware of this — you kill other people and can be killed, yourself. I know. It’s shocking, isn’t it?

Sarcasm aside, death has been a constant feature in video games since the beginning of the medium (well, maybe shortly after Pong). Whether it’s the statistics-driven flash-and-gone mayhem of Pools of Radiance, the watch-the-spine-twitch fatalities of Mortal Kombat, or the cartoon squishing of Goombas in Super Mario Bros., video games are about resolving conflict — and, often, that resolution involves at least a little bit of violence.

Disunion (the guillotine simulator, if you didn’t pick up on that name from the video above) is not about resolving conflict, and that adds to its effect. You aren’t a condemned prisoner attempting to escape your execution. There’s nobody you can talk to who can stay your execution. There’s certainly no way to grab a weapon and hack, poke, or blast your way out of it.

You’re being executed. And that’s that.

Which isn’t that different from the other experiences, when you come to it. In Spacewalk, you don’t interact with the other astronauts. You’re not fighting off aliens. You just experience the spacewalk, free of any further context.

These are tech demos. They push the limits of what the equipment can achieve, and they raise new questions about gameplay. Disunion, in particular, raises a very interesting question — when Oculus Rift games start working in violence as part of their conflict, how is the violence that happens to the player avatar going to be represented?

Is a game like the U.S. Army-backed America’s Army going to go the extra mile to suggest to their players what it might be like to die on the battlefield? What effect will even more traditional depictions of video game death have on their players? It’s one thing to watch on a television screen as your point of view rockets into the sky before landing, non-moving, on your side — but to experience it in an immersive environment?

Squishing goombas in virtual reality will probably still be fun — but, in an Oculus Rift version of Mario, what would happen when the player inevitably missed a platform? How far does Mario fall before the system cuts away to your next life?

It’s not a question I have the answer to, but it’s one that has been raised and one that will have to be answered. And probably soon.

Because I can’t wait for my chance to actually walk through the halls of Rapture and the streets of Columbia.

I was reading the editorial philosophy statement for a new sci-fi zine, when I came across this:

We are not optimistic about humanity’s future.

We’re not going to call the game early, but we do know this: progress-mongering and optimistic feel-goodery doesn’t suit this medium. We’ve been beating the drums of development for too long. What we need now is refinement, awareness, and the capacity for harsh self-evaluation.

And then my eyeballs rolled so hard they fell out of their sockets and I can’t find them.

It’s good to know that works such as “Star Trek: The Original Series,” “Stargate SG-1,” Podkayne of Mars, “The Tomorrow People,” “Firefly,” “Doctor Who,” and the entire works of Isaac Asimov were such critical, commercial, and artistic failures to prove that optimism has no place in sci-fi. Maybe now we will be free from the incessant bright-future Polyanna-ism of techno-utopian science fiction like The Matrix, I Am Legend, Blade Runner, Brazil, The Book of Eli, and the entire works of Michael Crichton.

Sarcastic knee-jerk response aside: Focus on the thematic content that suits you. But don’t act like optimistic science fiction is a proven failure, and don’t pretend that pessimistic science fiction is a brand new, previously-unexplored take on the genre.

Note: When writing this entry, my mind thought “Michael Crichton” and my fingers typed “William Gibson.” This entry has been edited to reflect my original intention.

I’m usually a sucker for new technologies — have been, ever since my dad brought home an Apple Macintosh back in 1985. Maybe earlier — I can’t remember when we got the Colecovision. And if that technology makes it easier for me to do the creative things I like to do, that’s all the better.

So when I started using Pages on my iPad to work on a new manuscript, I noticed something really fun — Apple’s word processor now lets you save to the cloud. This means I can start writing something on my iPad, save it, then open it and make changes on my laptop. When I’m done there, I can save it again and it syncs the changes to my iPad. So, no matter which device I’m near, I can always get my latest version of the manuscript and make changes.

Which would be wonderful — except for the fact that I live in Blacksburg.

You might remember Blacksburg as the home of Virginia Tech. You might also remember that Blacksburg was one of the cities that Adam Orth (formerly) of Microsoft said he would never live in, so spotty internet service was not a problem as far as he could see.

That particular name came up in conversation because internet infrastructure in Blacksburg is pretty notoriously bad — even more notoriously because it was only back in 1998 that Blacksburg was recognized by Guinness World Records as the “Most Wired Community.”

So, last night, I discovered a problem with the cloud and all of the wonders that it offers me as a writer. When your internet access completely disappears for, say, nine hours starting in the afternoon and ending late at night, it puts a damper on any internet-based activities. In fact, my webcomic only updated on time because I was able to move the comic strip from my computer to my phone (through a cable), then log into my host (which isn’t designed for mobile) on my phone and upload from there.

As for my next novel? Well, it just didn’t get anything new written that night.

Because it was in the cloud.

And without internet access, the cloud is pretty useless.

Which is why I’m not a big fan when people start preaching ditching physical media — or even on-board digital storage. When people start saying, “The cloud is here! We should all be streaming all of our movies and music from the cloud and not even need copies on hard drives!” I hug my blu-ray collection and my hard drive full of music a little bit closer.

Because I live in Blacksburg.

And I haven’t watched a YouTube video in the past two months that didn’t stop to buffer.

On my way into work, I had to stop at the bank.

First, there was a car parked right in front of the window with someone in the front seat. I sat behind them for a while, thinking they were filling out a deposit slip or something.

Then I noticed that the driver was glancing at me in the rear view mirror — very furtive look-look away type stuff. So I thought, “Nah, they’re waiting for somebody and I’m freaking them out.” So I pulled around and used the pneumatic tube instead of the window.

As I pulled out, there was a car blocking the exit from the drive through lanes. She was sitting there, her car idling, directly across from the exit. There was room to get around her, but not — and this is important — if there was another car coming. Which there was. So I sat and let it pass.

Then, as I was halfway through my turn going past the car blocking me, she put the car into drive and started to roll right toward the side of my car. I stopped.

She stopped, leaned out of her window, and called, “Sorry!”

And I continued on to work.

I feel like I just witnessed the beginning of a bank heist movie. A comedy. Possibly starring Will Ferrell and Tina Fey. Or maybe Channing Tatum and Kristen Schaal.

I have a bad habit that goes way back — a habit of working on more than one story at a time.

it’s a bad habit because it makes it that much easier to abandon a story in mid-stream, as well as making it easier to forget where you’re going with any (or, occasionally all) of them. 

I’m not alone in this habit. Apparently, Isaac Asimov did the same thing — but that mutton-chopped son of a bitch made it work and became one of the most well-loved and prolific authors of his time. 

So I search for ways to make it work for me. My most successful attempts to date involve limiting the number of stories I’m working on at any given time and setting aside new ideas in the form of hastily-scribbled notes until the ones I’m currently working on are finished.

But today my efforts to curb my bad habit came around and bit me. Hard. I sit here looking at four documents — two novels, two short stories — all four works in progress.

And I can’t shake the feeling that there should be three short stories.

It all started when I went looking for a short story I was certain I was working on. I opened one story, glanced over it, and said, “No, that’s not the one.” Then I opened the second, glanced over it, and said, “No, that’s not it, either.”

Then I opened the novels and said, “No, not there.”

And as I continued to open documents, I started to think, “Man, I would hate to have to start all over again. It was a great story about—”

About…

What the Hell was that story about?

I’m sure it was great.

Maybe it was…

Nope. Gone, completely.

And so I look at four open works in progress and try to figure out — was there a fifth story? Or just a dream of a story in progress? A dream I forgot to write down that is now forever lost?

A lot of people seem to think that the argument for an extended, robust public domain is an argument for redistribution of wealth — that it’s about appropriating other peoples’ labor for widespread commercial exploitation. You know, commercial exploitation like giving books away completely for free. 

In point of fact, the call for the public domain to grow is a recognition of the underlying social contract. Artists and creators contribute to the larger culture. In exchange for their contribution, they are given a time-limited exclusive right to commercially exploit their work. However, after a reasonable period of time, that contribution to the culture is to be treated as exactly that — a contribution to the culture. Eventually, the people at large are supposed to have free and unfettered access to the things that have become part of their lives, whether it’s an adult author wanting to write about a 120-year-old fictional detective or a 6-year old kid painting the Bat Signal on a tile at the local mall.

This free and unfettered access also serves to expand the culture further. William Shakespeare (living in a time when copyright did not mean creator exclusivity) adapted not only classical works from before his time, but also based plays on the works of his contemporaries. His most famous lost play, Cardenio, was an adaptation of a section of Cervantes’ Don Quixote — the first part of which had only recently been translated into English at the time.

Today, works in the public domain still fuel new artists’ creations. The results may be mixed, but the same could be said for art in general.

And if you find yourself wondering why L. Frank Baum’s work keeps getting adapted and re-adapted, the reason is simple: Baum’s work is among the most contemporary works actually turned over to the culture at large. Post-1923, copyrights get extended into oblivion and the culture with which we (as well as our parents, our grandparents, and some of our great-great-grandparents) grew up remains walled off and exclusive to its “creators” — who, in an increasing number of cases, are merely the people who wrote paychecks for the ones who actually did the creating.

Over on boing boing, you can read a perfect example of why this prolonged exclusivity is a problem. When the copyright is held exclusively by the people who wrote paychecks and that exclusivity is indefinitely extended, at some point they will decide that empty space is more valuable than culture.

“I work at the NBC storage warehouse in Englewood Cliifs, New Jersey,” the man said. “We’ve got several boxes of 16mm reels of film from ‘You Bet Your Life’ and we were wondering if Mr. Marx wants any of it. If not, we’re going to destroy all of it tomorrow.”

“Destroy it?” I asked increduously. “Why would you do that?”

“We’re trying to clear space for the newer shows. There’s a lot of stuff from the ‘50s and ‘60s that we’re getting rid of. If Mr. Marx would like it, we’ll be happy to send all of the reels to him.”

[…]

“Where would you like us to put all of this?” one of the drivers asked me. “There are over 500 boxes and each box contains ten reels of film.”

5,000 reels of film, I thought to myself, as I watched the small army of UPS drivers putting boxes in any empty space they could find, including a now-vacated bedroom that once belonged to Groucho’s last wife from whom he was now divorced.

[…]

A month later, in early 1974, after checking the contents of the over 500 boxes and doing a little investigating, I had figured out that NBC had not only sent every reel of the original “You Bet Your Life” show, but also all the copies of “The Best of Groucho,” a syndicated version that included the show’s greatest episodes culled from the show’s original run.

For those of you keeping track at home, that was NBC in the 1970’s, willing to destroy over 5,000 reels of film from a show that is foundational to the medium and that represents hours of historical recordings of one of America’s greatest improvisational performers ever, all recorded when he was in his prime.

The stories are peppered throughout America’s cultural history. The 1960’s saw RCA Victor bulldozing their Camden warehouse with millions of wax cylinders and lacquer recording masters still inside. This past decade saw Les Moonves making the decision to lock up previously-lost episodes of “The Jack Benny Program” without making an effort to preserve them — especially heinous in this case, considering that the work was actually in the public domain. At the time, Moonves, made the decision to keep the masters under wraps because he didn’t want anybody else making money off of them, but he also made the decision not to remaster them because he didn’t see a market for them. (Luckily, Shout! Factory has just announced that they will be releasing them in July on DVD, suggesting this has been resolved on the side of the angels)

Did you ever wonder why it took so long for The Last Unicorn to be released on disc in widescreen? It was because the studio had carelessly misplaced the original master and could only find the master they had used to send a cropped version of the film to HBO and other television outlets. The widescreen version didn’t resurface until fans pointed out that a German company had released a widescreen laserdisc, meaning a widescreen master still existed.

That movie was made in 1982 and nearly lost because the studio didn’t see any economic value in keeping track of where they sent their negatives and masters.

We have lost and are still losing massive chunks of our culture every day to carelessness, apathy, and economic decisions that sell your memories for empty shelf space, and we may not realize they’re lost until the next time we go looking for them. Even when, occasionally, some executive decides preservation is preferable to destruction, they ship their masters off to be cared for at taxpayer expense while prohibiting taxpayer access.

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers to copyright reform, but I know this: We need to be reminded that copyright is a social contract. We trade commercial exclusivity for the expansion of our culture. When one side takes the benefits, then continually screws the other side out of their recompense, that contract is being violated.

Conserving energy. vine.co/v/bv9KMbUFO9v

— C. Glen Williams (@DoctorHu) February 13, 2013

I truly love Vine. Unabashedly. Truly, madly, deeply.

I am not so naïve as to think that Vine will proceed to crank out a million dime-store Tarantinos, nor so jaded as to completely ignore the impact Vine can potentially have on future storytellers. Vine is accomplishing something with six seconds of video that Twitter can rarely manage in 140 characters.

Vine is encouraging people to think in terms of scene.

Yes, you can just choose to document six straight seconds of whatever you want. Sometimes, you’re going to realize that that’s what you should do. But Vine is more flexible than that. It gives you six seconds, then makes you realize just how long six seconds can be.

You have narrative possibilities. You can have shifts of point of view. You can build dialogue.

That’s pretty nifty for an application that gives you six seconds of time.