Comments on: Clarkesworld and Peter Watts’ The Things

By: Tender Linksels « Torque Control

Tender Linksels « Torque Control — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:23:28 +0000

[...] Peter Watts story at Clarkesworld: “The Things“; see Jonathan Strahan’s account of how this didn’t end up in Eclipse [...]

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:19:43 +0000

Hi Chris. I’m not trying to be vague about this. Basically I just didn’t want to get into the details of the legal issues. In essence, I wanted to buy the story. The publisher was willing too, but didn’t have the budget to pay for a copyright lawyer to check the story, and time was running out. The best we could guess is that there was some risk in proceeding, and given that we would have been risking having to pulp the print run of the the book if we’d run the story and been challenged, we felt it safest not to proceed. As Peter correctly says, the publisher basically wanted to be indemnified against the risk and Peter wanted to share the risk. The publisher was unwilling to proceed under those circumstances. I do wonder what will happen when year’s bests come looking at “The Things”. It deserves to be included, in my opinion, but a risk remains. I hope it gets clarified soon. – Jonathan

By: Homo Sum » Blog Archive » Another Fine Free Thing

Homo Sum » Blog Archive » Another Fine Free Thing — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:03:33 +0000

[...] Strahan is only slightly more elliptic about the details of what couldn’t be worked out in his congratulatory post on the publication). So it looked like I was never going to get to read the story… and then word came out that [...]

By: Rich Horton

Rich Horton — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:44:36 +0000

I completely agree (as I think Jonathan already knows …) — it’s a first rate story, and would surely have been in one of my books if it had appeared in 2009, and certainly might be again for 2010!

By: Nick Mamatas

Nick Mamatas — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:48:11 +0000

Another fun fact: “I will have to rape it into them” is the state motto of South Dakota!

By: Cheryl's Mewsings » Blog Archive » Talking about “The Things”

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:34:35 +0000

[...] Twitter Nick Mamatas described it as “fanfic”. Jonathan Strahan explains why, and also gives some background on the origins of the story. Jonathan says: If you want to read one of 2010’s best hard SF stories, head over to Clarkesworld [...]