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Publishers and songwriters question why labels should get a much bigger share when a track is played on Pandora or Spotify
Publishers and record labels are heading for a collision over the huge difference in streaming royalty rates between master recordings (labels) and publishing (songwriters), with publishers and songwriters questioning why record labels should get five to 12 times as much as the writers when a track is streamed.
At the heart of the issue appears to be how important the songwriting is to an artist's success. Record labels maintain that the division of royalties is fair, as they have to invest more money in marketing, PR, recording costs and tour support (though the latter two expenses are recoupable against the artist's royalties).
Publishers and songwriters, however, say that labels are able to do 360-degree deals with artists where they get a share of merchandising, concert tickets and brand partnerships – but songwriters can only make money from the actual recordings. PRS collects a small share of ticket revenue, which gets split between all the songwriters that wrote the songs in the set, though it's less than what the credit card companies get from each transaction.
Songwriters also point out that, unlike sales of CDs and vinyl, labels don't have to pay for pressing the records and physically deliver them to the shop when it comes to digital sales. Also, there are no returned, unsold records that the labels have to foot the bill for, so surely the songwriters should get a bigger "slice of the pie" from digital music services – not less, as is the case with Pandora (songwriters get about $90 per 1m streams, 12 times less) and YouTube (varies, but in general a songwriter who's written 100% of a song makes about $90 per 1m streams, while a label can make $1,000 to $4,000 per 1m streams) .
One publisher claimed Lucian Grainge, the head of Universal Music Group, said at the PRS copyright tribunal between the labels and songwriters in 2006 that he considered songwriting to be a part of the recording process and so did not warrant a separate royalty.
Björn Ulvaeus of Abba would surely disagree. At the recent 40th anniversary of the group winning Eurovision, he voiced serious doubts that they would have had the same success if they started out today. "We broke through during the golden age of copyright," he said. He and his co-writer Benny Andersson were more interested in writing great songs than going on tour, but did not start out as fully formed hit songwriters, he explained. It took years of trial and error, fine-tuning and studying other songwriters. And, once they became successful, they'd still write every day, nine to five – and only end up with 12 songs a year.
Ulvaeus said he doubted spending all that time on writing songs would be possible in a world where Spotify is the main source of income (it's responsible for about 70% of revenue from recorded music in Sweden), as they would have had to spend much more time touring in order to make a living.
Abba's songs are still largely responsible for Sweden being one of only three net exporters of music in the world (the other two being the US and the UK) today, though those from contemporary hitmakers Max Martin and Jorgen Elofsson also play a part.
There are a lot of misconceptions about how songwriters make money from their music. One of the most common is that songwriters sell their songs to artists. While that is sometimes true in a handful of Asian countries, where copyright enforcement is almost non-existent, in the west they only get paid in micro-payments (royalties) when a copy of the song is sold, streamed, played on the radio – and, if they're really lucky, used in a commercial.
But, today, songwriters are feeling more marginalised and undervalued than ever – not only by music streaming services, but by record labels – and it's moving towards a breaking point.
Instead of supporting songwriters in their quest to get fair remuneration from big corporations such as YouTube, the major labels put pressure on songwriters' collecting societies to accept ridiculously low royalty rates.
Recently the US on-demand digital radio service Pandora won a court case against the American songwriters' collecting society Ascap, in which it claimed it couldn't afford to pay the society more than 1.85% of its revenue as it already pays record labels 49%. Meanwhile Pandora's founder has been cashing in stock at $1.2m a month for quite a while.
Both the PRS (UK's songwriters' society) and Sweden's Stim accepted very low royalty rates from Spotify to help the service to get off the ground. Meanwhile, the major labels acquired shares in the service and large upfront advances that exceeded the royalties they would have earned from usage.
When Spotify issue its IPO, expected later this year, those labels and the venture capitalists behind the service (including founder Daniel Ek) can cash in – as songwriters (and artists) have virtually subsidised them for five years while they've been building up to their big payday, expanding the service worldwide (which, by the way, is why it hasn't made profit yet).
But what can songwriters do about it? In the US, nothing, as they are not allowed to refuse the use of their music (incredibly, when it comes to songwriters, the US is far more socialist than Sweden was, even during its social democrat days). But here in Europe, they could organise into a united "no".
As one publisher said: "When you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain. What we get paid by these streaming services is so insignificant that losing it won't make a difference."
As Ulvaeus concluded at the Abba anniversary, it all starts with a great song. Without it, it doesn't matter how much money you sink into promotion, no one will want to come and see a concert of awful songs – and certainly not use a service such as Spotify. And great songwriting is not part of the recording process, it's a craft that demands serious investment in both money and time.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2014
When Iraqi voters go to the polls tomorrow they are likely to endorse parties that plan to legalise child marriage at nine years old. Based on Shia Islamic jurisprudence, what is called the Ja'afari personal status law was approved by the current Iraqi cabinet eight weeks ago. It describes girls as reaching puberty at nine, and therefore ready for marriage. The current legal age is 18.
This barbaric and regressive law would grant fathers sole guardianship of their female children from the age of two, as well as legalising marital rape. It has horrified Iraqi women and they publicly declared last month's International Women's Day an Iraqi day of mourning in response to the worrying developments. Hassan al-Shimari, the Iraqi justice minister who proposed the draft law, is a member of the small Islamist Fadhila (Virtue) party, which is allied with the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who is seeking a third term in office.
The move is a further loosening of protection for school-age girls. Even without the new law the number of child marriages in Iraq is rising. In 1997 15% of marriages involved women under 18, according to Iraqi government figures – jumping to more than 20% in 2012, with almost 5% married by the age of 15.
Activists are worried that because of financial hardship, families are forced to marry off daughters young when they are offered dowries. There are serious concerns that if this new law comes into force it would only escalate the trend.
But Iraq is not alone. Around the world 10 million children are not at school today as a result of being married off as child brides – a number that is rising in many countries. In the past few months Mauritania has been at the centre of allegations of genital mutilation to make it possible for girls of eight and nine to be married. The country has resisted pressure to introduce a legal minimum age for marriage. In Yemen, where the UN estimates that more than 50% of girls are married before they turn 18, there is also still no minimum age.
Nigeria has also been considering reducing the age of marriage. And India, where rape has brought millions on to the streets in protest, has been revealed as having 40% of the world's child brides.
The facts are that the one secure way to prevent child marriage is to deliver the right of every child to be at school. A girl with some education is not only unlikely to be married at eight, nine or 10, but is also six times less likely to be married by 18.
Child marriage-free zones, where girls get together and refuse to be married, are springing up on the subcontinent – the first in Pakistan, with several now in Bangladesh, and others soon to be set up in countries such as Malawi. We see that girls are no longer prepared to succumb to the fate that others have decided for them, or to wait for others to protect them.
Together with a group of high profile individuals I am proud to be part of the Emergency Coalition for Education Action. The coalition is committed to zero education exclusion, and this means zero child marriage. We are linking up with girls' rights movements across the developing world, including Nepal's Common Forum for Kalmal Hari Freedom, the Nilphamari Child Marriage Free Zone in Bangladesh, the Ugandan Child Protection Club, and Indonesia's Grobogan Child Empowerment Group.
Many are linked to the growing Girls not Brides movement spearheaded by Princess Mabel van Oranje of the Netherlands – more than 300 national organisations are already affiliated. They are attempting to stop child marriage by law, to register girls by their correct ages, to enforce existing banning regulations, and to get girls to school.
Children's rights must be protected across the world, and we call on all countries to put an end to the barbaric practice of child marriage and to ensure all children are in school and learning.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2014
Much of our political dysfunction arises from the fact that different parts of the electorate turn out to vote during midterm and presidential elections. Democrats rack up big wins in presidential years, when younger voters and people of color turn…
Inequality is the root of social evil, Pope Francis has tweeted, only a day after he canonised Pope John Paul II, a man regarded by American rightwingers as the spiritual arm of Ronald Reagan. So, Saint John Paul II is now officially stowed in heaven, and his attitude to capitalism has been consigned to the attic where the Catholic church keeps its lumber of discarded opinions.
Francis has been saying things a lot like this for years, most recently last autumn. Each time, the voices of largely American conservatives explaining that he has been misunderstood get a little less self-assured. It is – even for a Republican party hack – difficult to mistake what the Pope meant, although one site has already made a heroic attempt by translating the tweet into Latin: it appears to be a denunciation of injustice rather than inequality. But in last autumn's essay, Evangelii Gaudium, Francis wrote that: "Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'Thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills … Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalised: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape. Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded."
The claim that human beings have an intrinsic value in themselves, irrespective of their usefulness to other people, is one that unites Christianity and socialism. It can be even found somewhere in the shadows of Marxism, but there humans gain their value from history, and when they stand in its way, that's tough for them, as the millions of Stalin's victims could tell us. But if you think the market is the real world, it makes no sense at all, since in the market, value is simply the outcome of supply and demand.
The American Christian right is convinced that God so loves everyone that there is no need for anyone else to do so. Pope Francis harks back to a much earlier tradition of distrust for the market, which had been dominant in American Christianity until the rise of Reaganism. Then, a group of Catholic intellectuals, some former Protestants such as Richard John Neuhaus, reacted against the liberalism of the 1960s by proclaiming that the church was far more than social work and that only the market allowed people the moral freedom essential to the Christian vision. Equality was to these people fundamentally immoral.
In their arguments they made much of the claim that liberal churches were dying and strict ones flourishing. The claim became that middle-class, Guardian-style activist Christianity was doomed. Only an uncompromising proclamation of the great countercultural truths of Christianity could save the faith, restore civilisation and so on. Important among these great countercultural Christian principles was of course the necessity for the rich to get richer and richer.
This attack was effective partly because it was pitched in moral terms: it denied the moral superiority of the welfare state to the alternatives. What makes Pope Francis's attack so significant is that his position, too, is charged in moral terms.
What he really believes is that riches in themselves are bad for people. That is part of the reason he does not live in the papal apartments. This is not a view shared throughout the Catholic hierarchy. Nor is it really, whole-heartedly, shared by the politicians who will praise his views. I don't see any party anywhere in the world, except perhaps the Greens, running for election on the basis that they will make the voters poorer but more virtuous.
But at the very least Francis's remarks show that Christianity can be a way to step outside the rules by which we are normally bound, and consider the world as it might be if the games we all played were different and had different goals.
• Comments on this article will be turned on in the morning
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2014
Last night's episode of Game of Thrones opened with what's become an increasingly common scene: one of teaching. In this case, the lesson is how to speak the common tongue, because it makes no sense to walk around shouting "Kill the Masters!" if no one can understand what you're saying.
Grey Worm -- in what must have been painful, given the previous conversation -- then dons slave-chains and sneaks into Meereen to meet with some rightfully disgruntled, but nonetheless revolt-wary slaves. In a rousing speech, he informs them that "all men must die," and after talking up the mighty power of Daenerys, Mother of Dragons, tells them not to expect any help from her.
Which was, apparently, the right thing to say:
The slave revolt -- which director Michelle MacLaren dispensed with in all of two minutes -- is successful, but for the first time Dany isn't directly playing the role of "white savior." She may have inspired this revolution, but she's not about to go crowd-surfing on the broken backs of the emancipated this time, because as Grey Worm informed the slaves, "no one can give you freedom, you must take it."
Unless, as we learned in previous episodes, you have dragons, then you can take all the freedom you please.
Once victorious, Dany rounds up all the slave-masters and tries to figure out what to do with them. She's advised that she should "answer injustice with mercy," but the slave-owners of Meereen crucified themselves, so to speak, when they crucified their slaves one-per-mile-style on the road to Meereen. Dany chooses to answer "injustice with justice" and do to them what they did to their slaves.
Meanwhile, in Westeros, Bronn continues to teach Jaime how to fight left-handed, but the humiliation isn't limited to Bronn stealing his right hand and slapping his "ass to dirt" with it. Like a good Catholic or Jewish mother, Bronn decides to use guilt to convince Jaime to visit his brother Tyrion in prison.
Just like the last time we saw them, when Jaime and Tyrion meet up, they do so as equals. Director MacLaren seats Jaime far enough away from Tyrion so the two can make direct eye contact:
If anything, Tyrion's situated a little higher than his brother, but only because he's sitting on the moral high ground. He insists that his wife, Sansa, couldn't have killed Joffrey, because she's "not a killer, at least not yet anyway."
Cut to Arya, the Stark girl who is a killer -- or so I expected, only to be disappointed, because MacLaren decided to stay topical and cut to not-a-killer-yet, Sansa, having the same conversation about who killed Joffrey with Littlefinger. He informs her that he played a role in Joffrey's death, and for the first time, we learn that Sansa's been paying attention.
She tells him that she knows Ser Dontos didn't slip the poison into Joffrey's chalice, because "you're too smart to trust a drunk." All those hours spent with her drunken, scheming husband weren't for naught -- but she's not at Littlefinger's level yet.
"A man with no motive is a man no one suspects," he tells her. "Always keep your foes confused. If they don't know who you are or what you want, they can't know what you plan to do next."
Which, of course, is just grand for the stability of the kingdom, given that it's also being undermined by the likes of Olenna and Margaery Tyrell.
Then it's back to the Wall, where Jon Snow is behaving like it's his first day of school, except this time Snow's not the pupil, he's the master -- er, maester. At least he thinks he is, until Alliser Thorne reminds him of his station. It's not a steward's job to train the new recruits, after all.
Also, Locke's at the Wall, which means there's a mole in the Wall, and worse still, Snow seems inclined to trust the Bolton's mole. That can't bode well, especially given that the Lannister's already have their Wall-mole, Janos Slynt, firmly entrenched there. It's almost as if the show runners don't want you to forget he's half a Stark, and therefore twice as likely to die.
Given that he raped her in the previous episode, it shouldn't be surprising that Cersei and Jaime's conversation is a little stiff and stilted:
The formality of MacLaren's staging here is downright stultifying -- it literally looks like they're on a stage with the curtains pulled back. The composition is straight from Masterpiece Theater circa 1973, and with good reason, given how little chemistry these two currently have, what with their son being dead and all.
Speaking of which -- now that Tommen's to be the new king, you'd think Jaime would station some of his men outside his surviving son's door to prevent the likes of Margaery from sneaking in. In a sweet scene -- if a disturbing, given the age difference -- Margaery informs Tommen in a language that he'll understand that while she likes him, she could easily see herself liking liking him.
She then strokes his cat, Ser Pounce, in an act that a Freudian would have a field day with -- unlike the next scene, in which Jaime lets Brienne play with his sword. There's nothing metaphorical to see here, people, move along, move along!
But Sansa's not the only one learning to be devious in this episode, as Jaime unloads all his responsibilities upon Brienne, who must rescue Sansa to keep her oath to Catelyn Stark, and care for Podrick so Jaime can keep his oath to Tyrion.
She then names her sword "Oathkeeper," and given that that's also the title of the episode, suggests exactly how much faith the audience should have in the human characters on this show -- unless that character is Jon Snow, who has kept all his oaths, except for the ones about not abandoning his brothers and sleeping with the enemy.
In a significant deviation from the novels, Sam tells Snow about his brother, and then -- coincidentally -- Snow's ordered to go to Craster's Keep, where the real oath-breaking former men of the Night's Watch are still playing Deadwood.
"I was a fucking legend in Gin Alley," Karl informs the assembled traitors, or as he likes to call them, "you fucking cunts." He's no fonder of the last of Craster's children, a baby boy, who leaves in the woods as a "gift to the gods."
In those woods -- coincidentally -- are Bran Stark, Hodor, and the Reed siblings. Bran takes his direwolf Summer out for a joyride and crashes him into a pit, but he caught a glimpse of his half-brother Jon's direwolf, Ghost, right before he lost control, so the lot traipse off to Craster's Keep, where they hear a baby.
Before they can act, however, they're captured. Hodor is tortured for information, but he's only saying "Hodor," so it takes the-fucking-legend-of-Gin-Alley a few beats before he realizes who exactly he's captured. He vows to ransom the boy off to Castle Black, but -- coincidentally -- representatives of said castle, led by Jon Snow, are already on the way.
The episode concludes with a scene that's only implied in the books -- the white walker birthing ritual. Because it's on Game of Thrones, the scene occurs in a circle, and because this episode is director by former Breaking Bad producer MacLaren, it must involve a blue that's bluer than blue. The set-up is brutally epic -- the extreme long shots leading up the white walkers' lair, the long shots of him entering the ritualistic looking circle of frozen stalagmites:
And then the white walker reaches toward the baby:
Wait -- what the Hell is that, and why does it have horns?
No doubt, all will be explained in next week's episode.
During the 2012 presidential election, Republican nominee Mitt Romney regularly liked to joke that President Obama wanted the US economy to look "more like Europe". In the context of modern American politics, few insults are more stinging. To be European is to be somehow effeminate, irresolute and, perhaps worst of all, socialist. It's the opposite of the "rugged individualism" and "exceptional nature" of the uniquely American experiment in self-government.
But, as a sobering New York Times article last week made clear, America could have a lot to learn by looking to Europe. According to the New York Times, the American middle class – the linchpin of the country's phenomenal postwar economic growth – can no longer call itself the richest in the world. "While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers," says the NYT, "across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades." America's poorest citizens lag behind their European counterparts; 35 years ago, the opposite was true.
This was yet one more wake-up call about the reality of America's continuing economic malaise. Ask Americans if the country is on the right track – 60% say no. Satisfied with the way things are going in America – only 25% say yes. Still think you're a member of the middle class – only 44% feel so confident. Forty per cent self-identify as lower-class, a 15-point jump since 2008. Among young people, the numbers are even more depressing. Those who place themselves in the lowest tier have doubled in just the past six years.
While a majority of Americans tenaciously continue to hold dear to the American Dream – that long-standing American ideal that if you work hard anything is possible – more and more people are reporting that the opportunity for social advancement feels increasingly out of reach for them and their children. Indeed, it is hard to think of a more disquieting trend in American society than the fact that those in their 20s and 30s are less likely to have a high school diploma than those between the ages of 55 and 64.
All of this must seem counterintuitive to foreign audiences. The US swaggers along on the world stage with a certainty and sense of moral purpose that no other country can match. Blessed with practically limitless national resources, a dynamic and diverse population, a relatively stable political system and innovative technological capabilities that other nations can only dream of, how can so many Americans be falling behind – and how can the nation's leaders allow it to happen?
The answer is disconcertingly simple: we chose this path.
Granted, no one actively set out to attack the middle class in America. There wasn't some evil plan hatched behind closed doors to wreak socio-economic havoc. But the decline of the American middle class, the ostentatious wealth of the so-called 1% and the crushing economic anxiety of the growing number of poor Americans have happened in plain sight.
It is the direct result of a political system that has for more than four decades abdicated its responsibilities – and tilted the economic scales toward the most affluent and well-connected in American society. The idea that government has an obligation to create jobs, grow the economy, construct a social safety net or even put the interests of the most vulnerable in society above the most successful has gone the way of transistor radios, fax machines and VCRs. Today, America is paying the price for that indifference to this slow-motion economic collapse.
It wasn't always like this.
Once, Americans lived in a country where it wasn't just the biggest boats that floated high on a rising economic tide. In the years after the Second World War, America was defined by an unprecedented period of economic prosperity. Jobs were plentiful and well-paying, with generous health and retirement benefits. New creature comforts, from refrigerators and washing machines to televisions and cars, were suddenly available. Americans became homeowners and eventually, if they were lucky, suburbanites. Perhaps most important, those at the bottom of the economic ladder shared in the bounty as much as those at the top.
Life back then was never as idyllic as nostalgic portrayals of postwar America would suggest (this was particularly true if you were a minority or a woman). But it was also true that Americans enjoyed the type of economic security that current generations can only dream of.
Part of the reason was that they had political leaders who recognised that the federal government could not just sit on the sidelines. From the emergency measures of the New Deal, which laid the foundation for the modern welfare state, to the vast ambitions of the Great Society, the government provided support for the aged, healthcare for the poor, job security for workers, good schools for the nation's young people and invested in science and infrastructure projects that created new economic opportunities. By the 70s, however, as the postwar economic boom began to deflate, so, too, did the idea that government had a role to play in stewarding the economy or protecting workers from the vicissitudes of the free market. Instead, as a conservative anti-government populism emerged out of the perceived "liberal" excesses of the 60s, a new political ethos came to the fore. It was one promoted by Republicans (if occasionally articulated and endorsed by Democrats). Government was no longer a friend to the working man – it was a malignant force transferring his hard-earned tax dollars to the poor and minorities.
These attitudes weren't necessarily new. Americans have long flirted with strains of anti-centralism and fears of concentrated power. But out of this backlash would come toxic policy ideas that have defined post-60s US politics – lower taxes and even lower federal spending, less regulation and even less government intervention in the economy. Though pitched to the American people as a magic elixir for what ailed the US economy, they instead brought the economic disquiet we are seeing fully flower today.
The impact of conservatism's anti-government backlash was significant. Unemployment benefits became less generous; same with food stamps, welfare payments and the minimum wage. Job protections were weakened as once strong support for unions and organised labour was replaced by increasing hostility from pro-business Republicans. When once a third of all private sector Americans were in unions, today the number is down to around 11%.
College tuition fees went through the roof as support for public universities declined. This was happening at the same time that a university degree became an essential ticket for success in a competitive global economy. A lack of early-childhood education and underperforming schools, particularly for the poorest Americans, meant that unless you're in the top 10% of Americans chances are that when your child begins kindergarten, he or she is already one step behind.
This educational inequality is reflective of a larger trend of growing income disparities across US society. So, as Americans saw their wages stagnate, their economic anxieties increase, their debt levels skyrocket, their retirement savings shrivel and their future prospects dim, the very rich got much, much richer.
Yet, conservatism's most pernicious impact came not from what it accomplished. There was no rolling back of the welfare state or the Great Society. The revered conservative Republican saviour Ronald Reagan railed against big government, but as president he found himself unable to zero out even a single major spending programme.
Far worse, however, were the sins of omission. Conservatism's most dubious legacy came in stopping progress dead in its tracks. There were no expanding childcare benefits or universal pre-kindergarten to deal with the influx of women in the workplace. Millions lacked health insurance coverage and yet Congress showed little inclination toward providing universal access to healthcare. New infrastructure programmes, such as high-speed rail or expanded broadband penetration, went nowhere. Public works programmes to create jobs weren't even on the table. When new social programmes were created, such as family and medical leave, they were pale substitutes of what the European middle class takes for granted.
Instead, Congress busied itself with more tax breaks and subsidies for the richest 1% and hacked away at regulations that protected workers and the social safety net that kept them from falling into economic misery. Until the long overdue passage of Obamacare in 2010, the middle class consistently found itself on the short end of the stick.
Certainly, some will quibble as to how much blame the federal government should receive for this economic downturn. Larger systemic forces, such as globalisation, technological change and the increasing specialisation of the US economy, which demanded more educated workers, played important roles as well. Still, even if one accepts that these factors were more responsible, where were Congress and the president in helping workers navigate these changes?
Alas, they were probably out raising money from the 1% for the next election. It's small wonder that, according to a recent academic report, the world of politics is so "dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans" that the US is on shaky ground even calling itself a democracy.
As Americans have seen their economic fortunes decline, those most in a position to help them have shown far too little willingness to lend a hand, none more so than conservative Republicans.
In the immortal words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention". Its success comes in standing in the path of reform and saying no. With the Republican party currently in charge of the House of Representatives (and unlikely to lose that control in this autumn's mid-term election) there is little reason, unfortunately, to believe that the nearly four-decade decline in the financial standing of the American people will right itself soon. In short, the "choice" that America made to pursue the path of decline will be with us for some time to come.
Kind of makes looking to Europe seem like not such a bad idea.
["Mid adult carpenter with coworker carrying wooden planks outdoors" on Shutterstock]
The work of Jeff VanderMeer is as difficult to describe as it is engrossing to read. In the introduction to the anthology The New Weird -- which he edited with his wife, Ann VanderMeer -- he defined the genre in which he writes as "a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping off point for creation of settings that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy."
Whatever it is, it works -- and people are paying attention. His most recent novel, Annihilation, was published last month by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (FSG); his next novel, Authority, will be published by FSG next month. The third and final novel in what he calls "The Southern Reach Trilogy," Acceptance, will be published by FSG in September. All three novels have been also already been optioned by Paramount Pictures.
The first, Annihilation, follows a team of female scientists into a wasteland known as Area X. They are, at least, the eleventh expedition into Area X, and once there, they discover a tunnel containing, among other things, an unknown organism that appears to be writing doomsday prophecies -- in English -- on the wall with a fungus whose spores may be murderous.
In less talented hands, such a premise would border on preposterous. However, VanderMeer grounds the oddity of his narrative by sharing it through the perspective of a woman known only as "the biologist." Encounters with the uncanny in the book are filtered through the intensely curious, but still stubbornly scientific, lens of a scientist in the field.
You can read the first chapter of Annihilation here.
VanderMeer graciously agreed to speak to Raw Story about his new novels and the unusual manner of their publication between stops on his book tour.
RS: The publishing model you and Farrar, Straus & Giroux (FSG) agreed upon for the trilogy is revolutionary. How did it come about, and are you happy with it? Would you ever want to do something similar again?
FSG suggested it and I enthusiastically said yes. It’s a little like a convoy roaming through possibly perilous territory. A trilogy spread out over three years is susceptible to all kinds of unexpected misadventures and attacks. This way, in a nice, tight formation, the Southern Reach novels are in a position to come to each other’s aid...because they are alive, you know? Water the plant on Annihilation, give a carrot to the rabbit on Authority, and feed a mouse to the owl on Acceptance. Otherwise, they might become unpredictable and terrorize you in ways you can only imagine...
Although the media did pick up on the initial New York Times article about Annihilation and this model, many articles focused on the idea of “binge reading” as if you could now just skim books faster. But when I think of “binge watching” it brings to mind immersion and being more fully engaged with a work of art. So many times readers have to get back up to speed when the second book in a series is published, which also puts a strain on the writer to perhaps put more context into that novel than they would if it were a pure stand-alone. In that way to, this model works.
Would I do something similar again? That’s a good question. The other novels I’m working on are stand-alone, so it probably won’t come up. And I would caution that anyone adopting it as a model not mistake the speed of publication for the speed of writing. You have to build in enough time to complete the novels in the way they need to be finished.
Annihilation seems very much to be an environmental fable about a world very much, but not quite our own -- one, perhaps, that we've despoiled. Do you consider Area X to be a place we've discovered, or one in whose creation we're complicit? Or are readers supposed to become like the conspiracy theorists you discuss on page 94?
The place Area X was before it became Area X was very much a creation of human beings. Even in that wilderness, you had waste barrel dumping, other types of run-off and pollution, invasive species that would never have been there without human action. You could say Area X, whether as its purpose as a side effect, is going back in time by removing all traces of human occupation. But, to be honest, the secret agency that sends in the expeditions, the Southern Reach, hides its own secrets that pertain to what’s going on in Area X.
On page 111, you note that the pile of journals describing Area X will soon become Area X itself. This strikes me as a literal version of "contact narratives," in which what an explorer writes about an area he discovers becomes how future generations understand it. (Describing cities of gold in the "New World" leading explorers to "discover" such cities, even though they only ever existed in print.) Are these books an exercise in, call it, "creative geography"? Re-shaping the world by describing it?
I must admit my minor in college was Latin American history, and I’m sure there’s a sedimentary layer in the back of my brain that, in soaking all of that conflicted and difficult chronology, has peeked out through some of the observations in Annihilation. I guess I was also thinking of the journals from the prior expeditions as almost being like the bones of the explorers, in word form. This is where they washed up, their instruments useless, all logic revealed as merely construct to push them through the day.
And, yes, there is perhaps a parallel: explorers and exploiters who are culturally so different and from such a different landscape that the very land seems to reject them, even when they seem to have conquered it. I’m not particularly fond of missionaries or of conquerors or empires, all of which strike me as examples of dreaming poorly but, alas, doing so across a vast continuum of human endeavor, to the brutal detriment of all who push back with perhaps a more sustainable and humane vision of the world.
Is the novel more concerned with how language shapes the world than how the world actually is? (I'm thinking of passages such as the one on page 179, in which you discuss that the words "gun" and "sample" are meaningless outside of the notion that they're both just "aiming at something.")
Not to side step the question, but one point I’m trying to make is that language itself can mean something radically different to something that doesn’t share any points of commonalities with human beings. That language can be hacked or turn into something else. In part because our use of metaphor and simile and comparisons are so wide-spread that we don’t even realize that we’re transforming the world just by encountering it. We’re turning it into something that can be expressed through language, in ways that allow what you might call short-hand for more effective communication of concepts both tactile and ethereal. We’re so in thrall to this approach that it’s hard to even conceive of some other way.
You spend a lot of time emphasizing the fact that while "the biologist" is an academic, her knowledge comes as much from her interaction with the world -- from experience -- as from "book learning" of the sort that academics typically value. Is there a reason that you have her value what she observed with her own eyes over what she read?
I wouldn’t say she’s an academic—she’s a field biologist and then in the commercial sector, kind of against her will. Yes, she’s associated with various universities, but whenever she’s embedded in academia, she’s a bit of a mimic, using camouflage, because she in a very personal way is about an attempt of a true viewing of the world.
And even if there’s failure in that, the greater failure is to accept the metaphors and analogies of any human institution, which is like a vast high-functioning accretion of complex barnacles attached to the hull of a ship none of the barnacles can really see from their position. Or, at least, I imagine the biologist thinking, at times, in this way. Given also the way the Southern Reach operates, it’s very important to her not to fall victim to what she would think of as propaganda.
Why did you decide to tackle these issues through the almost alien perspective of academic inquiry?
Although the biologist sometimes leaves things out, I think her attempt at a dispassionate view, although no one can be truly dispassionate, is a way of counterbalancing the weirdness they account—for me. There are many practical reasons for this approach and philosophical ones, but If my narrator was someone highly excitable and prone to wild leaps then suddenly there is absolutely no striation of layers of reality or possible reality in the book. Instead, the reader would be rolling around inside of a chaotic washing machine, trying to see what’s outside the little circular window. You might feel clean, if bruised, at the end, but you’d have no sense of story.
The novel reads very much like the world it describes -- utterly familiar, yet slightly off at all points. Was that your intent? (For example, on 59, you describe "Something like a body or a person," which makes perfect sense, yet is incredibly disturbing. What is like a body or a person that's not a body or a person?)
I hike a lot in North Florida, and from a distance, things look like other things. A bat can metamorph into a bird when seen closer. A creature on a log becomes just a stubby branch. A seeming tree trunk is actually a bear. You think you are going north, but suddenly, through some daydream of lapse of attention, you get turned around.
These are, in a sense, reminders to us that the real world is stranger than we usually think. Imagine being able to spy on the processes going on around you while even walking down the sidewalk on your street—the plants employing photosynthesis and speaking to each other in chemical emissions, the ants with their pheromone trails, the fungi with their spores. Why, there’s still crowded and noisy cosmopolitan situation all around you, but you can’t experience any of it because your senses are these stunted, incomplete systems.
You’ve got eyes that can’t see the whole spectrum. A cat would laugh at your stupid sense of smell. Your sense of taste is pathetic compared to many creatures. Your sense of touch is put to shame by your average gecko. So the world is in a sense laughing at you anyway, or on some level ignoring you completely, and your sole contribution is the ability to tread too heavily on a dandelion and break its stem. So if we’re honest the world should feel slightly off at times. The world should at times reveal some glint or glimmer of greater processes ongoing. Something like a body or a person. Something like a shadow or a creature. Something like a sudden clue.
On page 100, you discuss the relation of maps to the world they ostensibly, but clearly don't, describe. This seems very much in keeping with the short stories of Samuel Beckett, which are filled with descriptions of impossible places. Are you a fan of Beckett?
From a purely practical viewpoint, maps do indeed render some things invisible and other things more visible than they should be. This is at times the main function of maps: to make some group or country seem either unimportant or, perhaps, no longer there long before this is actually so. The orientation of our North-South world on maps is no accident, not a flip of the coin, even.
But I am a fan of Beckett, especially early and middle Beckett, when he hadn’t yet quite stripped down everything to one exorable blade so sharp it can cut you before you even really understand you’ve been opened up. I like the dirt and the squalor of some of the earlier material, before Beckett Uplifted or Ascended or in some way became an empty cathedral. An empty cathedral is a beautiful and awe-inspiring thing, but so too is the grout between the tiles if you look at it closely enough. Say, under a microscope. Belacqua might have been hopeless, but he lived in a world that was full of color.
To build on that, since all we have is what she's written, are you trying to say something about our ability to judge the decisions she's made or actions she's undertaken? (Especially given the fact that by the time she writes this account, she's long ago "remembered that [she] had been someone else.")
I like very much that none of the expedition gets a physical description or a name, so you have to “judge” them or assess them by their words, actions, and interactions—as well as, in the biologist’s case—her memories of the world beyond. What actions are by their very nature unethical or unworthy no matter what the context? Which are in a gray area? Which are actions that in a normal context would be monstrous but that you feel you yourself might undertake in the context of Area X? There’s a practical reason they have no names, to do with the metrics behind the expedition, but it also does a lot of other work.
I know from Facebook that you read literary theory, so I wondered if Walter Benn Michaels and Steven Knapp's "Against Theory" argument -- in which they claimed that words "written" on a beach by the action of waves wouldn't be "real" words, merely "marks" that resemble them -- factored into your description of the "mysterious words" that you describe on pages 27 and 28?
That’s a good question. I have read that argument, but hadn’t thought until you brought it up that the words on the wall came from reading it. One thing I believe in fiercely is the physicality of things that happen in books, that subtexts that stick up out of the story are like bones that have been cracked and broken by accident and the marrow showing means you need to get the book to a hospital straight away. So there is a physicality of the words and a practical aspect to them, as revealed later, but, again, a lot of things have been “hacked’ by Area X.
What is it with creepy lighthouses lately? Between you and Brian K. Vaughn's Saga, I may never be able to take a leisurely drive down the Pacific Coast Highway again.
They tend to lend themselves to stories about crackpots and iconoclasts because they’re isolated and they almost all have rich and sometimes mysterious histories. Loners become lighthouse keepers. Lonely stretches of coast often become riddled through with myths and rumors and speculation. I love lighthouses, especially since my research into them. I visit every one I encounter—and especially along the Pacific Coast Highway. They’re repositories of a destabilized and imperfect history, a history that’s often about outsiders and people who didn’t make it into other history books. Preserved in these towers that now often lie silent and empty, and which sometimes also are a beacon pointing out some remote and wild place. I don’t want to romanticize them—they also harbor rats and many lighthouse keepers were just boring weirdos, but there is something about a lighthouse that I find compelling.
Fun fact: truly ancient lighthouses used a bonfire on top of an open plateau-like space, or just stuffed three fatty birds on a spike and lit them on fire for a beacon. Very efficient, if perhaps ridiculous looking to a modern eye.
Feel free to write about anything else that you think would be of interest to Raw Story readers. Barring that, feel free to tell me what happens in the next book, because damn it, I don't want to wait until May.
I’m a big fan of the Semiotexte books, and found much in the work of writers like Jean Baudrillard and books like the Invisible Revolution of use in writing these novels, especially Acceptance. As for Authority, it is an expedition into the Southern Reach, much as Annihilation was an expedition into Area X. It also contains these three passages, which should not necessarily coexist peacefully in the same novel, and yet they, I believe, do:
[Image of Jeff VanderMeer via Facebook]
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