The Marquis de Leech

Yep. The problem here isn't actually that AI will make writers redundant. It won't. The problem is that it makes it so much harder for publishers and magazines - which in turn screws over writers.

This is great, though it is only the 150 letters originally cut from the 1981 edition. A fair bit has been unearthed in the last forty years, and it would be nice if an expanded letters could take that into account.

Currently on a Jules Verne binge.

New story out with New Maps Magazine, The Dream of Florian Neame: https://www.new-maps.com/issues/SP23/

In one of those strange (and sad) examples of costs increasing, I have been notified by my publisher that copies of Wise Phuul generate a negative royalty (at current prices) when purchased via bookshops in Australia. They have sent off an email to the printer about this (several other books are in a similar predicament, generally worse), and I'm waiting on further updates, but it's definitely a sign that Times are Tough for small presses. The redeeming feature is that the publisher sells the vast majority of their books online.

Christie's work evolves over time. Her older stuff tends to have some very unfortunate handling of Jews, Chinese, and even Irish. But here's the funny thing - Christie learned from her mistakes. A 1950s Christie novel does not have the same... issues... as some of her 1920s stuff. By rewriting her stuff like that, you're basically flattening her out.

The 'canonical' nature of these amendments is really only possible because of the silliness of modern copyright. Were public domain only twenty years after the death of the author, people could do all the amendments or fanfiction they want. It's just none of it would be official, any more than nineteenth century efforts to make Shakespeare family friendly were official.

On the other hand, it's set in the early seventeenth century, and I don't think the characters involved would have considered it rape (an unpleasant deception, yes, but such things tended to be played as a comedy in older stories - the Reeve's Tale, for instance).

The scene in question is the one where he fucks Milady while pretending to be someone else, right?

Small presses tend to use un-agented submissions too, though generally they have a limited submissions window. The problem for writers here is not "they're taking our jobs!", since the quality is simply not comparable to human-written stories (AI can imitate. But it cannot explore theme like a human can). The problem is that the swamping of the magazines will mean longer turn-arounds for rejections, and potentially lower renumeration - magazines must now spend time and effort sorting the AI nonsense from real submissions.

It wasn't Ten Little Negroes, of course. But the difference there is that Christie herself was approving the title change.

I see this as a product of modern corporates' obsession with intellectual properties. And more specifically, milking them for as long as possible. Penguin Random House (owner of Puffin) and Netflix (owner of the Roald Dahl Story Company) are trying to "update" the texts for cash, nothing more. Sincere bowdlerism is about public morality, and this is not about that. Really, if we didn't have such an oligopoly with book publishing, and a copyright system encouraging that oligopoly to hoard and milk the properties of dead creators... we probably wouldn't have this.

The last three weeks have been very productive writing-wise. Four short stories done (totaling over 11,000 words between them).

Finished a re-read of Tolkien's Letters. I'd forgotten how much the guy changed over the course of his life (as the enthusiasm wanes, and the grumpiness takes over).

Given that they remove rubbish, a joke about Lord of the Flies might be more appropriate?