[What Came Before]

I've spent a fair bit of time looking over old posts from the old Three Seas forum.  Perhaps the best thing about the old forum was Scott's participation. 

Having spent so much time reading stuff on Three Pound Brain, I'm amazed by how easy to understand and seemingly enthusiastic to talk about his creative work he was back on the old forum.  The effective death of that site, and the lack of his participation on this one, makes me wonder: what happened?  It seems clear that he is contemptuous of commercial motives, but somewhere along the way it feels like he became contemptuous of this fans; the people who his story is aimed at, the folks who need to care about stories before they can care about the ideas in them.

Initially, I imagined that he was here, lurking.  Perhaps he was one of the regular posters and just operating incognito.  It seems clear that most of the regulars are here to speculate, and no one speaks with the omniscient voice of Cu'jara Cinmoi from the old forum.  So, I'm assuming he doesn't darken these halls.  Why his commitment to TPB and BBT and his seeming abandonment of his "average-Joe" fans?  For someone with so much to say about the problem of "in-group" dialogues he is surprisingly silent with folks not in the TPB group.

Did something happen?  Sales weren't cutting it, so he began to turn back to academia and felt compelled to toughen up his street cred for the ivory tower set?  Or the inverse: proud of the story until it became popular, and then felt cheapened by the whole transactional relationship of author and fan?  I'm stumped.  It's like two different people.  Stone-wallin' Scott on TPB and sweet ol' loveable Cu'jara Cinmoi who can easily manage an explanation without lapsing into ists, isms, or ologisms (unless, again, one of the regular posters here is Scott, pretending to be just another fan, in which case all the speculation is a posture and there is a whole different class of transaction happening... easy to return to the notion.)

I'm stumped, because anecdotally it sounds like he is a great guy.  Gracious, accessible, outgoing.  How do I interpret the change, if there indeed was one?  What is the understanding of the folks here?

Where's Scott?

[What Came Before]

Lol, I'm terrible. I need to take a camping trip or technology fast - remove the Second Apocalypse IV.

Two things, Willem, unfortunate consequences of Bakker being the amicable and challenging guy he is.

Off the hop, we're too crazy for him. From what I've heard, we have too many good ideas - I don't buy it - which was also his reasoning for never participating in the Westeros threads. I'd hazard the Bakker & Woman/Sockpuppeting instance caught him waxing a certain mood?

Also, the spilt e-ink. As an aspiring novelist, not to mention academic, I think he'd abhor the amount of the words I've put on Second Apocalypse. There was a certain instance of internet usage, which destroyed his working laptop - for which reason, he apparently writes his work in progress on something not connected to the internet since - and it curbed his activities severely in the years after as you can tell from Zombie Three Seas.

I, for one, support both reasons. While I advocate interacting with him in any form - the novels being one of the most noteworthy ways - I actually hope he stays away for both reasons. I wouldn't want the quality conceptions of Second Apocalypse members spoiling his stories and I also want him writing as much as possible - blogs and forum posts just aren't quite as inspiring as his novels have been.

But those are just my thoughts...

[What Came Before]

it's me, i'm scott bakker. kellhus is marching the new empire's armed might into the shadow of golgotterath for the greatest dance party ever. the inchoroi are like the universe's rock stars. it's all coke and hookers in there. shae is t-pain.

 the ancient nonmen empires realized too late what partying 24/7 did to productivity, and so crumbled. now Man must step up and discipline himself to not snort lines off hooker ass all day.

the inverse fire is just a look into the hangover the collective inchoroi race is in for. and it's bad. real bad.

ask me anything


(seriously, I'm torn between wanting Bakker here to give us some tantalizing TUC info, and just writing the damn book. Gonna have to go with Madness on this one.)

[What Came Before]

@madness

He must use a different computer than his laptop to write and post those novella length TPB entries!  Must type them up on his smart phone...

EDIT TO ADD:  I only worry about his absence in as much as it affects the potential popularity of his books.  Setting philosophy aside, this series is a head better than 95% of the crap I gleefully consume every year, and I'm just talking about out and out storytelling.  Add the deeper resonances into the mix, and we're getting into potential classic of the genre territory.

But for this forum, Scott's fans would be squatting over on Westeros and occasionally pounding on the door over at TPB.  Not a great way to grow a non-academic audience.  The home site at rscottbakker.com is a move in the right direction, but a bit like an empty museum; the map of Three Seas is cool, til you realize it is non-interactive.  The beautiful posterboards of his books loom, but link nowhere.  The whole thing gives a reluctant, shuttered feel. 

If he were to crack the door here, mutter a monthly "hey fans, it's me, this is how things are going with the book" to the sad-sacks who lurk this forum, it would go a long way.  If TPB is for an in-group, then but for occasional updates on TUC I'm out.  I want him to write, I want him to keep cranking out the books, but if TPB is any indication, it isn't a question of him having the time or willingness to address an audience, but rather which audience he deigns to address.  That seems incongruous with the big-hearted person that can speak forth the thoughts of someone irascible yet compassionate like Akka or Mimara.  Maybe a bit more like Kellhus, less the pragmatism.

I dunno, I guess the only reason I even care to make noise about this is out of hoping I can provoke a reaction.  Maybe if we utter his name three times fast (a la Beetlejuice) he'll show up here, and we'll all marvel: holy shit, it's Bakker.  He's got halos around his hands... and fur on his palms. 

Whore after all.

[What Came Before]

it's me, i'm scott bakker. kellhus is marching the new empire's armed might into the shadow of golgotterath for the greatest dance party ever.

Tell me that Neo and the rest of the inhabitants of Zion are hitting that club and I am so THERE!

[What Came Before]

From what I've heard him say, he used to do a lot of the online interactive stuff but it eventually became too much. Too much distraction, too much praise, too much disapproval.

Everything in moderation, as they say, too much of anything is bad. I think that he probably wasn't able to take all the noise and so shut the door. He seems to prefer quite, small group interactions, and the interwebz just doesn't jive well with his personality.

I say you are reading too much into it WillemB. If you don't like to dance, going to clubs isn't going to change your mind. If he doesn't want this kind of interaction, doing it more isnt going to make him like it more. It would probably just drive him farther away.

For us sitting on our hands waiting for TUC to be released, asking for just one Q/A doesn't seem like a big deal, but we have no way of knowing how busy he is. He has a life outside of writing, including a family with a baby girl and a whole other career, and I'm pretty sure that he is currently making enough money to be happy where he is at. Sure he is just a mid list author, but the current fan base may be the amount of fame he wants.

If he wants to come around he will. I wouldn't hold your breath though. The zombie three seas was a long time ago and there are probably a lot of factors contributing to his diminished online presence that we can't guess at. Best to leave it alone and not worry to much.

Try to get to an event where he is doing a reading or a signing or something. If you ever get to sit down and have a chat with the man you'll have a different opinion. As of a few month ago he was, as you described, still gracious, accessible, outgoing. I don't think thats changed at all (but what good is another anecdote? maybe something you gotta see to believe).

[What Came Before]

I'm always afraid of somehow spoiling the writing machine. Self indulgent to think I could, maybe, but giving the quality of writing, it's a concern that ones posts might put the writing off kilter.

I mean, unless you know a robust way of writing regularly (let alone seven days a week), who knows what it takes to keep that up? Maybe it does require cutting off?

And you're probably right - the commerical cuts into the genuine social. Yes, socialising with us would increase commerical potential and...that kind of poisons the social! Ironically abandonment in such an instance is being genuinely social!

I think after the series is done, we have some guilt leverage on him to post on forums again, I'd agree!

[What Came Before]

He must, indeed, Willem. Though for many years I just wrote on an absolutely archaic gray laptop (first usb port, no wifi card) and transferred my files to access points as I needed them for the web. I'm sure Bakker has a computer at home with the internet.

Zion's in the original tunnels under the Ring Mountains - Earwa is the Matrix. Dance party is on!

The forum is fantastic start as you said, Willem. I honestly think we all expect that Bakker is going to get much more popular in years to come and we're the nucleus of that. I'll always value my interactions with Bakker but there's two hundred people here who are also attracted to his mind - I value human interaction above all else. You all can think thoughts I cannot and I wish to communicate, to soak in the knowledge from such interesting brains.

Keep cultivating the fandom, Willem, that's my game. Facilitate this novel society, our cultural interaction, as much as possible. The dividends won't be long in coming - I'm still amazed that we're the only place on the internet with a Bakker excerpt from TUC!

[What Came Before]

I don't hope for the level of participation we saw on the old forum.  I can see where that kind of interaction would be genuinely disruptive to the process of getting work done.

I was thinking more in line with a monthly update, talking about upcoming appearances, progress on TUC, maybe the occasional titillating sample like we have from the first chapter.  In all, the product of five minutes at a keyboard, just saying "howdy" to his readers.  Fan contact aside, it just makes sense in terms of building interest in the series.

But, oh well.  I get it.   :roll:  And I'm sure I'm not saying anything he hasn't heard from his agent.  Were he not who he is, the books would not be what they are.  So, as I say to my daughter: "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit." 

Cheers, everyone.

[What Came Before]

1: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html

2: this is true of all author forums I've participated in over the last fifteen years.  OSC, GRRM, RSB.  At some point they're active participants in helping their fans mythologize and deify them.  Then it becomes too much, whether its too much of a time commitment or the egostroking is tolerated but the criticism stings too much (OSC has said he stopped going to conventions in the 80s or early 90s because speculative fiction fans that attend conventions were just too honest for him to handle. He loved hearing the praise but the criticism was hard to take in person, this is a decade before the homophobia complicated his career with the genre).  GRRM used to answer every fan email sent to his AOL account (OSC answered most of the emails sent to his AOL account). and twelve years ago after ASOS was published, just about any question about the world (not about the plot) would be answered, this deluge eventually had to end.  RSB had the forum.  Hell, in the midninties, OSC had his RPG esque subforum at hatrack for his Alvin Maker universe he actively participated in and wrote some of the fan-created characters/relationships into his fourth and fifth novels. I don't really know how to describe that subforum other than it was a sort of MMO fan fiction small town soap opera role playing forum.  Basically, it just comes down to the internet being too much of a time suck for authors to sustain the demands of fandom. 

3. There's also the legal implications that the publisher/agent will make the author aware of, the legal departments are more skittish post Harry Potter Encyclopedia lawsuit.  Even though that suit had nothing to do with author participation, Authors and publishers don't want to get into ownership of content lawsuits with their fans.  If Bakker is actively posting and someone posts an accurate guess, that fan could have grounds for saying that the accurate thing coming to pass means that Bakker stole their idea and now owes them monetary compensation, Authorial active participation means that the authors have a much weaker defense.

[What Came Before]

Wait. Read the original book again. Read something else. Get on with your life. Hope that the author is writing the book you want to read, and not dying, or something equally as dramatic. And if he paints the house, that's fine.

Makes me want to read his books.

+1 on #1, lockesnow.

I don't think Bakker would ever have to worry about #3 - call me optimistic!

[What Came Before]

I'm aware of that post from Gaiman, and I think if you review my posts in this thread you can see the tone is one of hoping not demanding.  But maybe I've overstated my case!  It's been known to happen, and I'm as open to breaches of e-tone as the next person.  So if that is the case, then I apologize.      Certainly didn't expect to get the "RSB is not your bitch" response, as I didn't think I had suggested as much.

I also get the legal angle, and that authors don't have time for forums.  I'm not interested in picking RSB up and carrying him down main street on my shoulders, let alone deifying him.   :roll:   Many author's manage their fan outreach by hiring someone to do it for them.  Where that is prohibitive, it would make sense, as I mentioned above, plan on giving dispensations of info to your fans periodically.  By his own admission, Scott has observed that he isn't great about managing the marketing side of his writing career.  I guess, ultimately, that's the case I'm making.

As I said before...

But, oh well. I get it.   And I'm sure I'm not saying anything he hasn't heard from his agent. Were he not who he is, the books would not be what they are. So, as I say to my daughter: "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit."

Cheers, everyone.

That is me, accepting the status quo!

[What Came Before]

Lol, lockesnow offers contrarian perspectives. I don't think anyone's being overtly critical. I'll say it again, a Bakker forum isn't a regular forum...

Many author's manage their fan outreach by hiring someone to do it for them.

I can get paid for this :shock: ?

[What Came Before]

Yes, but probably only ramen money. 

[What Came Before]

At one point he was going to close down TPB as well.

How long has this forum been going for? Sometimes it just takes awhile for something to fit in - the TPB almost closed because of that. This forum is still fairly young.

On a side note: That sock puppet thing - mah gawd! It was a fairly dull post or two, with a moderate stance (though I guess I've got a thread here about a forum that calls a moderate stand threadcrapping, so maybe moderate is the new controversial...). It feels like there's something intensely human about that that I'm just not in touch with.

Yes, but probably only ramen money. 

All the shrunken sranc heads you can carry!