The Horrors of Private Publishing

I looooooove email. While I think most people really like getting email from their friends, I'm especially blessed since my friends (mostly) are pretty terrific writers. This means that their emails to me are extra, extra great - and thus, my serious email addiction. Anyway, today's Email of the Day comes from Jeff. While our normal day-to-day emails involve things like buying cat food or running late to dinner, he managed to write a truly great email today which deals with art (of a sort) and politics (of a sort), so I thought I'd share a bit of it (the link above is for the site he's talking about, which offers self-published science fiction novels):

Here are some brief descriptions from the site of some of the books and/or series, and some comments of mine. I especially admire the last couple items for their subtlety and reserve. Here we go:

Attack of the Bounty Hunters: "Plot summary: The Graftonites had incredible reflexes, making them superior bounty hunters and almost unstoppable gunmen.They could draw and fire a blaster in a blink of an eye. Grafton II had evolved into a planet with no government--a purely libertarian society where all services were privatized and civil disputes were mediated by one-on-one gunfights. But when the Graftonites banded together to take over the galaxy, only superspy Clifford Croft, aided by Red Sally the always angry firestarter, the Clapper, an eccentric telekinetic who liked to clap, and the legendary bounty hunter known as the Silencer could stop them."

The Column Infiltrator: "Everyone on the Happy Worlds were under the direct mental control of the state. There's no individuality, no freedom of thought, or action. When the Happy Worlders plot to invade the League of United Planets, superspy Clifford Croft is sent in to investigate. Croft, a brilliant infiltrator, will face his toughest assignment yet: infiltrating a society where nearly everyone and everything is watched, monitored, and controlled by the state. Policemen tap resistors with long black rods that zap their minds and give them blank smiles."

Several of the books feature a character described as "military supergenius War Admiral Norman North". Nice.

There's a villain named the Terrible Thinker.

There's also an apparently non-science-fiction novel about an "ivy law school grad who inadvertently gets a job at a scummy New York law firm where she is degraded and sexually harassed. Read as she takes it, and then how she fights back." Sweet creeping Jesus.

And finally, these two:

"Coming soon--Newt World--a parallel dimension where the radical right rules America, with positive positioning for white men replacing affirmative action, constitutional amendments requiring proper respect for the flag and only permitting sex in the three approved positions, and featuring the long overdue invasion of France."

and

"Coming soon--Teddy World--a parallel dimension where the radical left rules America, where the marginal tax rate reaches 95%, gay sex is promoted as a means of birth control, and abortion and suicide booths are on every streetcorner."

I wonder what the three approved sex positions are. Seems like there'd be fewer than three in Newt World.

Wow. Thanks, Jeff.