{"id":10177,"date":"2022-03-18T11:23:04","date_gmt":"2022-03-18T19:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=10177"},"modified":"2022-03-18T12:59:22","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T20:59:22","slug":"inadvertent-virtue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=10177","title":{"rendered":"Inadvertent Virtue"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> I’d been negotiating intermittently with my Russian publisher for months: backlist titles up for renewal, a new collection of short stories. We’d been poking back and forth since November. Everything was in coming together.<\/p>\n

Then Putin went ballistic. The wall came down. The paperwork was done but no money had changed hands\u2014so, the contracts remain unfulfilled. Maelstrom<\/em>, Echopraxia<\/em>, and \u03b2ehemoth<\/em> are no longer legally available in Russia, and the collection is off the table.<\/p>\n

The timing keeps me from bandwagon bragging. I couldn’t have behaved unethically even if I’d wanted to; the rights to those titles just happened to expire when they did, the wiring in Putin’s head sparked just so when it<\/em> did, and the deal was off (at least, it better be off; AST doesn’t seem to be answering emails these days). Fate made ethical behavior the default option in my case, unlike most other authors who’ve taken a stand. Not even the Kings and Gaimans of the world can legally break a done deal; they have to wait until the rights expire before refusing to renew. Right out of the gate, four of my titles are down for the count.<\/p>\n

I would very much like to renew the others as they expire in turn, because that would mean Russian forces had withdrawn from Ukraine (which in turn would probably mean that Putin himself had been deposed, which is the only way I can see a withdrawal happening at this point). But I won’t be signing anything within those borders until that happens.<\/p>\n

To be clear, I’m under no illusions that this will make a damn bit of difference. (In the short term I may even be helping the Russian economy some infinitesimal amount: ten grand that was going to leave their country now gets to stay.) I’m told I’m relatively popular over there, but I am also supremely unimportant. Not to mention that Putin has apparently just made piracy legal in Russia (not that it was ever especially frowned-upon), so it’s not as though anyone’s going to be deprived of my deathless prose regardless.<\/p>\n

Still. If I’m gonna be a drop in an ocean, I suppose this one is as good as any. I’ve been told the Russian fans call me “Grandpa” or “Uncle”, which kind of freaks me out but is apparently meant affectionately; if any who regard me thus are paying attention to these words, maybe it’ll help penetrate the disinformation (and at least no one who’s read this ‘crawl for any length of time can accuse me of being any kind of a lackey for the US).<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the reports and the images keep coming in, watered down by both sides. Anderson Cooper, voice wavering, admits that there are things they can’t show, can’t even mention on TV. Too exploitative of Human suffering; too graphic for delicate western stomachs. Maybe that’s why I’ve yet to see any mention of rape in the official coverage, despite the fact that someone I know over there tells me that it’s “everywhere”.<\/p>\n

Or maybe rape just doesn’t count any more. In an invasion where you explicitly declare ceasefires to allow civilian evacuation, then mine the evacuation routes and shell the evacuees as they flee; in a war where the only nonlethal escape routes lead directly into Russia or Belarus (a situation roughly akin to telling Nemo to take shelter in Bruce’s mouth); in a war where, frustrated by an uppity population that refuses to roll over and play dead on command, the invaders resort to the indiscriminate bombing of breadlines and apartment buildings and a fucking nuclear reactor<\/em>, to hiding in hospitals so they can use the sick and injured as human shields while taking potshots at defending forces\u2014maybe mere rape drops off the bottom of any bullet list that would fit into CNN’s powerpoint template.<\/p>\n

For any who don’t know, there are plenty<\/a> of curated<\/a> lists<\/a> that let you funnel bucks into the resistance while avoiding the scammers. “Humanitarian aid” causes seem way thicker on the ground than those which directly support the Ukrainian military (and the latter<\/a> are not always, shall we say, the most user-friendly sites on the planet), but a lot of causes take PayPal (PayPal provides a list<\/a>).<\/p>\n

It’ll probably get worse before it gets better. Apparently Russia’s already expended most of its precision long-range weaponry, meaning the missiles raining down on Ukraine will be increasingly indiscriminate (if that’s even possible). Syrians are being brought in to bolster the increasingly-ragged Russian ranks, and as I type these words, Mariupol appears to be falling at last.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if you’re desperate for even the faintest whiff of good news, here’s something: Putin has already lost, in a sense\u2014because (as a Ukrainian friend recently pointed out) if you were really winning the war, you probably wouldn’t feel compelled to jail anyone saying otherwise.<\/p>\n

And if that’s not enough\u2014well, at least the hopepunks have shut up for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d been negotiating intermittently with my Russian publisher for months: backlist titles up for renewal, a new collection of short stories. We’d been poking back and forth since November. Everything was in coming together. Then Putin went ballistic. The wall came down. The paperwork was done but no money had changed hands\u2014so, the contracts remain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10177"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10183,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10177\/revisions\/10183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}