SFWA Estates: Can You Help?

The SFWA Estates Page is the place for editors and publishers who want to reprint material by a deceased writer and need help seeking permissions.

Bud Webster, SFWA Estates Liaison, is circulating his latest list in hopes of finding the rights holders. New additions are marked with an asterisk. If you have an idea about any of these, please let him know. His e-mail is: budwebster (at) mindspring (dot) org:

Estates Needed

*Adams, Robert (Pamela Adams is either deceased or no longer available)
*Banks, L. A.
*Banks, Raymond E.
*Barnes, Arthur K.
Bass, T. J. (Thomas Joseph Bassler)
*Bates, Harry
*Bell, Eric Temple (John Taine)
Binder, Eando (Earl and Otto)
*Bok, Hannes
*Boule, Pierre
Browne, Howard
Carr, Jayge/Marj Krueger
Castell, Daphne
Clifton, Mark (possibly orphaned)
*Counselman, Mary Elizabeth
DeFord, Miriam Allen (Still working on a line for this one)
Eshbach, Lloyd Arthur
Fyfe, H. B.
Gallun, Raymond Z.
Geier, Chester
Gernsback, Hugo
*Gold, Horace L.
Gordon, Bernard
Gotschalk, Felix
Guin, Wyman
Gygax, Gary
Holly, J(oan). Hunter
Jones, Neil R.
Kapp, Colin
*Keller, David H.
*Keyes, Daniel
Maine, Charles Eric (David McIlwain)
Neville, Kris
Pavic, Milorad
Phillips, Rog
Rotsler, William
Smith, George H.
Smith, George O.
*Wandrei, Donald
Wells, Angus
West, Wallace
Williams, Robert Moore
Williams, Paul O.
Wolfe, Bernard

Webster notes, “I don’t have queries for all of these, but I want to be proactive and have them ready just in case.”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

SFWA Creates Estates Page

The SFWA Estates Page has been added to the professional organization’s website. It’s the place for editors and publishers who want to reprint material by a deceased writer and need help seeking permissions.

Bud Webster, SFWA Estates Liaison, credits the new page to the “significantly hard work” of Michael Capobianco.

 [Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Looking for A,DV Authors

Bud Webster is helping Susan Ellison track down some of the contributors to Again, Dangerous Visions which Gollancz will be reprinting soon so that payments can be made.

I am looking for the following authors, some of whom I know to be deceased and others I have no idea about…. A few of the authors below only published a few stories (or only the one), and  I know this is a long shot, but some of you out there should know something  or someone. 

  • John Heidenry
  • James Hemesath
  • T. L. Sherred
  • H. H. Hollis (Ben Neal Ramey)
  • Bernard Wolfe
  • Evelyn Lief
  • Josephine Saxton
  • Ken McCullough
  • David Kerr
  • Burt K. Filer
  • Richard Hill
  • Parra y Figueredo (“Vine and Figtree”, clearly a pseudonym)
  • Andrew Weiner

Contact Bud Webster directly at <[email protected]>.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

MacIntyre Profiled in New York Times

Authorities hope they soon will be able to formally identify the fire victim believed to be F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, reports Corey Kilgannon in the New York Times:

The medical examiner’s office has not officially confirmed the identity of the man who burned to death that day in Apartment C-9. The corpse is “not visually identifiable, from the fire,” and there were no dental or other X-rays to help identify the body, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the office.

The body has remained unclaimed for months, but last Wednesday, Ms. Borakove said that “a relative was recently located, and DNA testing is being conducted to positively identify” the body. She would not say whom, citing privacy policies.

Kilgannon’s fascinating and detailed profile contrasts MacIntyre’s acceptance as a writer and in online communities with his everyday life as a pariah in a Brooklyn apartment building.

Sf figures quoted in the article are Darrell Schweitzer (MacIntyre’s editor and agent), Bud Webster, and Andrew Porter.

“It was the bizarro death of a man who lived a bizarro life,” said Andrew Porter, a Brooklyn writer who was among the first to announce Mr. MacIntyre’s demise, on the sci-fi fan blog File 770. “What was his real name? Where was he born? No one knows. Froggy was weird, and his death is just as weird.”

[Thanks to David Klaus and Gary Farber for the link.]

Webster Resigns from SFWA Copyright Committee

Bud Webster reportedly has announced his resignation from the SFWA Copyright Committee effective June 30, citing his frustration with a lack of action and the complete lack of support by other writers’ groups.

The decision was announced on a listserv whose members occasionally notified him when they discovered copyright violations, because Webster wanted readers to be aware he would not thereafter bring violations to SFWA’s attention.

SFWA’s former “Electronic Piracy Committee,” although disbanded in the wake of last year’s Scribd controversy, was reinstated on terms recommended by an exploratory committee as the Copyright Committee in November 2007.