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Conjecture: there's more money in fantasy or horror writing than there is in science fiction writing

8590

This is one of the points I'm hinting at here. A lot of science fiction authors *should* have made bank but very definitely didn't. PKD another example

3600

Has he written science fiction?

320

Discounting the wangles (Hubbard made a lot of money by unrelated means, Lucas was primarily a director, King primarily a horror writer), Crichton seems like the one. Jurassic Park was a legitimately successful book

4560

Maybe to specify this a little better, who made the most money directly from writing science fiction books and short stories? Let's exclude unrelated book income, screenplays/film adaptations of their work Or, approximately equivalently, who sold the most science fiction books?

16340

An extremely successful science fiction creator but I wouldn't call him an author... Did he write books?

110

qntm @qntm.org · 24/09/2026

Open question. Which science fiction author do we think was the richest/made the most money

49591

Just a printing artifact. Not part of the story

121

Restraint is a difficult metric to optimise for

1312

"What if you could go back in time to France during the Revolution?" Okay so what if I could go back to modern Paris, 1 second ago? There's a proper business model

81060

That's a great bit and that's also the kind of thing that makes Red Dwarf legitimate science fiction

0200

I think this was a pretty neat creative choice

1140

A lot of "What would you do if you had a time machine" is "What if you could perform an arbitrary act and then escape all of its consequences" and the fact that you escape to the future is kind of neither here nor there

2918

I feel that quite a few time machines in fiction are coincidentally also teleporters and the teleportation angle goes somewhat unexamined

2820017

That movie is about someone's egg cracking, right

1170

Imagine a sealed ovoid full of liquid organic protein which, if kept warm for long enough, may become a bird

21096

It's nice when there is a new bird

11186

This while also being utterly feeble, bald, pink, blind and helpless, but ALSO wanting it badly enough to make it happen

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qntm @qntm.org · 01/09/2026

Imagine first gaining consciousness inside a sealed dark ovoid and being "well I guess I need to hack my way out of here if I want to exist"

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Reposted by qntm

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waterstones.com

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm | Waterstones

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qntm @qntm.org · 20/09/2026

Thank you! Surprise 🐋

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qntm @qntm.org · 16/09/2026

To be clear, the title of the French translation is "La division antimémétique n'existe pas", not "Request Rejected". A classic semipredicate problem

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qntm @qntm.org · 16/09/2026

THERE IS NO ANTIMEMETICS DIVISION is now available in French! Everywhere French books are sold

jailu.com

Request Rejected

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qntm @qntm.org · 14/09/2026

It was all a dream

000

I guess it depends if you have the stomach and the funding for a legal fight, and what you hope to gain from that fight And I also guess that the relevant lawyers have already played this out and aren't particularly worried

2360

What happens when someone other than A24 attempts to redistribute the movie under CC BY-SA 3.0? Well regardless of any of the above, whether rightfully or not, I'm guessing that party would receive a DMCA takedown notice... The real question is what happens after THAT

2440

Regardless of the above, if the film uses the "SCP" name and some popular SCPs - that is, enough recognisable SCP content to make it worth doing at all in order to attract existing SCP fandom - then I think it *should* be CC BY-SA 3.0 (not a lawyer)

1442

I think it is fairly unlikely that the producers of the V/H/S SCP movie will *explicitly* release the movie under CC BY-SA 3.0 (cont.)

2754

Thank you! Tell your friends!

020

Looney Tunes' commitment to scientific accuracy is just horrendous from top to bottom

060