You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [52]
Sometimes the writer finds himself subservient to another individual who controls the actual content of a work. This is most prevalent in nonfiction where a celebrity or authority can sell a book without actually writing it. The story and authority are theirs, but it is up to a real writer to put it on the printed page, whether working from notes, research or interviews with the subject at hand. In such cases the writer in question is usually paid more upfront for his services than he would get on a book of his own, but his or her participation in future profits would be more limited or in some cases not at all.
Such is the case of William Novak, who was the author of the number-one nonfiction bestseller of 1984/1985. It was called Iacocca: An Autobiography, for which Novak received second billing under Iacocca, and an up-front flat fee with no participation in any future revenues or royalties.
I’m sure at the time he handed the book in, Novak felt well compensated.
I am equally sure that he felt less so after the book had sold its first one million copies.
You Ignored Whose Warning?
On September 11, 2001, terrorists rammed their stolen jetliners into the World Trade Center, killing 3,000 people and changing the world forever. But compared to another much more destructive force, their efforts pale.
GALVESTON, TEXAS, 1900
Mike Resnick
Let’s turn the clock back 101 years and 3 days, and move the locale from Manhattan to Galveston, Texas.
The United States government had a relatively new agency: theU.S. Weather Bureau. The same one you get on your cable TV, or that your local newscast quotes when telling you to wear your raincoat or your galoshes. That weather bureau.
It was a new science, forecasting the weather. Oh, people had been predicting the weather for centuries. See a hairy caterpillar in October? Bad winter coming. Did the June bugs show up in late April? Long, dry summer on tap. You know the routine.
But then, in 1900, weather forecasting was finally recognized as a science. They used instruments. They studied the barometric reading. They contacted outposts in all directions to track storms. They were the newest of the new, these weather forecasters.
And they protected their turf.
We’ll get back to them in a minute, but first let me tell you a little bit about Galveston, because these days it’s dwarfed in its own home state by Dallas and Houston and San Antonio — but back then, in 1900, it ranked behind only Houston as the major city of Texas. Not only that, but in the entire country it was second only to New York City as an entry point for immigrants. In fact, it was nicknamed the “Western Ellis Island.”
How big was it? Well, the population was always in flux due to immigration, but the best estimate was 30,000, give or take. The climate was pleasant, the land was lovely, property was inexpensive, and though it was on the water everyone knew it was safe from typhoons and hurricanes and the like. And if they didn’t know, the Weather Bureau was only too happy to tell them so.
The shining light of the Galveston Weather Bureau was a gentleman named Isaac Cline. He was their superstar. Cline was quoted as saying that it was “an absurd delusion” for anyone to think Galveston could possibly ever suffer serious damage from a hurricane.
He based this conclusion on two erroneous beliefs: first, that any high surf or storm tide would flow over Galveston into the bay behind it and then into the Texas prairie, doing no lasting damage at all; and second, because of the shallow slope of the Gulf coastline, the incoming surf would be broken up and made much less dangerous.
Cline was so sure of this that he ridiculed the notion of building a seawall