“The Six Fingers of Time [Tragedy of the Anticommons]”, 2013-07-13 (; backlinks; similar):
It’s well known that sorting out R. A. Lafferty’s estate has been, in legal terms, a mess. What’s less well known is how “The 6 Fingers of Time” contributed to that mess.
For almost a decade, the Lafferty estate was a byword for snarled probate cases…though Ray and his brothers and sister may have been unusual in their lack of issue, the rest of the family more than made up for this oversight.
The foremost task of Lafferty’s executor was moving on the literary rights to a group better equipped to represent and propagate Lafferty’s work. But thanks to the probate situation, every single heir (of majority age) would have to approve such an agreement: though extraordinary effort they were just on the verge of one when something happened that spooked some of the heirs—or rather, got them thinking that they had hold of something much more valuable than was probably the case.
See, in 1994, Nicholson Baker wrote a novel called The Fermata [as of 2024, no sign of life]. A film company bought the movie option, and hired Robert Zemeckis & Neil Gaiman to produce a screenplay. As is often the case, the studio also took out options on any intellectual property whose central conceit was near that of Baker’s book—which was a protagonist with the ability to stop time and manipulate the people around him as he wished. Whether it was Gaiman—who certainly would’ve recognized the surface similarities to “Six Fingers of Time” [as Gaiman is a big Lafferty fan & energetically advocates for him]—or someone else who advised taking out the option, the result was a large amount of money being paid to the Lafferty estate to ensure that a movie would not made of that story, lest it encroach on The Fermata. Some of the heirs—a few of whom had heard of Philip K. Dick, or noticed that sci-fi seemed to be doing well in the theaters and wasn’t Uncle Ray a famous sci-fi writer?—decided to hold out for the money they were sure was on the way, and quashed the original deal.
…And up through the actual sale of the state to the Locus Foundation last year, “Six Fingers” was still the last and only high-dollar Hollywood option taken out on any of Lafferty’s tales—which might have explained the willingness of the heirs to finally agree to the sale for $103,214.16$75,0002012 (with a provision for splitting the purse, should Tinseltown come calling in the future).
…The end of the tale is ambiguous: nearing the great vision of the conspiracy’s extent, and the transmission of that vision to the public, the prematurely aged protagonist dies in his sleep, and his adversaries sedately rejoice. For a decade such appeared to be the fate of Lafferty’s own vision—until the Locus sale gave instead a reason for all of his fans and supporters to rejoice.
Let there be nothing sedate about it! But let us also remember that there remains much work to be done.
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