Friday, August 20, 2010

Blood Relatives

I saw this post over at "Letters of Note".  Warren Ellis brought it to my attention at his blog.

Anyway, its a letter that Kurt Vonnegut sent to an aspiring author who had mailed him a book.  What a great guy Vonnegut was in this regard.  It is my understanding that he replied to a lot of the letters he was sent.

Here's the quote that hit me --
The fact that you have completed a work of fiction of which you are proud, which you made as good as you could, makes you as close a blood relative as my brother Bernard. The best thing about our family, our profession, is that its members are not envious or competitive.
It occurred to me that the OSR embodies this sentiment in large part.  There are a lot of folks out there who are creating their own stuff and putting it out for the community's benefit.

In that way, we are all brothers.

1 comment:

Greyhawk Grognard said...

You know, I hadn't thought about that before, but you're right. Nobody in the OSR seems to view anyone else as a competitor.

Maybe that's part of the return to game publishing as a hobby, rather than a business.