pebkac thoughts : letter to Kim Stanley Robinson

I couldn’t find an email or web form contact for KSR, so I just posted this letter (thanks, USPS):

Kim Stanley Robinson
c/o Bantam Publicity
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

21-Aug-07

Dear Mr. Robinson,

I hope this letter finds you happy and well.

I am writing regarding a flowchart that I have published which I believe is a derivative work of one that appeared in your 1997 book, Antarctica. When I published the flowchart I was (very sadly) not aware of your book. I’m writing to ask if it is okay for me to leave my flowchart published to the web. You can find my version here:

http://pebkac.homelinux.net/2007/08/17/useful-flowchart-foul-language/

I’m hoping you’ll appreciate the attribution on that page and perhaps additional readers who will purchase a copy due to my blog post and the attention it received via boingboing.net, an incredibly popular blog. Furthermore, another boingboing reader seemed to indicate that yours is predated by yet another version. If so, I would hope you could tell me (and boingboing) where it comes from. I’m eager to secure your approval to continue to release my flowchart under its current license, a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 US license:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

I have ordered a copy of Antarctica from Amazon and hope to find time for it soon. Today is my first day of class as a Masters of Information Science student at UNC Chapel Hill. Eek! I can be reached most easily via email ([redacted]) and would love to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Cristóbal M. Palmer