Quote:
Originally Posted by Namekuseijin
there's been all kind of great talented people who've been real douchebags as human beings. Wagner, Michael Jackson, Newton, you name it. It doesn't bring a single spot to the genius in their work.
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I don't agree, but I can follow your logic: The specific sci-fi story is the same, no matter if the author is a saint or a monster. But the existence of this very thread proves that things don't work quite like that nowadays.
I think I have read somewhere that the earliest storytellers where anonymous craftsmen who didn't create stories to express their individuality. Rather, they were following tradition, and whatever stories they produced was not seen as 'their' stories. They had no intellectual ownership. It was a bit like jokes, which are shared freely, naturally being part of the public domain.
Nowadays, any published book has the name of the author clearly visible on the cover. Most often, the book writes a few flattering words about the author, and there might be a photograph too. When we pick up a book, we judge the book by the author. Even if we don't know the author, we have noticed if it is a man or a woman. But this somewhat intimate relation to the author becomes cucumbersome when she turns out to be a child molester.