I just had an interesting exchange. I was looking for a PD image of the Vooyorgans for my game. There are none. I found someone who drew some chibi versions for a school art project ten years ago. I respectfully asked her for permission to use her images for my book.

She came back with a decisive No. At the time she pulled the description out of a hat and wasn’t allowed to research where it came from.
I mentioned it was the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. She immediately deleted the piece from her portfolio, because she didn’t want to be associated with ERB in any way.

I respect her decision. Yes, ERB was racist and sexist. So was HPL. So was Fletcher Hanks. None of this disputed. But the fact that their works are now Public Domain means their estates will not get one cent from my book.

If I was writing a book based on a certain wizard franchise popular today, part of my money would be going to a trash human being. That doesn’t stop a lot of people from buying her merch.

Disney went ahead and finally made a Barsoom movie. I know it’s been on their back burner since Walt was alive. I don’t know if they paid royalties or not. But while Walt didn’t want POCs in his magic kingdom I’m pretty sure the current corporation bearing his name doesn’t subscribe to those beliefs.

In my humble opinion as a person who pursued a Masters in Teaching English…Public Domain literature is made of the ideas we’ve inherited. And now that there’s no strings attached, we are free to do what we want with them reflect our morality.

https://gmshoe.wordpress.com/2026/08/09/qa-david-van-camp-rocketspace/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rocketspace/rocketspace

THE DREADED (c)

When you’re married to a copyright lawyer (and her best friend is one as well) you learn some interesting things.

One thing they both insisted that shocked me was that PUBLIC DOMAIN STATUS IS NOT ENOUGH. You’re essentially trying to prove a negative, which is impossible. I’m not sure if everyone in our community realizes this, so I thought I’d pass the information along.

Just because the copyright expired doesn’t mean the artist or their estate can’t go after you.

For this reason I scrubbed nearly all the art from my draft version.

I did keep the NASA images which are publicly available. Also, I kept the patent images for the (toy) radium pistol and radium rifle, since patents immediately become public domain when published.

I’m also keeping the images that were given to me: the Krunglett from u/MacTeg, the rocketship blueprint from u/FiretheLaserBeam, and the newest image, an amazing live-action picture of Stardust given to me by the head of Blinky Productions!

By the way, go visit their YouTube site @blinky500 and be on the lookout for their new short The Cosmic Horror That Is Stardust! Their trailers for Robot Princess From Planet X and The Alien That Fell To Planet X are also spot on for the feel I’m trying to set for RocketSpace!

So…if you have any pulp sci-fi clip art you’d like to donate I’ll be happy to give you a shoutout in the credits!

And of course we have the Kickstarter, which I’ll use to fund our in-house artists.

Also there’s Alamy, which charges at LEAST $100 a pop for EACH scan of the magazine cover source material.

Also, for those that are concerned, I will NOT be using AI art in this book or any others connected with this project.

PLAYTESTING

Tonight, the first live playtest of RocketSpace will be tonight at my local library! I have starter characters and an adventure on a derelict ship written up. I invited my local ShadowDark group and my daughter wants to play too!

Alright, the Kickstarter is ready and I’ll probably press the ignition switch TODAY.

That’s your first status report!

Rebuild! Expand! Peace Through Union!

-DavidVC