A Fundraiser for Jay Lake — With Extra Added Whimsy
Posted on January 10, 2013 Posted by John Scalzi 29 Comments
So, here’s the thing: My pal Jay Lake, who many of you know as a fantastic author and raconteur, has cancer, and things could be going better. One of the things that might be able to help with his treatment is for Jay to have his genome sequenced. How would this help? By examining his genome, his doctors might be able to find a more targeted, suitable set of therapies to attack his cancer and squash it. Yay doctors and genome sequencing!
The catch: Genome sequencing of the sort that Jay would need isn’t cheap; it costs thousands of dollars. So a group of Jay’s friends, of which I am a part, have decided to make a fundraiser out of it. For every thousand (or so) dollars we raise, one of us will so something whimsical.
Who are these friends? Besides me: Tobias Buckell, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jim C. Hines, Scott Lynch & Elizabeth Bear, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, the makers of the Jay Lake documentary, Patrick Rothfuss and Neil Gaiman (and behind the scenes for it all, Catherine Shaffer). Basically, a dream team of science fiction and fantasy.
What will we do? Well. You should go to the fundraising page to find out. I will say that my contribution will be… unexpected. Especially to Bob Dylan.
So: If you have a little bit of money to give, please consider giving it for Jay. I love the dude, as do all his friends, and we want him around to do his thing for years to come. And as a bonus, “his thing” includes lots of amazing science fiction and fantasy. Which is good for all of us who love to read and love the genre.
Consider giving, and thanks.
Update, 4:49pm: My bit of whimsy unlocked at $15k. I’ll be recording it tonight or tomorrow.
BWA HA HA HA HAH HA HA.
And thank you.
Bob — beware the ukulele!
Next paycheck! Ashcroft must DIE!
Who’s writing the lost Dylan song? Paul and Storm? It sounds up their alley. Storm does a mean Dylan impression, at the bottom of a well.
So… do you have a harmonica? Can’t do a Dylan song without a harmonica.
WHEEEEEP!
Does this mean that, after we sequence his genome and cure him, we can, like, clone him or something?
Donated.
Over the goal and building fast, what a wonderful gesture and use of several forms of high tech for human good. Proud of you Scalzi and co.
Best of luck to your friend, John. I put a little into the box as well.
If you want to help your friend survive cancer, please research Rick Simpson…..Run From The Cure. OR…..”What If Cannabis Cured Cancer” narrated by Peter Coyote and now available on YOUTUBE. Cannabis is curing cancer. Specifically, Cannabis Oil, made from the whole plant. Scientific studies from Harvard say Cannabis cures cancer and there is no damage done to the healthy cells, like with chemo and radiation. Please, look in to it, there is good info out there and good luck to your friend.
John, get your best Bob Dylan impression ready…
(Mwhaahahaha)
I play blues harmonica btw. Just in case…
I would have donated anyway, but Mary Robinette Kowal reading the classics as phone sex? How could anyone pass that up?
KarenT, do you have a citation from the medical literature for that? I can look the papers up myself tomorrow when I head to university if they aren’t on PubMed, but I’d need some names: Harvard is a big place and a lot of papers come out of there every year.
(I don’t really consider You Tube videos a source of health information without knowing who made them: I’ve seen what science reporting does to my field, and if anything, I imagine health reporting is worse (or at least more full of con artists).)
Folks, let’s actually not have this thread turn into a discussion of medicinal marijuana. It’s not on point.
Oh wow, I just saw this and donated and my donation (though quite modest) was the one that actually took the fundraiser past the $20,000 goalpost. That’s a nice feeling.
I hope the sequencing helps!
Wow, the fundraiser was climbing so fast that in the space of time it took me to make my donation, it grew by 3K! And now it’s over the top — I love seeing so many people coming together for good. I really hope the genome sequencing does everything you all dream it could, and more besides!
This is truly awesome. It is wonderfully meta, when I think about it. Sci-fi author undergoes cutting edge scientific procedure. Now if someone could just write a story about a sci-fi author who undergoes cutting edge scientific procedure… Best of luck Mr. Lake.
Done. Best of the best to your friend.
Ehh, I’d probably spend that money on ridiculous shit anyway. Might as well give it to someone who needs it.
I’d donate just because of the fantastic Steampunk Hat Monocle, let alone Mr. Lake.
Saw this on FB from your cover-pose archnemesis, and given we were just short of 15k at the time was happy to pitch in to get it a bit closer to Ukeleletime… nice to see it alreay went over the top in the first day. SF/F fandom is pretty awesome.
It’s interesting and weird the way that lives intersect each other…
Bit of a story, but bear with me.
Mr Scalzi, I’ve been a longtime on-again/off-again (mostly off-again; sorry!) reader of your blog for about 6 years or so. A few weeks ago I found myself with some down-time from my career and desperately searching for things to do. I remembered some fun and intellectually stimulating things I’d found on your blog before, so I bounced in to catch up a bit. I hadn’t read any of your Old Man’s War stuff yet, so after reading some of your recent blog posts about it, went out and bought e-book editions of all 4 books and read them. Since then, I’ve been popping in every few days just to see what’s been posted, which brings us to here.
I decided to check out the fundraiser for Jay on a whim. Mostly I wanted to see what acts of whimsy were on sale, but I found myself at a fundraiser being hosted by YouCaring. If you visit the “About Us” page on their website, you’ll see a photo of the people who run the website: the dapper young gentleman in the salmon colored shirt is a fellow named Luke, whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with at my job for about a year and a half. On Dec 28, 2012, to the great dismay of everyone in our office, he left the company I work for to help out with YouCaring full-time, trusting his financial future to the often fickle generosity of the Internet.
I’m obscurely warmed that the creation of one of my friends is able to provide this service and in this way. It’s just so damned *interesting* to actually see the ways that we all effect each other, the ways that kindnesses have to pay themselves forward, and the ways that seemingly inconsequential gestures of generosity (the encouragement for a temp worker to go ahead and learn HTML, and later to work on that side project of his) can visibly rebound around to potentially saving the life of another human being. And what timing! If I’d achieved boredom even just 3 weeks later than I had, I would have never made the connection at all.
Needless to say I’ve donated to the cause. I hope for the best for Jay, and I hope that sequencing his genome adds something positive to the general medical knowledge pool, and I hope that the seemingly inconsequential gestures of generosity of every person who’s donated thus far rebound around and multiply into something resembling a better world.
Is there a way to use Amazon Payments or Paypal? I find myself at odds with my policy, never to give my credit card details to an organization i never heard of before.
While i now about the problems of Paypal, it allows me to give money without running a risk myself. So (at max) i loose the money i donated (of which i intended to part anyway).
I donated via Paypal with no problems. The option appears when you get to about the third screen in, where you make the actual payment.
@MadLogician: Thank you, will donate tonight.
As you know by now, John, Youcaring offers you an opportunity to make a small donation at the time you contribute to the fundraiser. Our fundraiser came to the attention of the staff pretty quickly, and I can only imagine that such a large and successful event is generating some significant donations for them, too. I am glad we are helping out a new nonprofit in addition to everything else, and thanks for giving it a human connection with the story about your friend who works there.
Okay, the strretch goals have all been unlocked — time for a new set! $40k, $45k . . . at 50k, do we get Celebrated Authors reading fanfic as if it’s phone sex, while acting out the scenes using ukelele-playing puppets?
You know, I tried to make a donation using my Visa card, and it wouldn’t accept it, saying “that card is not valid on this site” or words to that effect. Second time in a month that’s happened; the other was for the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. Both seem to be semi-amateur websites; perhaps that’s the problem.
+1 for Beth’s stretch goal :-).
I doubt if they’re willing to go for Beth’s stretch goal for any amount of money. HOWEVER, if this actually cures Jay, I think Beth’s goal should be done, as an act of gratitude towards whatever benevolence exists in the universe.