The weird thing about this is that the more crowd funding ventures like this that succeed the less likely the powers that be will provide grants.
I wish On Spec luck but if they succeed then they will be proving the misers right.
You’re right. But long term though, isn’t this just a step on the road to the transfer of the economy into the hands of those who do, rather than those who own?
This might be a case of Harper’s cutbacks, but I suspect it’s even more that the awards panel was composed of our purveyors of high litter-a-chur. Sci-Fi is fine when Margaret Atwood does it, but the rest of it is all penny dreadfuls, dontcha know?
According to Atwood the way to tell if something is science fiction is if it has talking cabbages. 
Thank the FSM that Gernsback and Campbell had access to government grants, otherwise we might never have had any science fiction at all.
In No Logo, Naomi Klein points out how, in the second half of the 20c, corporate taxes were repeatedly cut, and at the same time functions that had been government functions were picked up by private foundations, which ultimately means corporate money.
Maybe this is the next step - and a step in a very good direction. Taking benevolence out of corporate hands and putting it the hands of the many will mean a big shift in priorities. Now we need to get busy cutting taxes on the middle class, and boosting corporate tax rates.
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