[IW] Ordinary Worlds with valuables!

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Actually, I don't think art is going to be all that profitable.

The great works of a couple hundred divergent timelines arriving in the space of a decade or two have completely fragmented the Homeline market, and collapsed the Homeline film and publishing industries at the same time. For actual physical art, you don't actually saturate the market, but as it's now pretty much impossible to prove something is genuine, and even if you can somebody could discover a new line with another copy (and an older/better preserved/whatever one at that) tomorrow, rendering yours an "inferior copy". This means the investment side of the market that's so driven up prices in the last few decades is pretty much gone. Collectors and art lovers are still out there, so there's still *some* market, but nobody pays millions of dollars for a painting anymore.

However, new works of popular art, from the Complete Mystery of Edwin Drood to Lovecraft's major Sci Fi novels of the 1950's, would have audiences, paying audiences. If there was a parallel where a Sci Fi film was a major hit in Hollywood in the 1920's, convincing the studio heads there's money in Sci Fi (which most of the moghuls doubted profoundly), then many of the classic Hollywood stars of the 1930's and 40's might have made Sci Fi and/or Fantasy films. A movie, where Humphrey Bogart plays Northwest Smith with Katherine Hepburn as Jirel of Jory, would find an audience quickly. And fast money is what counts in film distribution, and always did.

So there is some money in popular art.