According To Hoyt

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM C. M. CRAIG: Astral Adventures

Rob Falcon is about three seconds from being eaten.

He is fourteen, the only midshipman aboard a pirate-hunting warship, and currently strapped into a lifeboat that has just been launched into open space with a jelly slime wrapped around it. He blows up the slime. The blast tears a hole between worlds and drops him face down in the surf of a beach where the trees come up to his chest and the whole population is nine inches tall.

Will Foster is one of those nine inches. He is twelve, he lives in a tent on that beach, and the entire island blames his dead parents for the tidal wave that flattened the town four years ago. Nobody feeds him. Nobody stops the mayor’s son from beating on him. And he is still the only person who wades out to check whether the giant washed up in the water is breathing.

Rob needs a signal strong enough to reach his captain. Will needs off this rock. What they get instead is a mine full of gnomes with pickaxes, a ninja with a knife made of light, a ten-year-old who has been forced to a hundred and thirteen feet tall by a bracelet he can’t remove, and a pirate captain in a scavenged suit of armor who already knows Will’s name.

Nobody gets rescued in this one. They have to do it themselves.

A shipwreck story where the castaway is the giant. First adventure in a world of astral galleons, gear-driven pirates, and a song at the edge of hearing that only a few people can pick up. Written for the kid who says he doesn’t like reading, and for the parent who is tired of hearing it.

Complete story. More to come.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Last Pendragon (Legends Book 1)

“The last thing I expected when I went to grieve in the mountains was to get chased by werewolves, kidnapped by a dragon, or meet a legend. But that was exactly what happened.”–Sara Hawke

Sara Hawke, a highly-educated former PhD candidate in Linguistics, is plunged into a situation that strains her skepticism: first she meets a pack of werewolves while camping on the night of the full moon, then she’s rescued by a man the werewolves seemed to fear. Her rescuer then decides that she’ll be good company until he decides to let her go. Then he tells her that she has the potential to be a sorceress, and offers to teach her.

Along the way, she learns that legends aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be, and are occasionally more than they seem…

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Last Jade Crown: The Jade Dragon Protocol, Book Three (The Four Banners 4)

THE CROWN WAS NEVER MEANT FOR A KING.

Two years after the Emerald Relay affair, Major Hiroshi Takamura has returned to the quiet pursuits of retirement. His antique aircraft needs attention, his latest book needs defending, and several governments would be happier if he remained somewhere else.

Then a museum curator disappears.

A fragment of ceremonial jade has been stolen.

And an old enemy returns with a warning that could change the future of four civilizations.

The object of the search is the Jade Crown of Harmony, an ancient artifact created by the first explorers of the Four Banner worlds. Its four components embody wisdom, craftsmanship, science, and exploration—the principles upon which an interstellar alliance was founded.

But the crown is only one part of a much greater system.

Chairman Liang Zhenyu has spent years preparing to complete the Jade Dragon Protocol. He does not seek conquest for its own sake. He wants to end war, eliminate political instability, and bring permanent peace to a troubled galaxy.

His proposed solution appears irresistible.

Ships will cease fighting. Weapons will fall silent. Governments will be guided by a system capable of anticipating conflict before it begins.

But what happens when a machine that promises to protect civilization begins deciding how civilization must live?

As Takamura and his companions pursue the crown across the Four Banner worlds, they uncover a secret deliberately buried by the original explorers. The greatest safeguard against tyranny was built into the system itself—but activating it will demand something that rival civilizations have rarely demonstrated.

Trust.

With the Longhua Directorate closing in and the future of an entire region at stake, Takamura must solve a mystery that cannot be settled by superior firepower, clever deception, or the defeat of a single enemy.

Because peace without freedom may be the most dangerous victory of all.

THE LAST JADE CROWN is the thrilling conclusion to The Jade Dragon Protocol , a science-fiction espionage adventure of ancient mysteries, interstellar intrigue, political ambition, and the enduring struggle to keep power in the service of people.

The final question is not whether civilization can achieve peace.

It is whether civilization will remain free to choose it.

FROM JOHN E. SIERS: Daughters of Two Worlds (Children of the Lunar Free State Book 2)

Two worlds. Extraordinary daughters. One dangerous future.

Aurora Drew escaped Tatanna as a frightened child. Seven years later, she’s returning with the knowledge to change her homeworld forever. But bringing modern medicine to a primitive society isn’t without its dangers, and the past she thought she’d left behind may be the greatest threat of all.

On distant Xanadu, teenagers Kang Seri and Li Zhiruo have developed extraordinary telepathic abilities through their connection with the mysterious aliens known as Kitties. Their gifts make them unique—and potentially invaluable to the Lunar Free State.

Because the enemy is watching.

Confederated forces are preparing their next move, and the fragile peace on Xanadu is about to be shattered. As hidden threats emerge and old enemies return, these young women may hold the key to defending everything their people have built.

On two worlds, a new generation is coming of age. And the future belongs to those willing to fight for it.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Mesopredator Hustle

A dying star, and a station harvesting its planetary nebula for resources vital to a centuries-old war.

Amidst this beautiful but deadly stellar environment, a spy has infiltrated the star-lifting operations, creating “accidents” to take the lives of the crew. Can two troubleshooters from Engineering, one a human and the other a member of the feline Chongu, track down the killer when Security is certain the real problem is carelessness?

A short story of the Chongu Empire.

FROM LIANE ZANE: Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins Book 1)

Book One of The Dragon’s Paladins

A shattered world. A relentless hunt. A collision of dark angelic forces.

Dianne Markham never asked to be part of a supernatural war. All she wanted was to survive a broken world and find something real. But when demonic forces strike her cruise ship as it docks in Split, Croatia, her pursuit of peace becomes a desperate, bloody fight for survival.

Enter Ryan Helsing.

A decorated Army Ranger with a past forged in fire, Ryan is battle-tested, emotionally scarred, and sworn to protect a hidden race of angel-blooded warriors. His orders were supposed to be simple: retrieve Dianne and escort her to a fortified sanctuary in the Albanian mountains.

Instead, it becomes a lethal race across a crumbling Europe. Hunted by forces both human and inhuman, Dianne and Ryan are drawn into a deadly web of ancient bloodlines, harmonic technology, and dark angelic forces.

As the unseen enemy closes in, Dianne realizes she carries secrets even she doesn’t understand—and she might be the key to the coming war. Ryan will risk everything to protect her, even if it means confronting the echoes of his haunted past and risking the very sanctuary he is sworn to defend.

Helsing: Demon Slayer is a pulse-pounding romantasy thriller. Whether you are returning to the overarching Elioud saga or stepping into the universe for the first time, this standalone road-escape delivers high-stakes action, visceral survival, and a fierce first strike against the dark.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: Saving the Spring: A short fantasy (Seasons Book 1)

Jack Randall knew immediately something was off when he pulled up to the old roadhouse. Little did he know that crossing paths that night with the establishment’s beautiful bartender and her handsomely-rugged boyfriend/cook would lead to him recalling his former life as a god – or fighting a rematch with the god who had stolen his memories.

FROM PAUL MICHAEL DURIVAGE: The Crossing

HE LEFT THE HOUSE. IT NEVER LEFT HIM.

As a child, Evan slept behind a locked door while wet footsteps crossed the hall. His parents called it the pipes. He knew better.

Evan grew up, left Connecticut, and built a life with Sarah and their daughter, Lily. Now he works with the Church, helping families confront things they cannot explain. Sarah knows how much his work has taken from their marriage. She does not know how much of his own past he is still keeping from her.

Then a call brings him home to Ripley, Ohio. A young woman is badly injured inside St. Jude’s. She is speaking in the voice of a priest’s dead mother.

Evan recognizes the black water. The river mud. The demon that knows where to hurt him.

As he fights to free Emily Hart, Sarah hears their daughter’s voice calling from an empty room. Lily is standing beside her, holding her hand. The danger has followed Evan home.

To save Emily without losing his family, Evan will have to trust people he cannot keep safe and stop deciding what they can bear to know.

FROM ROSS HATHAWAY: Grimm’s Anatomy 2: Leaving Is Not Loss

Mercy General has finally learned how to treat supernatural patients without turning them into monsters, myths, cautionary tales, or billing disputes.
Naturally, someone decides to standardize it and turn it into software.
Dr. Tessa Ward and Nurse Hattie Boone helped create Witness-Based Narrative Stabilization, a deceptively simple approach to supernatural medicine: listen to the patient, preserve what matters, and never confuse the story with the person trapped inside it.
It works.
That is when the trouble starts.
A regional healthcare system wants to expand Mercy’s methods using Continuum, a new technology designed to make sure critical information follows patients wherever they go. Allergies will not vanish between hospitals. Dangerous histories will not disappear under old names. No patient will ever be lost again.
Unfortunately, some things should stay in the past.
When Megan Bell arrives with back pain, insomnia, and a hallway that has mysteriously grown six feet longer, Continuum discovers that twenty years ago she was known as the Maiden in the Tower.
Megan escaped that story once.
Now the healthcare system remembers it for her.
As old diagnoses regain authority, forgotten identities begin shaping reality, and well-intentioned safeguards become increasingly difficult to distinguish from cages, Tessa faces a problem medicine rarely admits it has:
Sometimes forgetting can kill you.
Sometimes remembering can do something worse.
Darkly funny, strange, and unexpectedly human, Book Two of Grimm’s Anatomy returns to Mercy General, where werewolves still get pneumonia, ghosts still need discharge plans, bureaucracy remains incurable, and the most dangerous diagnosis may be the one everyone agrees is true.

FROM STANLEY WHEELER: Accidental Wizard: The Accidental Adventures Series

Two brothers. One dead wizard. And a spell nobody warned them about.

Twins Chris and Kenny only meant to walk through the giant fallen log at the end of Grandpa’s trail. Instead, the world explodes into fire and thunder, and they crash-land in a medieval kingdom on the losing side of a war. A dying blood mage summoned them on purpose, and now Chris is expected to take his place.

There’s just one catch. In this world, magic is paid for in blood. Every spell Chris casts — fingers of fire, a flick that stuns, a stone that breaks locks — opens a fresh wound. They call it the mulct, and the bigger the magic, the bigger the price. Meanwhile Kenny is handed an enchanted sword and mail shirt and told he’s a knight now. Ready or not.

To get home — and to stop a dragon-sorceress whose army is already crossing the Wide Waste — the boys have to find a staff sealed inside a mountain since Merlin’s day. Between them and the prize: flying blood wolves that hunt mages by scent, a valley of shape-shifting trolls, a traitor on a war-wolf, and a one-eyed pirate they were sure they’d already blown up.

Fast, funny, and packed with courage, quick thinking, and brotherhood, Accidental Wizard is Book Two of The Accidental Adventures Series. Adventure the way it’s supposed to be: the good guys outnumbered, outmatched, and not backing down.

FROM ELISE HYATT: A French Polished Murder (Daring Finds)

PIANO FORTE, MURDER FORTE She restores furniture. Murder restores itself.

When furniture refinisher Dyce Dare decides to spruce up an old piano as a gift for her boyfriend Cas Wolfe, she expected wood stains and varnish—not stained reputations and varnished truths. But that’s exactly what she gets when she discovers a mysterious letter hidden inside, pointing to a murder that’s been gathering dust longer than the piano keys.

Suddenly, Dyce’s biggest problems aren’t just that her well-meaning friend gave her son a miniature motorcycle (what could possibly go wrong?), or that said son has formed an unbreakable alliance with Pythagoras, a neurotic black cat with enough anxiety to power a small city.

No, her biggest problem is that someone out there doesn’t want this particular skeleton dancing out of its closet—and they’re willing to add Dyce to the body count to keep it quiet. As danger creeps closer to her doorstep and her parents’ mystery bookstore, Dyce discovers that old murders are like vintage furniture: they may be hidden away, but eventually, someone always finds them.

A French Polished Murder – When the music stops, the real mystery begins.

(Warning: Contains refinishing tips, parenting mishaps, and one cat who absolutely refuses to be a proper sidekick.)

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: BRAINY.

Because my brother was older than me, my tastes in music were weirdly dislocated in time. Okay, it saved me from Disco. They were also a little odd, because my brother was odd.

Before we could even afford a tape recorder (or were sure they weren’t a myth) when his transistor radio was the height of luxury, I fell in love with this song heard on his radio, and he enabled me into going across the street to the general store that became a tavern after 9pm (and this was around 10 pm) to call the requests program (he dialed and paid for the call) and ask for Dock of the Bay by Ottis Redding. I remember the announcer was so amused he asked me to repeat it. I must have been around four.

And yes, he used to sing this to me with all the silly flourishes:

At some point, we discovered John Denver. Weirdly the favorite was not Rocky Mountain High, but that song about the exotic and exciting land of West Virginia. In my pre-teens I used to belt this while walking home alone from middle school, along the ride overlooking the train line.

Tonight, I guess I’d rather be in Colorado:

And we had no idea what or where MacArthur Park was, or why it would melt or why leave a cake in the rain, but we loved the song anyway (yes, in this version.)

He sang this to his future wife (of course).

When I was ten and unbraided my hair, it came to my knees and being a kid, I would often forget to dress and come running downstairs dressed only in my hair (there’s a picture somewhere. You can’t see anything.) My brother nicknamed me Lady G. and sang this for me.

He said this was our song, and improbably, though we were never that old together and we were never both men, it feels right.

I just got word that my brother, Alvarim, died this morning.

We meant to go visit this fall, because I feared it might happen, but with the move and all, we were low on money and…. it didn’t happen.

We were so far apart in age that we were practically both only children, and he was ALMOST a third parent. And no, that’s not the best picture above. He hated having his picture taken, and I was weird. BUT–

For a long time I was his shadow. doing what he did, because that was the way to be in my mind. I followed him everywhere. I pretended to read the same books, and then later on read the same books and for a while we spoke almost exclusively in quotations from those books, driving my poor parents nuts.

He read to me when I was sick as a small child, was very patient with my notions when I was a teenager, and since we always thought no one would be stupid enough to marry either of us, we’d planned to get old and crazy together in our parents’ house.

It didn’t happen that way. He was very good to my kids. During the lean, tight years he’d send us money to buy them gifts.

We diverged politically as I came into my own mind, but the love was always there. And despite our differences, until he grew too ill to read much, when I visited, every five years or so, the book on his bedside table, often an history book or a classical mystery, was the same — in translation — as the one I’d left on my bedside in the US.

He died, and I never got to say goodbye and I don’t know what to do with this.

And my poor father, burying his first born little more than a year after losing his wife.

At least he came back to the church before he died.

Please, if you’re the praying kind, pray for my brother, Alvarim Marques de Almeida.

And pray for my father.

This is new year 1980. Of the people in this picture, a good half are dead.

Alas, I remain.

I’m not going to be okay for a long time. I will come around, but forgive me if I’m a little weird now and then.

And pray for me too, if you’re the praying kind.

(A Blast from the Past: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/06/29/routing-around-damage/)

Sorry this is so late. I got up this morning ready to give the last coat to what will be the household accounts office, so we can move furniture in on Wednesday, So I can do what will be my office over the weekend.  And then I remembered the stairs to the basement needed to be Zinzered (Totally a word. Like Killzing only more so) because grandcat did a number on them when older son was at work or school and not spending the requisite time with him. (Which in D’Artagnan’s mind means, of course ALL the time. 24/7)

By the time I looked up it was 12:30.  And now I shall try and go work, though not absolutely sure I have enough energy.  In the past I’ve found a nap helps reset the mind after hours of physical labor, but one also doesn’t like to employ it. It is admitting the body is getting old, I guess.  We’ll see.

Because I was working on the stairs, my mind was ranging over a bunch of things, including the old tale of the garden, and of the entity that offers that you shall be “like gods, knowing good from evil.”

For some reason this seems to be an unavoidable temptation of mankind, the sort of thing we can’t resist, just like we can’t resist the feeling that whatever one has should be divided equally.

I suppose it makes perfect sense from the point of view of a clever ape.  In the ape band, if things aren’t divided equally — say the hunt or the produce of foraging — then someone will grow fat, and someone will starve. We are, after all, as a species, scavenger apes. Which means that most of our ancestors, since well before we became human and throughout our past since that time lived at the edge of starvation.

At the same time, being clever apes, we want to know. we need to know. And we want to know what the rules and are and what we can impunely poke at, and what will turn and sting us into next Wednesday or the next turn of the wheel for that matter.

We also, being clever apes, and scavengers, distrust the good times.  We hate it when things are going too well, people have fat babies and there’s peace on the land.  We hate it, because as every scavenger knows too many fat babies mean a time of famine around the bend. It’s unavoidable. There are only so many resources. You have too many scavengers, and the food supply is stripped bare, and then what?

All of this probably explain the 20th century. Well, as much as anything can besides “Dear Lord, that lousy century!”

Because through the wars, the horrors, the killing by the numbers by government fiat (which we show ourselves quite ready to continue this century, by the way) life was pretty good, for most humans.  You know, in raw terms of food and fat babies, humanity was doing pretty well.

Except —

Except the Cassandras were out full force, and often spurring on the government killing by the numbers — and still trying to do it — alarmed at the number of fat babies.  We won’t go into the various theories of Paul Ehrlich. Honest, the man is impressive. How can you be wrong so consistently? It’s like ALWAYS guessing the wrong number in a set of two. By pure luck, sometime, he should be right. By accident even.

And we won’t go into the climate doom and gloom, because honestly, I’m forever astonished at anyone my age who takes it seriously. Because in my lifetime we were going to freeze to death. I bought it then. How could I now? All the smart people and scientists said so.  And the prescription was socialism.

Oh, they didn’t call it that. They call it being sensible and careful and sustainable. What it amounted to, to the kid who read science fiction, was belt tightening on a global scale.  We all needed to live small lives. Ask permission to have kids, earn permission to live in a little cubicle and eat our ration, and be happy for it, because without that we’d all freeze to death by the early two thousands.  Oh, well. It was just my luck, the time I’d been born into.

At the same time we were running our of oil, out of gas, out of coal, out of minerals. Out of everything.

And then a funny thing happened.  Not only didn’t we run out of any of those things, but learned to use them better, found new deposits, but the weather didn’t grow markedly colder.

In the middle eighties, the consensus pivoted in the space of a year to “We’re all going to boil to death.”  Perhaps by then I was more cynical.

I’d realized a few things.  Like, we weren’t running out of anything, and Paul Ehrlich had rolled snake eyes again.  Another was that the prescription to avoid boiling was the same as to avoid freezing. More socialism. And the other was that these prophets of despair didn’t want us to go to space. No we had to “learn to take care of the Earth first.”

That seemed weirdly moralistic. More a religious position than a scientific one. Because, really, who judges when we “learn to take care of the Earth?”  The Earth seems to be doing okay, honestly, humans or not.  How many trees do we need to plant, before we can have a colony on Mars? What sense does THAT make?  Or as I used to put it — to much sputtering — “I don’t think we’d ever have learned to take care of Europe, if we’d not struck out to other continents. Or if you go back far enough, to take care of Africa, before homo sap migrated.  That’s not how any of that works. You don’t learn your language properly before you learn another. And knowing other planets is what will allow us to take care of the Earth. It’s just the way it works.”

Anyway, I think that’s the other, third flaw of the human brain, born of our biological heritage. We’re jumped up scavenging apes. We can’t help worrying about how bad things will get now that they’re good. If there’s enough food today, there won’t be tomorrow.

Unfortunately add intelligence and shake, and what you get is people convince that they ARE like gods, knowing good from evil, and that they get to tell everyone else what they can do and what they can’t.  That of course, being the other curse of apes. You want to be the band leader. Fraught as it is it’s the safest position.

Well, except those of us who are broken apes, and feel safer by ourselves, in our own branch.  I don’t think any of us would have survived too long out in the wilderness, though.  A solitary ape is known as “lunch” to too many things.

I have friends who run terminally ill computers.  I’ve done it myself in the past.  Now that writing pays, even if irregularly (Dear Lord, I need to stop flooring rooms and start writing more, because indie does pay, and so does PJM…. indie more, but PJM faster) I usually don’t fool with computers past the point the they fail me twice. But in the bad old days when I was just starting out, I normally inherited my husband’s computers, once they started sputtering (or we bought them from his job when they upgraded. That’s how the boys got their own computers when Marshall was 3. Which prevented my losing half the workday because the toddler wanted to play the Winnie the Pooh game.)

Because husband is a genius with computers (he just is) he found ways around the damage of computers that weren’t working very well.

Sometimes he wrote programs, that made the computer not get trapped in dead sectors.  Or at one time he (at least tried to) made me use Linux, because the computer was too slow for Windows.

I’m glad we don’t have to resort to that now. The computer fails twice and I point out we need a new computer. (Though I’m a little nervous at replacing three computers with one. I hate single points of failure. Well, I still have the travel laptop, at least.  That will do for writing, if not for rendering or publishing work.)

But there is no such workaround for humanity.  Maybe in the distant future we can get rid of the persistent illusions that are part of being human.  This idea of “fairness” and omniscience and, oh, yeah, that doom is just around the corner.

Perhaps. I wouldn’t trust anyone capable of doing that, mind, capable of tampering with the very essence of what being human means.

Those of us who are religious believe that eventually there will a New Heaven and a New Earth.  Which ultimately means new humans. We believe something will happen, and the good old hardware will be fixed or fix itself automagically.  And, well, if there is an engineer who put us together, then it’s okay if He fixes it, I guess.

But  I’d be really leery, as my fiction probably shows, of any humans trying to fix the old hardware.  Why, even with computers which are orders of magnitude simpler than you or I, and even with as good as husband is with computers, I always tense when he says “oh, it’s just the motherboard.  I’ll get a new one and–”  Okay, it’s been years since he’s made the problem worse. But it can happen.  I know that. And then the computer catches fire.  (No, seriously. Two of mine so far.  Yes, it’s my fault for all the heretical stuff I write, like this post, I guess.)

So, what is to be done?

I don’t know.  So far, we know that the flaws of mankind can be compensated for with software.  And the best software, so far, seems to be called “Western Civilization.”  At least in terms of leading to fat babies and lots of food.  Sure, it also led to government by the numbers, and killing by the numbers, or as we call it around here “20th century.”

But the thing is, it’s hard to tell how much of it is the software “Western Civilization” and how much is the flaws in the hardware.  The Zulus, who were virgin of the software, left enough corpses strewn around Africa that some of them form the basis of hills. And the things the Chinese got up to in their history are best read about thy those with a strong stomach, and not after lunch.

And then there’s the virus of socialism, which takes advantage of the hardware’s flaws of “fairness” and “knowing good from evil” and “oh, no, too  many fat babies, famine around the corner.”

In fact, the Marxism/Communism/socialism virus is almost too perfect, slots too much with the human hardware flaws to be accidental; just like Western civ and bourgeois values might be too perfect, leading too assuredly to enough food and fat babies to be accidental.

Maybe.

Or maybe cultures, like species are subject to evolutionary law and the best adapted one emerges the victor.

Which would mean we win, they lose. In the long run. The very, very long run.  But neither of us will see it.

I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. I’m not the engineer, and I’m not the software designer.  In fact, I’m not sure any of us is qualified to design software at that level. All attempts at doing it seem to result in a lot of dead hardware.

I do know that if the program is not running on “Respect individuals, don’t hurt them and don’t take their stuff” it ends up in a lot of broken hardware.  A lot of it.

I do know that I cannot be like gods knowing good from evil.

And I will fight against anyone in the grip of the illusion that everything can be made fair, who thinks they can hurt people and take their stuff and somehow bring about paradise.

I’m not the Engineer. I’m not the software designer. But I can read print when its engraved in all the sorry history of mankind, and elsewhere too.

And in the garden there was a serpent….

Do you guys ever wonder if time is circular, and if those writings, metaphorical, of course, are the result of many-times-experience of mankind?

Man, if that is true, we must be the worst students ever.

Of course A Canticle of Leibowitz posited something like that, but the idea was that it was all designed to warn about nuclear war and how to avoid it.

Bah. No nukes needed. To destroy civilization, the inherent flaws of mankind suffice, and are plenty.

“You shall be like gods, knowing good from evil.”

It always leads to destruction and death, and the dark of night, and sweating while laboring to extract our livelihood out of dirt.

Perhaps this time we can avoid it, yes?  Perhaps we can take the old snake and make a pair of shoes out of its skin?

Probably too much to hope for, but at the end of the Pandora Box that’s 2020 maybe some hope remains.

Route around the damage. Write a new program.  Not the same old stupidity again.  Let’s try new and exciting stupidity.  Let’s go elsewhere and try our all too human flaws.

Enough is enough. They shall not pass.

Still here, and rocking you into your new Build Under, Build Over, Be Around, keep chill, check your ammo and count your canned!

Once, I woke up in the middle of a hurricane, (Hugo, in Charlotte, NC) looked out the bedroom window and a tornado was crossing our backyard. I thought “I’m dead” and went back to bed and turned on the radio. This came on. I fell asleep to it. I didn’t die. And neither will we:

And from exile with love and longing and loss…

For all of you (and sorry for using my clanker stuff… but you get the point):

And for my family:

by Holly the Assistant

Picture credit to Caitlin Walsh

All right. We had our various pity parties–or not–time to find our boots and lace them up again and get back to work.

Now, there is no easy route. There is no Great Leader who will wave his magic wand and make everything right. There’s no Chosen One who will assemble his followers and fix the world. It’s a lovely trope in fiction. In reality, that isn’t how it works. Never has been. Fixing anything is messy and it’s a group project, and we all hate group projects. (And I’d wager that every one of us has ended up doing everyone else’s work at least once.)

On the bright side, though, it’s a project that breaks up in to small bits really well, and your bit can succeed without relying on everyone else’s bit being done correctly. You can make real progress.

On the down side, you will get attacked. For those still raising children, or not financially independent, you need to be more cautious. (I’ve watched the attacks happen to a local friend of mine running for local office. Relentless, and at least one went viral nationwide, which didn’t actually fix the slander.)

Snelson had some great suggestions in the comments yesterday. If what he’s doing is something you can do, go forth and do. If you can show up to local party meetings–and I don’t care which party–and get involved, annoy people, keep them on track, get them off track, go do that. If you can run for a down ballot office, my hat’s off to you, and please be braced for impact.

If you can copy HSLDA’s tactics for your local city council, or your state legislature, or your school board, and run a news list, and tell everyone who really cares about issue XYZ when they should show up, call, email, write, about that issue, do that. I mean, if you can find a passion for . . . deregulating food from home kitchens, get a group of people together who care about that issue. Or for allowing hens in city limits–you can definitely get a list for that. Or for improving county election security. Or, there’s a nascent movement I spotted for, how was that phrased, “The other twenty-nine kids’ right to learn” about de-mainstreaming disruptive children. That’d be a good issue to be involved with.

If you have the pocket books to hire the lawyers and sue, and you find standing, go you forth and do just that. I suspect that certain big figures from the MAGA movement have attorneys combing everything today.

If all of that’s too public, I want you to think of whisper campaigns. Not actually whispering–that would defeat the purpose. Not shouting either, that’s rude. But comments that seed doubt. “Funny how everything that passed and everyone who won in our state is something China cares about, isn’t it?” “I don’t know anyone who voted for X, do you? Do you know why they did?” “Why hasn’t that guy resigned from his megachurch position? Is he a Christian Nationalist?” You’re just asking questions. Totally reasonable questions. Look at the person, or the issue, find what the other side would just ask questions about if they weren’t in favor of, and ask those questions. That’s how that game works. I’ve had good luck with persuading perfectly normal Democrats against mail-in ballots before by asking why abusive spouses should get to vote their victims’ ballots. “I mean, if he’ll hit her for cooking his steak wrong, then he’ll definitely force her to vote the way he wants.”

Now for your own family, I want you to start thinking practically. We’re all (almost) preppers here anyway, right? I think this is the biggest conglomeration of “Actually this is how to survive a week long power outage” people that isn’t a dedicated prepper website. So make sure that’s in order. Make sure you have what you need if your bank account gets hung up for a couple days-we had an internet outage here a couple years ago that shut down all the banking in town, my credit union stayed open on the honor system but most simply closed doors, only stores that could deal in cash and checks and had cashiers who could do math stayed open. Make sure you have what you need if your power goes out–we know corrupt government is associated with lack of basic services–see South Africa for details. Make sure if the garbage trucks don’t come for a month you have a plan so you don’t get rats. Not apocalypse, just . . . lack of services on schedule. My in-laws get city water only occasionally, so they and all their neighbors yell to each other when the water comes on and fill all their storage containers. Basic big city third world stuff. Charge your phone battery and your backup battery when there is power. Not Mad Max, Kinshasa on a Tuesday or Johannesburg on a Wednesday. If you normally rely on a big freezer, be prepared to cook and can without power if you don’t have backup power for it.

Make yourself a network of people. Who can come over with a chainsaw if there’s a tree down in your yard? Who can you go over to with a chainsaw if there’s a tree down in his yard? Networks are vitally important when you’re in a low-trust situation. You have to know who will help and who will steal. You need to know who will give you a reference to a real roofing company. You need to give references to your mechanic, your roofer, your driveway paver, and you need to give business to your network’s references. Don’t hire based on “I did an online search and got quotes.” Hire on “I know a guy.” Not least because the fall-out of failing as a “known guy” is no more jobs, not dissolving the company and starting a new one. This is not the American norm, but it is the way most of the world gets people who do things. And our unassimilated immigrants are doing just that–giving work exclusively to people in their trust network, while we’re . . . not.

Yes, this means you-YOU!-have to talk to actual human beings.

We didn’t pick this, but we’re here.

There’s no man coming on a white horse to save you. But you don’t need one of those, anyway. Get your saddle on your own horse and ride.

For two weeks now I’ve been driving my family and my close in fan group insane with “They’re going to steal the election. I can see all the battle space preparation signs.” And them telling me I was insane.

After last night, I don’t think a lot of them speak to me.

And yet–

“But Sarah, the right lost fair and square!” “The people want Islamic socialism!”

Maybe they do. Maybe they do indeed. Except there is no sign of it at all, except what came out of the machines last night.

Look, the numbers are — on the face of them — bloody unbelievable. The democrats had presidential-turn-out-or-better, suddenly, in a mid-term. Which, given how many of the voters were deported– Never mind. Not enough, probably, to make a big difference.

But what we saw at the polls heralds the type of sea change that goes “everyone hates the president”. And… I’m not seeing it?

Sure maybe in some super-blue enclaves this is obvious and in your face, but… even so. Opposition that strong shows. Where is their viral “Let’s go Brandon!” moment? Where is their run away success fictional series where the good guys win? Where are their massive demonstrations saying “the king is a fink?” The No Kings movement had to use photos from a year ago or two years ago. Because they couldn’t even commandeer their usual 12 people on respirators in a corner.

You know what else a big sea change movement of this kind doesn’t do? Steal signs. Across the country there was an epidemic of leftists stealing signs. Not one or two, not their petty, usual vandalism, but “I can’t keep a sign for my guy up, because it gets stolen.” That’s… battle space preparation. Not for a fair vote, but for fraud.

You know what else is funny? Well. A lot of things. But one of them that is clearly, blatantly, obviously funny is that the Democrats outperformed the polls.

“But Sarah, Republicans outperform the polls all the time.” Yes, but that’s like me saying “There is a flock of turkeys flying north” and you saying “So, geese do that all the time.”

The culture we live in, Democrats announce their preference loudly. Hell, they’ll run you down on the street to tell you what they think. They will not be phone shy. Ever. And all the polls are skewed left anyway, if you look at the internals.

Another weird thing: This time the cities reported first. Normally they report last to account for how many votes they needed. Not last night, no siree bob! They reported first. Must be because there’s no fraud in the cities any longer. Stop laughing.

“But Sarah, where’s the proof?”

And there you have me. DataRepublican exposed their talk of color revolution. Of what they’d do to secure the gains if the President tried to call them out on it. How they’d expose him as a tyrant.

What does that hinge on? No PROOF of the steal. Or no easily provable proof. Because if we can point at it and say “but they obviously stole it, this way” then the color revolution fails.

I don’t know how you voted. I mean, the mechanics of it. I voted in paper. I was such a small minority that the only wait in our polling place was for the machines. No wait at all for paper. And until five minutes ago (It’s five am, btw) I was patting myself on the back over it.

I filled a ballot, then I approached a machine. A nice poll worker helped me put it in the machine, the ballot was pulled in, and the screen lit up “Your vote has been counted!”

Very nice. Who was my vote counted for, precisely? It can’t tell me, of course, the nice poll worker would see it! And besides the ballot is right there! They can count it again. (I presume.) Sure. BUT I’m NOT THERE TO WATCH IT COUNTED. … and most people voted by machine.

You know the rule, don’t you “Don’t trust your vote to anything you wouldn’t trust your cash?”

Let me know when you’d be happy and excited if your bank account had no way to audit your deposits and withdrawals. I know I’d practically pee myself with happiness! Who wouldn’t? I put a thousand dollar check, the ATM flashes “Your deposit has been accepted” and then…

Look, I’m increasingly looking askance at AMAZON because I hadn’t looked closely at what one of my releases was doing in years, but when I looked at No Man’s Land — I also had never had an indie release that sold numbers worth watching like a hawk, to be honest — anyway, I saw it do impossible things. Like my sales numbers went backward without returns. That was… special. More than once. And I’m looking askance at it, because “what’s my control?” and “What’s my recourse?” And in both cases the answer is “none.”

Now look at your voting apparatus which just did a … if not impossible truly bloody unlikely thing. What is your control? And what is your recourse?

Yeah, yeah, enclaves of foreign workers in Texas and Islamics in Michigan and…. Are you for real? In two years? It changed that much in two years?

No bloody way. What we just saw was expert fraud preparation and then the pay off.

There AREN’T any organic, on the ground signs for this shift. And suddenly dems are poll shy? People. These critters haven’t been shy about their idiotic opinions since they emerged screaming “Marx” from their birthing person’s wombs.

Yes, yes, a lot of their candidates were smooth articles, who practically claimed to be GOP. BUT Talarico? The homunculus? Like Beto but gayer? Was that really what Texas was waiting for? And across the board, too? Not just the big profile campaign?

One thing I’ll tell you is that locally, they stopped handing out the little slip of paper that you had to hand back to show how many people voted. You see, it had been badly wrong in 20, so… People, ah ah, just forgot to hand it in. But it worked in 24. And now it was gone, without a blink.

It stinks. To high heavens it stinks. Before you start ripping into your fellow citizens, look around. The reason you’re not sleeping (Ah!) or beating your head against the wall is that none of it makes sense. A friend last night said “AI could make the hack into the voting machines smooth, without sudden hockey sticks.” But of course, that’s nonsense. These systems that are all connected to the internet are as secure as big, commercial refrigeration systems, after all. A hack would be preventable, obvious. And it’s not like, oh, open AI or Anthropic have a vested interest in getting someone in who will destroy grok! Or in getting idiots in who will “regulate AI.” Not a chance.

It’s a black box. Your vote goes in. Trust me, bro! comes out. And you trust it. Of course.

Oh, you don’t? Well, what are you going to do about it? In 2020 with the fraud blatant, in front of our eyes and in front of G-d and everybody, we couldn’t convince the vast majority that we’d been color-revolutioned. Now? Now with this smooth operation? Are you kidding me? A quarter of you are in a full out tantrum and saying I’m making up shit.

I’m not making up shit. Our election systems have gone from wobbly to fully mythomaniacal. And you know what is a bad sign? A bad sign is DataRepublican talking about ways to power around the vote system and the elected rep system. And one of the reasons it’s a ridiculously bad sign is that those don’t work. Not really.

Oh, yes, you should be fully ungovernable and make it as hard as possible for them to do onto you. No one is asking you to be good Germans.

BUT– Look, it’s obvious the left got an infusion of cash and expertise. Looks at Europe. Looks at Brazil. Hell, maybe even Israel, though every politician there is so bad one can come up with excuses. But then one can come up with excuses everywhere.

For something like sixteen years this depressive has been telling you to have hope; this hothead has been saying “don’t go hot.”

Now the ballot box has failed us. Conclusively.

Yes, I just heard, across the internet, as a hundred thousand of you dragged the ammo box across the floor.

For years now, I’ve told you “When it’s time, I’ll tell you.”

Is it time?

Not yet. Don’t stomp your foot. It’s unbecoming for a fully grown ungovernable American. I didn’t tell you never. And no, I won’t keep saying “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”

I’m not even saying “trust the plan.” If you remember in 2020 I was the one who never trusted the plan. I was beating myself like a fly in a tarbox because I didn’t trust the plan.

I’m saying take a deep breath. Go back to bed. Sleep. Eat. Bide your time. They’re expecting resistance right now. They’re prepared right now.

What’s more, maybe some portion of the DOJ isn’t entirely taken over by the deep state. (I know. I’m so funny!) And they were supposedly ready for this, right?

Give it a month. Give it at least a month See what happens. A month isn’t so much, is it? Put that ammo box back under the sofa. And the bed. And in the closet. And — (Look, guys, someone brought her dowry in ammo in my family, and I don’t think the rest of you are so different.) — don’t forget where it is.

The program is subject to change depending on what happens. Keep your eyes peeled. (The man with an overcoat is an enemy.) And I’m praying really hard that a miracle occurs and we don’t have to shoot ourselves out of this. Right now, the most dangerous move is the premature one. Make sure you’re not getting in the way of something that obviates your need to move. The next most dangerous move is trusting the guy who’ll drive you to the criming. And the person saying you need to go hot right this minute, and they have everything to help you do so. Don’t do any of that.

I’m begging you with tears in my eyes, don’t do the dangerous. In fact, don’t do anything right now. Isn’t there a rifle — or a dozen of them — you want to clean? And you know that the price of ammo is going to go up. And wasn’t there some ruling recently making body armor legal for civilians? Go shopping this week. Figure out the money.

Do all of that. I half joke about “sell your cloak and buy a helicopter” but metaphorically speaking consider it.

Also check your canned. Check your water storage. Make sure you have the right meds stocked up. Take your pets to get their vaccines you’ve been putting off. That surgery? If you can have it done asap and be okay in a month, now is a good time. Take out cash. Better yet, buy silver, both coin and jewelry. (Gold is for the big things. How many houses do you plan on buying? Cars?) Make sure you have clothing for winter, and back up means of heating. And a good first aid kit. And make sure your family has a rendez vous in case the house is not there. Or not reachable. A bolthole might also be a good idea, if achievable. (These days, it might be hard.)

Don’t go off half cocked. And give it time. Who knows? Maybe the pig will sing. I’ll grant you it’s unlikely, but G-d looks after fools, drunkards and the United States of America. Looks up at ceiling fan: Now would be good, Lord.

You feel you just were massively cheated because — signs are — you probably were. Almost certainly. All I’m seeing is perception management and a number that defies even the perceptions.

Take a deep breath. This is not your sign. But it’s closer to your sign than it’s been in almost two decades.

G-d have mercy on us all. But in the end, we win they lose. There is no other option. Because ours is the only hope for mankind.

Be not afraid. Deep breaths. Plan, plan, plan. No, plan more than that. And give it time for a miracle first.

Stay frosty. Stay ungovernable. Stay American. Don’t give them an excuse to enact the second half of the coup.

Go count the canned again. Contemplate what we’ll lose forever if we have to act. (All I wanted to do was to write my little stories in peace and make enough to live on. And to have children and grandchildren, fat babies to hold and sing to. That’s all I ever wanted.)

Take a deep breath. Go to sleep. Give it at least a month.

I actually doubt it will hold that long. Gut feeling is it won’t. Not every one reads ATH. Not every one will go count the canned and go back to sleep. Not everyone will give it a month. And some will go off half cocked. I suspect some are being wound up to do so even as we speak. And we can’t control them.

So be prepared for that too. For when the sea tosses you and it’s all you can do to keep your head above water. That’s where your preparation comes in.

G-d have mercy on us all.

Your lives, your fortune, your sacred honor. Did you think it would be easy? Did you think it was a game?

First of all go vote. We’re going as soon as we get up and I drink enough coffee to be functional, because we’re getting reports of lines. Maybe tomorrow will be the exception to that, but hopefully it won’t.

Vote to give us a chance to get better representatives. Vote to give us a chance to escape what’s happening in Europe.

I do believe we’ll survive, anyway, but on the way to survival there is a never end of pain we’ll be inviting if we let the bastards have even one house. Go vote. Vote against socialism. Vote against subjection. Vote so blogs like this can continue to exist.

And speaking of what’s happening in Europe, yesterday in my close-in group (The Chinchilla of Hope gang) someone asked why the store shelves are bare of essentials like toilet paper. We quickly determined this is country wide, so it’s not a fear of storms.

Apparently a bunch of countries around the world are telling their citizens to have 3 days of supplies on hand, and, not being stupid, people know that fuckery is planned and fuckery is afoot.

I don’t think it will move this fast here. For one the votes won’t be tallied by tomorrow night.

BUT Bill Reader in a rare phone call a couple of days ago told me that he expected things to go hot almost immediately. That win or lose (please let them lose) the left is going to go hot ASAP. … well, even if they win (particularly if they win) it wouldn’t be the first time that they took this as the go signal. It wouldn’t be the first country either. And if they go hot here it’s probably the sign for the world to go hot-ter which would explain the “warnings”.

So– On your way back from voting, go see if you can get whatever you need to round up your supplies. And yes, I am very much including ammo. And axes. you can never have too many axes. (Okay, fine, I can never have too many axes.)

Go forth. May the Lord bless you and keep you, may he may His face to shine upon you and give you peace. (And strength.)

And as always, keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

I have bad news: This is not going to talk about the Heinlein novel. Yes, I will resume my reviews, soon-ish. Right now the ETA for this place unpacked is “before New Years” mostly because novel keeps pulling me away from the packing (Weird that.) So the reviews might not resume before that, but they will review. Besides, me, reviewing Heinlein amounts to “Squee, squee, squee!” and you’d all be reaching for your adjustment knob and this blog ain’t got one.

The further bad news is that I’m going to inflict Slopcore on you, which is apparently the term for generated music with this kind of “catchy” non demanding tune and this figure. Before I do, it’s okay if you don’t watch it. The story is ten bad ideas, five really inadvisable decisions, and a strong burning core of hope all rolled into one. From further videos, I suspect the people producing this channel are Libertarian Socialists, which are weirder than anything the founders of Elly (in No Man’s Land) cobbled together. Fortunately it’s an ideological chimera, not a biological one. Unfortunately, it can only live in a world where the laws of economics have stopped applying. And since the laws of economics are tied to basic humanity, getting there — as for all socialism — would imply exterminating humanity. (And if you just said “Oh, that’s why!” Yep. That’s why the green everything, the purposeful immiseration, the loathing of mere humanity. For Socialism to live, humanity must die.)

Anyway all the same, the slopcore is catchy and there’s something there, which I will explain. (Beyond and beside the stupidity.)

The stupidity is obvious. It starts with “voted to share what the robots made” — economy doesn’t work like that. Life doesn’t work like that — UBI is second only in stupidity to the idea you can take billionaires’ wealth and make everyone rich forever. If you have UBI in some amount, then every price immediately goes up by the measure of the UBI. Also, for the love of screaming Bob, robots will belong to real, live people ( probably a lot of them retirees counting on their funds to live.) They will need maintenance and replacement. Nationalizing robots is the stupidest thing imaginable. Supporting people without work is the stupidest thing imaginable. There’s a reason the scions of very wealthy families become Hunter Biden. Man — and woman, and those who looked in their pants before going on — was made to strive. Remove the striving, and it all collapses, everything that makes us human. Which is one of the fundamental mistakes of socialism. Giving people things doesn’t make them happy with those things as it does earning them. And the ultimate penalty of socialism is the loss of the will to live. It manifests first with stopping births. Then killing the elderly in the name of compassion. Well before people are being supported in absolute comfort.

It seemed to me we didn’t need the socialist experiment, frankly. We already knew what happened to retirees who had nothing to do, no drive. And we knew what happened to very rich kids. But did anyone ask me? No. Partly because I hadn’t been born yet, which seems to me like a poor excuse.

Anyway, I did not miss that this is two generations of single mothers. Look, I’m also not kicking too hard at that, because there is such a thing as clean storytelling, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a guy there for the birth scene and mention dad lost his job too. Hey, maybe mom and dad have different jobs.

The core of hope that makes this story cheery despite the galoomphing stupid: The abundance it promises is real. Radical, soaked through, endless abundance. And that’s… well. That’s a tide that lifts all boats.

It won’t stop human civilization, though some people WILL fall by the wayside — look, it’s as easy to kill with joy as with grief, and who told you human evolution was done — but as with AI used properly, it will free those with the drive and the will to push on to do the things that matter.

Like this: Yes, a lot of jobs are going away with AI — and even more with robots, though if you tell me you don’t have a dream of a housekeeping robot (I’m going to name mine Jenkins, and if you get it, you get it. AND if I can make things work out as I want, this January you’ll understand why this is funny enough to laugh shooting coffee out of your nose. You’ll see.) you’re a rank liar. Science fiction people, I’ve found, writers and readers alike are lousy housekeepers. We spend too much time in our heads to do otherwise. I try to be the exception, but I’m losing that battle as I get older.

BUT as the Little Pickle said last night “Heaven’s sakes! There will be other jobs that appear. Jobs don’t go away without new ones being created.” Which means that if I die before there are grandkids old enough for me to yell economics at, they’ll still be fine.

Because she’s exactly right. If every job currently being done went away tomorrow morning, humanity would find new needs. If every dirty, dangerous outdoor job is done, men don’t become obsolete. They will find their danger and dirt exploring far flung worlds, designing and testing the machines to get us there… all of it.

And if every indoor, boring, repetitive job went away tomorrow, it doesn’t make women obsolete. They’ll find they can plan their household better, and have the androids execute it. People who had servants didn’t stop working at the household. (Well, some did… but… See evolutionary pressure below.)

To an extent we’re already there, already past that inflection point. No? Compared to even the nineteenth century we’re unimaginably rich. As a culture, sure, but even as a species. Do you know how our ancestors would have felt about “The only time there’s a famine is when we let ourselves be oppressed by horrible rulers?” Famine was the rule of human existence since an ape stood up, thought of the past and dreamed of the future. This is literally unimaginable for the generations of our forefathers who sleep in the dirt.

This shows in the small things too, everyday life. Cleaning, cooking, the most basic tasks of housekeeping for anyone not wishing to live in rank filth, are so ridiculously easy now. (And we still fall down, and yes, there are novels to write, and I’m going to blame those, okay?) And it keeps improving.

And yet, we’re busy. Busier than ever, at least some of us.

This is what I was saying, about evolutionary pressures. There already is an evolutionary pressure in place. Right now it’s a little mixed if I’m honest. Those who are given everything, have no ambition and are basically non-functional SEEM to have an evolutionary advantage. I maintain that’s illusory. Yes, they reproduce more, but the children live ephemeral lives and a lot of them die without reproducing. On the other hand, those with drive and purpose, who design and plan and build are suffering a different pressure: by the time we’re done training and establishing ourselves — unless you’re as crazy as Dan and I were and take the plunge early. Our infertility was the fault of my auto-immune, not of our waiting too long — we don’t have the ability to produce children. Which brings the spiraling population numbers into focus, of course.

Fortunately not every one of the purposeless produces children that likewise lack drive. And the ones who have drive are the most likely to survive.

Also, fortunately, this dream future of robots that seems actually within our reach, is going to lift the onerous cost of training and establishing oneself. Or it should. It should be easier than ever to plunge from late adolescence into comfortable, if now ridiculously prosperous (though maybe by OUR standards) adulthood, and children without a problem. (Either that or figure out how to extend fertility which, instinctively, seems to me will be the harder puzzle to crack. But maybe no. I’d like to say I’m here for it, but even in pie-in-the-sky scenario chances are low. I have, on the outside, if everything aligns, maybe 30 years, after all.)

What I think this … let’s call it radical abundance, will do is that we will have those who don’t want to do anything, if it’s not needed for them to survive. They will… wither away like retirees without a mission. Which means the children of those with drive and purpose will inherit the Earth. Yes, some of those, maybe most of those, will be purposeless and will also just wither. Look, the majority of humanity is designed to be lazy. That was the evolutionary pressure in pre-history. Man who hunted mammoth while mammoth was rotting at the camp, just starved and his whole tribe with him. Which means the “selection for drive” will refine over the next, oh, few thousand years. But that’s not our problem. It is simply what it is.

The point though is that this future gives humanity a chance at the stars, a chance at lives that transcend the everyday chores, the boring, all physical stuff, the fear of hunger, the fear of disease, and maybe if we’re very lucky the humiliating descent into senescence at the end of life. (I don’t expect, or want, to live forever, but the decline and loss of ability should be manageable, if we’re going to live lives even as long as we have now. It’s a pity to waste 1/3 of your life to diminishing ability.)

It will bring with a lot of new and fresh problems, yes, like: Yes, what about people who just want to sit and eat cake (or do drugs, or whatever) till they die? And what does marriage become in an age where you live a long time, vigorously? How many marriages survive? And what becomes of families when the longest time you’ll have with your children is with them as adults? (This we’re already facing.) And what about people too dumb for the new economy? (Ah! Caught you. That one is Bullshit. There will always be things people can do, at whatever level. No? look at history.) And what do we do when obviously stupid ideas seem to suddenly make sense? (Like this video. Chill, they still don’t.) And what do we do when we go beyond the need to write words? And– And we’ll burn those bridges when we reach them. But I’d rather be fighting in such a state of abundance that Humanity can’t starve if it tries than otherwise, okay.

This future of radical abundance hinges, to a great extent on how these elections go.

If you just snort giggled, don’t. I mean, I’m not stupid, and I think this future, this radical abundance, is inevitable. The question is… How far in the distant reaches of future time? Because it could be very far indeed.

Or it could be in the next 20 years, within our children’s lives. It is honestly, right now, so close we can touch it with our fingertips.

And yes, sure, your GOP congressman is a fiend, or if you live in Alaska, an idiot. And some of them are demonstrably in the pay of China.

But there are more people in the pay of China on the left. More importantly the left, elected mostly by fraud (trust me on this) doesn’t give a good damn for what you want. You have no pressure you can bring to bear on it. Look at NYC or Denver. Seriously. They don’t depend on voters, and can shit right on your wants and needs. And call you names on top of it.

However, if the left — let alone the red-green alliance — takes over, we’re done. The only question is for how long a count. AI will be regulated to a fare-thee-well, which means the current, impossible to monetize models will be the only ones, and it will quickly become a rich man’s toy. (I’d hate that, because it has become one of the best series-Bible keepers I’ve ever met. And instead of spending three days leafing through three ring binders to find a reference (I always sucked at wiki format) I can simply ask and be told. And verifying that is way easier than coming up with it fresh. Also, honestly, that frees more time to write. I need to experiment with publicity via AI too, because I sure can’t do it on my own.) Humanoid robots will come, but it will be to literally take your job. However, don’t worry little buddy, the government will create a job corps, digging and filling in ditches. (They never understood why this was idiotic. So they’ll do it again.)

These regimes collapse in about 70 years, but they either mutate into hardcore fascist (hi, China!) which is not an improvement or they leave an awful hangover for a long time.

That future we can ALMOST touch? Could be gone within a year, if we hand our legislature to people who are even more ignorant of economics than you average politician. (And that’s a lot.) It could stay gone until no one on Earth remembers our names, not even as a line in some record.

Arguably worse if the green part of that alliance takes hold. I am all for freedom of religion, but without a radical reformation to make it safe for the world, Islam will stop all progress cold. HARD. Because it’s a religion with a political component that is rigid and rigidly enforced, and which is attuned to the desert of Arabia circa the seventh century, countries that fall to it stop progressing in knowledge and civilization and often regress HARD.

Oh, the future will still come, the super-abundance that’s baked in in our tinkering genes. But that would be…. How does thousands of years sound to you? Because a lot of it will need to be re-invented. From first principles.

Yeah, I know. One of the lines the slopcore hit right was “the year when everyone was afraid of the future” and a lot of people are. It’s running too fast. It’s making the world too unstable. Hit a pause button!

As with puberty (sorry) there is no pause button. There is only something that will hurts seriously and has a small, outside chance of killing us prematurely.

I’m begging you with tears in my eyes. Do not try to hit the pause button. The future will hurt. But not as much as trying to stop it.

Go out and vote for your GOP crook as opposed to your DEM madman. It’s important. They’re all stupid and venal, but the GOP is slightly less so, because it still depends on getting out the vote and also because at its core it doesn’t hate America. Or humanity.

Vote for the crook. It’s important.

And maybe there will be time for the stars in the near future. And, yes, even time for love.