Everyone Needs Something Good To Read- Amanda S. Green

Here are a few of the books I’ve either just finished reading or that are on my to be read pile.  Or mine, that are on sale.  Enjoy!

The Long Black (The Black Chronicles, Book 1)

by J. M. Anjewierden

Morgan always assumed that if she could survive growing up in the mines of Planet Hillman – feared for its brutal conditions and gravity twice that of Earth – she could survive anything.
That was before she became a starship mechanic. Now she has to contend with hostile bosses, faulty equipment, and even taking care of her friend’s little girl. Once pirates show up, it’s a wonder she can get any work done at all.

*

Winter into Spring

by Nitay Arbel

Veronica “Ronnie” Zielinski, a librarian in the Chicago suburbs, has always dreamed of writing but never dared pursue her dream since the needs of others have always seemed to come first…until one winter, when a mysterious new library patron opens her eyes and changes her life, with some help from the romantic sci-fi classic “Komarr” by Lois McMaster Bujold….

*

Spring that Never Came

by D. Jason Fleming

Tammy Kirsch has had her shot at fame. She came to Hollywood with stars in her eyes and lint in her pockets and looks that would open any door in town just to try to get her onto the casting couch. After several guest roles in TV shows, one starring role in a movie that nobody saw, inadvertantly dodging the mid-70s porno chic moment and keeping her dignity and reputation intact, her career sputtered to a halt.

Then she lost her daughter in a custody case, and what was left of her world came crashing down around her ears. When the crazy homeless man tried to talk to her incoherently as she was leaving the court building, that only seemed to be the cherry on top of the layered dessert of her misery. In fact, it was just the first step on her path, a path that would end with her defending the entire world from an invasion of other-dimensional eldritch horrors.

*

ConVent

by Kate Paulk

A vampire, a werewolf, an undercover angel and his succubus squeeze. Whoever picked this team to save the world wasn’t thinking of sending the very best. But then, since this particular threat to the universe and everything good is being staged in science fiction conventions, amid people in costume, misfits and creative geniuses, any convetional hero would have stood out. Now Jim, the vampire, and his unlikely sidekicks have to beat the clock to find out who’s sacrificing con goers before all hell breaks loose — literally.

ConVent is proof that Kate Paulk’s brain works in wonderfully mysterious ways. A sarcastic vampire, his werewolf best buddy, an undercover angel and his succubus squeeze. The “Save the world” department really messed it up this time.

*

Tom

by Dave Freer

Tom is a cat in trouble. The worst possible kind of trouble: he’s been turned into a human. Transformed by an irascible old magician in need of a famulus — a servant and an assistant, Tom is as good at being a servant as a cat ever is. The assistant part is more to Tom’s taste: he rather fancies impressing the girl cats and terrorizing the other toms by transforming himself into a tiger. But the world of magic, a vanished and cursed princess, and a haunted skull, and a demon in the chamber-pot, to say nothing of conspiring wizards and the wickedest witch in the west, all seem to be out to kill Tom. He is a cat coming to terms with being a boy, dealing with all this. He has a raven and a cheese as… sort of allies.

And of course there is the princess.

If you were looking for ‘War and Peace’ this is the wrong book for you. It’s a light-hearted and gently satirical fantasy, full of terrible puns and… cats.

*

Wedding Bell Blues

by Ellie Ferguson

Weddings always bring out the worst in people. Or at least that’s the way it seems to Jessica Jones as her younger sister’s wedding day approaches. It’s bad enough Jessie has to wear a bridesmaid dress that looks like it was designed by a color blind Harlequin. Then there’s the best man who is all hands and no manners. Now add in a murder and Jessie’s former lover — former because she caught him doing the horizontal tango on their kitchen table with her also-former best friend. It really is almost more than a girl should be expected to handle. . . .

*

Nocturnal Origins (Nocturnal Lives, Book 1)

by Amanda S. Green

Some things can never be forgotten, no matter how hard you try.

Detective Sergeant Mackenzie Santos knows that bitter lesson all too well. The day she died changed her life and her perception of the world forever.It doesn’t matter that everyone, even her doctors, believe a miracle occurred when she awoke in the hospital morgue. Mac knows better. It hadn’t been a miracle, at least not a holy one. As far as she’s concerned, that’s the day the dogs of Hell came for her.

Investigating one of the most horrendous murders in recent Dallas history, Mac also has to break in a new partner and deal with nosy reporters who follow her every move and who publish confidential details of the investigation without a qualm.

Complicating matters even more, Mac learns the truth about her family and herself, a truth that forces her to deal with the monster within, as well as those on the outside.But none of this matters as much as discovering the identity of the murderer before he can kill again.

*

I have the following books on sale.

Death of a Musketeer

by Sarah D’Almeida (Sarah A. Hoyt)

When D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis discover the corpse of a beautiful woman who looks like the Queen of France, they vow to see that justice is done. They do not know that their investigation will widen from murder to intrigue to conspiracy, bring them the renewed enmity of Cardinal Richelieu and shake their fate in humanity. Through duels and doubts, they pursue the truth, even when their search brings them to the sphere of King Louis XIII himself and makes them confront secrets best forgotten.

*

Dipped, Stripped and Dead

by Elise Hyatt (Sarah A. Hoyt)

A Dyce Dare Mystery

When she was six, Dyce Dare wanted to be a ballerina, but she couldn’t stop tripping over her own feet. Then she wanted to be a lion tamer, but Fluffy, the cat, would not obey her. Which is why at the age of twenty nine she’s dumpster diving, kind of. She’s looking for furniture to keep her refinishing business going, because she would someday like to feed herself and her young son something better than pancakes.

Unfortunately, as has come to be her expectation, things go disastrously wrong. She finds a half melted corpse in a dumpster. This will force her to do what she never wanted to do: solve a crime.

Life is just about to get crazy… er… crazier. But at least at the end of the tunnel there might be a relationship with a very nice police officer.

*

Ill Met by Moonlight

by Sarah A. Hoyt

Young Will Shakespeare is a humble school master who arrives home to find his wife and infant daughter, Susannah are missing, kidnapped by the fairies of Arden Woods, the children of Titania and Oberon. His attempts at rescue are interrupted and complicated by a feud over throne of fairyland, between Sylvanus, king regnant, and his younger brother Quicksilver who is both more and less than he seems. Amid treachery, murder, duel and seduction, Shakespeare discovers the enchantment of fairyland, which will always remain with him, for good and ill. (This book was originally published by Ace/Berkley 10/2001)

*

Witchfinder

by Sarah Hoyt

n Avalon, where the world runs on magic, the king of Britannia appoints a witchfinder to rescue unfortunates with magical power from lands where magic is a capital crime. Or he did. But after the royal princess was kidnapped from her cradle twenty years ago, all travel to other universes has been forbidden, and the position of witchfinder abolished. Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, son of the last witchfinder, breaks the edict. He can’t simply let people die for lack of rescue. His stubborn compassion will bring him trouble and disgrace, turmoil and danger — and maybe, just maybe, the greatest reward of all.

Person or Principle?

by Julie Pascal

 

Fifteen or twenty years ago I was reading a science fiction novel and during the course of a conversation one character asked the other which they put first, if they put people first or principles first.  If I recall correctly the main character said that she put people before principles.

I remember this so clearly after all this time because I didn’t understand the question.  What was meant by “people?”  What was meant by “principles?”  It seemed obvious to me that you couldn’t separate the two things so I couldn’t figure out what the author was trying to get at.  In my mind it always came around to the same idea.  Principles were how you protected people.  I couldn’t picture a scenario in my mind that could be described as putting people first without relying on principles to make that possible.

So it stuck with me.  Over the years I’d reconsider the question in this or that context and discover that it still didn’t make sense.

Perhaps unfortunately, I had an epiphany a year or so ago.  I finally figured out what putting people before principles looks like.  And I noticed that it’s actually very common.  Not only is it common but it’s got a wide scope of expressions and consequences in our society.

The shortest explanation is that putting people before principles is picking sides.

Principles, being principles, are those things that apply equally to everyone.  “Equality” is a principle.  All men are equal under God.  All men are equal under the Law.  The Constitution protects everyone, not just some.  All have the right to worship and speak freely according to their own conscience, not just some.  Lying is wrong, no matter what you lie about.  Stealing is wrong, no matter who you steal from.

This passage from “A Man for All Seasons” is a discussion of “people vs. principle” that, although it doesn’t use the terms at all, catches the essence of it quite well.

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

 

Consider that different people identify the “Devil” differently and we see that there is no end to those who would “Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil.”

In fact, there is no end to those who will argue that a good person must not “tolerate the intolerant.”

What does that mean?  For one example, there is an idea that has been part of our culture that our individual political life, who we vote for or why we vote for them or how our political involvement is expressed, these things ought to be apart from our social and economic involvement in our communities.  Everyone should have the right to their crack-pot notions and the right to be horribly wrong about politics, according to this principle.  More, there’s been the idea that even if you really hated the choices that someone else made, or the statements that someone else made, that you ought to defend their right to make them.  People didn’t always live up to it, but at least the principle was there to try to live up to.  This has been turned entirely on its head.  The reversal is more than simply not defending people who are wrong. It’s more than choosing to be neutral. It must be active opposition. That you must not tolerate the intolerant means this: If someone doesn’t pick the right side in their individual political life, you are morally obligated to be intolerant of their participation in the community.

By that I mean… their job, walking unharassed, purchasing items in a store…

Oh, this intolerance is almost certainly expressed as a positive rather than a negative.  If directed at you this will be about who must be protected from your awful speech, who is hurt by your hateful ideas, and losing your ability to make a living and pay your bills will be told as reasonable “consequences” for your horrible political expression.  Bad things must be opposed by good people.

This idea if applied as a principle equally to everyone would mean that in the past (and elsewhere in the world as I type) all the religious persecution of people with “bad” religions, all the persecution of those with “perverse” and “corrupting” sexual practices, any oppression by law or extra-legally by communities toward those of minority opinions or ethnicities, any horror that is done under the cover of protecting children or society as a whole, is justified.  All of it is justified.

The horrific nature of this obligation to oppress is seldom acknowledged because the sanctioned harassment in question is not considered a principle. It’s picking sides. (You ought to pick the right side.  How hard is that?) Since it’s about picking sides, when you point out to someone that different groups of people are committing the same oppression or injustice and for the exact same motivation you will be told that these are not “equivalent.”  You are guilty of a false equivalency. They aren’t equivalent because they can’t be equivalent. The people involved are different.  The people are different and the ideas are different.  Those being defended truly are “good” and those being punished truly are “bad”.   It doesn’t matter at all that those other people believed the same things when they did what they did.  They were wrong.  So it’s not equivalent.

At this point you should be able to see that the only thing that protects you at all is being lucky enough to have a majority of other people willing to defend your “rights”.  However, since “rights” are principles that would apply to everyone even the bad guys, it’s not your “rights” that are being defended, just YOU.  Ultimately, your only real protection lies in having convinced someone to choose to put YOU before principles. Today. Hopefully tomorrow.

It seems self-evident to me that shifting opinions protect one about as well as closing your eyes keeps others from seeing you.

Perhaps you can see how I always came around full circle and back to the fact that the only thing that does actually protect a “person” is a “principle.” But this equality of protection for everyone requires accepting that principles also protect the Devil and some people just seem unable to accept that.  I don’t know if that’s a personality thing, or if it’s a matter of failing to teach principles at all unless it’s to rail against how the principle is used to protect the Devil and should be destroyed.

“Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

 

There are a number of ways that “putting people first” expresses itself in our society.  One of the most common and relatively simple ways is the various political dichotomies that we see.  It’s in every argument based on compassion.  It’s in weaponized empathy. It’s in claims that logic or facts are oppressive. It’s in the political rhetoric that says that calling for economically sustainable and sensible policies is the same as wanting babies to die.

I’m sure that many people can point out examples in our culture where we’re asked to choose picking sides over principles of equality.

This is why a principle that applies equally to everyone and would protect everyone, “all lives matter”, is considered hateful, and something based on no principle at all but on picking sides, “black lives matter,” is something all “good” people ought to support.

This is why authors who ought to know better by virtue of education and occupation outright call for the end to free speech, which has no value in their ideology beyond allowing bad people to say hurtful and damaging things.

Picking sides is how someone can rail against Christianity and support Islam without going bug nuts from a cognitive break.  There’s no conflict because there is no principle, only picking sides. The illogic involved is immaterial.  A parent doesn’t care about the illogic of favoring their own child when their own child isn’t the best, brightest, most accomplished and wonderful of all children.  They just do it.

So maybe it is a personality issue after all.  Maybe some people simply can’t turn off the part of their brain that wants to find principles, wants to figure out the larger network of truths that apply to everyone.  Maybe it’s personality that makes inequality and the abandonment of principles grate like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Maybe it’s the leftover howl of a small child when they think they figure it out and then life isn’t “fair.”  Except that some people think that “fair” means we all have the same rules, while other people just want life to be “fair” in their favor.

 

I’ve recently started to wonder if intersectionality is an attempt to design an overarching principle. (Feminism sort of tried when parts of it attempted, and failed, to rebrand as equality for everyone.)  Just the concept of intersectionality, the word itself, seems to be an attempt to bring it all into some semblance of a uniform ideology.  But beyond the terminology chosen it’s hard to see and I don’t blame anyone for thinking I’m nuts to suggest that what intersectionality is attempting is “principle.”  There’s a reason that we look at intersectionality and start talking about the oppression Olympics, after all.  There’s a reason why it was described by a young (very liberal) person I know as “an overwhelming manifesto where if you disagree with a single thing it proves that You Are Bad.”  Intersectionality might be an attempt at developing a principle but it can’t succeed.

Why?

Imagine having a Person over Principles world view that is so foundational and automatic that it’s transparent.  You can’t even imagine a different way of looking at the world.  If you read this essay to this point you won’t be disagreeing with the ideas I’ve presented because you’ve decided that I’m a delusional nincompoop spouting gibberish.  This is how foundational the assumptions are.  Now imagine, instead of just choosing sides and promoting your cause, you’ve decided to try to choose ALL sides and promote ALL causes.  Now instead of one person or one cause to put before others, you’ve got to juggle bunches of people and causes and decide their order.

Because “People First” isn’t a principle and it isn’t equality (since equality is a principle), it means you have no choice but figure out who gets put at the head of the line. Who deserves to go first?  Who deserves to go second?  Where does each person fit and each cause rank compared to others? Add to that the moral imperative to abandon principles of equal or civil treatment in order to oppose the “Devil” whomever the Devil may be?

What a mess.

“And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?”

Take heart, they may come for you last.

 

As most of you know, my one, no-fail con a year is Liberty Con, in Tennessee.  Over the years it’s become not just a family reunion (my kids consider it so themselves) but also a place where my fans know they can find me.

It’s sold out, as it usually does.

Thing is, this year with the trip to Dallas so close by, we’re running to get everything done before LC.  I have a mound of clothes to iron (before it gets too hot), I have the beginning of Guardian to rewrite (I’ve not sent it in yet because it felt “off.”  I finally got the voice though.  And I’ll be reading from Guardian, with the proviso that it’s unapproved, so it might change, at my reading at LC on Sunday.

I also need to file a couple of articles with PJmedia, because I missed an entire week, mostly through trying to work on other things, but also through being on antibiotic from h*ll for my ear infection.  And I get paid by the article.

So I’m going to go and do paying work.  But I’ll leave you with my MGC post on what makes a good plot, or at least how I work a plot and my guiding principle: Ride Alongs.  and my sole article at PJmedia in the last week:  A Cultural Revolution in Slow Motion.

BTW late and stupid, as usual, on that last one, someone came to my FB page to tell me I was overgeneralizing “as usual” (No Sh*T Sherlock.  I generalize in 1k word articles.  Because otherwise it would be a textbook.) that I’d got the Cultural Revolution all wrong (I guess this bunny thought Mao was cute and cuddly, and no I didn’t, I’ve read too many autobiographies of people caught in it.)  and that the parallels aren’t that great.

Um… no one is sending indoctrinated young people to the countryside to teach farmers how to farm, true, but we are sending indoctrinated young people across the country to beat people and lecture them in the name of progressivism and “to build a better future” even though everything these young people know of the world they learned from their ideologically insane/no world experience professors.

And if they think there is no similarity to the Chinese cultural revolution, when statues, monuments, references to our own past are being removed from every public space and book, in the name of “progress” then they are part of the problem.  They too have been indoctrinated to the point they have no contact with reality anymore.

Okay, I go write for pay and pack, and clean.  See those of you going to LC on Thursday evening at the con suite (if open, if not we’ll let you know where to meet via tom tom de Baen Barfly.) where we’re apparently having more Port Wine than is good for anyone (So many fans bringing it) and reading aloud from a book that deserves it (and is not mine.  Though I could be tempted.  Also Port Wine.)

Post tomorrow.

Six years ago now I told my husband I was quitting writing.

It wasn’t the first time I told him that, but that time he took me seriously.  He knew it had been building a long time, partly frustration, partly insufficient recompense, partly that proverbial hostile work environment.

It wasn’t a matter of my being tired of writing, or frustrated with my own progress.  I’d had those moments too, coming up.  I once gave up writing for two weeks.  At the end of which Dan and the boys begged me to go back to writing because they couldn’t take me anymore.  I’d cleaned everything, twice, and was starting to take an unhealthy interest in the boys’ play-activities.  I think it was the “there is only one right way to build a toy railroad” that broke younger son.

But in 2011 I’d hit a different type of wall.  Several things were coming to a head.

First, my then agent had started pressuring me to have a blog, have a presence on social media.  The words “organize giveaways” had been uttered.  It seemed I just wasn’t selling enough and it was my fault because I wasn’t spending my entire advance to promote.

Look, I’m NOT utterly stupid, and I know I suck at self-promotion.  Partly because my “publicity to bragging” boundary is set too low.  But there were also things about the field and how it operated that had started bothering me something awful.  One of them was the whole “contest” and “giveaway” thing.  Like giving kids prizes for reading in school, it was predicated on the idea that reading was unpleasant, not something you did, and it must be rewarded with fast food coupons.  Part of it is that it started having the same whiff as the magazines I used to buy, so I could write for them.  After a while I started suspecting magazines only had subscribers because people were subscribing to see what they published, so they could write for them.  It was a daisy chain of looking for prestige and advantage, which works fine if your real job is college professor and you just need the credits to look good, but not so fine if your intent is to make a living from writing.

The whole “I will have a contest, and give away an ipad if you retweet my post about my book” started having the same feeling.  For one, most of you followers were other writers, who did it so that you would retweet their book and so they could — maybe — win an ipad.  The end result seemed to be being talked about EVERYWHERE but not actually read.  Which impressed a certain type of publisher (not Baen) but didn’t actually make any money.

I knew that people read — or at least at Baen I’d found some real enthusiasm for books and reading from people who didn’t write or weren’t looking for how to become writers — but my books for Baen had met with distinct lack of success (Darkship Thieves had just come out) and I was about to give up.

No one else would touch me, anyway, certainly not as one of the darlings.

Part of it is that I didn’t keep up on the latest pc-speak and wasn’t one of the twitter brigade (which is what my agent envisioned me becoming anyway, since I can be gregarious and engaging when I want to.)

The piece of the puzzle she was missing is that I COULDN’T become one of the PC brigade on Twitter.  The reason I was a bit of cipher about politics (except for whatever my face gave away when someone got up at World Fantasy and talked about “our next president, Howard Dean”) was that I didn’t sing in the choir, and I’d long ago found there was a limit to my dissembling.

I could keep quiet.  I could, occasionally, make a joke about one of the (many, there’s a reason they’re the stupid party) silly things the right had done.  BUT I couldn’t live like that, because what the left had come to mean: Collectivism, statism, rigid enforcement of “right think” was antithetical to everything I was and everything I thought.  I knew too much to pretend that communism was sort of well-intentioned salvation army without G-d.  Because if I tried, the stench of 100 million graves rose up to suffocate me, and then I couldn’t sleep at night.

And socialism was the new hotness in our circles and communism very cool, and self-censorship and joining the blame and guilt brigade the way to be noticed.

I couldn’t do that.  Not and remain myself.  (And you don’t want me to become someone else.  Let’s put it this way “I watch myself ALL THE TIME.”)

I’d had a blog since 2007 and it was puttering along.  I had loyal readers, but I posted maybe once a week, because if I posted more, I’d have to post about what interested me and what concerned me.  Per one of the kids last night, I’m composed of three parts: Geekery, writing, and an unhealthy obsession with politics.

I could talk about geekery and writing, sure, but not enough to keep a blog going.  And the unhealthy obsession with politics, kept getting in the way, enmeshed in the others.  Because they are.  Only I had to keep quiet about that part.

For years I’d been living a double life.  I kept quite and secretive about what my politcs were to all but a few friends.  And I had a nom de blog, under which I commented (weirdly there was someone blogging under the name, which I didn’t find out till MUCH later, but I only used the name to comment.  I think some people confused us.  More than once.)  To throw dust on my trail, I’d given this persona a whole other life/interests/profession, only it was starting to leak into my real life, as characters will, and it was driving me nuts. And there was the friend who tracked me by linguistic style, and the fact I was starting to slip up.

So–

There being other things, including possibly a nosy angel with a mission, I decided I was going to stop writing, I was going to come out of the political closet, and I was going to find some other thing in which I could make money: Maybe making cloth dragons?

I wasn’t going to stop writing because I had no more ideas, because I didn’t want to write, or because I was tired of making money.

It was linked, see.  If I came out of the political closet then all doors but Baen would shut with a bang.  And I’d have to give up writing, because I wasn’t doing that well at Baen, either.

And even if I stayed in the political closet, I wasn’t promoting the way my agent thought I could/should, and so she’d started only sending my stuff out to third-tier houses.

I had to come out of the political closet or die, and, I thought, at the time, if I came out of the political closet I was done for.

That morning, in the closet-sized bathroom of our Victorian in downtown Colorado Springs, while we shifted around so we could both dry ourselves after showering, I told Dan I was done.  He’d told me years ago if there came a time all Writing  did was make me unhappy, I should quit.  I was quitting.

My long suffering husband listened to me, then hugged me and let me cry on his shoulder, and then told me “Why don’t you give it another year?  If you feel the same way in a year, we’ll find something for you to do that makes you happy.  Come out of the political closet, by all means.  Stop faking it.  Just don’t quit writing yet.”

That week I sent a letter to someone who had been an early mentor, Kristine Kathryn Rusch telling her I was taking a year to shutter the thing down, and in return she sent me an email telling me to shut up and come to a workshop in September on indie publishing.  (She was much nicer than that, but it amounted to that.)

And then Darkship Thieves sold, and eventually won the Prometheus,  and things changed.

And I came out of the political closet, and I’m still here.

It occurred to me yesterday that I’m in a very weird sort of position.  Most of the publishers-not-Baen still won’t touch me with a ten foot pole, but other than the ideologically committed extreme left, the rest of the field hasn’t shunned me.  It’s not all closet right wingers reaching out to me, either.  There’s a lot of people whose politics I frankly don’t know, who are willing to talk to/work with me, particularly when something needs done.

The thing is, it didn’t use to be like that.  Back in that bathroom, 6 years ago, when I whined to Dan that if I came out of the political closet it was all up, it was true.  Or it had been true very recently.

You didn’t even need to be politically displeasing.  It was enough for someone to start a rumor about you, because they thought they’d seen you do or same something that was against the ethos of NY publishing.  Say, you posted a picture of your cat and said you didn’t approve of spaying.  (I’m divided and it’s a long story, but we do spay.)  Or someone heard you didn’t like the darling book of the season.

Suddenly (this happened to an extent to me in 2003 because awful numbers after 9/11 were deemed to be my fault, but no one knew why Ace didn’t want to buy me anymore, and things were whispered) a desert formed around the “culprit.”  Since most of the time we weren’t sure why someone was being no longer published/shunned, we tried to get away from them as much as possible, so that we weren’t hit by whatever the heresy was.

The effect when you were the shunned one is that you found yourself, at a time of financial and emotional need, deserted by your friends and anyone who might understand your plight.  Conventions became a vast wasteland of backs turned as you approached.

If I hadn’t had some real friends, who frankly didn’t care, and David Drake who got me into Baen that would have been the end of my writing career, after 15 years of breaking in.  All because of numbers, which I couldn’t help given circumstances, but the field was as always rife with rumor.

Imagine how much worse it would be to tell the truth and shame the devil.  My career would be over.

However, part of what was working at me, and had been, is that my career COULD be over any minute, any way.  It’s impossible to write thousands of words and a blog, and not say something that sounded awful out of context.  And once they’d tainted you with racist or sexist or homophobic, you were a pariah and could never get back.

Things have changed.  Things have changed a lot.  The campaign against Milo Yannopoulos was one of the worst I’ve seen, and, within days, had cost him his job and his book contract.  This is the way things used to happen and how the left conquered many fields: academia, publishing, the arts, movies, even your local library system.  Step out of line politically, make too much noise, and you’d be destroyed and never heard from again.

It used to be incredibly effective.

But Milo — Yanno? — has his book out, and has seed money for his own site.  And those of us who made ourselves persona non-grata keep chugging on, making a quite respectable living.

Sure, part of this is that the worm is turning or, as I like to put it, the times they are achanging.

Part of it is that when the left takes over an institution, guts it, and prances around in its skin demanding respect, they destroy that institution from within.  They’re not very creative, being a cult of sorts, with rigidly imposed limits on their thinking.  And they’re not very good at understanding the market.  So things… go South fast, resulting in those magazines read only by writers, and in books everyone talks about and nobody reads.

Part of it is that while they were long-marching, we were taking stem degrees and building other ways to do things.  Now with indie, it is objectively impossible to block anyone from publishing.  Sure, you can try.  But I can use at least five names legally, (as in I can cash a check addressed to that name) and there are other ways.  Most people are just pixels on the net these days.  H*ll I could become a “darling” with impecable political credentials next week, if I wanted to.  (I don’t want to.)

And while many people are stuck in the past, and while indie publishing might not do a d*mn thing for your academic resume, it can make you money.  Most of my indie friends out-earn me.  My indie book outearned my traditional ones.

I objectively CANNOT be blacklisted.  I can’t even be side-streamed.  And I CAN and do earn a living.  Better than many of the darlings, at this point.

This is why I laughed at the insane objective of “keeping the SJWs out of publishing” — how exactly do you plan to do that?  Short of a government take over and extreme authoritarianism?  That won’t work? And will result in Samizadt and in giving the rat bastages credit they don’t deserve.  (You want communism to be creditable again? That’s the only way to do it.)  And HOW do you plan to take over government, precisely?  Go ahead, try. Shine on you crazy diamond!

The SJWs had a lot more control of the “only reputable market” than we can get in a generation.  (These things take time.  Also, this is only if there IS a “traditional” market in a generation.  Indications aren’t … promising.)  And they couldn’t keep ME out, when there was a sort of nascent, hesitating market.  Sure, I had a couple of very lean years, but I came back, and I’m doing fine.  (Yeah, it is a case of “and yet she persisted.”)  How could you keep people out when we don’t have that kind of control and the market is becoming distributed all around you?  You know the market always wins, right?  Even when regulated, it comes back.  And why would you want to?  They’re doing a fine job of doing themselves out of readers, already.

I’ve been watching, with some interest, as the right builds parallel structures.  Often healthier parallel structures than the left, because we believe in the market and they don’t.  For instance, PJmedia pays.  Huffpo doesn’t.

Sure, our structures and institutions don’t have the “prestige” yet, because prestige consists of being invited to the right shows and the right academic speeches.  You are invited by other people who came up the traditional ladder, of course.  But the thing you have to remember is that ALL OF THESE INSTITUTIONS ARE DYING.

Sure, some of the old names, even theoretically on the right, won’t associate with us.  We’re those crazy people and “tainted.”  But this is rather normal when a revolutionary avant garde is coming in.  Eventually the crazy kids become the greybeards with position and thoughtful discourse.  And the rebels become founding fathers.

The point is that you are no longer left out in the cold because of your political opinions — right or left — or really, because of anything.  Because wherever you are, you can find your footing and start to build a ladder.

I laugh like an hyena when I read that some new magazine is “giving voice to marginalized people.” Who is marginalizing them?  The only place they can be marginalized from is traditional publishing, the same people who talk about embracing them and giving them voice.

Thing is, though, that it’s true in a way.  Traditional publishing demanded a much tighter line of minorities.  You had to act a certain way or be cast out into outer night.  And then if you were “good” they’d give you a “voice.”  Provided you said what they wanted to.

That is OVER.

When cast into outer darkness we light a flash light, then build a fire, then…

Soon enough our little encampment outside the walls is shining like  star, and the big city is dark and dying.

Which is sort of what is happening to most of trad pub, with Barnes and Toys in jeopardy and their power to “make” bestsellers by push a thing of the past.

Sure, we’ll never get invited to The View.

Did you want to be?

They’re dead men — and notably women — walking.

Let the dead bury their dead.  You start building a ladder, and giving a hand up to other friends who are out here, in the outer darkness that is not all that dark anymore.

Sure a lot of the places you stand will give out under you.  And some will prove to be like the left, only on slightly different ideals.  Power hungry people got to power hunger, and some are smart enough to see the times, they are achanging.

But if you work hard, if you deal fairly with your friends, if you help when you can and are willing to discover new pathways to making money and establishing institutions, you will do well.

The citadel of the left is crumbling.  Build ladders and get to higher ground above it.  If you build on expertise, on hard work, on doing favors when you can, you will eventually find yourself more stable than you ever were before, without having to sell out who you are and what you believe.

The tide is coming in.  Build ladders.  And be not afraid.

 

 

 

 

*Haven’t got a post from the Oyster.  He’s probably playing with his forks. Seriously, not a reproach, I know what his life gets like, and he does this for free.
As for me, I’m dressing to go to the airport and will be back home in some hours.  I feel dead, but that is more that the antibiotic level I’m taking is ALMOST anti-Sarah, because of the levels and compensating for the prednisone.  I hate antibiotics that make you feel like your internals were liquified and hurt all over. Anyway, back home, with not as much written as I wanted to, but hey, that’s life. -SAH*

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 ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Hair

Okay, ladies, gentlemen and small fuzzy animals.  Vignettes are postponed till tomorrow, when there might also if Oyster has time, be a promo post.

This is the time in the blog where (Giovanni Guareschi readers will get this) I turn the picture of Heinlein to the wall, put my hands on my hips and speak in my own way.

Before we start, I want to point out this is my one and only post on this sh*t and that it is done ONLY to be my one and only post on this thing, because a) I have a job.  (Three, actually, if you count insty and pjmedia, but who’s counting?) b) I don’t have time to get into playground fights. c) Did I mention I have a job?  And a family? And friends?  All whom come before playground fights.

You know “why does it always have to be snakes?”  In my case it’s “why does it always have to be the attacking stupid?”  And more importantly why does the attacking stupid have to strike while I’m really busy, away from home and trying to finish work before a convention?

It never fails.  It’s like I send “I’m out of home and busy” beacons throughout the world and the stupid go “Oh, great time to have fight with my mirror and pretend it’s Sarah.”  It looks something like this:

The last time this happened it was because the VolksDeutsche Expatriate decided it was a great time to fight with me on the meaning of being American while I had cued up posts and was a space convention minding my own business.  He was all:

While I was all:

And he got so mad that he faked a tweet from me saying I’d punch him. Which is quite insane because a) I don’t tweet. b) If I ever threatened anyone in public, I’d threaten to have them have something silly happen to them, like being eaten by a komodo dragon.

Or maybe danced to death by a secretary bird:

But mostly I don’t threaten people, certainly not with anything physical, because my life is like this:

And if it weren’t, I’d rather it be like this:

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a physical fight. I never want to be in another again. And frankly I don’t have much use for online fights again, because my life is mostly like this:

This time the sequence is, if anything, even more bizarre. On Tuesday Amanda Green asked me to swap days with her at MGC. It has occurred to me I should give people reassurance I didn’t forget I promised, long ago, to put up a Sad Puppies Permanent page to become a review and recommend site which might give indies (in all fields, not just SF a chance to shine.) Back then (I’m sure you can find the post if you look at MGC) I said we were bringing the movement in for a landing, decoupling it from apparent pursuit of awards (apparent? Yeah. More on that) and retiring the name with dignity to become a place to find books you want to read.

Now, when I put up that post, many months ago, I was very surprised at getting this reaction from a bunch of blogs supposedly on our side:

They were all like “why does she think we need a review/recommend site, when we already have this one.” So in the post at MGC I tipped my hat to the right, pointed out that yes, I read their reviews but we had different sensibilities. (Some of them, at least, draw the review line on the philosophy of the author. Eh, to each his own, right.)

My horribly offensive post is here: About those lost puppies.

Understand I posted this because I felt mildly guilty, the same way I feel mildly guilty about being late sending out books and shirts and stuff promised to fans, because this year has entailed a month of auto-immune attack for every two months well, and since I have more deliveries than UPS, when I’m finally well, I have to catch up on that month of lost work.

I did not feel guilty about a) not turning over Sad Puppies to someone else. Sad Puppies was Larry’s, then Brad’s, then Kate’s, and is now mine and next year will be mostly Amanda’s. We were in it from the beginning, and we have decided long ago that it would stay within the cabal, because none of us — all of us public figures to a degree or another — can afford to have something associated with our name taken down a crazy road without us having control over it. b) Not putting up a list for the Hugos — I was never going to put up a list. And I feel queasy about encouraging people to vote for an award that has been so thoroughly tainted. c) Not putting up a list for the Dragon. The Dragon is bigger than any of us. Some small names got in last year, but they were just because it was the first time. Right now I’m not big enough for the dragons, and I doubt any who covet it are either. d) I thought it was time to get out from between the fight of the Volksdeutshe expatriate and the guardians of chorfdom, because they’re all like this:

And I’m all like this:

THE POINT of the fight for the Sad Puppies was never to get the Hugos, to conquer the Hugos or to hold the Hugos in perpetuity. It was simply to show that the fight was rigged and in the possession of a small clique.

THIS was amply proven by Larry and Brad, and if more was needed, Kate did a double reverse maneuver and actually proved that even if you did EVERYTHING they wanted you to do from open nomination, to more than the slots per category, to actually attending conventions and being very very nice, they would still attack you if you weren’t one of the club.

To continue participating in the Hugos at all after that would be stupid. Like this:

We’ve proven the dot isn’t there to catch, you’re never going to catch it, if you caught it it wouldn’t be worth anything, and frankly those of us in possession of more than a back brain understood both that the fight was never really over the Hugos and that we were never going to catch it. And at some point, it was going to stop and come in for a landing, while we went back to something more productive, like this:

Because this is how we actually make a living, and this is what matters to us. (More about awards in a moment.)

We figured the Chorfs would be celebrating their making of the Hugo more selective with this maneuver:

Vile 666 would be throwing a party like this:

The VolksDeutsche Expatriate would be commanding his armies like this (Only with a photo of himself behind him):

And we’d be:

So, imagine my surprise when my post immediately attracted two commenters yelling at me for… well… actually I have no idea because most of it makes no sense. You guys can see the comments yourselves. There’s something about me looking down on people who don’t use the right oyster fork. You guys know my background and my question on this is… there’s a FORK? FOR OYSTERS? Why?

The other one apparently had something about me slandering other puppy-descended movements, which frankly… was news to me. First slander doesn’t mean what they think it means. Second, I’m fairly sure to slander them I’d have to mention them, and I don’t recall I have, except for Superversive, for whose anthology, Forbidden thoughts I wrote a short story. (It was as a press of that name needs to make it a rather more on-the-nose anthology than I’d have made it, but the point is I wasn’t the editor, the stories weren’t mine to choose, and it would be a funny world if my aesthetics were the only ones that counted, right? So, saying they have different tastes from me doesn’t count as a slander, right? particularly when I still wrote for them. Either that or I don’t know what slander means. Maybe I slandered them BY writing for them? I’m SOOOOOOO confused.)

What I do understand however is that the idea of bringing the movement for a landing was absolutely right, because in the middle of their bilge, these derp canoes made it a point of saying we should save our fight until we “push the SJWs out of publishing.”

This was so crazy I kind of glossed over it, until an alert reader answered that point and then I was like:

And then I was like:

1- This is EXACTLY what we were accused of by the left and the media. Do you mean you guys on the right believed it? Wow.

2 – This was never part of our intention, because we’re not crazy. Most of us are Americans who believe in freedom of speech. You’re allowed to write whatever you want to. And we’re allowed to point and laugh or simply ignore it.

3- How in actual heck do you propose to “push someone out of publishing”? Newsflash for those who live in backward European countries — there’s indie. Anyone can publish. Sure, you can destroy anyone’s readership, maybe (only you can’t if they’re on the left, unless you’re more left than they are) but how do you plan to make sure they don’t change names and publish again?

4- It is possible to block people from awards, which is what the left has been doing. But awards are THEIR game, because they’re a way to get tenure and better teaching salaries. What do they mean to us? Not a heck of a lot. So pushing them out of the awards would be a lot of work that gains us nothing, particularly since they’ve changed the rules so they can’t be pushed out.

5- If you somehow DID manage to push them out of TRADITIONAL publishing (which was never a Sad Puppies objective and which we DO NOT approve of), you’d not push them out of sales, distribution, or any of the other places now owned by the left, so you’re kind of like:

That’s what you want to do? Fine. We’ll:

You rock on. But we will be like this:

Because awards are a game of the left. And a game of authors with a great big following. My books sell okay, but I’m not yet where I could win a Dragon, or where it would do any good for my career, because you know what? Amazon rankings don’t lie. Someday, maybe.

Until then I’ll be doing this:

And you should too.

And Sad Puppies will be a review and recommend side, everything working out this next week.

You want to have a fight with establishment SF? We might even hold your coat. Depending on how sane you are.

BUT you can’t call it Sad Puppies, a name associated with OUR names and therefore of importance to us.

I understand you don’t approve of what I’m doing. I just fail to see why I should care.

This is my last statement on all of this. You guys carry on fighting Mirror-Sarah because I’m busy.

We’re at an undisclosed location for a writing weekend.  I’m sorry.  I meant to post, but I have a ton of things to catch up, since I am FINALLY over the auto-immune and medicated for the ear infection.

 

I’ll TRY to do Grant today, but no promises.

 

Yeah, I’m back on the future history and the Usaian faith.  I know it starts somewhere in the 21st century.  Way too meta, but my name ain’t Hubbard, so ignore that.

I took yesterday off to write, and because I’m actually cursed (right?) I immediately came down with a severe ear infection.  This is not unusual when tapering on prednisone. It’s just… normally not ears.  Anyway, I did the thing I usually do and tried to ignore it, but when I was sweating and crying with pain, I got dragged to the doctor, and am now on antibiotic and better.  Not fully well (duh) but not crying in pain, which I count as a win.  I might even get some work done today.

And speaking of the Usaian faith.  One of you is cute when I mention it, and says she’s not a Usaian but an American, but the two are distinctly different.  I called it Usaian for a reason, partly because I heard it used as a pejorative in international boards (yeah, I know) and we have an history of taking those and using them with pride.  See Yankee.

But I used the term, because I needed a different term from “American.”

I went to school with two American twins.  You wouldn’t know it from looking at them, because they were as Portuguese as they can be. But they bragged of their status, because — get this — they got money from the US every month.

Now back then I saw nothing unusual about this.  In Portugal, you do get paid per-child.  It’s called “family allowance” and it wasn’t a heck of a lot, but you got some money every month (not money back on taxes, just money.)  Now I suspect that these chicks were on some form of assistance for poor families (still most, but at the time all of Portugal would qualify, by income.)  Because they went to the embassy every month to collect a check.  And their entire family lived off it, an upper-middle class lifestyle.

You see, their mother was on a bonafide tourist visa, and went into premature labor as they landed.  They saved the twins who, born on American soil, were American.  In the legal sense, that is.  There was no sign they were American in any other way.

“But Sarah, you say, that’s because nationality of birth on the soil is stupid.  But people who have lived here for centuries, whose ancestors came over if not on the Mayflower, on a decently later ship, are SURELY American.”

You’d think so, wouldn’t you?  I think the founders thought it was impossible for anyone who knew the country not to love it.  Hence, the citizenship rules we have.

However, go through the old families in New England. 90% of them are exquisitely well educated in the best schools, and ideological international socialists.  A lot of them, in fact, amount to a fifth column on our soil, the boot of the occupier on our neck.  The fact that they were turned by a would be occupier who then collapsed from within doesn’t change the fact they are in all but name enemy agents.

But they are AMERICAN.  They were born here.  So were their ancestors.  (And we all know three generations of magic soil will do it.  After all experts assure us of this.  Just like the other experts assure us that being born here would do it.)

Their vote counts as much as mine and yours.

In most countries this would make perfect sense.  Nationality and tribe are roughly covalent in use, if not in fact.  What I mean is though there is a heck of a lot more miscegenation between countries in Europe than you’d think (no, really. Not just the normal people with wandering feet, but you know, invaders, war, economic exiles, religious exiles, you name it.  All of them leaving DNA behind) each nation thinks of itself as the US thinks of races.  (Which is a largely fictitious thing in the genetic sense in the US also.  Anthropologists have a technical term for American blacks: Caucasian.)  They think of themselves as tribes or clans, or sometimes related tribes or clans (the North and South of Portugal despise each other, but will admit they’re closer to each other than say to Spaniards.  And they admit they’re closer to Spaniards than to Frenchmen.  you get the point.) So being born there means you’re likely to intermarry with the tribe.  And if your family stays there for generations, you already have.

But America is something else: it is a country founded on loyalty to the constitution, on belief in self government and on what Heinlein called the immortal poetry of the declaration of independence.

We are sure, a nation of soil and culture, but we’re also a nation of belief.

My future history required that America fall.

I’ve found I have this little defect: I can’t write a book set on our Earth in which America doesn’t exist, even if only just as a dream and a hope.

So I figured after America fell, the dream and the hope remained.  “Humanity’s last best hope.”

Dreams and hopes are important.  It was to an extent the dream of a Rome that never was, the idealized republic that people in the Empire wrote about, which caused America to come into being.

I noticed, further, that we had something here that only one other historical people had.  You see, in most nations, when they lose a war, have a financial crisis, get righteously trounced, the fault is found anywhere but themselves.  It was the great betrayal of an internal minority.  It was our enemies being so dastardly.  It was unfair, and besides the sun was in our eyes.

Americans, by and large, don’t do that.  Instead they buckle down, swallow hard and go “it’s because we deviated from our own principles.  If we do penance and return to a more faithful observance of our beliefs, we’ll be great again.”

Whether that’s true or not — obviously I think it is.  There’s a lot of the USAian in me. — it is a weird religion.

Those of you who have read the old testament know exactly what other nation did this.

It is a belief highly likely to form into a religion when the people cease having any other form of identification.  You live and die and exist by your belief.

Now are these people in the future, who believe in the Usaian religion, are persecuted for it, and who hold onto it as their reason to live Americans?

Oh, h*ll no.  Most of them weren’t born on American soil, and at any rate, America has no legal existence in their world.

So, they’re not American.  But they believe in the founding principles.  And they carry the light of them, idealized, through the night of tyranny, with intent to reestablish the Republic and to be Americans again.

I have — of course — great sympathy with them.  It also amuses me to play with religious belief in the future, divorced from other beliefs that bring a knee jerk reaction (though many of my characters are the religions we have now, sometimes with a USAian overlay) because it allows me to bring forth the nobility of honor, devotion and belief.

But more than that, as the Earth revolution unrolls, we get to see where belief fails, where it can get contaminated, and where it’s impossible to recreate America as such (which America would be the question, given the three centuries of existence they sort of have records of)  because of new conditions, different tech, different people.  And it’s fascinating to see how close they go towards recreating it.

Because it’s my world and I’m a romantic, the closest it comes to existing eventually (oh, there’s many books to get there) is in the North American territories, which weirdly end up including a portion of what we call Canada, because it greens first in this timeline.

But will it ever be America?  Well, it will have or fight for the same principles.  But America the dream will remain as unreachable to them as it is to us: a shining city on a hill to which we must ascend forever, but which remains too perfect for mere mortals.

And yet the fact that it exists as an ideal is enough to keep the hopes of it alive.  Forever.

 

 

 

*I’m okay, guys.  Actually better today than yesterday when I felt so tired I had to talk myself into taking a shower, and pretty much did nothing in work the rest of the day.  It might have been reaction to life-stuff or it might have been the side effect of prednisone (but hey, as of yesterday no open sores) who knows.  Whatever it is, it’s better now, but I have to catch up on work.  Thank you Orvan for filling in. – SAH*

Letter from a Minotaur: “Only Human” – by Orvan Ox

“I’m only human.” “You’re only human.” “(S)He’s only human.”

It sounds like an excuse for being of limited capability, “only” human. Alright, humans are not Gods. Not to themselves, anyway. They warn themselves not to “play God” and point to horrors of their history when someone has tried to do that very thing. A most sound warning. Mr. Marx might not have realized it, but he eventually killed millions in his perhaps unknowing attempt. Mr. Hitler made and attempt and contributed to the horrific cost. Mr. Stalin as well. And Mr. Zedong. And… well, it’s long, horrific list. The “Zombie Apocalypse” might be less deadly should it happen – at least Humanity will know it has an Enemy and be willing to fight it from near the beginning. Yes, humans “playing God” tends to end in disaster.

And yet… it’s humans that called my kind into existence. Yes. Sure that one story is about a sacrificial gift not sacrificed, but used in a most unusual (and genetically impossible) breeding procedure. But the result, horrific as Asterion and Asterion’s story was and is (yes, “The Minotaur” had a name: Asterion) it did inspire the idea of the general form and give it – us! – a name.

Humanity has similarly created centaurs, unicorns, mer-folk, fauns, satyrs, dragons, and a good (or bad) many others. And when that wasn’t enough, why, they came up with Personifications. The process of dying and the state of death was a thing that was somehow more easily understood by inventing the character of Death (it was not “JUST TERRY PRATCHETT” though he [He?] did very well with the characterization). Yule? Solstice? Christmas? The Great Spirit of Giving is created in Santa Claus (and if once-common lumps of coal do not send the message of “you get a common, near worthless gift, you Problem Child” with sufficient force, there is Krampus – the anti-Claus as he were.)

“Only human.” Only. You have created… us. Your myths are our existence. In that way, humanity, you ARE our Gods – you have made us. Yes, we are imperfect – in the same ways you are. Only the traits are… amplified. The centaurs party and party hard. There is, as far as I know, no centaur version of William Tell. It is simply understood that, of course, the centaur’s arrow hits the apple and not the noggin – even if the centaur downed a barrel of wine. Us minotaurs.. well, let’s just say you do NOT wish to be the “Guest of Honor” at a minotaur event (I suggest you nominate a sheep – one that will NOT be missed – for that role. Mint jelly optional, but highly recommended). The unicorns are more faultless than Angels… or are at least as evil if not moreso than Demons, depending upon the tale and the teller.

Ponder that power. Humanity.. creates. Yes, rocketships to the Moon and wafers of silicon where they’ve taught the sand mathematics and lightning politely gives error messages instead of smitings. But also… entire species. Entire Universes! Mirrors. Oh, Yerkes and Palomar and those that came after are impressive, sure. But virtual mirrors of humanity itself. Not mere mirrors, but <i>amplifying</i> mirrors. One trait or another, good or bad, is dialed up to 11. Or 12. It’s not that we are human – we are not. Nor are we “better” than humans. Humans might claim such, but we didn’t summon ourselves into existence. That’s a Brilliant Human Trick. We did not do that. We are… stories.

Humanity, please keep telling the stories. And if you do not like them, then tell better ones. My kind… our kind… depends on you.  If you forget us, we cease to be. We are NOT Gods. You… you… just might be. Don’t play at it. Take it very seriously indeed. We’re depending on you. And so are you. Embrace it, but with great caution. What you create or summon can be Good or Evil.. dialed way up.  Choose wisely.

This is where I confess both in my science fiction and in other people’s writing I have a problem with “super humans!” tm.

Oh, most of the super-powers in comics and books and movies are just weird, and not really super powers that could develop. But once I settle in to “oh, fantasy,” I can watch most of them.  I just quickly get tired and mostly watch them because the guys (husband & sons) are watching, not because it’s something that naturally attracts me.  Given several different blurbs for movies, I’d rarely choose “super powers.”

And here, I should probably note that I grew up with what my parents didn’t call “a notion of superpowers” only because it wasn’t in their vocabulary.

You know that thing kids have, where they think they’ll try to do something and do it perfectly first time out?  Every kids seems to have this, at around two or three, and when they do try something, be it jumping or dancing or riding a bike and it doesn’t work, it takes a lot of patience from the adults to say “no, you have to practice, till you get it right.”

My parents, and this might have been cultural or maybe an early 20th century thing, had this idea of “genius.”  If you were a musical genius, you might never have seen an instrument, but the first time you see a piano, you’re going to play perfectly well.  You might never have written a story, but if you’re a writing genius, the first time you try, it will be Shakespeare.  You might never have ridden a bike, but if you’re physically gifted, the first time you try–  You get the point.

I grew up with them “testing” me against things I’d never seen or thought of doing, and then being disappointed I wasn’t instantly good at them.  And it must be part of the culture, because I grew up so immersed in this that I was in my thirties before I realized this was crazy-cakes.

I’m smarter than the average bear.  How much smarter I don’t know, and these things are hard to test or quantify, one of the reasons I don’t throw IQ points around like confetti.  But when you always rise to the top of your class, even in an environment biased against you (most of my secondary education, because I was a girl.  Though there was also “from a backwater village” and later — here — the “she has an accent, can she even understand what we’re saying”) you sort of come to accept you’re above average.  But everything I do comes at the cost of a lot of work.  At one time I spoke seven languages fluently, but I did an insane amount of work on each, the first three years, memorizing grammar and verb forms, and then reading in the language in the next three years, even when it was very difficult in the beginning.  And while I don’t know anyone who can just walk into a place and speak the language, I know there is such a  thing as a talent for languages.  My brother routinely went somewhere for two weeks, and came back speaking the language like a native.  Leading to the joke that we could drop him naked in the middle of the amazonian rain forest and he’d emerge speaking whatever tribal language there was, within two weeks.

But I’m not stupid.  I know he could speak the language “like a native” in two weeks, but not actually.  He would be able to ask essential questions and get the gist of things said to him.  But if he’d stayed there, he’d spend years learning the language to be truly like a native.  I still envied him, because I can learn, but it takes me insane amounts of work.

In the same way my parents were kind of pleased because I won writing contests very early and had a chapbook of my poems published at 14 (Yes, I know.  I’m Sarah A. Hoyt, and I’m a poet.  It’s been fourteen years, five months, two weeks and three days since I last wrote a sonnet, but I’m still a poet, and I have to stay away from it, consciously, every day.  Even a couplet would be too much.)  So I had some talent.  But only some, since I didn’t write a world-famous novel at six.

In reality, I had some facility with language, and a compulsion to make up and tell stories, which probably has its roots in my very lonely childhood, where I had to make up the games AND the play friends.  But twenty years after selling my first novel (Nineteen minus a few weeks, but who’s counting) I’m still learning my metier.  I probably will be, still, twenty years from now.

Oh, and some novels turn out better than others.  And some are more successful than others which yet again has nothing to do with quality, really.

Then I had a son who is at least one and maybe two standard deviations above me. No, we don’t know.  It’s hard to know because he’s at that level where they have trouble putting a number to it.

He’s now starting to grow into himself, I think.  I mean, nine times out of ten, if you meet him, now, you’ll get that he’s very smart, and you don’t think he’s crazy or borderline mentally slow.

Because that’s what most of his teachers thought, in elementary through middle school, that he was “developmentally disabled” and they couldn’t figure out why we didn’t have accommodations (mostly because he didn’t want them.)  And an entire school (middle) once made war on him under the belief he was and I quote: Mentally Retarded.  (Which is a weird reason to make war on anyone, but there it is.)

Mostly we knew he was “off” somehow, but we weren’t sure how.  And once we figured out he was very, very smart, our problem was figuring out why this often presented like utter stupidity.

You’ve heard of overthinking things, right?  Now combine that with the ability to get very bored once you figure things out, an inability to understand other people AREN’T like you, and therefore to consider most people somewhere between stupid and crazy and several quirks/eccentricities, and what you have is a kid whose first presentation wasn’t “He’s so smart.”

My cousin, who was raised with me (14 years older) is a teacher specializing in the profoundly gifted.  I’d vent at her and she’d laugh and say, “that is completely normal.”  Like, his obsession, at four, with trying to create life.  The vials of things I found under beds and desks, and stuffed in weird places, with rotting household chemicals and bits of dead flies.  (When your four year old heard about the primeval soup but lacks some context and world experience.) Or the two weeks he spent in front of the computer, in his underwear, playing all the computer games he’d got for Christmas, until he mastered them all.  Interrupted only by us dragging him out of the room to hose off and feed.

And the way his obsessions often had nothing to do with the real world or real skills for life.  I mean, it might be your ambition to learn to glue two pieces of cardboard just so, but really? WHY?

Brings us to the future history and “making Supermen.” Most people who are normal or a little above normal (the sweet spot for being considered “very intelligent” is like the top 25% to the top 10%.  Above that people think you’re “crazy” (they’re not wrong in the sense of maladaptive) and anyone top 2% or above is at best considered odd by his/her peers.) and know that other “smarter” people have an easier time with this or that, dream of supermen.  People for whom, they think, the difficult tasks they struggle with are “easy.”

But human intelligence doesn’t work like that.  It’s not quantitative.  It’s qualitative.  The intelligence that allows you to solve a math problem at a glance will also seriously complicate your life when you’re trying to choose clothes in the morning, because you’ll run everything through the “and yet on the other hand” and might cause you to emerge from your room in too-tight pants and the luchador shirt you bought at the thrift store while you were in a weird mood, because according to some weird metric that exists in your mind only, they’re the least likely to get you noticed by the neighbor’s dog who hates your guts.  Hence “overthinking” and “So sharp he cuts himself.”  I swear to you the best way to make my kids flunk a test was to ask them questions the other kids could answer in their sleep.  You know “What shape is an egg?” or “What color is the sky.”  They’ll end up positing n-dimensional eggs and describing minute seasonal changes in the sky, because well, no one can ask questions that simple, right?

My older son tells me that “smart” people have more connections between brain cells, and are slower to prune them.  This means they can correlate knowledge much faster/better, but also… well, all those connections are a great way of describing “going fricking nuts.”

Will we ever create supermen?  I don’t know.  Supposing we ever know enough of genetics, we might be stupid enough to try it.

Hence in the future, after they’d created laborers, etc, and created superstates too, they get stupid enough to create “supermen,” partly because they think that they need them to administer their superstates (we already hear rumblings that say EU or the US are “too complex to be administered by normal humans” — it never occurs to them to let the places administer themselves — and it gets more so with both intrusiveness of state and complexity of society.

Now they create at least three levels of supermen, alphas and betas and tetas and then just slightly enhanced humans.

They’re supposed to be faster, smarter, stronger.  It is a thing of note that the editor for Through Fire couldn’t understand why this woman who was supposed to be all these things (and yes, she repeats them to herself like a mantra) could have ANY difficulties.

She has difficulties because I don’t believe in supermen.

Long ago I came on the concept “Have the virtues of your faults” or “have the faults of your virtues.”

Me?  I’m prouder than the devil.  This means I have trouble admitting to difficulties, even those caused by health issues.  It means I don’t do nearly-enough butt kissing to climb in my profession.  In fact the more I like someone who could help me up, the less I show it.  (Yeah, my relationship with my publishing house!) and that I DISDAIN pushing my work too much, because it should sell on its own or something. But that means I’ll break myself in two trying to live up to my good opinion of myself, for instance.  My younger son is a perfectionist.  This means when he delivers something it will be perfect.  But it also means he won’t deliver things he can’t be perfect at.  Which means, yes, sometimes work doesn’t even get turned in.  Also, he has two novellas ready to publish that no one but me might read.

So the smartish people of the future create very smart children to …. be their functionaries, do their bidding: to be their clerks, their planners, their spies, their assassins.

At some point — and I’m not absolutely sure why, but I think it’s the “Writ large” of bugs under the bed, and the fear of exposure of the whole project — these children, named for the scientists who created them, or after national heroes — are collected from all over the Earth and dropped into a “creche” in Germany.  Where, because their caretakers are scared of them, they get brutalized and terrorized into learning and behaving and knowing they’re subordinate to the “real humans.”

Instead these potentially very gifted children and young men emerge with the faults of their virtues and also convinced they’re not quite human and they HAVE to control “real humans” to feel safe.

It is a recipe for trouble.  And trouble will come.