Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Everything is Coming Up Promo- Freerange Oyster

J.M. Ney-Grimm

Skies of Navarys

When the king’s geomancer announces that a tidal wave threatens Navarys – the Atlantis of the North-lands – every citizen on the island springs to action. Amidst the uproar, the aeromancer Palujon steals unique and magical lodestones.

Mago, son of the lodestones’ creator, vows to retrieve his father’s precious artifacts. But Mago’s friend Liliyah questions Palujon’s motives.

Why would a man of his stature break the law? Is he truly a dastard? Life and death hang on her answers.

Henry Vogel

The Counterfeit Captain

A Coloring Book

Captain Nancy Martin expects a lonely death.

Passing out as her battle-damaged starfighter bleeds the last of its air, she comes to in the cavernous and deserted docking bay of an unknown starship. Leaving her crippled fighter to seek help, she finds she’s been scooped up by a gigantic generation ship inhabited by the descendants of the original crew and passengers—people whose entire universe is the ship!

Mistaken for the vast ship’s long-lost and near-mythical Captain, Nancy is welcomed as a savior. She believes she’s found the allies she needs in her desperate fight for survival. But an even greater menace lurks in the shadows of the ship—one that controls every inch of the ship and every life aboard it. One that will stop at nothing to destroy—

The Counterfeit Captain.

Set in the same universe as Vogel’s best-selling novel, The Fugitive Heir, The Counterfeit Captain further expands the stage for Vogel’s exciting brand of star-spanning science fiction adventure.

Mary Catelli

A Diabolical Bargain

Growing up between the Wizards’ Wood and its marvels, and the finest university of wizardry in the world, Nick Briarwood always thought that he wanted to learn wizardry.

When his father attempts to offer him to a demon in a deal, the deal rebounded on him, and Nick survives – but all the evidence points to his having made the deal.

Now he really wants to learn wizardry. Even though the university, the best place to master it, is also the place where he is most likely to be discovered.

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Madeleine and the Mists

Enchanted pools, shadowy dragons, wolves that spring from the mists and vanish into them again, paths that are longer, or shorter, than they should be, given where they went… the Misty Hills were filled with marvels.

Madeleine still left the hills, years ago, to marry against her father’s will. If her husband’s family is less than welcoming, she still is glad she married him, and they have a son, two years old.

But her husband’s overlord has fallen afoul of the king. And all his men fall with him, including her husband.

She sets out, to seek the queen and try to bypass the king – and the Misty Hills.

Some things are not so easily evaded.

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Recently, in a fit of my own form of quixotic insanity, I posted the following in my facebook page:

What did I want? I wanted a Roc’s egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist, and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a likely wench for my droit du seigneur – I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles. I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, “The game’s afoot!” I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is. I had had one chance – for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be – and I had known it and I had let it slip away. Maybe one chance is all you ever get.Oscar Gordan – Glory Road – Robert A. Heinlein.

That passage stirred me when I read it at about 14 or 15, sitting at the kitchen table in my mother’s kitchen.  That’s what I wanted to.  Oh, not the harem as I had no use for odalisques, but perhaps a group of oiled barbarians to carry my chaise over the heads of my adoring subjects.

I knew I was a reprobate, steeped in sin and malice from early on — I don’t lie to myself as much as most people.  I try to be good.  It’s much harder than being nice.  But I also know what lies beneath my attempts — but I didn’t realize how much of a reprobate until I posted this on facebook.

Before the metaphorical ink was dry on the post, I had realized that I was — apparently — a dinosaur come from a much freer past into a Brave New World.  (Which, btw, was NOT an instruction manual, no matter how much people want to make it so.)

Among other things, it was pointed out to me that odalisques didn’t consent, that wanting an harem was sexist and that dust beneath your chariot wheels meant you weren’t a nice person, or an elected ruler or something.

In the Don Camillo books by Giovanni Guareschi, there is this persistent scene, when the village priest is engaged in a feud with the local communists, or the local, ammoral gentry, where he spots one or more of them in the front row, turns the crucifix on the wall so the Christ faces the wall (and doesn’t hear him, is the understanding, though the character has enough depth we realize it’s a respect thing, not a literal thing) puts his hand on his hips and speaks in his own way.

I am now turning the portrait of Heinlein to the walls and putting my hands on my hips.

What a generation of mewling babies, with the intellectual rigor of a drunken sot.  Their inability to even imagine something that might potentially be offensive to someone, somewhere has so restricted their little pea brains that they are functionally historically illiterate.  They not only are unable to imagine that someone, somewhere, might not have believed as they do; they don’t think anyone should try to imagine believing or living differently than the morals of our times.  This at the same time they enjoin us to respect as our equals cultures that are far worse than those imagined far-off ones.

My grandmother used to say “There’s willfully blind, and then there’s those who erase the place where the eyes go.”  And that’s them.  A willfully blind generation of moralist scolds, stumbling blindly towards a future they refuse to comprehend is different from their imaginings, and does not, in any way, care about their scolding.  They wander around the world in a cloud of self-regard, unable to comprehend that other people don’t see them as brave pioneers but as crazed censors with nothing to contribute to either culture or society but a hand held up and  wagging finger and the word “no.”

They don’t realize they are midgets, standing on the shoulders of giants.  Because they can piss down, they imagine themselves superior, unable to see their product is nothing but a yellow streak on the face of civilization.

They’ve built nothing and understand nothing.

So, I’m saying it’s okay to portrait slavery and sexual abuse, war and criminality without making it clear in the books I disapprove?

I’m saying that most of the history of mankind is slavery and sexual abuse, war and criminality, and that in those times, and in those  days there were degrees of evil.  Sometimes a man made a very small advance towards what we now consider a better world.  A tiny one, by the skin of his teeth, and that was enough for us to consider him a hero, and to remember him through the ages.

A friend once pointed out that by our rational, present day morals, Ulysses was a despicable human being.  And my friend is right.  He was a brigand and a thief, a killer, a sea raider.

On the other hand he was in tune with the morals of his time, where hospitality was sacred over property or even self-determination, and he stood out from his time as a cunning one.  In a place and time where most people died within five miles of their birthplace and never broke the rules of his time, this fictional hero had traveled the world and outwitted supernatural enemies.  So.  He was remembered.  His adventures were chanted around fires for millennia and gave the pulse of those who heard it a pleasant rush.  “What if I did? What if I could?”  Even in the nineteenth century, as distant from his morals as from ours, his adventures thrilled many a school boy.  In the sixties, now as distant from us as the face of the moon is from the Earth, his story translated into Portuguese even thrilled a very small girl who’d just learned to read and who didn’t know this was the legend of a lost civilization.

Odalisques?  Well, when I was little, some of the still preserved legends from the Moorish occupation  spoke of good harem masters and bad harem masters.  Everything is relative.  The good ones were often remembered for centuries.  Which in turn helped a new generation of boys grow up with the idea of “what was acceptable.”

Yes, sure, women were always equal to men and blah blah blah.  And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.  It leads to nowhere.

Sure, women have the same rights as men, and are their moral equals.  Unfortunately, human civilization doesn’t proceed wholly in a world of spirits.  While there are undoubtedly some beliefs and conditions that are better than others and while by and large the civilization of humans — with some truly disgusting back sliding — proceeds to freer, less violent and generally better lives for all, in primitive conditions, or even very difficult ones, men tend to revert to the law of the jungle.  This is not ruled by some imaginary noble savage, but by physical force.  And in physical force women drew the short straw.  Meanwhile we’re also the producers of babies, the resource that gives a tribe a future.  Throughout history this combination made us THE most valuable resource, something to be stolen and hoarded and kept captive.  Yes I used “something” because caught in endless pregnancies and vulnerable to attack, through most of human history women weren’t treated as human.

They had a power of a sort.  A power that I’ve seen in action, and which is used — I understand — all over the Arab world.  While there was no such a thing as solidarity among women, each being too interested in the survival and prospering of their children, and therefore often helping in the virtual enslavement of other women (or worse. The history of China is … eye opening) women could and did have power.  A woman with a strong personality could influence a man all the more as she was held to be incapable of it.

If you don’t see the inherent dramatic tension of a story on such lines, it’s because you’re too busy shouting slogans.  Take off your “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” and take your foot out of your mouth and the plugs from your ears, and try to actually pretend you were born and raised in such a society.  No one is going to listen to you if you preach feminist power, and the men of the time will knock you about if you attempt to.  But you can have power by whispering in his ear.  And if you don’t see yourself as the woman who controls the empire with your whisper, if you don’t understand the power of it, your imagination is dead.  Put away the paddles.  Stop trying to restart it.  If it weren’t nailed to its perch, it would be pushing up daisies.

But isn’t it immoral to think, write, create such art?  Wouldn’t it be better if we wrote only about the world as we wish it would be, where men and women are completely alike save for some externals, and where there is no such thing as non-consensual sex or slavery?  Or at least, if we have to write about such a time, shouldn’t we condemn it loud and clear?

Ah, you lotus eaters.  You have no idea how most of the world lives even now, much less in former times.  You don’t understand the GLAMOUR of evil, even as you feel it — or do you really think your little witch hunts are inspired by loving kindness?  Do you think we believe you don’t feel the thrill of the hunt, the joy of sadism? — and you can’t comprehend not scolding when something is not right in tune with your quite up to the minute “morals.”  You lecture us on tolerating “the other” while completely incapable of grasping what “the other” is.  You think if someone is a darker tan or comes from far away, they are moral imbeciles who must be tolerated because they’re too stupid to reform.

And in that way you tolerate the unthinkable, even while refusing to think it or to understand how your ancestors built the civilization you’re now gleefully tearing apart.

You’ve been so rich so long you don’t realize your willful mind-castration is taking you back to a place where YOU will be dust beneath some barbarian’s chariot wheels.

But wont reading about such things make people do them?

Really?  You think your fellow humans are so feeble of mind they’ll be unable to help themselves but will do something because they read about it?  Honestly, is this projection?

There was this theory about movies and video games, both of which being visual probably have more chance of doing that.  It turns out Tipper Gore was wrong.  Actually kids who play violent video games and watch objectionable movies tend to be — on the whole — less violent than their generation.  The operative word is “their generation.”  If you have an entire generation raised by hired strangers who are not allowed to teach them morals, you are going to end up with more violence and amoral behavior, regardless of what they play, watch or read.

As for violent reads: between the ages of ten and twelve, I was fascinated with a book on the Adventures of Captain Morgan, which I BELIEVE had belonged to my great grandmother (unless dad bought it used in one of his ubiquitous old book stores, or as they’re known in Portuguese, Alfarrabios.)  It was a set of leather bound volumes, with original and rather bloody litographs.  I remember particularly Captain Morgan, trying to kidnap a princess, cut off the head of her slave sleeping in the antechamber, while the slave slept, with a blade so sharp the poor woman never woke up.

I mean, these were nineteenth century books.  The killing of innocents was part of the thrilling adventure and you read that scene thrilled that his sword was so sharp he could pull off the unbelievable.

You didn’t read it for the blood, though that gave you a range of the danger he faced, for others tried to do onto him what he did to that salve, but for the fact that the man for his time had an inflexible if idiosyncratic honor and, as written, was a protector of the weak and the oppressed.  (No, not in real life.)

Strangely, though this inspired many dreams (and a very bad novel written at 16 or so) about being a female pirate in the age of sail, I never actually felt the need to cut someone else’s head off as they slept.  Even as a pre-teen, I could get a sense for “that was a different time and place; they did things differently.  Didn’t mean they were right or that I should do them now.”

People who demand either whitewashing or preaching against the past in their stories, lose that sense.  They turn the vast and interesting history of mankind into a flat canvas with themselves in the center dictating what is light and what is dark.

The hubris of it is only half of the evil in this.  The wilful blindness is worse, because by losing sight of the past, they can’t see the future they’re shaping.

A Modest Proposal – Kate Paulk

A Modest Proposal (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)
Given the appalling decision-making powers of the political elites, and the equally appalling spectacle displayed by the recent primary contests in this nation, it becomes essential to propose a simple solution to the destruction of our essential liberties by means of a simple proposal designed to respect the disabilities of those responsible for such poor choices while enabling those of us retaining the capacity for independent thought to continue to enjoy our freedom without doing harm to any other free person.
Whereas the Thirteenth Amendment forbids involuntary servitude of any form save as penalty for commission of a crime, it becomes us to enact involuntary servitude as the penalty for the following crimes:
The offering of; and acceptance of bribes, be they in the form of lobbyist ‘gifts’, financial remuneration, quid-pro-quo understandings, or any other action commonly understood as corrupt.
The use of blackmail; such that a person would reasonably fear for his reputation upon public knowledge of an act that is both legal and meets common understanding of ethics.

That the blackmail of an unconvicted guilty party should expose the guilt and enable prosecution may be considered a fortuitous event.

That the act of knowingly accumulating debt for which payment in full can never be made be considered an act of fraud, and as such, subject to penal servitude similar to that for corruption and blackmail seems only reasonable, and may, with judicious use of auction facilities, assist in the reclamation of this nation’s alarming foreign debt.

We understand that this may cause hardship to those unaccustomed to labor, yet we consider this to be advantageous; in that those most likely to find themselves sentenced to auction are those who, by their decisions and actions, have demonstrated that they are wholly in favor of slavery and desire nothing so much as a benevolent master to serve.
We wish them good fortune in finding such a paragon.

Because I’ve been busy with house (groan) matters and trying to write short stories in the cracks between (they’re due) I have been reading one of those interminable collections of traditional fairytales.  See, I need to read something while cooking or walking on the treadmill, or such, but it can’t be anything long or engaging, because otherwise I won’t get my work done.

One of the things that struck me about the fairytales is that people are born to be what they are.  Sure, sure, there are tests (usually three) sometimes (not always) but even then it’s never at doubt that the chosen one will manage all trials.

Some time ago I was talking to a friend about this (no longer remember whom) and he said yeah, in Heinlein books the kids/heroes had to work for it.  And were often very bad at it (Johnny Rico and math, for ex) but in modern fantasies (Harry Potter — though at least she put him through trials), and even most other YA, you are “the chosen one” and therefore it falls to you without being a “battler” as Dave Freer puts it.

Which brings me to the topic of this: it used to be America as a pioneer culture admired the battlers.  The from-rags-to-riches story was the American story and people at least pretended to it, even if not quite true.  People admired those who sometimes fell a lot of times in the effort to reach the summit (say, Abraham Lincoln.)

I don’t know when this started changing.  Look, the fairy tales are a reflection of the society they were created in, a society where though social mobility existed (particularly after the Black Death) it wasn’t supposed to.  The idea was that G-d placed you in the strata of society you were supposed to be in, and your qualities fit that place.  So the stories talked about the naturally brilliant son, the beautiful daughter, etc.  And though they were often born poor they were “blessed” and “Fated” to succeed.  (Which might also be a way to cope with sudden social mobility.)

The US not being that type of society had different stories.

But in the seventies, when I came here, after I’d read all the SF and the mysteries in the local library I branched out into popular psychology.  (At the time I had an interest in maybe taking psychology.)

I remember one of the books going on and on about how people were either “winners” or “losers” and the one you were was set early in infancy (they went on and on and on about potty training.) They believed that time set the tone for your life and after that you always won or always lost.

This entered the popular speech in the epithet “loser” applied to someone, as though losing were a permanent thing you were “fated” to.

To an extent the whole current mania with “alphas” and “betas” and “omegas” follows the same thing.  You are born in a place in a hierarchy.  You can’t fake it, but you can’t change it.

Does all of this have a basis in reality?  Well, the alpha and beta and such have a base in primate studies.  This is and isn’t somewhat applicable to man.  The loser thing only has a basis if people CHOOSE to be losers; i.e. if they’re convinced that they lost once so they’ll always lose.  It is a narrative thing.  If you internalize that narrative then you do indeed become a “loser” i.e. a permanent f*ck up and dependent on the charity of others.

But in a way neither of them apply very well to man.  Most of the characteristics that make a primate a “alpha” would make — to an extent do make — a man a criminal.  The largest population of alpha males is in prison or (in countries that go for it) killed.

In fact that’s sort of the whole point.  If humans still adhered to that ranking and followed it, we’d live in small bands, hand to mouth (literally.)  The whole process of civilization is  a process of breaking out those ranks.

This has nothing to do with the pick up artists or the games.  For them learning to emulate an alpha male works. Because human mating instinct hasn’t quite caught up with civilization and women more willing to go with irrational choices will prefer alpha males or those who can fake it.  That’s valid.  Of course you’re appealing mostly to women who prefer not to think, even if they can.  That’s fine.

My problem is with stretching it to everything from business to politics.  And judging people that way, mostly erroneously.

Human society is FAR more complex than any simian band. This means you might have the alpha characteristics of your group, but not of “primate alpha.”

Some people just have charisma.  They enter a room and fill it.  That is a quality.  Is it a quality that means they’re a “Winner?” Or should be?

Um… no.

While these people have an easier time getting on, particularly in the liberal arts and other fields that are mostly bullshit and spin, it doesn’t make them GOOD at what they do.

Our worship of charisma means that we often will hire the idiot manager who looks good, and talks a good game, but who has no freaking clue how a business runs. We believe they are “fated” to be great.  Anyone forgotten Obama’s pantleg?  How well did that work out?

But worse than that, and what I’ve noticed, is that from this idea some are winner and some are “losers” people started worshiping and responding to outward signs of success as though they were reality.  You know “Nothing succeeds like success” and all that bullsh*t.  Which led to Fake It Till You Make It, which ONLY works if people AREN’T looking at accomplishments, but at “signs of a winner.”

Humans and life are WAY more complicated than that.  I mentioned Lincoln above.  Love him or hate him (and I do both kind of in equal measures) he had a long history of losing, before he won.  (And then he died, because it was that kind of story.) Robert A. Heinlein had tried his hand at just about everything and failed, sometimes through no fault of his own, before going on to become one of the most influential SF writers of all time.

There are a million other examples, but it’s early morning for me (don’t judge me) and those are the only two that come to mind.

But the point is if you’re a battler, you battle.  You might end up not succeeding, but you might also succeed against all odds.

Once at a very BORING party, I found a book of “Arab horoscopes.”  I know it will shock you that instead of cute animals like the Chinese or mythological symbols like the west, they use weapons.  They also — if this book was accurate.  I never looked further — make more sense in casting your “horoscope.”  What size town were you born in, what status was your family, how much education do you have take the place of when were you born, and what planet influenced you?

In a society that’s still very traditional, the end result should be very accurate.

Of course I plugged my data in.  (DUH.  REALLY.)  What came up was “deep Sling Shot”.  “Someone whose life conditions have no reflection on the result.”  Most “deep sling shots” get nowhere, but it’s possible for some to make it from beggar to king — or something like that.  (Not sure.  It’s been 35 years and it was the once.)

At the time this impressed me, because it amused me.  Which is why I remember it.

However, remember these “horoscopes” were designed for people in a deeply traditional society.  Thinking about it, the mixed, confused “original conditions” are far more common in America, and what’s more more prone to change.

So what we need to do is stop fawning over the rich and the successful at the moment and look at the person themselves (at any rate that success is often “Fake it till you make it.”)  We need to stop “respecting the office” when the person in it is a total f*ckup.  (This now extends to teachers and policemen, btw.  People continually tell me about those, “You have to respect the office.”  No, I really, really don’t.  This is not the military.  I don’t owe even external honor to anyone.  They can earn it or not. If THEY don’t show any respect for the office, why should I OWE them any.)

Our tax records, even in these diminished times show that Americans move from top to bottom percentile with amazing rapidity and frequency.  And back again.

We are Americans.  We’re the nation that beat the odds to exist.  We’re all deep sling shots.  How deep and how far we go is not totally under our control, but it is to a great extent.

The greatest determinants of success are application and perseverance.  Even if you lost every time till now, there is no fate dictating that next time you won’t win and win so spectacularly that it erases all former losses.

Battle on.  Illegitimi non carborundum!  We are not winners.  We’re not losers.  We’re battlers.  Win some, lose some.  The important thing is not to give up the fight.

I’m going to be a spoil sport.  Fortunately that’s easy.  You see, I raised two children, and boys at that.  Once you get the mom knack, you never go back.

This is the third post I wrote.  In the other two I got impolite and unseemly.  I had decided to take time away from all social media, but while having coffee — the stuff to make me sleep yesterday made my head ache this morning, though it had the advantage of amusing younger son who’d never seen me tipsy — it came to me that getting impolite and unseemly was all wrong.

This morning I was faced with the expected gloat from those to the alt.right (not the right, right, you know?) of me, and those to the left of me (because now they can get Hillary) and from those stuck in the middle (hey, when did unrepentant libertarian/classical liberal become the middle?) with me, I met with various flavors of defeatism and “burn it all down.”

I’ll be honest, the last ones are the ones who annoy me the most.

Do let’s suppose there’s nothing we can do.  Hillary or Trump there isn’t an ‘aporth of difference between them.  (Yes, I know respected people on the right say Trump will be fine.  I respectfully disagree.  His entire life he’s been a spoiled rich boy with only one interest: onanism.  Sometimes he uses others for his sport, but the world is a vast canvas in which only Donald Trump exists.  No, the type of business he does, in our current business climate requires neither intelligence nor common sense, only that one be born rich and with the right connections — there’s a whole post on that and the pernicious concept of “winners” and “losers” who are born so — and even then he’s not half as successful as he portrays himself.  Now, is it possible that someone like that can turn on a dime and be a great president?  Sure.  If you believe in miracles.  And no one would be more grateful for one than I would.  Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening and find the firm belief that it will akin to that of the child who closes his eyes and wishes for a pony in the firm belief it will appear.)  So, one of them wins and–

What precisely?

Yeah, there is a good chance it will precipitate us into civil war. Because frankly they’re both paranoiacs who will try to crack down on those who dislike them: i.e. most of the country.  Yeah, there’s a good chance of an economic crash.  Yeah…

So let’s suppose all those happen.  They don’t happen the way you think they do.  We’ve talked about that before.  Even Lebanon at its worst did not revert to the stone age.  It’s just slow immiseration and life becoming massively more difficult.

So, life becomes more difficult and the US keeps electing dumb asses.  And you’ve given up, because you know they’re dumb asses.

Now what?

Please understand that unless you’re very very very lucky you’re not going to get a glorious martyr’s death.  You’re not going to set yourself on fire in front of tank.  That’s not how these things work.  You might die in a reeducation camp.  You might get shot while resisting arrest.  Even those are unlikely.  The most likely thing to happen is that you live in a world that is increasingly grayer and more despairing, and in which you have less and less of a say.  That’s the way Europe has gone, and this election is turning out very European.

So, what are you going to do?

Give up?  Giving up is for a long time.

Shoot them up?

And then what?  There’s a million insurgences around the country every day that you never hear of.  You won’t even be a statistic.

So — I’m looking at you — what are you going to do?

Put away the bottle and the defeatism.  Give me the Kalishnakov.  Yes, siree, running around the hills with an AK-47 is way more fun than what I’m going to propose.  It’s also how you get Cuba.  So, put the machine gun down.  Take a deep breath and listen to the mom-voice, the voice that tells you that you must do unpalatable things like wash behind your ears, and eat broccoli, not because I’m forcing you to do them, but because you know in the long run you have to.

The country didn’t get where it is in a day.  Or a year.  Or ten years.  Or twenty years. The take over that destroyed our youth’s ability to read, our government’s ability to leave us alone, and our populace’s ability to reason took at least a hundred years.  And it was so slow that until about thirty years ago most people were in denial of it.

Yeah, things are pretty bad, sure, but none of the works of Man are permanent, and what others did we can undo.

What it will take is a lot like eating broccoli, but it’s the only thing we can do.  The alternatives are death in one form or another.  So, here it is a modest program to take back our country. Note I not only don’t expect to see the fruits of it, but my grandchildren might not see them.  On the other hand, our great grandchildren might get to live in freedom and prosperity.  It’s worth a try.  What do you have to lose?  (Other than the AK-47, and I’m keeping that safe till you cool down a little.):

1-  If you’re out politically, enjoin people not to give up.  Provide encouragement and support for those who can’t be out, and who will often be discouraged.  Be aware in either case your career is going to take a hit.  It’s going to happen.

2- If you’re not out, take a dramamine and infiltrate.  Infiltrate the alt.right.  Infiltrate the left.  Seek positions of power and influence, and start subverting.  Remember to take it slowly.

3 – If you’re an artist, create.  Particularly if you’re subtle enough to get under people’s shields.  Remember Heinlein had thousands of children, some of them overseas, where we read him in translation and his words were so STRANGE.  But we kept reading, because the stories were good, and little by little our minds change.

4- If you’re a teacher, teach.  Teach as much of the truth as you can.  I realize you’re hemmed in, but there are ways.

5- Anywhere else, gird your loins and educate others.  Around the coffee machine at work, or in the park, watching the kids — cast doubt on the narrative, and be prepared with facts.

6- Whatever you are and whoever you are, take care of yourself and those you can “carry.”  Times are about to get very, very (very) rough.  We’ll have to step in and keep things going as well as we can.  Sure, monetary help, if you can, but also knowledge and emotional support and… all of it.  Find out what you can do and do it.  Immiseration from the top down only works if you let it.  Find ways to get around destructive regulations and crazy enforcement, and build/create/make it work.

7- If you’re a parent, homeschool if you can, but if you can’t, consider what I did “homeschooling and deprogramming” after school.  It can save your child’s sanity, it can save your child’s life, but more importantly, it will assure the work keeps going another generation or three or ten.  As long as it’s needed.

This is not the end.  This is not even the end of the beginning.  We survived Woodrow Wilson, we’ll survive Trumplinton or Clinrump.

Our flag is still there.  Teach your children well.

Now go and work.

This seems appropriate just now:

BUILDING UNDER – A BLAST FROM THE PAST FROM 2013

So, we’ve established that revolutions don’t do much except make things worse, unless revolutions are the blessing of an order already in place and already functioning, in which case, the overpower vanishes and there it is.

This works best, of course, in Colonial situations, though for the record, most of the anti-colonial revolutions ended disastrously.  Even when the colonial power was as unorganized, hapless and… well, devil-may-care as Portugal, the result… oh, just read the recent history of Mozambique and Angola, or, better, talk to someone who was there.  As for Zimbabwe, its fall from the breadbasket of Africa is… well…

Of course there are other factors for that, including but not limited to the fact that the colonial powers had infected – via their intellectuals – these poor people with Marxism, and also that the Soviet Union used them as cat’s paws to keep the US occupied, to keep its people in goods (it’s curious that while capitalism is accused of this, the communist powers are always the ones who work like ancient empires.  They have to keep invading and stealing, because they simply can’t produce, having long since killed or scared away their producers.) and to kill off a lot of the young males who might otherwise cause trouble.

Leaving all that aside and since space colonies don’t seem to be forthcoming in the next 20 years or so – though I wouldn’t count them out.  Like with ebooks which were talked about forever and finally dismissed as “never gonna happen” I suspect if it does happen it will be suddenly, over about five years, and probably involving some new technology or a will to use the old ones. – what do we do, those of us who don’t wish to live under the boot of a progressively (eh!) more authoritarian regime?

We dig under.

I’d like to point out the regime we are currently living out is the result of just that strategy.  They occupied all the positions of power that lead to government control over about three to four generations.  (It’s what “the long march” is all about.)  Those of us who grew up in unstable countries know what the nexus of power a new regime absolutely must conquer to maintain its grip on the population: radio, TV, Newspapers, as much of the bureaucracy as possible, from your local DMV to whatever passes for a deliberative body – and then you can take the president, and then you’re home free.

The genius of the current take over is that they knew they couldn’t do it South American style and come in with tanks and machine guns, take over all these places by force and get away with it.  That can’t be managed in the country with the best military in the world.

Instead, they went exactly for the same centers, but one by one, and with replacement strategies.  In this they were helped by two of their characteristics and the characteristics of those they view as domestic enemies (No?  Listen to them sometime.) and who are anyone who isn’t to the left of Lenin.  For our purposes we’ll call them “conservatives” though a lot of us aren’t EXACTLY that and though at this point in time “conservative” is a misnomer for people who want to change the current form of governance.

They took over by stealthing it – that is by pretending to be “establishment” until they were secure.  I actually tried to stealth it for years in publishing, and I have friends who are still trying to do it now (All the best boys and girls, you’re better than I.)  I couldn’t do it for reasons that lots of other conservatives can’t do it.  First, I couldn’t STEALTH well enough.  We, liberty lovers tend to prize truth and it bothered me greatly to fake it, so I was never vocal about supporting stuff I, in fact, abhorred.  Second, (vile) progs once in control which was well before I broke in, started demanding VOCAL adherence to their nonsense.  So if you weren’t screaming about the patriarchal, capitalist regime every other line, you simply wouldn’t get the push and the promo.  Or, as a friend of mine said “they watch what you laugh at, and they watch for how you respond in conversation”  and since even professional meetings turn into extended political rants with quite unimaginably offensive things said about everyone not extreme left, keeping an impassive face is difficult enough, let alone faking enthusiasm.

The reverse of this is that liberty lovers have this habit of fairness (which is why it’s so hard for me to wield the troll hammer) so even if we took over, the take over would never be absolute, and it would never, ever, ever be permanent.  We tend to go “Yes, he’s a communist, but that’s a stupid quirk.  He’s a good worker.  Look at what he did with this or that – give him the promotion.  It is by this process that most conservative institutions become far left.  The reverse doesn’t happen.  It’s not that the left is much better at stealthing (though they are) it’s that the right is much worse at excluding ideological opponents and/or viewing them as “the enemy.”  At least quase-ante, before the last few years, we tended to view them more as poor fools.

And this is how they took over all the media, all entertainment and most corporations and boards and anything that was a group of people, that needed “leadership” and that could be manipulated.  It also helps they’re the side who want power over others, while we mostly want to be left alone.

So to propose that we start our own crawl through the institutions is misguided – it’s not something we can do, something we’re good at or something even particularly productive in the current state of affairs.

However, the power-lovers, no matter what the regime have one fatal flaw.  They love to seize power.  They’re very good at wielding it – as in pounding down all opposition – what they suck at, because their temperament makes them not empathetic at all, is figuring out how people work.  And trying to rule (which is what they do) or worse, govern, without understanding people leads to disaster.  It is worse if they are communists, because communism is a religion at odds with reality.  They continue believing it, even as it fails, like those poor cult members whose end of the world is forever postponed one more month, and they continue doing more of what fails, which is why their utopias turn rapidly to hell on earth.

This leaves the rest of us stuck in a situation where EVEN if we could do the reverse of their strategy, even if we decided to crawl through the institutions for seventy years, we don’t have that kind of time.  The people who were so hot on getting into the cockpit, are flying the plane right into the ground because their little (red) religious book tells that that’s the way to gain altitude.

We don’t have seventy years before gravity asserts itself explosively.  We don’t have seventy months.  Sometimes I think we’ll be lucky if we have seventy weeks, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if we crashed in seventy days.  Sometimes I feel as if I’m locked in the painting “the scream” shrieking soundless and I can’t do anything.

Wait.  Before you head out to the bathroom to slit your wrists in a warm bath – listen.  I didn’t say there’s nothing we can do.

Like the left we have our own strengths and our own abilities.  And they are things they not only don’t have, but they can’t fully understand.

To wit, the reason we tend to be really bad at politics is that there are things that are more important to us.  A lot of people have complained that people aren’t focusing on the politics because they’re busy making a living, raising a family, figuring out how to survive.

But, listen, that’s a strength, too.

See, the reason that they’re self-devouring is that they see politics before merit.  It’s never “we’ll promote him even though he’s a political idiot because OMG, he can write.”  It’s always “She can write all right, but she’s not “one of the good people” so we’ll not only do nothing but thwart her if we can.”

Over time this allows them to take over ideologically.  And it makes them REALLY dumb about anything else.

Here we have to go back to the publishing industry.  Because ideology was more important than anything else (though they promoted some books with no overt ideological tinge, because the author – they were satisfied – was one of them.  They tolerated these books more anywhere else rather than sf, which is why sf crashed harder and faster, except obviously at Baen.  Because SF is the projection of the present into the future, no “incorrect” politics would be allowed.) they needed to control not just what got published, but what got distributed and what got push.  This meant not only taking over the bookstores, (ideologically, not the publishers) but setting up a system which was determined by pull, not push.  By the end of their reign and just before ebooks hit, they could “publish” a book and make sure it sold nothing (it was never on shelves.  EVEN if people asked for it) and thereby end the career of anyone whom they’d found out was ideologically different – or suspect.  At the same time, of course, someone on the “right” (left) side got push, even if the work was otherwise undistinguished.

This worked to an extent – the reading public simply assumed ALL authors were leftist, and read the least offensive ones.  However, as the houses lost feedback (because this was all push, no pull) they lost track of “what the market will bear.”  Printruns were shrinking every year (the excuse being “people don’t read anymore.”) and they were starting to feel the pinch.  The bookstores, in particular (their fault for buying into “to the net” and the publishers’ push model) were caught in the middle and imploding.

All it took was the emergence of a free market in electronic books to send the whole thing into a tail spin.  (Most of the houses are dead, just still – somehow – walking.)

The houses reaction to ebooks was classic too – they reacted just like cultists whose UFO/prophet failed to bring about the end of the world on the appointed date: cover up, ignore, and hope the whole thing goes away.

Well – this is basically what we’re seeing in government, in finance, and anywhere that the left has got its big foot in, including “big science.”

They have been promoting people on the basis of faith, not intelligence for years.  And that’s no way to run a civilization (the problem goes beyond the USA, though I suppose, as usual, it will be left for us to solve.)

So – you want your second American revolution and your second American republic?  Fine.  Start building a structure that works, behind, beside and beneath the official one.

In some cases this will be very very difficult.  For us writers, for instance, it’s almost impossible to work for anything but US dollars.  (Though, who knows, that might change.  Will for sure if the crash comes.  I will of course work for gold, if anyone wants to cover me in a pile of it!)

On the other hand, we’re going around the publishing establishment, more and more so, yay us.  I’d advise every liberty-minded writer, even the traditionally published ones, to look into indie.  At best you can use it to support and promote your published work (I have brought a lot of people to the Darkship Thieves universe through the short stories.)  At worst, if something happens to your publisher (No, I don’t expect anything to happen to Baen, but a lot of it rests on ONE WOMAN’s shoulders, and while she’s younger than I and I hope she outlives me, sh*t happens.  To everyone.) you have a fallback and something to build from.

At the same time, I urge artists to find other ways to market their art.  Both of these will take stepping outside your “validation” comfort zone, but a lot of us had to do that with politics anyway, and it’s not that different.

If you’re not there – I urge you, urge you – to use your skills to advance the building of a parallel structure.  If you’re a computer maven, build a game engine that will allow indie game writers to compete with the big houses.  If you’re a computer maven, again, think about animation tools and others that allow indie movies to do what the big guys do for one percent of the price.  If you’re a teacher or interested in teaching, study how to do it on line.

We have it worse than they did.  We can’t just take over a few strategic points and hope the whole thing keeps running but now under us.  They’re destroying everything because of their anti-reality beliefs.  We have to take over everything just to prevent a terminal collapse.

Fortunately, most of us are “people who do things.”  I urge you to do things.  I have a friend who is studying brewing and welding, in case that’s all he can contribute.  In fact, I’d urge all of us to do that if we can.  Even if you’re a writer an artist or a scientist, if you have a hobby that can be turned into a part time job – growing vegetables, refinishing furniture, cooking, cleaning, sewing, brewing, etc – and bring in some money, do so.

I knew a family in Portugal who were educated and well to do, but when everything went upside down, they arranged with a textile firm to get the scraps of material that would (otherwise) have been burned at the end of the day.  The wife and daughters then fired up the sewing machines and started making pot holders, placemats and aprons (fewer aprons, most pieces were tiny.)  They sold these at the fairs which are at best gray market (the stalls require a license, so you have to declare some income.  But most of the business is done in cash.  You do the math.)  By the time things stabilized, they were living better than ever.

I don’t think that in most places the system will collapse that completely.  I DO think that things like making a living on line – provided you’re either selling something useful or something people find entertaining – will work for most of us.  But if your area goes bad, that second skill will help.

And meanwhile – hat tip to Dave Freer – network.  Network with those in your area, and network with those out of it who can help you on line.  Build connections with like minded people.

Yes, this means we will ALL have to work our tails off for the next – if we’re lucky – seventy weeks.  But work is what we do.  Building is what we do.

You see the current society is like a beautiful building that has termites in the support beams.  We’re working very fast to put up new support beams along side them and to encase the current support beams in strong concrete.

The goal is that when they give out and turn to powder, there is a shhh sound and then, nothing, because our support structures step in place and keep things going.

And THEN we can argue whether the bit on the roof should be round or square and – hopefully – termite-proof the new structure.

But first, it has to be in place.  So go forth and build.

Okay, the lasers are just for show.  I’m in the middle of multiple crisscrossing crisis(es?) and can’t even think straight, much less write a post.

The short version and for public consumption is that both houses (short sale and other) under some tenuous contract to us are likely to fall through/have to be rejected which puts us back to square one.

The long version is ARRRRRRRGH.

That’s all.  Back when sane.  It could be a long time.

Tudors Tales and Turpitude – James Schardt

Greetings everyone. Normally, Sarah would either be posting here, herself, or would have someone who, at least, has a blog of their own post here. However, in the interests of keeping her writing the stories we all want to read instead of the unprofitable columns or gif posts she sometimes feels obligated to write, I am stepping in. Sarah, go write. We gots this. *cracks neck*

Brad Torgersen reposted a link to his “Nutty Nuggets” column Sunday. To summarize it, Brad felt that sales of Science Fiction books had gone down because the stories published had drifted away from the themes that had attracted people to Science Fiction in the first place. I am going to expand on this and point out that the same themes that attracted people to Science Fiction are the same themes that attract people to stories in general. And blatantly inserting current issues into a story stands a good chance of marring that story and rendering it preachy and forgettable.

An anecdote was posted last year by an author who had personally delivered a story to an editor, I think it was John Campbell, hoping for it to be published. For his trouble, the editor took him out to lunch. During that lunch, the editor asked him if he could name one story written by a man in a mud hut 4000 years ago that is still sold in airport book stores today. The author looked confused. The editor told him he was talking about “The Iliad” written by the blind poet, Homer. His point was that people wanted to read stories about heroes striving to overcome things. Brad feels that the striving has been lost in a sea of messages that will have difficulty resonating five years after they are written.

This year, the big issue in the news, besides the election, seems to be whether to allow non-op transsexual persons to use the restrooms of the sex they feel they are as opposed to the restrooms and locker rooms they physically are. Three years ago, this wasn’t even on the radar. I would have to look up opinion columns and news stories to be able to tell you what issues were big even five years ago. Time passes and people move on. Laws will be written and passed or rejected. What is controversial today may not be controversial tomorrow. While I cannot tell you how society will eventually deal with this, I can guarantee this will not be a big issue two years from now. This means basing a story on a current issue is probably unwise.

Does this mean you should leave out these issues entirely? No! Look to authors who have remained in the public eye for years, even centuries, after they have died. There are several of Shakespeare’s plays that are, to put it bluntly, nothing more than Tudor propaganda. He set up a whole series of historical plays just to lead up to showing how bad Richard III was and show how justified Henry VII was to take the throne from him.

In his time, one of the major issues was the legitimacy of Queen Elizabeth and the House of Tudor. England had a woman on the throne (scandal!) Her father had broken from the Catholic Church (scandal!) Her grandfather’s claim to the throne was tenuous at best (scandal!). Needless to say, her political enemies, both inside and outside of her kingdom, were happy to use these issues to weaken her power and possibly take her throne from her. But, unless the reader is a serious student of history, nobody remembers this.

We remember the strained relationship between Henry the IV and his son Harry in “Henry IV part I”. We remember King Henry V inspiring his soldiers to overcome the odds against them at Agincourt in “Henry V”. We remember how Richard III’s quest for power and hubris brought about his downfall in “Richard III”. Nobody remembers the politics behind these stories. But that doesn’t mean it was not there. The story came first. The issues were woven in with subtlety. People’s minds were changed. And Elizabeth I is still remembered as one of the greatest monarchs England has ever had.

The legitimacy of the English throne was a topic for discussion, but it didn’t effect that many people outside of the nobility. People eating and not being robbed in the street were what mattered on a day to day basis. It wasn’t that people didn’t care about who their rightful monarch was, they did. It was simply a lower priority. So Shakespeare slipped the message he wanted to put out into his plays. He barely mentioned the Tudors in Richard III. The focus was on how rotten a person Richard Plantagenet was. At the end, his audience was saying “Thank goodness Henry Tudor got rid of THAT guy.” The message, the Tudors are legitimate because the Plantagenets were bad, worked. He didn’t have to beat people over the head with his message. They came to that conclusion themselves.

By contrast, his play “Henry VIII”, is mostly remembered for accidentally burning The Globe Theater to the ground. It is a blunt message play that is simply there to remind people that Queen Elizabeth is, indeed, King Henry’s daughter. It did not resonate at the time and it is largely forgotten now. This is the sort of fiction Brad was talking about when he was saying it wasn’t “Nutty Nuggets” and what others talk about when they say “message fiction”. Making the message the story is simply preaching. If your reader wants preaching they’ll either go to church or listen to the shaggy guy with the sandwich board ranting in the park. Readers want a story. If there is a message, fine, but the reader wants a story first.

Take a timeless theme. A story that would be recognizable to both your grandparents and your children. Put it in a future or fantasy world. Weave your message in with subtlety so it is barely seems to be there. Your story will be memorable and it will plant the seeds you want to grow. The story wins over the message. Always.

As you guys know yesterday I came across mention of an IO9 article that said that we’re already living in a science fiction world, and so all that was left now to justify science fiction’s existence was social critique.

I didn’t read the article, partly because it was IO9 and who the heck wants to wade in that, but the concepts struck me as worthy of “unpacking.”  Frankly, they need to be unpacked, as it’s impossible to deal with that fermenting load of insanity  in a single post. “Wrong too great to fit in a few words” would be a good description.

Yesterday I dealt with the idea that we’re leaving in a future world, as though the future were a destination, at which the train of time arrived and, having disembarked, we now have nothing to do but mill around and criticize each other, like school girls on a field trip.

I am being unkind, but only partly.  There is a deeper truth behind that image of school girls ripping into each other: the idea that criticizing others is a deeper virtue and that it is not only useful, but good and necessary.

First, let me start by saying, because some idiots (and they are idiots) are going to say I’m talking about an article I haven’t read: this is not about the article.  It’s about the concepts, which I’ve come across in panels and talks over years of attending science fiction conventions.

One common presentation of “the end of science fiction” is that we are now living in the future which is why kids aren’t interested in science fiction.  This is of course mind-bogglingly stupid, because for the kids the time we live in is not THEIR future and it certainly isn’t science fiction. It could be the reason the kids aren’t into science fiction is that twin idea that “since this is now a science fiction world we should turn to critiquing the injustices in it.”  The kids get quite enough victimhood whining and guilt in their normal curriculum, which leaves them quite uninterested in more of it in their entertainment.

In fact I don’t know ANYONE who is interested in their entertainment being a bunch of whining and critiquing the flaws of society.

Look, I went through middle school at a time when “revolutionary juntas” took over SCHOOLS and changed the curriculum.  I wrote my fill of “social critique” then.  You sort of had to, because your parents didn’t understand that education had stopped being about knowing stuff and started being about signaling virtue.  Well, mine didn’t.  And they had an attitude of “if you have a problem deal with it”.  So I dealt.

It wasn’t general whining, mind, or real social critique.  I mean, none of us wrote about the injustice of coming to school and finding your curriculum had changed over night and you were studying Marx in five courses gain; or how upset you were about their abolishing Latin, because you’d been hoping to finally read Virgil in the original.  OR even how you thought Mao’s poems, which were being pushed at you in literature, sounded like they’d been written by a boastful kindergartner on speed.

No.  It was critique-of-that-which-the-teacher-wants-critiqued.  I remember one occasion where she read a bunch of things about the injustices cleaning women suffered, and how their work was demeaning, then asked us to write a story about it.

I wrote a story that could make you weep, all about this poor woman’s aching knees, and how her husband oppressed her by not doing housework.

In point of fact, in the village, cleaning women — particularly those who worked for the wealthier families — were often among the upper social strata and almost for sure made more than my dad did.  Their kids often went to private schools with their employer’s kids, and since they worked for the “better” (not us, though we were in a way, but only among true natives of the village, which these people weren’t) families, they had all the conveniences and their cleaning the house once a week and touching up in between was probably less work than my mom did in our house, in addition to her more than full time for-pay work.

Never mind.  The teacher wanted the injustice critiqued.  I critiqued it and I got an A.

And that’s sort of what we’re talking about here too.  The injustices that the left wants critiqued never have anything to do with the REAL injustices, in the real society.  They have to do with Marxist theory, viewing people as widgets, and their permanent illusion that we live in a 1950s-that-never-existed, with victimhood classes frozen forever in place, and those “deserving of help” always in need of help till the last syllable of recorded time.

Most of the authors who have pivoted to this form of writing aren’t bad craftsmen, but their stories ring hollow.

It is the duty of every writer to put the reader through the wringer, and this often involves picking a character in an invidious situation and then making his/her life WAY worse.

In a normal story, then the character starts fighting back and finds his way out of the bind, taking the reader alone, which leaves the reader feeling released and powerful and maybe even able to tackle his problems.

The issue with “critiquing society” is that it’s not that type of story.  Rather you start with the oppressed and end with the oppressed, and along the way you show how mean and evil society is.

There is a reason for this (DUH) in dialectical Marxism.  You see, Marxists believe the only reason that men are: greedy, murderous, evil, envious, etc. is that they live under capitalism, which in their heads (and their heads only) is an artificial system which Man (note capital m) wasn’t meant to live in, and which twists humanity into what Christianity would call sin.  (This is not the first, nor the last instance of Marxists stealing Christian theology, and the idea that the offense of the first sin stained humanity’s tendencies and ways.)

The only way to overcome capitalism, and incidentally to make socialism work is to reform man. We know how well that goes.  That belief has two prongs, both wrong.  One is the idea capitalism is unnatural, instead of arising wherever allowed, and often where not allowed: an inherent part of how humanity functions.  The Second is that humanity can be changed completely and made like onto the angels.  this idea is responsible for filling AT LEAST 100 million graves.

But armed with this belief, the academics and pretentious pseudo-glitterati who are trying to submerge science fiction in the same morass that consumes every genre they touch, have decided the way to reform man is to harangue them.

Look, I know that preaching is considered good in Christian practice.  I also know that a famous saint so gave up on its having any effect on his flock, that he went off to preach to the fish.

While Christianity changed the face of Europe there is very good reason to argue it was done less with “critique” and more with the way they lived, and the way they did care for the poor and downtrodden in a very material and personal way, which in turn gave the new religion an edge into society.  (Recall it started largely as a slave’s religion.)  Yeah, there are twists in there, including converting the leader and having him order the conversion of his people, BUT none of this was simply by telling him how wrong he was, over and over again.  Much less was it by criticizing a society that didn’t exist and probably never had.

If a Christian missionary had marched in hot foot into a primitive German tribe and started haranguing them on micro aggression he’d probably have escaped execution.  For one, those primitive tribes had a great fear of the insane.  For another, people who are asleep can’t kill you.

Note I’m not saying — I know you know.  I also know teh stupid will dissect this looking for poo to fling — that science fiction should be all about adventure and shouldn’t deal with weighty subjects.  I loved SF when I was very young because it dealt with weighty subjects.  BUT what allows us to do that is not that “we live in a science fiction world” or that we’re “speaking truth to no longer existent power, just like everyone else.”

No, what allows us to do that is the fact that we take the weighty moral questions out of context and can examine them more clearly.  Take colonialism.  All of us — every human — is descended from colonialists and colonized.  (I was explaining to son some peculiarities of Portuguese that create homophones which have CLEAR nothing to do with each other, and I had to explain Portugal probably started as a Celtic colony — though some new genetic studies claim it might have been a colonizing center, rather — then Carthaginian, then Greek, then Latin, and all of those left linguistic debris behind.)

However recent history makes the idea of colonist and colonial a hot point.  Also, you really can’t discuss things such as “what is human” without people getting very upset (as they should be.  The recent history of people who would do this is not good) but you can do it in an SF sense.  Suppose we go out to space and find a much dumber, but obviously sentient alien race.  What are our duties/obligations/rights in relation to them?  Morally HOW should we treat them? What if we go to space and we find we’re the slightly impaired aliens in relation to everyone else?  How do we cope?  How should be be treated?  I don’t know, and if I continue not knowing, I can write an interesting story that explores the possibilities.  H*ll, there’s novel series in that (some already written.)

If I go in with the idea of “critiquing current society” though, I’ll use the downtrodden aliens as a vessel to blame/hate on humanity and rage at our “history of injustice.”  (Compared to WHAT?  The history of angels?)  This just falls into the “approved” paths and it’s boring because it’s obvious the story is a device to hector the reader in the same old way that those who speak power to truth (in order to keep power) use.

There have been societies that have been completely changed by a new idea, a new revelation, a new way of looking at things.  This is usually because the person or persons who bring it in show the new idea/way/revelation to be a vast improvement over the way they live.  Also this change always comes from outside and not the current structures of power.

In the whole history of humanity there isn’t a single instance of a society being changed by prim scolds, hectoring people about sins they know d*mn well they didn’t commit, and promoting a way of life that — no matter how the scolds try to hide it — leads only to misery and mass death.

The only change such prim scolds bring about is a sudden onset of a desire to be anywhere we can avoid them.  Which when it comes to their scolding being a supposed for-profit enterprise means avoiding it like the plague, and finding alternate channels to get our entertainment.

Which is exactly what is happening.  And which only causes them to scold us harder and tell us we need our medicine more.

I suggest we leave them mumbling to themselves and others like them, and go read a good book or ten.  Because they can no longer keep us from publishing.  They certainly can’t — never could — force us to buy them.

The gatekeepers are bravely guarding the gate, while around them the walls have crumbled.  Step over the fallen stones and come on out.

There’s good reading out here.

*Sorry about lateness.  I should know better than NOT to blog on Friday night.  Saturday morning we always have errands which ends up making the blog very late.  I’m not done either, I’m going to need to clean the cat boxes.  I’m being glared at by Greebo as we speak, I’ll have you know.*

Yesterday in one of the groups I belong to and check irregularly, someone posted an article from IO9.  Full disclosure, I didn’t read the article.  Life is too short to hang out at IO9.  But this is not about the article, not really.  It’s about the concepts which were summarized in the lead, and confirmed by those of my fans/friends brave enough to put on waders and climb down into IO9.

The concept of the article was this: with our communications technology and gene splicing and other goodies, we’re living in a science fiction world.  There is no point to science fiction anymore, except to “critique the world.”

This is a point of view I’ve often seen defined in panels too.  I call it the “we had to kill science fiction in order to save it” point of view. There was more to that, like there should be no “retro” science fiction.  There’s fodder for a post there, and there will be a post, about what is “retro” science fiction and whether there’s a use for it or not.

We will, possibly in a later post get into the whole concept and potential value or lack thereof of critiquing society; what it actually means and what it actually does.

Right now I want to concentrate on WHAT is science fiction after all.

I’m fairly sure I know.  I’m also fairly sure these people are spectacularly confused.  They seem to hold on to how science fiction was explained to me when I was eleven and stumbled onto it.  (I’d already read Have Space Suit Will Travel, at around 9, but it didn’t strike me as science fiction, just as a slightly fantastic present day adventure.  Look, guys, what did I know about what America was really like?  Remember I thought Denver was by the sea [I think I confused it with Dover. And now I have a story title that’s going to bug me till I write a short story.  The White Cliffs of Denver.])

I stumbled onto science fiction with Out of Their Minds, by Simak, which was and wasn’t a problem, because, you know, while it took place in the future, sort of, it was the near future and I could call it “fantastic adventure.”  But my second science fiction book was A Canticle for Leibowitz and that I could not just write off as “they made up some stuff, but it’s essentially the world as we know it.”  So I asked my brother what weird-*ss books he was reading (my early sf reading was standing up by Alvarim’s bedside, ready to toss the book in the drawer and run into my room at the sound of a footstep on the stairs.  you see, he’d told me not to read them, showing both a remarkable care for my innocence [SF in the seventies.  Yeshhhh] and a complete lack of knowledge of my character.  Yes, I also read Masters and Johnson standing up by his bedside table.  Did wonders for my English, it did.]

His explanation was “Science fiction are stories set in a future world.”

While this is, technically, true, of course, it neglects that little fact that making predictions is hard.  Particularly about the future.  And also that now that we have almost a hundred years of science fiction behind us, it makes a lot of the futures depicted in those books the future of the past.  Or in Sir Pratchett’s fantastically appropriate description “the future of another leg of the pants of time.”

I mean, the “The future is now” people are very funny.  Yes, we do have a lot of technological marvels (like, when haven’t we?  Even if it was just a better plow) and it’s affecting society (like, when hasn’t it?) BUT is it the future depicted in science fiction novels?  Pfui?  Do I have a flying car?  WHERE are my moon colonies, my weekends on Mars?

Second, “the future is now”?  Really?  I’m no longer surprised at their lack of understanding of gender.  I’m somewhat puzzled that they ALSO don’t get verb tenses.  I’m told that some very primitive societies have no concept of past or future.  Everything is an eternal now. (I don’t know.  I never did linguistics field work.)  For my money they’re more advanced than people who think there used to be a future, but now we’re living in it and time stopped.  (MAYBE that’s what’s actually wrong.  Maybe there’s a whole group of people we should never have taught to talk.  How much damage could they do by rhythmic blinking, after all.  Never mind.)

Do we have things that our parents didn’t have?  Bother.  We have things that were unimaginable when I was a little kid.  More so than your childhood, mine was temporally dislocated from the normal time.  I mean, I still remember my mother ridiculing the idea I’d ever afford a house with running hot and cold water.  (She built one herself 3 years later.  Never mind.)  I remember trimming oil lamps (partly because we had electricity — sort of — but it was really unreliable.  I am daily humbled by living among marvels of human ingenuity.

What I don’t imagine is that this is the end of the human ingenuity or the human story.  I don’t presume to say “we won’t go any further.”  And I CERTAINLY don’t presume to say “we should go no further.”

To say “we’re living in a science fiction future, there is no reason to write science fiction anymore” is wrong on EVERY front.

First, yeah, sure we’re living on  science fiction future.  Just like people in the 1930s were compared to their parents.  Your point is, precisely?  That’s a tautology on the order of “the black horse is black.”  Yeah, and so what, Captain Obvious?

Second, I don’t think science fiction is what you think it is.  We don’t each have a crystal ball and write about “the future as she will be.” See part about making predictions and how that’s hard, PARTICULARLY about the future.

So if you think the point of science fiction was to predict the future, then there was never a point to science fiction.  It’s sort of like saying the purpose of pigs is to fly because you saw a drawing of a pig with wings.  The only answer to that is “You’re not from around here” and by around here I mean reality.

Yes, yes, science fiction dresses itself in future tropes, gives dates, etc, but it’s actual and point of fact purpose, as a branch of fantastic literature, is to give the artist (or the craftswoman, in my case) a broad canvas on which to tell stories that can’t be told in our present-day, limited-to-reality universe.  Sure, it makes it interesting, and it’s one of the constraints of the genre (sort of, before you get into alternates and counterfactuals) that you at least do some hand waving at “how we get there from here.  The readers of the genre expect it, and it’s polite, kind of like it’s polite not to mention lucrative to meet your readers’ expectations.  BUT it’s handwavium for the paying patrons, not a fact of life.  Every science fiction universe, even the most grounded in reality is always “what might be” not “what will be.”  Because the future and reality are way more complex than you can cram in a book.

So there is a point to science fiction.  The same point there always was.  The future is by definition not here yet.  It never will be.  Because that’s the quality of the future.  It hasn’t happened yet.  (These people probably eagerly believe signs that say “Free beer tomorrow.”)

And I bet you that it surprises you.  I bet you there are wonders we can’t even dream of (though we try) waiting just around the corner.  And I’ll dream them until I get to see them.  And I’ll take as many of you as I can along for the ride.

These people belong to the future of the past.  The future that belongs to them (eh) is the future imagined circa 1930s.  A future of central control and exact distribution of limited resources.

They’re both disappointed they don’t have it — hence the reason that they think SF should “critique” things — and bewildered by the advances that have really happened, hence the almost forlorn lament that “we’re living in a science fiction future already.”

If you can’t imagine anything more than what we have, I suggest you’re in the wrong field of writing.  I hear there is a lot of demand for technical manual writers. It demands no imagination.  (Though it does demand a mastery of verbs, of course, which might be a negating condition.  On the other hand you can call machinery xyr and no one, not even the machines care.)

If this REALLY is the wildest future you can imagine, that’s fine.  Sit down,  stay here.  Rest (or bitch) a while.

The rest of us?  We can imagine a million interesting futures.  And we’re going to dream of them until we get there.