Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

*First a note from Sarah — Okay, because there was confusion before — I did not read these books and they’re not personal recommendations.  They’re books my readers send in to promote.

I’ll turn this over to the Oyster, but before I do, this week I have something on countdown sale.  I think Crawling Between Heaven and Earth is on sale for 99c for another 24h give or take after which it will creep slowly back up to 7.99.

This book contains my first published shorts and is a good snapshot of who I was at that time.

Btw, it’s number one in fantasy anthologies (It’s not, it’s a collection, but what does Amazon know.)  Thank you. – SAH*

Good morning, Huns and Hoydens! Another fabulous weekend is upon us, and to get you started we’ve a small selection of books for your enjoyment. Do remember, please, to go leave reviews for the books once you’ve read them, whether to praise them or offer constructive critiques. One more note, since there seems to have been some confusion recently: these books have not been reviewed, curated, or endorsed by Our Beloved Hostess or myself. The Beautiful but Evil Space Princess is simply providing a platform for the writers among the commentariat (and occasional lurkers) to advertise free of charge, and I simply put it all together. No warranty, guarantee, deputy, Model T, contract, compact, hijack, fel pact, gentleman’s agreement, endorsement vehement, negotiated easement, pachyderms indecent (in case of bereavement), handfast, hold fast, bypass, repast, top caste, bombast, or martial satisfaction on the bloody field of honor is, has been, or ever will be provided. *catches breath* [Ed.: But he doesn’t know the territory!] So, if you have words for sales or rent, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Book Hawker, Minion Wrangler, and Fancier of Patter Songs

Alma Boykin

Marie’s Tale

A Colplatschki Novella

What price rank and riches? Duchess Marie von Starland knows full well. Now she tells her story, of Aquila Starland, Elizabeth von Sarmas, and of the traitor who was once a beloved baby brother.

Includes a bonus Elizabeth story: When the chance to explore a Lander city arises, Elizabeth must decide between her two greatest loves.

John Van Stry

Champion for Hire

Portals of Infinity: Book One

William is just your typical engineer fresh out of college with a stressful job, a boring life, and not a lot of prospects of anything better in the future.

Until one weekend while hiking in the woods he stumbles across a portal to another time, or perhaps another place. The more he investigates this new world the more he realizes that it may just be able to offer him a lot more than the one he’s been living in.

However, there are forces at work beyond anything that Will has ever come across before and the local Goddess seems to have taken a liking to him. Will may soon find himself getting an offer he cannot afford to refuse.

Michael Kingswood

The Pericles Conspiracy

William is just your typical engineer fresh out of college with a stressful job, a boring life, and not a lot of prospects of anything better in the future.

On sale at Amazon this weekend

Josephine Ishikawa’s last shift as Captain of the starliner Pericles changed the course of history, but no one knows about it. The powers that be took charge as soon as she got back to Earth, with only a select few permitted to learn about the beings she encountered during the run from Gliese, or the eggs they entrusted to her care.

Satisfied that the government would make good on her commitment to return the eggs home, Jo returned to her job of getting Pericles through a major maintenance overhaul and then back out to the stars. But when she learns that the authorities reneged and have begun experimenting on the eggs instead, she faces a difficult choice: keep the life and career she loves or embark on a quest to rescue the eggs and keep the promise she made to their dying parents, out in the depths of space. That quest could cost her more than she ever imagined as it plunges her into a shadow war against a planetary government that will stop at nothing to keep its secrets.

Also available from these fine booksellers:

• Barnes & Noble
• Kobo
• Smashwords
• iTunes
• Google Play

*Two Quick Updates before your Whacky Post Of The Day TM:  First Crawling Between Heaven And Earth, my first collection, of stories that were, you know, the first I got published (almost my juvenalia!) is up for 99c for two days, and then slowly going up to its normal price.  I know many of you got it when it was free at baen books.  It now has a shifter short story and such, but anyway, if you’d echo the link in whatever social media you use, much appreciated.

Second: Baen books, who as we all know is an evil publishing house, decided to up its psychological warfare on me personally by interviewing my husband (and other Baen Spouses) on what it’s like to be married to a highly splodey writer.  I understand Dan had a lot of fun with it, and also that Madames Correia and Weber were in this also.  So.  Baen Spouse Podcast here.*

I confess I’m not much of a joiner, and that I view joining an organization as a liability. You join, say an organization for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers and soon enough, early enough, you find you’re a member of an organization that wants to ban the word “Lady” and would love to run all men out of the craft.

And then you pause and wonder “What have I got myself into?”

Yesterday, in the diner on facebook (if those of you are getting the idea that if you want to fight you should go there, don’t. I try to keep it as politics and friction – but I repeat myself – free as I can) a semi argument developed on whether or not the Black Panther and the KKK were similar in nature.

I stomped on it, because I didn’t want to get ugly in the diner, that’s what I have a blog for.

The fact that the black panthers at least used to be a charitable organization, with literacy programs and pancake breakfasts and that this makes it intrinsically different from the KKK who were, after all, just the night riders who lynched people and stuff.

GROAN.

I come not to defend the KKK. No, seriously, I come not to defend the KKK who would object to me on at least two genetic points and one of choice and whom I object to in principle. And this post is about something far more important/different from these two rather icky organizations.

The black panthers MIGHT have started as a charitable/uplift organization. Or at least their members believed that, early on. But it has gone a long way down the rabbit hole of a pretend black supremacy theory that in fact keeps Americans of African descent stuck in a loop of resentment and self-sabotage. Oh, and also they bar people’s access to polls and parade around a lot armed for purposes of intimidation. Whatever they started out as, they’re a race-based association that tries to intimidate all those not eligible to join and to control those who are eligible.

And the KKK might have started as a revenge organization (did it? It’s a part of history I don’t know very well, right after the civil war) but it d*mn skippy was also a charitable organization.

It is a little known fact that the state of CO somewhere in the late nineteenth early twentieth century was more or less controlled by the KKK. At my son’s college graduation a letter was read from the first president of the university. You see, he’d received a letter from the governor who was in the pocket of the KKK, telling him to kick out all Jews and Catholics or be left without state funding. So, he answered not only no but h*ll no, and the school barely survived. The letter they read was his speech at the graduation of the following class. (And I’m so glad they did that instead of having a guest speaker.) It was a moving letter and the incident was an example of the KKK flexing wrong-muscles.

However, the elementary school my sons’ attended was built by the KKK. The corner stone is still there in a rather hippy-dippy and mixed community, something for which I applaud them: not erasing the past because it’s gross.

What this means is not that KKK was a “mixed” organization or that we should feel any sympathy towards it (I don’t) but that they too clearly did some laudable and charitable things – which still does not excuse them from being evil bastages and icky and stomach-turning.

Does the fact they had pancake breakfasts and literacy drives and such excuse the Black Panthers for the evil they do and the amazingly ignorant stuff they spout on history and racial theory? Don’t know. Don’t care. Supposing my kids were dark enough to join or white enough to join the KKK, my answer would be the same to both, “Don’t do it. Yeah, they might, maybe, do some good stuff, perhaps, but organizations based solely on race tend to go wrong to justify their own existence.” They start out as “us against them” and sooner or later you need “incidents” by the them – real or (these days) largely imagined – to justify the being “against” and next thing you know your whole cause of existence is not to uplift your race, ethnicity or cultural group but to “stick it to” whoever is perceived as the enemy.

Exempt from this – to an extent – are certain cultural associations, like, say the Scottish Heritage association or the Italian History league. To an extent. It’s important to realize that if the last two meetings have been about “How city council is discriminating against us because they don’t like kilts” you might be going down a dangerous path. (Or the city council might be *sses, of course. Still, it’s best to step back and see it with fresh eyes.)

Look, the characteristic of humans is that we are tribal critters. We not only like to tribe up, we like to define us against them. Nothing makes you feel so cozy in your in group as knowing other people are out. (Whether the other people want in or not.) And once we tribe up, argument and fighting are a step away.

You can see it in any group of kids released to the wild of a playground for a considerable period of time. Once, long ago, it was “No gurls allowed” and maybe “No darkies allowed” (Or whities.) but at least in most middle class areas, kids wouldn’t do that openly now. They know the adults would descend on them then. So, instead, they have “No trailer park kids allowed” or “No boys allowed” or “no people who live on that hill as opposed to this hill allowed.”

And if you let the groups (particularly if there’s two) go on long enough, sooner or later there will be fights.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I remember glorious afternoons of chasing each other with bamboo sticks while playing at Robin Hood (and his men) vs the Sheriff (and his men) or The musketeers vs. the Guards of Richelieu, or even world war too (when the bamboo sticks became guns) even though we were all girls. Because it was ritualized and rather like a massive LARPG very few nose bleeds, bruises and skinned knees ensued, and at any rate, Dona Albertina of blessed memory (“Honestly. I’ve never taught a class of such rambunctious girls before. I’ve taught boys who were tamer.”) stood ready with bandages and hydrogen peroxide.

I’m saying it’s a human thing. And you don’t leave it behind just because you grew up. Humans like to join up with others that are like them and keep others at bay.

Which is why it is very very important to make sure the charter of whatever you’re joining is not evil. No, seriously, it starts there. You want to start an organization to take care of the under-privileged children of left handed yodeling laplanders? That’s great. WHO CAN JOIN? Because if it’s just a benevolent organization, then anyone should be able to join.

On the other hand, organizations based on ethnicity that go to the bad – and we might include the Mafia, which regardless of purpose, sort of started in its earliest origins as mutual protection (before the US) and yep, through the depression did a lot of good, supporting whole families. But to be a member of the organization you had to be Italian.

Look, no humans band up then sit in their clubhouse twirling their moustaches and saying “now we’re going to be evil.” But human organizations often become evil. Partly this is because the people willing to do the donkey work of running a voluntary organization are often – not to say always – the type of mind that seeks power over others. If the charter of the organization allows them to achieve that power by dividing (as it were) the world in two and playing us against them, they will, and they will drive the association down an ever more paranoid path. At the end of which there’s always evil and attack on the “the other.”

On the other hand, if the charter of an organization is to achieve something, it’s harder to subvert. Not impossible, mind.

Take the charter of SFWA which was to negotiate with publishers and look after the interests of SFWA writers. The problem is that it couldn’t (I don’t know if from the beginning, I know it tried at least in the beginning. I know by the time I joined, it couldn’t) do anything in a business model that as an oligopsony and where anyone who fought any of the controlling publishers was blacklisted. This made it an organization with a requirement of membership and no chart, so it went in search of stuff to do. Hence, where we got to. (And no, it’s not as bad as the KKK. It’s just annoying and might hurt us professionally by making our field sound like a collection of whackballs.)

OTOH look at feminism, which isn’t even a formal organization so much as a “club” that you join by saying you are one, and a few loudmouth “leaders” who purport to speak for everyone with a vagina. Holy mother of whack! How did we get from equal pay for equal work to “I want to kill 90% of men and studfarm the rest”? Well, because when you assume that all women are equally oppressed and all women are interchangeable you’re already on the path to insanity. From there to “look for a mission” is one small step.

And the mission groups find in these circumstances is always between insane and “ew” because it starts by EXCLUDING.

So, if you’re thinking of starting a group (and who isn’t, after all) make sure the membership is open to all who might have an interest in the cause and are aligned with you. (A non-Marxist group shouldn’t have to accept Marxists, for instance.) And then make sure your mission makes sense and is something that can be accomplished and that you have a provision to disband when it is. Making sure your mission is not outright evil, like, say, killing all left handed Laplanders, might be a good idea too. Because if you start evil, you’ll only get more evil.

And if you’re considering an organization to join, look for the same things.

Me? I’m not much of a joiner. I’m odd. And odds don’t band well, even with other odds. So I’ll stay on the outside and blow raspberries and fondly wish a plague on both their houses.

And now all you left hand Laplanders shut up. I have books to write about your iniquities.*

*No, not really.

Did you hear about the snake-headed baby born to the woman in the next village? What about the three-legged centaur born to the woman a village over? No? You know those people over there, with whom you don’t interact are always having monstrous children and, what’s worse, they eat them too.

You’re reading that paragraph again and wondering if I lost my mind.

Last night, I found myself wondering if the field as a whole has lost its mind.

A colleague, a midlister with a decent reputation and okay writing, posted a recommendation of one of Larry’s books. The comments were immediately assailed by people informing her that he was the evil lord of evil and she was evil for promoting him.

I considered jumping in, and while I was deciding, she erased the post, then put up another saying that, well, she’d liked his books, but since he was an unsavory homophobe and all around evil in the matter of gay rights, she would never read him again, and she would now recommend a female from a small press.

This – this leap from rumor and innuendo to “since he is” pushed me over the edge. Yes, I do know some of you are saying that it’s a short road and an easy drive, but really, what kind of insanity is this?

I posted that Larry is no more homophobic than I am. For all I know he does oppose gay marriage (I don’t know. Never asked. Not particularly interested. Some of my best friends oppose it. I don’t. We have discussed it. They see my reasons, I see theirs. Neither will change. Doesn’t matter. They’re friends, not members of my hive mind. We can disagree on a lot and still be friends.) However, I’ve never seen him treat gay people differently or espouse the view that we should pull walls down on them or hang them from cranes, or that they’re worth less than the rest of humanity.

My comment was deleted, then the post was deleted, and meanwhile I blew up in the facebook diner, but all of this left me feeling furious.

Look, what idiocy is this? Are we people in the age of reason, taught to look for fact and evidence? Are we humans grown in a land of law where you get to confront your accuser? Or are we savages in a little village who believe all the bad things said of the people in the next village?

Humans are tribal and tend to believe the worst of strangers. The left has used this tactic for a long time.

As someone mentioned in the comments, a lot of (stupid) people constantly repeat “there’s no smoke without fire” without considering that sometimes the smoke is deliberate and special effects.

There is a tendency, particularly on the right, where we pride ourselves on being morally upright (by which I mean neither prudes nor judgmental, should any leftist be reading this. Most people on the right that I associate with pride themselves on being as moral as they can in their own conduct) we tend to immediately distance ourselves from someone we perceive as having some taint. This explains why they’re trying nonsense like the Perry indictment. It worked with all the minor figures of the Bush administration. Indict them of something stupid and everyone in the country would know they’re “criminals.” They might have stepped too far on that one.

And there is a tendency in the soft right and the center to distance ourselves from someone perceived to have committed the unforgivable crime of our age: being a bigot.

The left knows this. It is not for no reason that they fling around words like sexist and racist. (The Fascist MIGHT just be because they get carried around with rhymes. I keed, I keed. It’s because they have no clue what it means.)

So they start a whisper campaign and after three or four times of hearing the same thing repeated, the mush heads who never verify anything for themselves will believe “there’s no smoke without fire.” And never mind the fake smoke blowing from beside the stage.

This is nonsense and I’ve had enough of it.

Dave Freer, who is a better man than I am, unfriended the writer who posted the nonsense about Larry. I didn’t. Unless she unfriends me, I intend to bring down the rod of correction every time she does idiotic stuff like that.

Look, the hard left is lost. They employ these tactics because they know they’ll work. The mushy left, the mushy right and the mush-headed center just runs scared, afraid of being mistaken for a bigot or of being seen with the people the left is reviling.

Pfui.

I have had enough of this. They’re like a puppy piddling on the rug, and you wipe it up and don’t say anything because the puppy is young and doesn’t know what he did.

It does great credit to our soft hearts and none at all to our soft heads.

From now on, when the mush-heads go along and get stampeded by the smoke blowers, I’m intervening.

Yeah, I have the clean up bottle. But I also have a newspaper. I’m going to rub their noses in their own messes.

And if that doesn’t work, I’m going to ask them to explain why they gave birth to snake headed babies.

Bet I can find more proof of THAT than they can of Larry holding any of the opinions they attribute to him.

Can I make them abandon this tactic? On my own? No. If all of us do it? Probably. The matter, be it with leftists or puppies, is to make it too painful for them to crap on the rug of society.

I suggest we start doing so. The carpet was too expensive to throw out or burn. Let’s house-break them.

So, in addition to extended family turmoil, I figured out part of the issue with my writing.  As we all know something has been giving me allergic reactions (yes, could be the cats.  Monthly baths for Havey help.  OTOH I’ve had cats my whole life and only the last few years have been bad. I think it’s more household dust as the cutting down of physical books is helping) so I’ve been taking a benadryl a night to sleep.

I know that benadryl makes me woozy and weird and stops the writing, but I thought “just a four hour one at night…”  After being unable to write for a couple of weeks, I stopped it.  The writing came back.  Yes, it’s proceeding.

Zen, main character of Through Fire, is still the world’s hardest character for me personally to write, but my cheerreaders say you can’t tell.  Which is good.

After Through Fire gets delivered, please G-d, soon, I’ll finish Darkship Revenge.  Meanwhile, fully revised, The Musketeer’s Inheritance (formerly published as Dying By The Sword) is waiting my entering the changes into the electronic version so I can put it up.  I’d like to do so before the end of the month, since I’d like to do a promo on Death of a Musketeer.

Also being edited are the three books of the Magical British Empire, a subset of the world of Witchfinder.  It’s taking forever because they got “Political correctizized” in edits and it needs careful cleaning for the “author’s edition.”

All of that is taking back burner to books for Baen, and the YA fantasy — Shadow Gods — which is due at Wordfire press in exactly a month, give or take.  Some of you have seen the beginning.  It’s about blended families and Roman Gods with emotional issues.

Robert — #1 son — and I are working on a YA series that’s sort of Harry Potter space opera.  You’d have to be there, but… well, you’ll be there.

I’m also working on The Haunted Air, a short novel that falls between Witchfinder and Rogue Magic.

After I deliver the Space Operas to Baen, the most vital thing is getting Bowl of Red, the fourth shifter book, finished.

At some point here, I SWEAR A Fatal Paws, the first Orphan Kittens mystery will get finished.

Look, I KNOW I can write two novels a month.  I’ve done it in the past.  The price might be to wheeze and be stopped up, but that’s not the end of the universe.

Other projects which might or might not get done this year: The great Southern Gothic UF, Hell Bound (Also a UF), The Musketeer’s Confessor, Changeling (A space opera.  With Aliens.), Lucky (A space opera, with aliens.  Not the SAME space opera), The Brave And The Free, which is half done and might just be sent to Denver and, if they don’t want it, come out on its own.

I counted, and I have something like 42 things in the back burner.  And they’re all either novels or series.  And at some point here, we’re going to lose a big chunk of time as I move.  However, if we can find JUST the right place and set up for low maintenance, and if the hyper-extended family can stop having crisis, (or at least keep it down to a low roar), and if I can have just two “good years” (where the health issues are also down to a low roar) I could dig myself out from under the back log.

It’s a dream.  It could happen.  Don’t burst my bubble.

On the other hand by that time, I’ll have another five or six novels in the pipeline.

But that’s a different story.  Or several.

The Haunted Air

Sarah A. Hoyt

The problem with a wicked stepmother, Miss Albinia Blackley thought, suspended from her sheet-rope, between the sky and the distant Earth, was when the wicked stepmother was in fact your real mama.

It was all very well, after all, for Miss Albinia’s brothers – who always called her Al – because Mama was just the woman who had married papa when Geoffrey, the youngest, was seven, and was in fact no blood relation to them.

Oh, it had been terrible for them, probably, when papa had disappeared shortly after the marriage. Al couldn’t be sure, because she did not remember papa and wasn’t sure if he was like Mama or not.

But then when mama had done something and Al’s brothers had disappeared. And even if Mama was her real mama, Al was not going to stick around and have the full benefit of mama’s attention for the duration. Whatever the duration was.

She was going to run away and find her brothers, because Geoffrey needed someone to help him make himself understood when he started stuttering and Edmund was likely to lose everything, including his paints, and Aaron, Jeremy and Joshua would argue about everything, and William was likely to disappear into his music, and Samuel would just go all extremely disappointed…

It had all seemed so simple when she’d hid the sheets and crafted this tied-together rope ladder to escape from the room where Mama had locked her when Al had asked once too many what had happened to the boys.

But once she’d crept over the stone ledge of her room window, she’d found herself in a world she couldn’t recognize.

Gone was the tower of the mannor house on the cliff, overlooking the ocean and the familiar marshes. In its place, Al found herself hanging from a building that seemed entirely composed of blue glass.

Beneath her, there were flashes of moving things that she couldn’t understand and the sound of klaxons superimposed on a low roar as of a million voices.

She had no idea where she was, dangling here, between Earth and sky, on her fragile ladder of sheets.

All she knew was that the ladder ended far short of the ground.

Far above, a window opened in the wall of glass, roughly where Al’s room would have been, if this were still the tower from which she’d left. Mama’s silhouette appeared, and Mama’s voice called, “Al, how dare you.”

And Al let go of the ladder.

She let go before she could think. She let go, knowing only she couldn’t stand to go back in and explain herself to Mama.

She tumbled downwards, head over heels, wondering how it felt to hit.

And then she stopped. Middair. Someone was approaching on a rowboat, slicing through the air and the clouds.

UPDATE: You should read Amanda’s blog.

This post is late because I have an outdoor not-my-cat who loves me. He brought me something that squeaked for breakfast. He brought it back very fresh. In fact, he brought it back for me to kill. Fortunately I was in the kitchen and he was in the outdoor mudroom thing we call the airlock. I stood in the kitchen, listening to the squeak-thump and wondering if I should intervene, but the chances it was a bunny are minor. Sounded like a rat. And the chances of a desperate rat in the kitchen were really high.

Eventually Greebo (He’s just a big softy) grew disgusted with me and carried of his victim breakfast to enjoy elsewhere.

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with the post this morning. I mean, I could twist myself into pretzels and come up with something, but I’m not going to and instead I’m going to plunge head first into the post.

Imagine everything you’ve ever been told is a lie.

No, seriously. Close your eyes and picture it.

This kind of ah epistemological upheaval is very difficult. I’m telling you this as someone who found out about half of what she knew was a lie. What? Oh, little things – the first flight across the Atlantic was NOT as I’d been taught Sacadura and Cabral. “I regret I have only one life to give for my country” was not said by one of the assassins of Dona Inez de Castro before his execution, no matter how much my history book said so. (It might have been said by him TOO, but I suspect someone just thought it sounded good and stole it.) If you take more than an aspirin at one time, you won’t die. (I remember standing frozen in the kitchen when I’d complained to my host mother of a headache and she said “Just take a couple of aspirin, honey.” I thought “She’s trying to kill me!”) Other things that aren’t true that I “knew” were true: if you take a bath before it’s an hour after you last ate, you won’t die. Oh, and if you wash your hair every day it won’t fall off. Also, the entire street won’t turn and laugh at you if you go out in last year’s fashions. In fact, fashions are different in different countries. (And in the US, different parts of the country.) Things I found about the US, like for instance, it’s not all paved and built over, and Americans don’t ALL live in skyscrapers, was a different thing. You expect to find new things about a country when you go to a new country. You don’t expect to find out new things about how the world works.

Even the aspirin thing? Blew my mind. “Why did my mother tell me I would die if I wouldn’t?”

Of course, the answer is because someone told it to her. (Also mom hates meds. ALL meds. She wouldn’t even take vitamins, because she was sure it would kill her.)

I understand it was much more difficult for people like the inhabitants of the former soviet block to come out and find out that everything was the other way around. In fact, anyone who comes from a repressive and self-aggrandizing society gets a shock when coming to the greater world. For instance I’ve heard of Arabs stunned to find out they DIDN’T win the six day war.

So, why am I talking about this? We are not in a repressive society, or not that kind of repressive society. News leak in around the edges.

Except we sort of are. Our press is not in collusion because they think that the dictator will punish them (unless you mean not inviting them to parties.) But they are in collusion in order to be thought of as “beautiful people” and “good people” and smart.

And it’s amazing how much of that crap you end up buying. I mean, everyone behind the curtain knew their news lied. It was just the AMOUNT of the lies that was unbelievably large. They thought some things would be true. Same with people coming from Arab countries. I bet you if we kidnapped someone from North Korea and exposed him/her to the real world, they’d be shocked at how little their great leader occupies our consciousness day to day. Because that’s probably the part they believe. That he looms large in enmity or alliance in the west. In fact, I’ve read stories of transplanted Arabs and the part they didn’t anticipate was how little people in the west think about Islam and Muslims day to day. How their neighbors were neither resenting them, impressed nor spying on them due to their origin/religion. (Most of the time the neighbors think they’re South American :-P)

I don’t know how much we’d get “The truth” when transplanted to another country, but I’ve noticed that British newspapers (even sometimes the Guardian) sound terribly “right wing” to me. I know they’re not. It’s just compared to our press.

But American media looms so large in the world we tend to drag the rest of it at least partially with us into madness.

Still, I wonder what when we emerge from this mess – we will, though it will take a while and feel like we’re swallowing live frogs. (I’m almost sure Greebo didn’t bring me a frog.) – will be completely upside down from what we imagine.

This is relevant for what we talked about yesterday. Because I read a lot I knew of the horrors uncovered in communist countries after the fall. It shocked me – still does – that people not only still go around, proudly proclaiming themselves communists, but also that the schools are still teaching communism as the better/more moral alternative and always coming up with false equivalence soviet-style “we have homeless too.”

But what you have to remember is that MOST people didn’t sign up for the epistemological upheaval. And most humans are REALLY bad at that sort of thing. REALLY REALLY REALLY bad. As in, most can’t, not after adolescence. And some not then.

Even when I was an exchange student – a self selected group – I was one of the very few ones who socialized/had my best friends outside my linguistic group (British and Japanese, actually.) Most people would go to their linguistic group or the next one. Portuguese would preferentially associate with other Portuguese, then Brazilians, then Spanish, then Spanish colonies, and so on.

I mean, even while they were in the US. This is because that spare-time association allowed them to reaffirm at least some of their world view and to say “Americans think this, but—”

I chose to go off without this protection because I wanted to know what was true/true and what was agreed-upon true.

BUT I’m abnormal. I run towards that which scares me. (Not a survival skill.) [Okay, unless what scares me is the possibility of allowing a rat in the kitchen. And that’s not so much scares me as “ewwwww”]

For most people maintaining the imagined integrity of their world is worth being wrong. Even being wrong in significant ways.

Because of Soviet Agit Prop, the “communist” view was “popular” and “cool” in the west since the seventies and counterculture, at least. (It was popular in intellectual circles before that.) It’s probably hard for you young kids to picture, but even stalwarts on the right assumed that communism was somehow more “moral” even when it failed. They disapproved of their curtailing of freedoms, etc, but it was ASSUMED it would have better results than capitalism, if allowed to continue long enough. The right merely objected to the cost in human capital.

If this was true on the right, imagine on the left. Do you wonder that the journalists didn’t report the true horrors or reported them with exculpation. “If it weren’t for embargos against Cuba, it would be a paradise” is still believed. And as for Russia… Well, truth be told if we hadn’t sent them wheat they would have starved, but instead you’ll hear about how our insane capitalist arms race kept THEM poor.

But more importantly, once the exculpation and the nine days wonder was over, and the snide laments about the good guys losing, it was back to acting as though communism had never fallen. In fact, over time, that has mutated to a denial that all the times communism has been tried, it was in fact communism, and an insistence it’s “never been tried.” This is combined with eructation about Marx still being “right” – mostly they insist he’s right about things like literary criticism (and no, even there Marxism isn’t of any use. It’s like trying to measure elephants in light waves. It’s just that most people don’t care enough about these niches to go and show them they’re wrong, so they can protect their epistemological certainty wrapped around themselves like a blanket.)

This is typical of people under stress and whose world view is under attack to such an extent they can’t cope. They erase whatever challenged it and place it outside the discussion, and go back to repeating the cherished platitudes.

You can see the embryonic effect of this in a kid who has done something disastrous that threatens his view of himself. “I didn’t break the dish. Aliens flew through the window and broke it.” Is the first defense. The next is to pretend it never happened.

You can also see it in the white house, as our red-diaper baby president stumbles around breaking things, but can’t process it, because it would mean upending everything he’s been taught and his vision of him as “smart” for believing these things. He’s a normal human or possibly a normal incurious human. He didn’t sign up for this kind of upheaval. So he keeps stumbling around, pretending he didn’t do things, pretending things are different. Hence the insistence that removal of troops from Iraq was the former administration’s fault despite recordings of him bragging about doing it.

The problem is this: due to effects of a super-abundant society where people are not close to the bone – in fact are so far from the bone they haven’t seen bone in years – and the dominance of the press and academia by the far left, people’s view of reality is at least as skewed as that of people behind the iron curtain in the bad old days.

This corrupts everything, even those of us who are awake. What sounds right and plausible is twisted 25 degrees from reality. Western society is a giant bubble and a loud enough bubble that even people outside the bubble believe it. And a lot of the things propagated by the bubble are antithetical to the west and fossilized old communist propaganda, because the denial-reaction of our “elites” has enshrined that as “smart” and “cool.”

Will it take a crash to correct?

I don’t know. I think a crash might be inevitable, but whether it would correct it or not, I don’t know. The magnitude of the crash that would correct it scares the heck out of me and might not be possible, due to see how far from the bone we are.

I think what will correct over time is that technology is changing too fast for centralized anything. They’re losing the plot in each field it hits. And because of their mismanagement (Centralized is always more inefficient) the fields it’s hitting first are the ones they most control: media, entertainment, education.

We can hear that epistemological “reset” in the voices of the publishing industry’s execs as they say over and over again that their houses are better for authors because covers and editing and publicity, as though saying it made it true.

It’s possible things will right themselves as the generation that is most heartily promoting its epistemological error passes from this world. (Not long before I do, so I can’t verify that.) Kind of like the generation of the desert had to pass before the promised land could be entered.

Or it’s possible it will happen faster, as technology will change very fast. At least it seems to be on a track of not so much rapid change but “rapid change that makes a difference to normal human beings in every day life.”

It’s unlikely to stop.

And they simply can’t adapt.

This is going to make the times ahead as interesting as those thumps and squeaks from the mud room. (See, I told you I could tie it back!)

But we are at least semi-awake. So, whether we’re flexible or not (and a lot of us are, being Odd) the shock will be lesser to us.

In the end, we win they lose.

New World Disorder – Kate Paulk

Twenty five years ago, damn near to the day, the first crack in the Iron Curtain opened up when the Soviet Union chose not to prevent the appointment of the first non-communist Prime Minister of Poland since the nation was reconstituted after being functionally eliminated in World War 2 before being recreated as a Communist state by the USSR.

I remember the headlines that announced what was then a shocking change in the way the world worked. While I was growing up there was the First World, consisting of the modern Western democracies and republics, the Second World, consisting of the Eastern Bloc, China, and the assorted other Communist regime, and the Third World – the rest. Suddenly the Second World’s presence as a permanent antagonist to the First wasn’t quite as inevitable as it seemed.

For the next few months, it seemed like the world had turned upside down. Images of Trabants pouring across the Hungarian border into Austria (and the associated flood of trabi jokes) were a daily thing. Columnists reported the events, opinion pieces wondered when the crackdown would come, and people held their breaths (metaphorically) and hoped it wouldn’t end badly. (I should mention that this was Australia which has always paid close attention to the rest of the world. Something about huge tracts of land and an itty bitty population will do that).

Perhaps the iconic images of the mostly peaceful upheaval are the ones of the fall of the Berlin Wall. After that it seemed like a series of dominoes falling with regime after regime apparently packing up the cards and going away, with the sole exception of Romania where until the Romanian military defected en masse to the popular revolution, it seemed Ceausescu was going to hang on with his grim and bloody hands.

Then came the revelations of just what had been going on behind the Iron Curtain as secret police archives were opened and the west had more or less unfettered access to Eastern Europe for the first time in over 40 years. The Romanian orphanages and the AIDS children. The abuses the secret police perpetrated. The spying and propaganda and attempts to destabilize the west.

Australian news covered all of this – which led to (among other rather more momentous developments) at least one lifelong card-carrying Communist columnist publicly renouncing Communism in all its forms (I should mention that Australia never banned the Communist Party. There was even one elected to Parliament. One. Mostly because just about everyone in his electorate knew and liked him – he represented one of the remote, isolated regions of the country, and out there they tend to ignore labels like “party” and vote for the person). The footage and the newspaper reports were filled with what I think now was a mix of horror, outrage, and betrayal. Back then I was rather more naïve and only recognized the horror and outrage.

Enter the “New World Order”.

The Cold War might not have been pleasant, but there was a sense of stability to it. Everyone “knew” that the US would always oppose the “Reds” and that sooner or later the whole thing would explode in nuclear war and wipe us all out.

Suddenly that was gone. Worse than that, those who’d been pushing Communism as the kinder, gentler way to run a country saw the evidence that this was not in fact so – and that the Communist regimes uniformly bankrupted and destroyed the unfortunates stuck with them as well as themselves – and could not cope with a reality so much at odds with their cherished illusions (okay, yes, I did want to type ‘delusions’ there, but I’m having one of my rare moments of niceness, okay?).

Funnily enough, this is about when “Political Correctness” started to take hold, and when the really rancid criticisms of all things US began to pick up. Apparently without the threat of nuclear war to keep them grounded, the wannabes of the USA decided that if they couldn’t have Communism in the USSR under its own name they’d have it in the USA under any name they could manage to squeak it through by, leading to such delights as “Neocons” (which appears to have started as a way to describe socially conservative wannabe dictatorial types) and “Kinder, gentler conservatism” (yet another way to describe expanding Government power while pretending to be against overweening government stickybeaks. Apparently it’s perfectly acceptable if they only poke their noses into things those in power disapprove of. Like, oh, how much salt you cook with).

And, of course, steadily increasing madness and leftness from the acknowledged left side of the USA political system.

Which leads us to this little gem (http://www.vice.com/read/is-reducing-the-male-population-by-90-percent-the-solution-to-all-our-problems) of wannabe dictatorial idiocy – the kind of thing that is only possible if you have the sort of utterly repressive regime the communists specialized in.

Quite simply this “female” is a prime example of post-Soviet Derangement Stupidity – she has no idea how ridiculous or impossible her “enlightened” notions are, much less the kind of repression that would be necessary to enforce them – but one suspects she wouldn’t hesitate to enforce them because it’s “right”. Even if this meant the oh-so-euphemistic “culling” of the male population (and this doesn’t even go close to the potential genetic issues with the dopey creature’s plan – but then, she doesn’t have a degree in anything requiring rigorous attention to fact, so this is hardly surprising).

Twenty five years after the Communist dominoes showed that there was at least one case where the domino theory held true (even if not the one the left liked to laugh at), the vileprogs haven’t recovered from discovering their utopia wasn’t, and they’re getting more and more deranged as the world (and particularly the USA) continues to fail to recognize the wonders of their thoroughly discredited, murderous dream.

Sure it can work this time. Over 100 million dead can’t possibly mean anything.

UPDATE: Word Press, in addition to having made it more difficult for me to post new posts — they have these cute three balls that go beep bop boop — forever.  And if you manage to get in under that model, and press publish (which is a bit hidden) it also takes forever and has yet to post, in fact — has decided if you use the word fascist you go into moderation.  There must be other words too, because people are being put into moderation for no reason I can see.  So, at least for fascist use appropriate asterisks…

Yesterday I was talking in the diner about writing a short story for an anthology. I wrote this short story in the midst of extended family turmoil (nothing unexpected. People get old, and I’m a long way from the family home) and it is a short story on a theme that’s slightly a reach for me – how will humans get to the stars.

Given a month or two, and time to read and research I could write it as hard sf (I’m not a polyvalent scholar but I’m a really good researcher.) In fact, I am for a YA series that will be like the Heinlein Juveniles, in which I’ll be collaborating with someone in the space industry (I’m not announcing it yet, because I want to finish the research and do the worldbuilding. Baen has already expressed strong interest, though. There will also be a YA fantasy with Wordfire Press, and a YA space opera collaboration with my son, which will probably be Baen, and also a non-YA collab with my older son by adoption… um… would you guys at some point like a list of everything that’s under way?)

Anyway, I didn’t have a month or two, and worse, all the concentration I can spare is going into writing the books that must be written for Baen. So, I stepped sideways and went with “by accident.” The story starts with:

It was the summer of thirty two and I was living in a dilapidated Victorian in the Colorado Springs suburb of Greater Denver, with two mad geniuses, both of whom were trying to court me.

As a group we were recipients of the Bezos grant for developing a system of instant package delivery.

We weren’t the only recipients of the grant, which was structured as both a stipend and a contest. Twenty teams had been given sufficient to live on and create a prototype for a year, and the team that created the winning system would get the prize of twenty million.

It goes on to involve pizza pans, coin tricks and intergalactic travel. It’s a decent story. At least Kate Paulk, one of my cheereaders tells me it’s good. But here’s the thing – it’s also unlikely and I know it’s unlikely.

Is it possible that a new discovery, a new process, a new concept of the universe will upend our beliefs and even make interstar travel possible? Something like folding space or wormholes, or whatever you want to call it? (My son has hopes of a new process but he’s still asleep having stayed up late writing, and I’m not calling the idea to mind.) Sure it is. It’s quite likely that in twenty years what we think the most likely way of space travel will be proven wrong and that the craziest ideas will prove right. That is part of what science fiction is, or used to be, the dreams of our species, which keep us flexible, so that if the greatest thing in spaceships turns out to be powered by sparrow tears, we won’t be surprised. I mean, remember for centuries oil was just a black substance that wasn’t really that good for lighting lamps.

The thing is, even though this is possible and even likely, and even though we might discover the process by accident, it’s not likely to be three graduate students fooling around with it. OR if it is, they’ll be the culmination of several decades of study by serious people.

Is my story impossible? Oh, heck, no. Not according to what we know right now. It’s just highly improbable. That’s part of what makes it a good story, because, again, SF/F is supposed to be stuff we dream upon, stuff we really want to be real and which is maybe, marginally possible/plausible. If we anchor all our dreams in the plausible… well… I actually like some hard sf, but not the kind that’s SO plausible it’s like I’m reading next week’s newspapers. There’s no magic there.

I like to introduce some miraculous/improbable turns into my novels too – powertrees, anyone? – first because I think the future, five hundred years on, will have some things that we would consider magic or just too bizarre to exist. And second because it makes my inner thirteen year old girl squee.

But – to get back to the beginning of this – I posted the beginning of the story in the diner on FB, because it amused it, both the nod to The Door Into Summer and the Bezos grant. It’s set in Colorado Springs because well, I know the region. (I tend to set things in CO Springs, Denver, or Goldport which combines both. If you read my stuff, you’ll find the old stories were set in Charlotte. Are there other areas I could use? Sure there are, but I don’t want to spend time just researching a location. If the kids ever leave (ah!) and Dan’s job is at al flexible, I’d like to take to spending a month a year elsewhere, just for new locations. [At this point it would be uncharitable to tell me, as Mrs. Heinlein is supposed to have told her husband “Honeychild, you don’t need a new location, you need a new plot.”])

I’d forgotten that Colorado Springs is associated with Nikolai Tesla. This was silly even though we’ve never visited the Tesla museum (It was closed before we discovered it was here) because once upon a time I THOUGHT I was going to write a mystery series centering around Nikolai Tesla. (Editors and agents shot it down.)

Anyway, so, one of the people in the Facebook diner said “Is this about Nikolai Tesla” and this devolved into a discussion of Tesla’s strange popularity.

It occurred to me that Tesla is popular because we’re all waiting for the miracle. So much of what he did might or might not eventually pay off, but was ahead of its time in the way that Leonardo Da Vinci’s machines were. The way he made them, they were somewhat useful, mostly as pageant fodder, but lacking the internal combustion engine, they were neither practical nor could they be widespread. In the same way, we’re probably missing some puzzle piece that would make it “go by itself.” But it’s great to dream on. “What if” his strange energy suddenly solved our energy issues?

Well, it’s not impossible. It could happen. It’s just highly implausible.

Which is why he’s popular. More people than ever want a miracle.

I remember the last time it felt like this, in the seventies. Even at eleven/twelve, I knew everyone was seeing UFOs and writing about the mystical age of the Aquarium to come, because the situation seemed impossible and everyone wanted a miracle.

Then as now, I expect miraculous solutions will lose their appeal once we’re on the way to recovery – however difficult getting there might be.

The thing about miraculous solutions is that they’re so great because we know we won’t be required to work towards them. They just happen. (They’re also much better for short stories, because shorts are compact. I could come up with a future history leading to the stars, but not in six thousand words. Because for that to be fun, the nuts and bolts would need to be hidden behind human interest, and that times time.)

Fortunately for us our Republic and its design is NOT a miraculous solution. Someone here, a few days ago, left a comment saying “But for our form of government to work, everyone must be involved—”

Never! For communism, or for pure stateless libertarianism, yeah, you need everyone to be involved. Note I created an almost working stateless system in Eden (in Darkship Thieves) but note also that it only could be made plausible by making everyone there the descendants of people who were almost massacred (that will work while the memory of danger lingers) and making it a small, isolated and insulated community. Once crisis occurs, bad elements who were already exploiting the system openly try to take over it.

Because here’s the thing – it’s not just that we’re human – it’s that we’re alive and life is a series of odd shocks. Or “life is what happens while you’re dealing with something else.” (Sometimes I think my life is more so than others.)

Regardless of how much “everyone” believes in a system or a theory, a system that requires continuous engagement of every citizen is a system that will fail quickly and ugly. Which communism does. Pure Libertarianism never has failed that spectacularly because the individualists have trouble organizing enough for it to be tried.

Our system? It requires that people concern themselves with their own business. It’s taken a series of allowed corruptions for it to be where it is: the centralization of power; the conversion of our elites – and notably our press – to a communitarian doctrine which allows them to lie to us and wish upon a star for their perfect system.

But the design itself? Nothing wrong with it. And no, it doesn’t require everyone’s attention to work. Thank heavens.

It’s a system of governance, not a miracle.

But having come as far away from it as we have, it’s also not going to be saved by a miracle. It’s no use, now, looking at where we got and saying “but it’s not perfect.” Nothing made by humans is perfect. Because we’re not. And anyone who has kids knows better than to believe in a system where “if we all think good thoughts ALL the time it will work.” Not even the North Koreans think about their (messed up) system all the time, and just the amount of attention Dear Leader requires makes the place h*ll on Earth.

So, Tesla ain’t gonna save us. Nor is any other shaman and miracle worker. Yeah, technology makes our fight easier, but it’s not going to give us victory overnight and by accident.

Those of us who are awake need to see what we can do to consciously restore the republic. And we need to be aware it might be incremental. It took us almost a century to get in this much trouble. Expecting to get out of it with a wave of a wand is like expecting to lose those sixty pounds you gained over the last ten years to vanish by wishing. (If you figure out how to do that, tell me.)

Meanwhile, we work. Our contributions might seem negligible, but one of them might be the grain of sand that brings down the sandpile of statism.

Here’s your little plastic shovel.  Go work.

(Sorry to be so late and so short.  Was dealing with crisis with extended family.  Some of you know what. I am REALLY ready for the crisis to slow down.  Thank you.)

The prequel to this — Witchfinder — is now up on Amazon.

This novel will get posted here a chapter every Friday or Saturday, or occasionally Sunday.  If you contribute $6 you shall be subscribed for the earc and first clean version in electronic format.  I think it will probably take another three months to finish.  Less, if I can have a weekend to run through and get ahead of the game.  It hasn’t happened yet.

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

Treason on Treason

Miss Ginevra Mythborne

They wouldn’t actually sacrifice me, I thought, even as I realized my expression gave that thought away. But that wasn’t the point so much, only the horrid, cold feeling that, while trying to entrap me the Earl had stumbled on a truth he hadn’t meant to find.

I saw the realization hit him too. His face went from triumphant smile to something else. It wasn’t so much that it changed, but rather that it didn’t change. Instead it froze slowly into immobility, like flesh becoming waxy-rigid, as though all life drained from it.

I saw the understanding and the horror, together, fill in behind his eyes, as it came to him that he wasn’t merely lying or making a trap for me.

When I was at the home, when I was very young, we used to be sent out from the home for magical orphans to do small services for the neighbors. Sometimes that was watching the very young or the very old. I had sat up with the dying and watched death creep over them and not change anything, except for taking away the spark of life and mobility.

That was what Jonathan looked like. And I realized, with a little shock that I hadn’t thought of my days at the home for very long, and I wondered what it all meant, and why I hadn’t thought of it. It was like a part of my early life had been locked away, and now I had unlocked it and remembered it, like a long lost childhood toy one has forgotten but which becomes familiar once found.

I started to say, “It can’t be true,” and then realized my own face had frozen in seeming immobility. I thought that they had tampered with my mind, with my memory.

I thought of everything they’d had me do. They’d told me that I was suppose to lead Jonathan to fairyland, but it wasn’t Jonathan alone, I understood. All the traps I’d set had also led his sister in, and the king of fairyland himself, and his half-brother, the witchfinder, and Jonathan’s supervisor of manufactories, the peasant boy with the huge magical power and the magical wife.

I didn’t know for sure, in my person that all those had been led in, but I could feel they had. I felt them, with me, in this trap – a closing trap, like a net that had caught us all.

And I saw the plan. It would be to drive us towards the center of fairyland and there—

“Jon,” I said, and then realized I’d never called him by that time nor been given permission to do it. And remembered the rules of etiquette of my youth. “Milord. We must leave here now. Right away.”

Which is when the world exploded.

*The Oyster blinks blearily at the camera* Wuzzat? Saturday? Right, Saturday. Books! Have some books. Good books! Cyn having a… whatchamacalit… birthday. Right, birthday. Giving away books to celebrate. Happy birthday to Cyn! *blows a party horn* Oh, and send me more books!.*falls over, snoring*

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Kal Spriggs

Renegades: Origins

Books 1-5 of The Renegades

In times of chaos, there are those who fight for money, for power, or just to survive. In feudal Japan, they were Ronin. In the post US Civil War, they were desperadoes or hired guns. In the chaotic times of the collapse of human civilization, they are men, women, and aliens without shelter or succor. When no one else will take a stand, they stand for themselves. They are deserters, murderers, pirates, and worse… they are the Renegades.

Renegades: Origins contains the novellas Deserter’s Redemption, The Gentle One, Declaration, Ghost Story, and A Murder of Crowes. It also contains six short stories: Research Notes, Runner, Fool’s Gold, System Failure, Dishonored, and Crossed Stars.

Cyn Bagley

She Called It, Wolf

EJ Hunter

EJ Hunter comes home from Afghanistan when her unit is slaughtered by a man in cammies with an M16. They were sitting ducks. In a rage, she changes into a wolf and rips his throat out. The Army decides to give EJ an honorable discharge and send her home.

At home in Felony Flats, Nevada, her uncle, a Vietnam War Vet, dies leaving her a small piece of land, a silver bullet trailer, and a gold mine. She meets Sheriff Adam, who is also the alpha of the were-wolf pack.

There is a government researcher who is researching were-wolf DNA in hopes of making super soldiers, kidnapped children, and a were-cat. Also, EJ discovers that she is different from the pack. She can shift into other forms besides the wolf.

Billy the Kid

EJ Hunter

Betsy was the werewolf pack’s legal representation. Her life was pretty boring and man-free until Billy trotted into her life. He was a shifter and he was ready to join the pack. There was only one problem: Billy was a goat.

Urban Werewolf

EJ Hunter

John, a mechanic, meets Tina when she arrives at the shop to fix the copier machine in the office. For the first time in years, John is fascinated with this woman. There is something different about her that appeals to his werewolf heart. But Tina has secrets and when her son is kidnapped, John calls on the pack to rescue her son.

It never fails, but I post something about the threats facing the nation and some asinine and sanctimonious know-nothing comes by and drops a line about “I’m sorry you’re so afraid. I hope you find peace.” The dumber of them talk about my being afraid of change, foreigners, immigrants or non-white people.

Uh. If I were afraid of change, I wouldn’t have moved across the ocean and then twice across this country. And I wouldn’t write future-embracing stories.

As for being afraid of foreigners, immigrants and non-white people – for these idiots definition of non white – I’d run screaming everytime I look in the mirror.

The problem is they’re locked in a narrative in their heads. I’ve mentioned this before. First of all they think history comes with directional arrows.

I’ve said before and will maintain that the whole thing about “Standing athwart history yelling stop” is a very bad thing, because it presumes the future is leftist.

Look, if the future is leftist, it is, like the “queer future’ very short. Leftist societies are not long on the endurance, survivability or long term prospects. They just inflict a lot of misery and eventually the society will default to its foundations. Thus Russia is returning to the brutal and retrograde nation it always was, Cuba is a plantation run by brutal overseers, and China is going for a blinkered dynasty like many in its past.

The future doesn’t automatically belong to the left.

But the left has to believe this, because nothing else belongs to them. Even the most cursory reading of history shows that it definitely hasn’t gone their way.

So, like the failing business that is always about to breakthrough tomorrow, the left has to believe it has the future.

And so it has to cast every opposition to its crazy theocratic rule as “fear.”

Oh, yeah, damn skippy I’m afraid of their rule. But that’s because I’m afraid of seeing the economy run by people who couldn’t run a lemonade stand (when I said before that everyone is afraid these days, mostly I mean afraid in the “where is the money going to come from” sense), I’m afraid of their attempts to legislate prosperity for all (because it has worked so well everywhere they tried it), and equality for all (best attempt at that one was Madame Guillotine. Once you separate head from body the remains are all remarkably alike.) I’m terrified of their attempts to control speech and expression and their demand we all think as they want to (the ministry of thoughts.) I despise their blinkered pseudo-internationalist views (in the future we’re all one country, and that country is the USSR) and I loathe their attempts to make races (and ethnicities. And language groups. And orientations)into separate interest groups while screaming everyone else is racist.

I am afraid of all of this because in the past, countries that have succumbed to the proclamations of their twisted secular religion have all gone through horrible turmoil and misery and ended up poorer than ever before.

They on the other hand are convinced that I’m afraid of their rule because I hate minorities, gays, prosperity, equality and all goodness, possibly including chocolate and macadamia.

This requires increasingly more bizarre leaps of logic and reasoning and doing things like declaring people like Larry and I (hello, first and second generation immigrants) non-Latino, so that they can accuse us of being afraid of Latinos, even though all our culture and genetics are Latino and my whole family is still in Portugal (except my sons.) It demands they call people like me, who want a minimal government “fascist.”

It’s difficult to hold on to their position, of course, so they shout louder and louder, while ignoring the cracks forming in their world view.

In the end, they shout because they’re afraid. When you’re entire worldview is a one-piece, unwieldy, self-contradictory set of precepts that have no relation to the real world, you live in fear. If that thin shell cracks there’s nothing remaining of the world view you espoused, and upon which you built your unearned assumptions of intelligence and caring. You’ll have to think yourself into a new self image. A terrifying prospect for adults who’ve never had an original thought in their lives.

Fear. They have it. And through the fear that surrounds them like a miasma they see everyone else as afraid.

I’m afraid for my country and my children, for the economy and the world. But not too much. Or rather, I’m afraid in the short term, but not the long one.  I’m afraid of the mess they’re going to put us through, but I’m not afraid they’ll win.  And I’m certainly not afraid the future will include different ethnicity, skin colors or orientations, because right now in my family and my friends I have all of those.  (Baby, we’re a rainbow.  A libertarian rainbow.)

I’m afraid they’ll cost innocent lives, but not that they’ll overwhelm us. Because, you know, in the end we are in line with how the world works, and they’re not.

I’m afraid of many things, but none of those is that they’re the future.

In the end, we win, they lose.