These aren’t the crazy years.  These are the completely insane, run around with your pants on your head, saluting weasels years.

No, listen to me – there is a great mental illness striding the land.  Almost everyone is interested in things they shouldn’t give two hoots about.  And at least half the people want to live in a society of clones.

Look, I’m not talking just the government.  The government is forever sticking its nose in things that logically shouldn’t be of interest to them.  Part of the reason I’m so opposed to the governmental take over of our health care is that I know here it will be done with unique American-puritan zeal.  And I’m not wrong.

My last visit to the doctor I had to answer the “very stupid questionnaire.”  I’d been warned off telling them I occasionally have a drink, and just put down “never.”  (Why warned off?  Because friends are getting “counseling” for “alcoholism” who have wine twice a week with meals.)  However, I knew my doctor knew I’d smoked for a year at nineteen.  It’s part of my history because the reason I quit was pneumonia that wouldn’t quit.  So I wrote that down.  Now suddenly, this doctor  who has known me for seventeen years during which I haven’t touched a cigarette, (as I haven’t for thirty two years) wants to know if I’m sneaking cigarettes.  Because his computer directs him to ask that.  This is why the entire government in your business insanity is… crazy.

But that’s something we sort of know about.  WHEN hasn’t government taken power it’s not supposed to have, if a people are so supine as to let them?  Right – never.  And when hasn’t a government initiative gotten insane-silly?  Anywhere in the world?  Right. Never.  I mean, sure, this is a unique American brand in that the things they’re obsessing about is stuff like what you eat and what you drink and whether you might perhaps be having a little mild fun (a bottle of wine a week is mild fun anywhere else in the world) on the side.  Which would be okay if they weren’t basing this on the “latest studies” bound to be reversed in a decade.  (But ah, once it’s in law, it’s forever.)

Only there’s a worse craziness going on.  No, this is not a post about SFWA, but I’m going to illustrate it with something a lot of the ah… moral crusaders of SFWA say when you talk about the Vox expulsion. “He’s racist and sexist and I wouldn’t want to be in an organization with someone like that.”

Uh.

Look at that again.  An organization.  Any organization.

Let’s assume that Vox is all that (instead of just liking to twist people’s tails, to the level you can’t even be sure what he believes, precisely) plus he collects recipes for roast babies on the side (but he’s never roasted one, nor intends to.)

“I wouldn’t want to be in an organization with someone like that, ever.”

Uh… really?  Let’s suppose it’s a neighborhood organization, supposed to pay for the lighting the city no longer pays for.  Is his money somehow tainted because of what he believes?

Okay, so, next level.  It’s a professional organization, you know, whose goal is to benefit the practitioners of a little irregular and quirky craft that people routinely misunderstand.  You know, it’s supposed to negotiate better pay, make sure the contracts are fair, inform members of the worst offenders, if possible get health insurance and, on the side, in its copious spare time, throw a few nifty parties and if it must hand out an award.  (I think they’d be better served having tax help and also perhaps a buddy system for the aging and often never married members, but that’s me, right? I have these crazy thoughts all the time.)

Which of those purposes, precisely, is impaired if a member has beliefs you consider despicable?  If you said none, you win a star.

Now, there might be something to do with “he gives a bad image” but that’s simple, if you have strict rules for what can be tweeted over a sfwa channel no matter how irregular.  (Not that I even ever knew it existed when I was a member.  Probably because I spend so much time writing. And guys if you think only one guy stepped over the line on that one, you should take a long hard look at your membership.  MOST of you – heck most of us – should not expose ourselves to the public in unguarded moments if we want to preserve the mystique of the profession.  Unless you think androphobia isn’t sexism.  Never mind.  You probably don’t.)

This is not just SFWA’s problem.  We keep hearing this sort of nonsense from people everywhere. “Well, I wouldn’t even look at that fraternal organization because there are people there who don’t believe in evolution.”  “Global warming deniers are like holocaust deniers.”  (So, pointing out that the data is cooked, that the predictions from fifteen years ago didn’t come true – though they’re now telling us the oceans have already risen eight inches.  Really, guys?  So, they’re snorkeling in Amsterdam?  Or don’t you understand what you’re saying? – is the same as white washing the murder of six million people.  Nice moral confusion you have going there.)

I’ve been told (and not that long ago) that I’m a bad person for dissing Marxism.  Yep, yep.  It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do for others.  I despise a system that over the world, in completely different environments, has resulted in the death of 100 million people.  So I’m evil, and any association I join will be tainted. Because, evil.

This type of thing is constantly engaged in in public to discredit an organization people don’t like.  Lately seen when people were demanding the republican party apologize for what an allegedly republican singer said.

Note that if we were to tag every stupid thing that leftist celebrities say we’d never be done.  So not demanding they apologize for it is understandable.

In the same way, I suppose, demanding that any organization purge its Marxist, androphobic members would leave us without any public organizations.

But here’s the thing, the side that isn’t particularly interested in having government up in our faces mandating everything we do for our own good, most of the time doesn’t want to get up in your face about what you believe/think, no matter how crazy charmingly eccentric.

Over the years I’ve had friends who believed in the healing power of crystals, a friend who thought she was an incarnated alien, friends who believe aliens live among us, and at least one friend who thought that Wuthering Heights is great literature and not, self-evidently, a humorous book.

It doesn’t bother me.  It don’t make no never mind.  In the confines of our friendship, and unless their particular insanity came up, they were okay people.

I have, on the other hand, had people stop talking to me because I oppose the government takeover of the health care system.  Or because I don’t think we should give up all automobiles because the earth, it is burning up!  (Let me tell you, I could use a bit of burning up just now.)

If there were a professional organization that actually concentrated on improving the lives of its members, or a neighborhood association that actually kept the lights on and the streets watched, I couldn’t care less if half of its members believed that Call of Cthulhu is a documentary.

I might care what my husband believes – at least to the extent it affects me.  Say if he believed that every room in our house must be illustrated with Swimsuit calendar photos.  Because after a while all that semi-nude female flesh would get boring.  (We compromise and have fantasy chicks in every room.  Some in bikinis.  But hey, there are dragons for me to look at.)  But if he believed he really, really, really should drink cod liver oil every morning, so long as he didn’t want to force me to drink it too, I couldn’t care less.

As for his more personal beliefs, stuff about history and science, and how things really happen, we’ve been married 30 years and we discuss that stuff all the time, because we agree in a lot of things, but not nearly everything.  And with the kids there’s even less agreement and more discussion.  Which doesn’t mean they’re not my family and I don’t love them.  They’re individuals, not clones of mine.  And I have yet to meet anyone, no matter how nice or good or competent that didn’t have at least one TRULY crackbrained belief, that, by and large, has no effect on how they relate to me.

So what is this insane new… puritanism doesn’t cover it.  This insane desire to control everything people think, everything people know, everything people believe and everything people do?  Because if they believe differently from you, they’re WRONG and must either be made right or kicked out of polite society (or as the infelicitous troll over at MGC said “of society”?)

Beats me.  I don’t get it.  Unless these people are either using their beliefs as a club badge or so unsure of their own beliefs they can’t bear to have anyone admit to believing differently.

You remember, right, being about three and having a big argument because your best friend preferred his milk natural, and you preferred yours with chocolate, and he JUST had to change his mind.  HAD to.  And it ended in punches and the adults separating you.

And it was either because you didn’t want anyone to doubt your choice was the bestest OR because your friend was sort of a social badge for you at that age, so you wanted him to be “right” which at that age meant “like you.”  (All human young are intensely tribal and believe there is ONE right way to do things – how their tribe/family does it.)

But these people aren’t three.  And they believe that they should get the power of the government to force everyone to do what they think should be done.  And believe what they should believe.

Before this is done, we’ll be praying for Heinlein’s version of the crazy years.

*Yes, I’m better, and I’m hoping today is my last “sick day” but I did a hard post for Mad Genius Club (Someone volunteered for a first page critique.  It’s a difficult thing to do when you’re still somewhat under the weather.  Actually it’s difficult at all times, but very difficult when under the weather) and I’m out of energy.  Fortunately my lawyer, Robin Roberts — yes, the person who got me back my copyrights (yay) though I’m apparently not allowed to tell him how wonderful it is, because he blushes and stuff — the same man who keeps telling me to be VERY careful about what art I use for covers, the man who is the soul of law and the heart of probity, decided to send me a short guest post on covering it like it’s hot what art you can steal for covers, and stuff. (I’ll have to link this over at PJM too, next time I talk about covers. Meanwhile, it might keep some of you reprobates from stealing the nails off the walls of this here joint.  Or something.*

What Art Can You Stea… err Borrow — a Guest Post By Robin Roberts

Sarah has done some posts here and on PJMedia discussing her techniques for putting together cover art. She’s listed a couple of ways for one to find images to use as elements in such cover art and I want to briefly discuss what you can and can’t use.

First of all, what can’t you use?

Anything that is still in copyright and you don’t have permission to use. Period. “Fair Use” will simply not apply to cover art you assemble for your self-published book. And even if there was an argument that it could apply, one does not rely on the possibility of a “Fair Use” defense as a rational business plan.

There are also some “rules of thumb” that we often hear about if you “change” XY percent of an image, you won’t be infringing. This is unfortunately not true. The legal test for infringement is substantial similarity which is not expressed in a number. As an example, the iconic poster of Barack Obama from 2008 was created by posterizing a photograph that was copyrighted by the Associated Press. Posterization “changes” every pixel but the poster was still infringing of the AP photograph.

Creative Commons licenses are fraught with peril because basically there is no such thing as “a” Creative Commons license, there are many of them. Because the Creative Commons licenses have many options, some of which do not permit you to use them as elements in cover art (such as “no commercial use”, “no derivatives” etc.), you must be very certain of your ability to correctly read a Creative Commons license before using such images.

Don’t use anything you find on a stock photo or stock image website without having paid for a license. Stock photo and stock image companies search the Internet looking for unlicensed uses of their images and send dunning letters when they find them. Letters that demand large sums of money. I once worked in the General Counsel’s office of a large corporation and you would not believe how often someone in the company would inappropriately swipe an image off a stock photo website that we had not obtained a license from, and how much money that cost that corporation annually.

If you do purchase a license from a source of stock photos or images, be sure that you pay for a license that will allow you the full use of the image you intend and both website (for advertising your work) and multiple copies of ebooks far in excess of your intended sales.

What can you use?

If something has been explicitly dedicated to the public domain by its author, then you can use it.

In the United States, the term of copyright has been calculated in several different ways depending on how far back you go. There are still works in copyright that originally were subject to a 28 year plus 28 year renewal scheme (which was later extended by statute) unlike today’s authors’ life plus 70 years scheme. Further, until the Copyright Act of 1976 became effective, it was possible for copyrights to lapse for failure to observe some formality such as actually filing for the renewal term. There is a possibly apocryphal rumor in the intellectual property community that a major film studio fired all of its paralegal staff in the ‘50’s and allowed its film copyright renewals to lapse for a period – causing some films to become public domain. It is no longer possible for copyrights to lapse by accident.

The bright line in United States copyright law is that anything published in 1922 or before is in the public domain. From 1923 until approximately 1936, it was possible for something that had not been renewed to fall into the public domain but verifying the actual copyright status of a particular work is a non-trivial exercise involving research of the Copyright Office records.

Internationally, much of the world has used at least the “author’s life plus 50 years” term based upon the Berne Convention (photographic works minimum is 25 years from creation under Berne). But the European Union now provides for a term author’s life plus 70 years for most works. This results in odd situations where a work may be out of copyright outside the United States but still in copyright inside the US or vice versa. This is how the embarrassing situation came about where Amazon listed an ebook of George Orwell that was not actually licensed for use in the US some years back.

So if you are going to offer your work in the US, then make sure your elements are either properly licensed or from a work published prior to 1923. If you are going to offer your work outside the US, then you must do both calculations to be confident that the image you are using is in the public domain.

Almost twenty three years ago, right after I’d given birth, I was handed this slim pamphlet that started with how I couldn’t hope to mold my child.  I remember one phrase, which is still stuck in my craw: “Your children aren’t yours.  They’re the sons and daughters of the future.”

At the time I wasn’t sure if the nausea was from that sentence or from the morphine they were pumping into me, (because I had a massive uterine infection, due to three days hard labor.)

Now I’m fairly sure it is that sentence.

There was a comparison to children as arrows, shot from a bow, and you couldn’t control how they flew.

Right now I’m seeing every competition archer among my readers (and my husband used to be one) cringing and going “what do you mean you can’t control it?”

Actually the arrow thing is a good analogy.  Yes, part is how you shoot it, and part is in the wind, and the way it plays, and…

In the same way, some of your kids’ traits are genetic (a lot of them surprisingly so.  My second child is exactly like my dad, and my older child has a way of reminding me of my paternal grandmother, who died a year after he was born.) and some of them will be upbringing.  And some of them you can’t control.

For instance, in making me who I am, there are genetic traits – I come from a family of singularly stubborn people and terribly stubborn women, and also of people who like telling stories.  On both sides – but also the place and time I grew up in, and incidental things in my upbringing.  Given my temperament, if I hadn’t been sickly at a time when the society hadn’t yet processed the existence of antibiotics, for instance, (and so where quarantine and bed rest were strictly enforced for anything more serious than a sneeze) and therefore spent days upon days alone, in a room that didn’t even have a window (it was a shot gun apartment.  The bedroom was the middle room) I probably wouldn’t have started by telling stories to myself and ended up reading voraciously.  I’d have been out hiking, or climbing walls or something.

And while a lot of what I learned was from my mom and dad, from my grandmother… a lot of it was also incidental.  If my brother hadn’t been ten years older than I (just about) and an engineering student when I was a pre-teen, I’d probably never have discovered science fiction.  And if I hadn’t discovered science fiction at that crucial time, I wouldn’t have ended up being guided in a lot of my thoughts on society and the world by Robert A. Heinlein.  And I wouldn’t be here, now.

Now, none of those influences accounts for me as I’m now.  Not even Heinlein.  After a while, you raise yourself.  And no, my parents could not control how I’d react to the states, or the closed shop market of SF/F ten years ago, or— Any of that.

However, my parents could – and did – give me certain principles.  My dad’s was probably mostly “Never cry.  Legionnaires don’t cry.”  I don’t know how long that saying passed father to son I the family – and dad could see no reason his daughter shouldn’t be equally stoic – but there it is.  There was a warrior ethos there.  Even if you’re bleeding from both knees or if – as I did at eight – you just fell from a cliff (Dad and I used to go cliff climbing) and scraped your back raw; you might be in pain, but if you’re still on your feet, don’t cry and snivel.  It doesn’t make it better and it distresses others.  There was also dad’s strong abhorrence to lying (I get a special dispensation for telling stories.  I hope.) If you did something awful, it was better to fess up.  And you treated your friends and associates fairly.  If someone was your friend, or if someone had done you a kindness once, they’d need to do something fairly horrendous for you to ever turn on them.

Then there was mom who instilled in me the idea that you try your best.  You always try your best even if you work yourself into the ground.  If you can, you do.  If you can’t, you still give it a try — as hard as you can.

And grandma with “to stop is to die.”  You keep trying, no matter how many times you’re defeated.  And if you heart breaks, you continue working from your gut.  And also, you look after the weaker: cats, children, lost animals, strangers.  You look after them, because you’re stronger, and that makes it your obligation.  You don’t pass the buck.  You don’t take the animals to a shelter where they might get killed.  You don’t send the starving stranger to the curate or the civil authorities.  You set the table for the ragged man and treat him as an honored guest.  And you take in the poor dumb brute animals and look after them, and if you can find them a home, you make sure it’s good.  Because you’re strong.  And so it’s your duty.

Those are lessons you don’t lose.  Mostly given by example.  If I’m ever tempted to betray someone, I can see dad’s eyes, and feel him glaring at me across the ocean.  And though grandma is gone, if I fail to help someone – or something – in need when I can, I can hear her clucking her tongue.

What I’m trying to say is that the children might be the sons and daughters of the future.  They will – if everything goes well – see times you don’t know, in ways you don’t know.  But how you fire that arrow is important.  What you can give your children in guidance, and more importantly in example, is as important as your genetics and maybe more important.  Because people aren’t dumb brutes.

I find it particularly interesting that the “let them go, you can’t control them” instruction was being given to beginning parents in the early nineties.  It wasn’t as if we lived in a Victorian society where “honor thy father and thy mother” was graven law, inside every public place.

Was it an attempt at making child rearing a “public” thing?  Certainly we withstood a lot of push for us to put them in daycare starting at three months and give them “quality time” an hour or so a day.

And certainly the dream of public child rearing, collective, has been with us a long time, by people who think society would be better improved by standardizing their principles to everyone.

I even understand – all too well – that if I had been in a traditional job, I’d have had no choice.  Many people have no choice.

But that is the impaired situation, not the one to be elevated to ideal.  Even in that situation, you can usually block a lot of time for your kids.

Maybe it’s me making a virtue of necessity, but we didn’t give our kids much quality time.  What we gave them was quantity time.  I didn’t drop everything to play with Marsh.  Oh, okay, fine… there were rousing games of dinosaurs versus army men, but only when the alien dinosaurs invaded (it was this pack from the natural history museum… never mind.) Sometimes.  But most of the time, he played in the office, at my feet, while I worked.

And Robert would sit at my research desk and do his homework.

I sort of kept an ear out for them.

I continued keeping an ear out for them – and that I could have done even if I’d worked. – it requires finesse and reading between the lines, but you can figure out if one of their friends has a flexible relationship with the truth, and if another is leading them into trouble.  You can guess when the kid has decided not to bother with… oh, math.  And you can redirect.

I remember the thrust of that pamphlet was that you couldn’t.  If your kid decided to join a gang, it wasn’t your fault.  And if your kid didn’t want to finish high school it wasn’t your fault.

Part of it seemed to be to absolve parents from even trying.

I wonder how many people overwhelmed by life (and we’ve been too, a few times) took this as an excuse to just let go.  To let the kids grow up however.  “It’s not my fault.  They’re the sons and daughters of the future.”

Fortunately, I remembered dad and my mom and grandma.  Mom never told me that in so many words, but I knew that if I brought home less than a B I’d have to sleep outside with the cats.  It was sort of understood.  Since I was by nature a slacker, and kept an sf book under my geography textbook, and wrote snarky remarks on the side of my economics test (Well, the teacher WAS a Keynesian) if my mom had decided I was “the daughter of the future” I’d probably have dropped out of school in fifth grade and now be a factory worker in Portugal.

So my kids got that same kind of floor put under them.  “You’re expected to learn.  You’re expected to work hard.  No, you’re not expected to do the best you think you can.  You’re expected to do the best I KNOW you can.”  Robert still shudders when he talks of me standing behind him while he wrote an essay and saying “You’re not illiterate.  Watch verb concordance.”

And part of it was… that quantity time.  Not just the time while we worked, but we dragged them with us on things that interested us.  It was at a lecture about Mars that number two son fell in love with aerospace, for instance.  And we’d sit around reading together.  And we took them with us to lumberyards and groceries and talked.  And of course, if they were headed down a dangerous path we headed them off.

Are we to credit or blame for everything they are?  Of course not.  And we do know parents that tried their best, and yet … well, particularly when impairment or mental illness intrudes, you really can’t help the result much.

BUT for most parents, you can.  And it’s not a matter of being your kids’ best friend.  That’s silly.  They have best friends.  You’re supposed to be their parent, mentor and example.  You’re supposed to say “here there be dragons” and “here there be meadows of great beauty.”  You share more of the reasons with them as they grow, of course, but they’ll get a lot of it even without your saying why or how – from how you behave.

They’ll surprise you.  You’ll find they develop talents and notions you never saw coming.  That’s part of the fun.

And as they grow as adults, they’ll change and move away from the roots you gave them.

The arrow will fly through the air influenced by a lot of things, and well away from you, till you can’t see where it lands – but you gave it that first impulse.  And you made it.  It’s your arrow.

You’re not supposed to shoot blind and then say “it wasn’t my fault” if it doesn’t fly at all, or if it kills someone.

Just because you don’t have complete control, it doesn’t mean you have no control.

My children aren’t the sons of the future.  They’re my sons.  And I did my best to make sure they had a future.

Because that’s my job.  That’s what parents do.  Grandma told me so.

*For those not accustomed to this blog, in order that Sarah actually gets at least some writing time, and some relief from feeding the blog, Mondays are taken by one of my four friends.  Since fans of this blog/my writing call themselves Hoyt’s Huns, these four are the Raiding Party.  This week there might be a couple more guest posts, simply because I’m recovering from very bad flu/bronchitis/heaven alone knows what.  So, please be patient with me.*

 You are not entitled. . . . – A Guest Post By Amanda Green- Raiding Party Member

There are times I really wonder about folks. We apparently have an entire generation with a number of its members thinking they are entitled to do or have whatever they want. They haven’t been taught what it means to have to face consequences for their actions or inactions. Our schools don’t help. How can they when more and more of them are doing away with pesky little things like homework or take a test one time and learn to live with your score? Then there are the parents who don’t discipline their kids because it might damage their widdle psyches. It’s gotten so bad that there is now the pseudo-defense of affluenza that has been used to successfully keep a young man from serving time for killing several people in a drunk driving accident. Instead, he gets to go to a cushy rehab facility until he is better. Oh, his so-called punishment? He can’t see his parents during that time.

This sense of entitlement seems to have invaded every aspect of our lives. This was driven home to me yesterday when I read this article. I should have realized it was one of those articles that would drive my blood pressure up when I saw the title – If JK Rowling Cares About Writing, She Should Stop Doing It.

Take a moment to consider what the title says. Now, look at who the author of the post is and read her byline. Lynn Shepherd. Author and copywriter.

Author.

And she’s telling Rowling to quit if she cares about writing.

Now consider that this is someone who admits to never having read a word of the Harry Potter books or having seen a minute of the movies. She really didn’t mind Rowling so much when she was “Pottering about” but she just didn’t understand why so many adults were reading the books. After all, according to Shepherd, she was bothered “because there’s so many other books out there that are surely more stimulating for grown-up minds.” How do you make a judgment like that without first at least trying to read the books you are dissing? Oh, I know. You make assumptions and, like so many of the ones calling for the older writers in SFWA to move aside because they are no longer “relevant”, you want message novels and not plots readers actually want to read.

Okay, she does say she guesses any reading is better than no reading. That’s mighty generous of her.

However, any generosity she might have felt toward Rowling disappeared when – gasp – Rowling decided to branch out into adult books. How dare she? How dare she do something like that when she should have known her books would sell on the basis of her name alone and not on how well they were written? The horror, the horror.

The book [Cuckoo’s Calling] dominated crime lists, and crime reviews in newspapers, and crime sections in bookshops, making it even more difficult than it already was for other books – just as well-written, and just as well-received – to get a look in.

Now, I will admit upfront, I haven’t read Cuckoo’s Calling. However, the audacity of saying that Rowling shouldn’t have written the book and taken up a publishing slot other, lesser known writers could have filled – much less review slots and bookshop placement – makes me want to scream. Why not say the same thing to King or Roberts or Dan Brown or George R. R. Martin? After all, they are taking publication slots and bookshop placement from lesser known authors.

Rowling has no need of either the shelf space or the column inches, but other writers desperately do.

Excuse me while I laugh hysterically. Every author who wants to sell books under to the traditional model needs shelf space. How in hell are they supposed to sell their hard copy books in stores without it? As for needing column inches, I hate to tell the precious little darling that even if Rowling wasn’t getting the reviews, it is doubtful she would. Reviewers tend to review books by well-known authors or authors who are local products or who are being pushed by their publishers. If she was being pushed by her publisher, she’d be getting reviews as well.

By all means keep writing for kids, or for your personal pleasure – I would never deny anyone that – but when it comes to the adult market you’ve had your turn. Enjoy your vast fortune and the good you’re doing with it, luxuriate in the love of your legions of fans, and good luck to you on both counts. But it’s time to give other writers, and other writing, room to breathe.

How magnanimous of her. Write in one market and one genre only or for your own pleasure. But don’t you dare come intruding on what I see as my territory. If you do, I’ll hold my breath until I turn blue because you’re just a big meanie.

This sense of entitlement, that you get to tell someone who has actually made it in the business that they need to step aside and let you have your turn even though you haven’t earned it, is beyond me. It is the same sense of entitlement I’ve been seeing with SFWA. Those who are pushing for “diversity” sure aren’t practicing what they preach. If they were, they wouldn’t be telling writers who have earned their stripes, who have been in the trenches for years and who have supported SFWA through other internal battles that they were dinosaurs who just need to go away and die. That smacks of ageism, if nothing else, and flies in the face of a “diverse” membership.

What’s worse, many of the authors they are attacking have long written characters of color and of non-heterosexual preferences. But because they don’t necessarily speak the right-speak, they have to go.

But it goes beyond SFWA. You have “Con or Bust” that Jason Cordova wrote about over at Mad Genius Club last Friday. I applaud the desire to help those who can’t afford to go to cons but who want to attend. However, I wouldn’t qualify no matter how poor I might be or how badly I wanted to go to a con. I’m white, I’m over a certain age and I’m happily heterosexual. But it’s to help build diversity.

Then there is the amendment to Tor.com’s submission guidelines:

“We want our stories to represent the full diversity of speculative fiction, and encourage submissions by writers from underrepresented populations. This includes but is not limited to writers of any race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, class and ability, as well as characters and settings that reflect these experiences.”

While I agree submissions should be open to everyone, what gets me with the above statement is that it puts the emphasis on wanting a diversity of authors. Diversity in story content comes second. I’d like to think it’s because the powers-that-be recognize that there has been diversity in “characters and settings” in the genre from the very beginning. But I doubt it.

Instead of worrying about how they are entitled to their time in the limelight and their shelf space and their review column inches, these little darlings who are so sure of their entitlement ought to be worrying about writing stories readers actually want to pay money for. I know it’s crass, at least in their lexicon, to worry about such mundane things as money.

Unfortunately, too many of these entitlement darlings think they know better than the readers when it comes to what they ought to be reading. They forget that most people read for entertainment – especially if they are reading fiction. But if they allowed themselves to really consider this, they’d realize they can’t keep writing their politically correct books without a plot readers are interested in.

You want diversity in your books? Cool. Just don’t make diversity a preaching point and your story the rock you are beating the reader over the head with. You are not entitled to preach at your readers any more than they are entitled to throwing your book at your face.

This is a land of opportunity, or it is supposed to be. Look up the definition. I guarantee it is the polar opposite of entitlement. You want readers to buy your book then write the best damned book you can. You want to show readers that characters who aren’t of a traditional gender can be main characters? Then write a story with a character or characters like that. But don’t make their gender the main point of the story. It is part of who your character is but there has to be a plot, a story the reader wants to read. You are not entitled to force him to read it if he doesn’t want to.

Grow up. Learn your craft. Realize that publishing is changing. There are fewer slots than ever before in traditional publishing. So publishers are going to go with authors who they know are “best sellers” over the new author. That’s especially true when it comes promotion monies.

So, instead of bitching and moaning about how authors who have already made their mark on the industry should step aside and let your entitled little butt have the spotlight now, why don’t you take a moment to try to figure out what they’ve done over the years to get to where they are? Oh, wait, they worked hard to get where they are. They had to fight their way to the so-called top because they didn’t think they were entitled and the little darlings of today aren’t about to actually have to rely on their talent to win over readers. It’s so much easier to get an audience when you shove the others out.

The only problem with that is the audience, on the whole, won’t follow them. They don’t want to read about entitled darlings. They want to read about characters who fought the good fight. Sometimes those characters win and sometimes they lose. But they are characters the reader can identify with – no matter what their race, sexual preference, gender identification, religion, age, whatever – but who are part of plots the reader is interested in.

Entitlement is your enemy. Crush it in yourselves and get to work.

*First, it must be understood this is entirely Kate’s and Amanda’s fault.  Those of you who know all three of us, know that’s usually the case.  I’m the innocent, mild mannered one.  Second, when we were accused of being the Church of St. Heinlein, I rolled my eyes.  Ginny told me he was no saint, and she would know.  I said “Maybe the church of G-d as the Author. Most writers see Him in their own image, after all, and things like “why does evil exist?” are easy peasy explanations.  “The plot demands it.”  And they said “The Church of The Author, Western Branch, Heinlein Tabernacle.”

The cloaked woman approached the temple timidly.  To begin with, it wasn’t what she expected.  She knew these people set themselves up as so special, so she expected white columns and marble, not a dinky suburban mall, and a small corner, that had probably once been some sort of florist, because you could still read in the corner of the plate glass window “FTD.” (Someone had crossed out D and tried to make it an L and someone had inexpertly drawn a rocket next to it.)

Above it, across the window, someone had scrawled in bright red paint “Church of the Author, Western Branch, Heinlein Tabernacle.”

At the door stood a man who looked like a carnival barker, in red-striped pants and a blue jacket spangled with stars, hectoring the small but continuously renewing crowd of people, approaching from their beat up cars in the parking lot, by ones, by twos, by families.  “Come in, come in, brothers and sisters.  Why bless your heart.  Come refresh yourself with story and feats of daring-do.”

The cloaked woman shied back before the man could see her.  This was all so… uncouth.  But the man turned a kindly eye on her and smiled.  “Why, welcome sister.  You look like you’re in need of a pick me up.  Come on in for the reading.  We’ll have some hot fudge sundaes afterwards, and there’s always the sharing of the water, in whatever form you’d take it!”

She mumbled the lines she was taught to say.  She knew they’d cause these people to turn her away, stupid as they were, “I cannot.  I had sex with someone not my husband.”

The man laughed.  “Who cares?  Perhaps it was part of the plot.  Besides, was it a mammal?  And did you share water first?  It might have been blessed.”

“But, it was another woman!”

“Ah, but Heinlein wrote many so.  There can be a good plot there.”

“A black woman,” she said, desperate.

“What does that matter? Do you not know our finest theologians believe that Eunice in I Will Fear no Evil was black? Come in, come in and drink from the water that never stops, and take part in the plot that never ends.”

Shaky on her legs, feeling like she no longer understood the world, the cloaked woman went in.  She had a moment of hope that the man at the door was just odd, as she glimpsed a poster that said “Virgin” on the wall.  But it turned out to be a poster of Virgin Galactic, and, worse, someone had put an arrow to Virgin and written at the other end of the arrow “A perfectly curable condition” and the initials KP, followed by “Holy Deaconess, by order.”

The cloaked woman took a deep breath and walked into the great space of the temple.  It was a large room – probably once a warehouse – and the walls were completely lined with books.  She approached and was shocked to see there were female names on those books.  Female authors she admired were included here.  This couldn’t be right.  Were they mocking her?

A woman with a rolling voice climbed on the podium.  Was she wearing a live snake?  Her words were not immediately understandable – and the crowd shouted Yay! So much – but she caught something about a poet who read their verse in public possibly having other bad habits.  That couldn’t be right!  What about all the poetry readings at the coffee shop?  What could they have against those?

Then she remembered how bored she’d been with that poet who’d tried to deconstruct the language by writing a poem all in possessive articles.  Her, his, theirs had gone on for hours, and she’d been ready to faint or cry.  Maybe… just maybe the heathens had something.

And then suddenly in the middle of all this, came the words, “As Heinlein said, any artist who has to be supported by the government is a whore.  An incompetent one.”

The cloaked woman took a breath like someone drowning.  She swallowed hard.  How could they?  How could they believe that?  How could there be fine literature without government support; without government approval?  Who would support writers, if not the government?  Many of the cloaked woman’s sect were college professors, receiving government money to keep their careers going.  What would be the alternative?  Getting the common man…  She looked around at the people there, with a disdainful expression… to support them would mean you couldn’t preach or raise their consciousness in your books. What would be the point of that?  Didn’t these yokels know that literature was supposed to educated and elevate the masses.

She slunk out to the parking lot.  Nobody stopped her.  Looking dubiously at the mini mall store she made her decision.

That was it.  She’d give the orders to have the place torched.  That way they could stop preaching their evil story message.

The nerve of the peasants, thinking they could control what writers did, by only buying those who entertained them.

Fortunately her people were here to redirect Science Fiction into the greater temple of literature, where works weren’t actually read, but were praised, because they were good for society!

Improving moral works forever.  As it should be.

(If only she’d noticed the Flamewars Won Trophy  poster board!)

Scriptora est omnis divisa in partes tres…  Oh, wait, not that kind of report.

So — I hadn’t intended to get sick, and I went so far as not to get very bad flu, even while the guys got it.  In fact, #1 son and I — who’d had the vaccine — were barely touched by the flu, while the other two mugs got very ill.  Of course, any of the guys being ill makes it very hard to write, but I was sort of puttering along, and then the secondary infections reared their ugly head.  You see, I hadn’t prepared for that.  So, bronchitis and sinusitis, and my ears were starting to get involved.  (My ears always get involved.  If this were a space opera my ears would be the space ranger who can’t leave any situation alone — Sarah’s ears to the mess! — or for Heinlein fans, my ears are Lazarus Long — only they’re always trying to die off.)

But you know — I’ve talked about it before — how little aware I am of what is going on in my body.  This is one of the reasons I get so ill, because the symptoms need to get strong enough to break through the book currently unrolling in my head.  So, it took getting to the point my fever spiked to 103 and I was wandering around the house in a fog (did you know that a sufficiently high fever has the same effect as hallucinogenics?  I never actually saw pink lizards, but I used that as short hand for my mental state, so that people didn’t tell me to drive somewhere or something like that — I probably could have driven somewhere.  I just would have kept on driving in a straight line.  That was sort of what I was doing here.  If I was peeling carrots, I’d go through a whole pile before going “oh, yeah.”  Not that I peeled carrots.  In fact #1 son said “This family has been eating like we’re starring in a documentary.”  I.e. the family that NEVER eats fast food has had a lot of it this week, because everyone’s schedule is packed and I’m sick, and Dan isn’t very well.)

It was still unkind of Charlie to compare me to an oyster.  I could say “you can’t choose your family” but since he is in fact part of my chosen extended family I’ll just say “don’t let him put lemon on me.”

Yesterday (second day on godzillamicin) the congestion loosened.  This was actually a good thing, since what was worrying me was that I wasn’t coughing at all, and when that happens it goes to my lungs and that’s bad news.  Well, my cup runneth over.  Okay, not my cup.  And you don’t want details, but yesterday I woke up drowning.

And then I thought it would be a good idea to clean the kitchen, the boxes and the bathroom.  (Look, would you trust the parts of the house that must be clean to the young males?)  Yes, older son yelled at me.  There was something, something about my thinking I’m made of titanium, but I’m only human.  I have clue zero what he meant.  Anyway, this was about a third of what I normally do on Fridays, took me longer than the whole thing usually does AND I was shaking with tiredness afterwards.

This morning I woke up clear headed, but I think I’d best not do any cleaning and scrubbing.  (So hopefully Havey didn’t throw up all over the kitchen floor — why does that cat get sick when I do?)

I still don’t know what to do about these recurring issues — my lungs have always been fragile.  Twenty years ago in the Carolinas I lived tethered to my inhaler, so I guess this is an improvement?  I’m going to try to make with more C and lemon in my tea and stuff and to become more aware of signs of trouble before I’m really ill.

Meanwhile, if I was doing something with you two weeks ago — guest post, project started, promised to look at something — two weeks ago, it’s gone.  So ping me again.  A couple of extra guest posts next week wouldn’t hurt either.  I might no use them, but I hear this idiotic thing has a long ramp back up.  Feels like it to.

One of the projects I started two weeks ago was asking people to read over the first three musketeers and do a bible for me (I’d like to get three of those.  Then I’ll have everything covered.) and also to typo hunt them and No Will But His and send me lists.  All of this has been copyedited, some of it twice, but as I type set it, I keep finding strange and silly typos.

The musketeers were written when I was doing 6 books a year plus upteen proposals, plus homeschooling the genius (aka #2 son) so not only did things slip, but my very odd sense of humor intruded.  Some of it I can’t remember why I thought was funny (probably pink lizards) but I’ve been changing it and not making notes, so the old bible for the series is useless.

I have the new versions and will upload them to a hidden page and give the volunteers (and those subscribing at that level) access to them.

And I think that’s it.  I’m going to have caffeine.  If going downstairs and making tea and eating a yogurt doesn’t leave me winded, today might be a good day to write.

Now, I’ll admit that I have rarely felt a need to go to war with someone on the internet personally – at least unprovoked.  I have once started a war unwittingly, by linking someone who was being as Georgette Heyer would say “foolish beyond permission.”  This is known around here I think as “the incident of the very pampered non-fic writer and her insane groupies.”

Most of the time, though, when I have something to say, I have something to say about ideas, not the person in particular.  And since the ideas are usually stupid enough on their own, I don’t link the source – though I or my fans have been known to clue others on how to find it.  This usually avoids counterstrikes, because the originators of the annoying ideas either don’t feel a personal incentive to counter attack, or they don’t recognize the ideas as their own.  (People are oblivious, what can I say?)

This is not so much because I’m a wussy – I’m not – but because I’m your average, excitable Latin type.  (Well, maybe not average, but pretty close.  Sometimes stereotypes are true.)  Once the fight has started, I find it hard to pull back and do what I’m actually supposed to do, such as write novels, that actually pay, so we can actually you know, keep roof over head and such. (Okay, being fair, husband keeps roof over head.  But I pay part-tuition for the boys and other expenses of that ilk.  And if the payment for those has to come out of his paycheck, roof over head becomes… challenging.)

Also, as I said before, I’ve been involved in blogs that went to war against other blogs/organizations.  There are people you shouldn’t go to war with (more on that later, but let’s just say some of the more… ah… politically involved blogs… you know, the ones really involved, have connections who are either violent or plain crazy.  The practice of Swatting for instance can get someone who is just having an argument with a crazy comprehensively killed.)  But even if you go to war with a sane human being, (for values of sane and human being), if you both get so absorbed in the fight that it is the most fascinating thing in the world to you, you might not notice you’re boring your readers to tears.  I’ve wandered off from at least two blogs under these circumstances.  I agreed with their position in the war, but how many times can you say the other side are poopy heads without growing stale?

However, this blog has been – coughs delicately – involved in wars before, mostly when someone went after my friends, or said something so criminally stupid (as in, if you’re stupid enough to believe it you’ll do things that criminal in fact if not in law – and sometimes in law) that I must stomp.

From my own mistakes and er… unnamed (and unlinked) others in the Internet Art of War, here are some things you must do before going to war.

1-      Know your opponent.  I mean, at the very least CURSORILY google the person.  This also applies to commenting on their blog.  After all we’ve had people coming in here all hot and heavy, having heard somewhere I was ESL and lecturing me about my English based on my unproofed, un-caffeinated copy written early morning.

I’m not going to say I don’t make English mistakes – ya’ll do too, precious(es) – but I’m more likely to be using obscure slang and even more likely to have made some truly insane typo of the sort where my fingers think “head” is an apt substitute for “door” (this for some reason happens in my manuscripts a lot when I’m tired.)

Then there are the idiots who will run to other blogs and say “Sarah Hoyt, who is an indie writer” – before trying to claim I don’t know anything about traditional publishing.

Five minutes googling – or looking at the side bar – would tell them I write for a living and am still MOSTLY traditional.  Then there are the precious flowers, on and off this blog, who lecture me about not knowing other countries since I never left this one… yeah.  That’s funny too.

Of course, most of the time, when I get upset enough to go to war, my minions have already exhaustively researched the target.  That brings us to point two.

2-      If your opponent has hyper competent minions – by which I don’t mean ones who run to twitter to call your opponent white supremacist, but those who start posting funny (and true) stuff about your opponent in the comments to your blog – be aware that you’ve been researched and that some of it has been done by professionals who do this for a living.  Your proposed opponent – or the person you just attacked because it seemed like a good idea at the time – probably knows more about you than you do yourself.  If he/she isn’t using it, maybe he/she is being merciful.  Of maybe he/she is too busy with real life.

Don’t assume they used everything they have.  Depending on what you think is the possibility of a nuclear-level retaliatory strike based on what there is to be found out about you… not continuing to attack might be the best part of valor.  Remember what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen.  Let the sleeping Englishmen (or any other nationality that’s similarly nuts) lie.

3-      If you make mistake one or mistake two, don’t try to add to them by doubling down and saying something utterly stupid like ‘Well, I still think’ or even ‘poopyhead, poopyhead, poopyhead.’

At this time, it is a good idea to – if you’re not smart enough to apologize or simply can’t do it without losing face before your followers (eh.  Not mine, but some people have DIM followers)  — either drop the matter entirely or make a cogent case as to why your opponent is still wrong WITHOUT having whatever characteristic you based your initial attack on. That brings us to point four.

4-      Your opponent is unlikely to be a cardboard cutout.  Yes, I know, some of you are young enough to have soaked in group-hate without knowing that very few people fit stereotypes.  (I might be excitable, but I’m not flamboyant, for instance. Also, I’m only excitable after a point.)  Just because you’re battling what you identify as a conservative, say, (and you’d better make d*mn sure of that identification.  If you’re very young, be aware that anti-communist doesn’t necessarily mean traditional conservative.  That error will get you laughed at.) don’t assume this is going to be a prudish, repressed, or even particularly religious person.  Yes, I know what the movies and TV show you.  You might want to consider that in capturing the heights of entertainment and news, the left left its followers curiously disconnected with the real world.  (Which only works to a point.)  In the same way, when attacking someone you identify as crazy left, don’t assume they have the rest of the package, including atheism.  I’ve met a few hard left fervent Christians.  People can be … bewildering.  Don’t attack a “package deal” – few people are that.  In fact, don’t attack people at all.  Attack their ideas/beliefs/wrong-headed behavior that set you off in the first place.  Calling anyone a poopy head doesn’t convince anyone.  Explaining why an idea/belief is wrong might.

5-      If you’re going to attack or counter-attack, nuke from orbit.  That is, don’t just say something like “That idea/belief is wrong.”  Show why it’s wrong.  Explain how you came to that conclusion and don’t have it be just “I was told it was wrong, and only old people believe that’s right.”

Remember you’re not fighting a cardboard cutout.  So don’t suddenly assume your opponent got his ideas at the old cardboard cutout emporium mart.  To say “everyone knows this isn’t true” just makes you sound so young we’ll check for spit-up milk under your chin.

This goes double or triple when you’re talking about a country you’ve never visited; a time before you were born; a field that’s not your specialty.

Heaven knows, I engage in enough blather about things I’m not an expert on.  I’ve also been known to say that a commenter I KNOW is an expert should check me on it.

BUT when you’re going on the attack, you want to be on your home ground and conquer the hills.  Make sure – absolutely sure – of what you’re saying or doing.

Just because all your college professors told you things in country x are thus and so, if you’ve never been there, trust me – TRUST ME.  I’ve lived through this – you have no clue.  Chances are your oh, so learned professors don’t either.  They’re usually just going after their counterparts in that country who can be – again, trust me – astonishingly divorced from reality.

The mistakes can be as egregious – I’ve heard Americans say this.  No really – as assuming socialism works because “Europe has such beautiful buildings.  Much better than America.”  Or of course the idiot Michael Totten ran into in his latest jaunt in Cuba who told him that “They really love Che. I don’t think anyone in America is loved that much.”  (Innocents abroad, indeed.  Let’s hope this American tourist never finds out that when the penalty for not “loving” a public personality is death, people tend to “love” him, publically and loudly.)

Visiting a country on vacation won’t tell you anything about what life in it is like, either.  You might come back knowing a ton about artifacts and the local food, but to really know a country you need to live there, at peasant level.  (Or be a trained investigative journalist.)

So unless you’ve done that in a country, don’t lecture the people who live in that country on what they know/believe or what actually psychologically motivates them.

This is true for everything else.  I don’t care if your postmodern psychology teacher told you that tons of wives get beaten superbowl Sunday.  That is one of those things that sound right inside a belief system, but aren’t actually true (likely because the belief system isn’t congruent with reality) no matter how many made up statistics are brought up.  And don’t you go using those made up statistics to lecture your football-fan friends, because you’ll just look like a total idiot.

Again, make sure what you’re using to attack can be backed up and is not just a “I was told this.”

Once you’re sure, strike at will, and have fun doing it.  And then disengage.  This is just a battle.  It’s not your life, and certainly not your profession.

Always remember the motto “Peas Is Our Profession” (yes, if you get the reference, I’ll send a signed book to the first one.) even if war is at times needed.

*And no, there probably won’t be chapters this weekend.  I have Godzillamicin and inhaler but clawing back to health is going to take time too.  Meanwhile fiction takes more effort than non-fiction.  Sorry.*

(For a slightly saner (?) view on this whole thing, Kate Paulk (my fellow worst person in the world) over at Mad Genius Club takes on the daily dot article which claims all the signers of that anti-censorship petition are male  (Since C. J. Cherryh, Mercedes Lackey and my friend Amy Sterling Cassil signed it, I have to assume we are WAY post binary.) and want to keep women from writing science fiction (that is the most bizarre claim, ever.)  However, this being Kate, what she’s really worried about is that one of the stupid critters claimed Kate was afraid to use dirty words.  — I mean, you can perform bad journalism, insult an entire profession, slant the issue out of all recognition — but if you have some self-preservation left, don’t, I beg of you, tell Kate she’s a prude. So go on over for a primer on Aussie swear words.)

I’m not changing this blog format to all GIF posts.  But I’m running a very high fever, and have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and reading more than three sentences or so hurts.  Writing it… don’t even.  So…

This is not a post about SFWA!

Though it might be sort of kind of marginally related.  You see the charming creature who wrote about how I was one of the world’s worst people, also called me a Nazi.  (Because national socialist, totally equals small-government libertarian, right?)

That was like:

But THEN it got better.  Apparently on Twitter someone accused me and Larry (Why Larry?  I don’t know) of being white supremacists.

As you can imagine, I was deeply offended and … yeah, I was like:

Because if these little precious flowers who are mostly college professors knew how to research their way out of a paper bag,

they’d know I come from Portugal.

Genetically speaking Portugal is…

When I was a kid we were made to memorize all the invaders to the peninsula, and it was like — let me see if I can remember:

Celts, Phoenicians,Carthaginians, Greek, Romans, Alans, Swabians, Vandals (so we got some glitteries in there too!), Arabs, Berbers, French, German, Spanish…  then there was the massive import of African slaves who, unlike the US had disappeared into the population a century later.  In fact, genetically, Portugal is like:

So the idea of my being a White Supremacist is

They would have to think I was so altruistic as to think I — myself — was inferior to anyone on the basis of skin color alone.

If anyone needs me clarify, I don’t believe that skin color is relevant for much of anything, but hey — Tan people uber Alles!

So, I was thinking about it, as well as about the fact that most of my books totally don’t have people who change genders (or shapes) or people who are attracted to the same gender or–  Okay.  Okay.  I’ll stop because I’m like:But it’s not like either my racial origins or my characters who might be… uh… a little off the norm are a credit to me.  I was born this way (Ah!) and I get characters like other people get colds.  Writing them interestingly, that takes effort.
And it’s not like these people know what they’re saying because they can’t possibly ever have read something by or about me and think that, so they’re like:

And to do other than this

Would be credit them with SOME thought.
However, I’m a charitable person.  Also I have a fever.  So I’ve decided to give them something to hate on.

and prepare yourself:

Maestro, some music:

I’m a human supremacist!

No matter how many times you tell meI don’t think that humans are like viruses upon the world.I don’t think

or

or even:

Or even:

are better than:

or:

I think that humans are pretty d*mn extraordinary.  All the best people I know are human.  Also, it’s what I am, and I don’t hate myself.

Frankly I think we need to be making with this:

Only bigger and better, so more worlds get to know the awesomeness that are humans!Which I suppose is an inferior purpose to making sure that everyone who was born a different color and orientation from me, but what can I say?  We can’t all have everything.  Where would we put it.  Who would dust it?So I can’t

be making with this:

When I have to do this:

Which will happen as soon as the fever passes.

It’s the purpose I have, and it suits my humble ambitions.  And if you don’t like it, then:

This post might be a little scattered.  I’m told I’m the twelve hour warning for this bug – throat a little sore, tired beyond all reason – and that two weeks of being rather sick follow.  So, I’m trying to do my posts on Sunday night, and will re-run MGC if needed.

This is one of the things that has been getting to me, though, and I don’t even think it needs to be a long post (though knowing me, it might very well be.)

Recently and pretty much everywhere, I’ve been reading Eulogies to America.  Do not get me started on how this makes me feel.  Someone shortly after the election texted me with “You must feel like the last person who got a ticket on the Titanic.”

But even then, even after the poll watching that got me very angry, I didn’t feel that was quite right.  I had a moment of despair on the night of the election, immortalized forever at Instapundit, and probably ending up as part of my funeral service, but then I started perking up.

Look, our strength is that we’re Americans.

No, wait, I’m saying this very badly.  It doesn’t mean we’re immune from being spun or tricked into socialism/communism (if anyone wants to argue the differences, have at it, but really, guys, unless you want to dissect the innards of “State ownership” or “government control of private ownership” or… there is no point.  Socialism/communism/ and let’s throw fascism in are all different colors of statist ideal.  They all believe that if you have “the right people” on top commanding the economy all the way down, the future will be great.  Their definitions of what a great future is; their ideas of how much people should be allowed to own; their choice of demonization victims and everything else may vary but in the end, it is all the same.  I don’t believe they have the right to decide in which manner the individual should be happy; I don’t want any part of their utopias – and all of them end up demonizing and objectifying humans, hating all of humanity and advocating for fewer humans. And all of them can gaze upon my middle fingers, as I hold them up. I’d rather die in a free society than live in their “utopias”) but it means that we’re less likely to stick that way.  As someone told me the other day, we’re neither Russian peasants nor German soldiers.  There are hopeful signs of what Glenn Reynolds calls “Irish Democracy”, including the simple, silent resistance to doing what your betters insist is best for you. There are mutters from above that we’re ungovernable.  Hopefully this will be enough.  We’re Americans.  We’re peaceful.  We don’t want to have a revolution.  If we need one – forbid the thought! – it will take more than this.

But the funny thing is, right and left, what I hear about America being in decline always harks back to the fifties as some form of golden age.  I can get this from the left – no, truly.  If you think FDR was a right winger, you’re insane – but from the right?  And I get it from the right, too.

Here are some of the signs of hope that I think are being mistaken for reasons for despair:

–          We can no longer undertake big projects.  Now, I agree that EPA regulations are out of control and that is an issue, though I suspect in the next decade or so, if there isn’t any other type of correction, this will become self-correcting. Smaller technologies, better remote-work ability, all of it require less big projects.  At any rate, the big projects everyone hankers over are always things like the hoover dam.  A big statist project, with tight government control.

–          The fact the US had little competition in the world.  Well, then.  When a war just left most of your opponents flat broke, you’re going to have a monopoly.  Take a deep breath.  Even if you wanted that back (and some of our elites might) it’s not likely to happen.

–          American schools just “worked.”  Sort of.  Kind of. Arguably education was better in the old days, by which I mean when communities hired their own school masters and set their own standards.

The state view of education in the fifties gave us the dismantling of public education in the sixties, in order to accommodate new “scientific theories.”  Education in the fifties (and sixties and arguably the seventies) is only better compared to today because this has been a process of slow disintegration.

The school we have now is not very adequate but at least, thank heavens, people are aware of it, and alternatives such as remote schooling, homeschooling and others are available.  There is hope for the future.

And the number one, unmistakable sign: both sides lament the loss of “unity”.  But there was never any unity, guys.  There was a feeling of it (and only in the second half of the twentieth century, caused by the left having taken command of all the means of communication.  Be glad that is gone.  If it weren’t, what it would mean is that right now we’d think we were in a recovery and that the president is a genius among men, and that we must be the only ones not prospering/seeing it differently.  Bah.  I’ll take my chances.

It is normal, I guess, to hark back to youth and by numbers our population is mostly aging boomers, who gave us nostalgia radio stations and nostalgia fashions and nostalgia furnishings – but enough is enough.  Nostalgia culture and nostalgia politics are one step over the line.

Besides our sixty year olds today can expect to live healthy productive lives for the same twenty years or so that their parents would have had at forty, back in the “golden age.”

Stop being nostalgic.  This might not be the best, in the best of all possible worlds.  The lies of state control being best for everyone are still with us.  (They have to be.  If communists/socialists/fascists didn’t have a good PR department, they’d be chased out of town with torches and pitchforks.)

But we’re headed towards more freedom for the individual.  Something that has not been true in all of my life before ten years or so ago.  And for right now, that must be enough for me.

My grandmother used to say Rome and Pavia were not made in a day.  (I have no idea what Pavia is, but I’m sure it was a city?) Neither is the recovery of freedom.  Keep calm and work towards the future.

I’ve belonged to blogs in the past which got in fights and arguments with other blogs/organizations, and even when I agreed 100% it got boring really quick.  So, I’d fully intended to have that blog on Sunday be the very last one I did on the SFWA mess.

But then I got selected for worst person in the world (though I have to share the trophy with Kate) and I thought, what the heck, I’ll do a final post on my dealings with SFWA from beginning to end, and because I’m tired of being misunderstood, I’ll do it in a way they’ll understand: with video clips.

So, in the mid eighties, I started writing sf/f, and I was so green that I sent submissions to the subscriptions address.  I still managed to get a personal rejection asking for more, but I thought “I need help.”  And then I heard about SFWA and how it was supposed to help SF/F writers and as a newby, just arrived in the country, with no contacts or connections, I was like:

So I sent them a letter and they were like: You need to have three pro short story sales or one pro novel sale.

So, I was like “But how do I get that if I don’t know how and no one has invented google, yet?”  So, I was all like:

But I don’t give up easily, so I was like:

So I was like:

And I finally started selling.  And I sold two shorts, and then, before the third I sold the novel, and I was like “Now I qualify for SFWA!”

And then I had some problems with my agent, and some problems with my publisher, and SFWA was like “oh, no. If we get involved in all that type of thing, the publishers will stop publishing us.  There’s nothing we can do.  And besides your agent and your publisher are members.”  And I was like:

But then they said “You know we have helped these people” — mostly against small publishers — “and we run Editors and Preditors and we have a medical emergency fund” and I was like:

At least I was now a member of SFWA, so I could prove I was a real pro, and anyway, I got this nifty directory of all pro writers, so… I was like:

And then I heard from some friends that SFWA, in the past had caused issues for them in their work for hire, by going to the publisher and saying they were representing these people, who had no problems whatsoever with the contracts but who now were told they’d never work for the publisher again and I was like:

But I thought maybe they’d misunderstood something, and SFWA hadn’t done anything bad to me, so I continued paying my dues and I was like:

And then, you know, things happened, and I decided to go at least partly indie, and then SFWA got into this big fight with Amazon over some small-press distributor who was all butthurt.  And they were like removing the amazon buttons from member pages and being all like “All of SFWA hates Amazon.”  And I was looking at my check from Amazon and looking at SFWA and going like:

So money was a bit tight and when the renewal came around I didn’t renew.  If they weren’t going to help me, at least they shouldn’t mess up what was making money for me, right?

And then I heard they were kicking out a life member because they didn’t like stuff he’d said on a kind of might be sort of SFWA twitter feed (oh, there were other excuses, but if that were true, they’d have to get rid of half their membership, including the person he got in a fight with.)  And I was like:

But hey, I wasn’t a member and it was nothing to do with me, right?  I mean, they said they were a private organization, which is fine, but then shouldn’t they add an S to their name?  SSFFWA  Some Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America?  Just for truth in advertising.  But still I was like:

And then in my writing daze, I hear they’re going after Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg for being sexist, and I’m like:

So I ask what the EFFE is going on, and I’m told that they were making lewd comments about women in bikini, and I know Resnick and know of Malzberg and I’m like:

So I asked around and got the article sent to me and I was like:

because the column was completely unexciting.  They were talking about female editors and writers they’d known, you know, back when they were still rare in the field.  Part of what seemed to have kicked this off was that they called them “Lady editors” and “Lady writers” which was apparently sexist and I was like:

I mean, it’s an article about female editors and writers.  Perhaps they’d prefer they’d used Bitch and Hoes Editors and Writers?  Or People of Vaginitude Writers and Editors.

Oh, yeah, and the bikini thing?  They said one of the editors was exceptionally beautiful and that all the male writers’ wives were jealous when they saw her.  And that was totally sexist because women never talk/have thoughts like that, no way.

And they were also all upset about like women in chain mail on the cover, and the bulletin needed to be carefully censured, so that no bit of sexism got through.

And I was like:

And they were like:

And I was like:

And then my friend Kate blogged about the latest insanity, where established writers of every political stripe signed a petition to have SFWA give up this charming notion of censoring speech on their bulletin and a coalition of young no name or very little name writers (and a few decent writers who are my friends and who must be smoking something) were like:

So, Kate made fun of them, because she does, and an idiot troll came out under the impression it was all about the blogger named Vox Day and I was like:

But then he said that people like Vox needed to be cut off from society and I was like:

Because it was like:

So I was like:

And then some idiots saw it and they were like:

and also:

Because apparently telling them they can’t kill/kick out of human society everyone who hurts their feelings is like:

And also, I dissed Marxism which is totally a saintly ideology, because I’m a dumb American and all this makes me the world’s worst person (though I have to share the trophy with Kate Paulk, which is too bad, because I had a place all ready for it on my shelf.)

But life is full of these little disappointments, so then I thought…  Hey… I’m the world’s worst person.  By pointing out that Stalinist purges are Stalinist and never end, because someone is always going to be offended, I’ve made myself the worst person ever.  Worse than Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, and the blood soaked mass murderers and tyrants who have oppressed humanity.  I’m worse than Caligula!

And I realized this is incredibly freeing, right?  I mean, if you’re already worse than Caligula, how much worse can you get?

I even caused a commenter on that blog to want to change her gender!

So now I’m like:

And I have SFWA to thank for it.

This, my friends, is a full account of my interaction with Mr. Whickam the organization formerly known as SFWA.  And now I’ll stay out of it, no matter what the temptation:

Because they’re like this:

And I need to be like this:

UPDATE: WELCOME Instapundit Readers and thank you to Glenn Reynolds for the link. (I should have done this two days ago, but I was in a fever daze.  Anyway, ya’ll know me. Pull up a chair.  Stay a while.