Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

When I was six I discovered what was involved in sex-change operations, and decided they weren’t really sex-change, but cosmetic surgeries designed to make you appear as the other sex, which wasn’t what I wanted at all.

I might not have been six, by the way, though I remember it as six. I was probably closer to ten. There was time involved between hearing these could be done and figuring out what all happened/could be done. You see, this was pre-history, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t even have a library system where I grew up, and tracking down the right (or very wrong) books took time. I found information a bit at a time, in history books, in old medical manuals, and in the occasional throw away paragraph in a novel.

I very much doubt I could have tracked all that information down by six, particularly considering that at four or so I mostly read — haltingly and painfully — comic books.

Though my sources of information at the time were unreliable and hard to track down; though my knowledge of biology has increased exponentially, though medical science has advanced a lot since the middle of the last century (though not as much as we like to pretend, when it comes to hormones and such) I stand by the conclusion I reached when I first finished my research.

You are born into a body you can’t change. The best you can do is pretend to change it. For some people at some times that might be the best solution, but it’s bought at a very high price, or a series of them, not all of them obvious, particularly for the young. And — mostly for political reasons of divide and conquer — the whole issue has been weaponized so that the truth is obscured from the people making the decisions, so they have to make them in the dark and in confusion.

Because of my history, I’ve meant for a long time to talk about it. I haven’t done it, because it is a difficult, fraught — and yeah — weaponized subject.

So, let’s grapple with it anyway, shall we?

First, on the above, please note that the notion that I was all wrong and should have been a boy was not arrived at by contact with anyone who told me that. And that my parents were entirely unaware of my struggles. For all I know, they still are.

So while the trans thing — particularly the belief that you can somehow automagically change your body — is indeed a social contagion, saying “My son/daughter was a perfectly contented boy/girl“ is not proof of anything. When you feel something is that wrong, on that fundamental a level, you don’t tell your parents. Or at least some of us don’t. And that was before the weaponization. Mostly? I was terrified my parents would laugh at me. And even more terrified they wouldn’t. Because if they said they always thought I was wrong, that was worse.

For those wondering, yeah, I had the stigmata. Smart kid, very lonely, in a society that highly favored — and gave more freedom — to boys, (in a way Americans can’t even really process much less understand) and with mom having preferred me to be a boy. On top of which, I was convinced I was ugly, which was a problem for a girl, but not for a boy.

Having realized that there was no way to actually change didn’t completely quell the matter. I continued feeling wrong, like a terrible mistake had been made. It just meant it couldn’t be changed and therefore I must make the best of it. But up until about fourteen, while combing my hair in front of the mirror, I had wishful thoughts that I’d not be a half-bad looking boy. I also felt I looked wrong, walked wrong, couldn’t fit in with groups of girls/women, and was generally off in some indescribable way.

Realizing at about 16 or 17 that I very much liked boys and that it was stupid to be a boy while chasing boys (Not that I chased. What I did was more debate them into the ground in the hope they’d like that (it worked, once)) helped some, but let’s be bluntly honest, I still feel — often — divorced from my body. Not in terms of I should be a boy. Older and more experienced me realizes the problem is more basic that than, but in terms of I forget I have a body, or that the body has a sex. Honestly, its getting worse as I get older, can’t get pregnant, and the whole cyclic dance of womanhood is done. As the body malfunctions more, it’s easier to retreat into a life of the mind. This led to the famous panel in which I was a moderator, and faced with a panel of all women (on women in sf, I think?) I announced that everyone but me was female. I wasn’t thinking I was male. I’d forgotten I had a body at all.

You can add in there on my risk factors on the spectrum, maybe. I don’t read as being such and it’s hard to tell for sure. I grew up in an hyper-connected and social environment that masked the fact I was a raging introvert. Masking being on the spectrum is not out of the question, and I have a bunch of the secondary sensory issues.

Some degree of generalized discomfort with your body seems to contribute to the idea that you should change, and that will solve everything.

In fact, and again, from the beginning, it solves nothing. It just gifts you with a completely different set of problems.

So let me lay out those problems.

As it exists right now, the whole you can transition is a pretty lie. You can’t. And while medical professionals are very fond of saying that we will for sure solve that and make it possible to fully become the other in the next ten or twenty years, that’s not even a gross exaggeration, that’s a piece of insanity.

What we’re dealing with is not cosmetics, or hormones. It’s the basic components of the human genome, which dictate whether you are male or female. Or intersex, but that’s honestly more of a defect. That is woven into you at a level that cannot be altered or changed sort of regrowing you an entire other body. Consider we can’t even clone people in the normal way without running into issues with premature aging.

Might there be a way to change people at that level? Or to somehow defeat chromosomes and make them do different things? Maybe. There is one — note ONE — case of an xy developing as a normal woman and becoming a mother. IF the report wasn’t vitiated, which given the time and place it might have been. If that’s real, we might be able to change people, but even then it will probably have to be done before birth and we’re talking true science fiction. Look, guys, cold fusion is on the menu well before that. At best it can be done with a “genius breakthrough“ but that is left to chance and random reshuffling of genes and life experience. Which sure, could happen in the next… 50 years. Or 500. Or never.

Almost for sure, though, given the current state of science, it won’t happen before we’re all dust in the dust. And those people lying to the young and telling young men they’ll be fully functional women, able to bear live young should be hanged, cut down while still living and have their entrails burned before their eyes.

What we can do, better than in the mid-20th century which relied on crude surgery, is more sophisticated plastic surgery to make things appear to be other things. And we can pump you full of hormones for a — relatively — more credible transition.

It will surprise no one I’ve retained an interest in reading about the field. The problem is two-fold. One: You will never fully pass. To date, I’ve met exactly one person who passes, and even then my back brain kept trying to reset. I’ll get into why that happens, and why its a problem, later. Two: hormones have a price. Hormones have an horrific price. If you take the hormones necessary to change your appearance and behavior, you’re very likely to get cancer early. Like forties early. But atop of it, the dosage is hard, so you’re also likely to have a whole slew of issues of hormones too high and too low, including brittle bones and things malfunctioning in ways most women don’t experience till menopause — and that’s regardless of the way in which you change.

If you’re a young woman transitioning to male and there’s the slightest possibility you’ll ever want to have children — permit me to tell you that at even 20 you might not know. Heck, at 30 you might not know how much you want them — be aware transitioning hormones might make it impossible.

There are other prices, more subtle, and here we have to get into why transitioners rarely pass and almost never pass completely: the part of the human brain that tells male from female is very old, and not very easy to hack. You see, I figure in our long evolution as apes and hominins and hominids telling male from female was absolutely necessary to any child. Because males will kill you, females might not. I figure its coded in the part of our brain, way back, that infants to go through a phase they are scared of everyone but mom. And more or less for the same reasons.

This means no matter how good a job anyone does at passing, other people will see through it. And at best they’ll behave oddly. I think this is part of the reason so many trans people are convinced everyone hates them. Because there is oddness in every interaction and if you were Odd or on the spectrum or something to begin with, you already interpret awkwardness towards you as hatred.

This is also, and for real what is driving trans to supporting younger and younger transitions. Because if you transition as a child, you probably CAN pass as the other sex. While this is true, there is the problem of no one before puberty having any idea of the true costs and penalties of transitioning. And also of giving a disproportionate vote to parents, some of whom will be insane. But that is the main reason driving the child transitioning movement. It’s in a sense baked in.

It’s also in a sense futile. You can’t change completely even if you do it to toddlers. They will not be functional adults of the other sex, even if they pass better. Which means you’re robbing them of a fully functional future. But even without that they’ll never fully be the other. You are what you are due to hormone baths in utero, long before you were aware there was a you.

There are other costs, social ones, beyond the fact you’ll look odd to others.

Look, I changed my name at citizenship. First, middle and last. I hated my name pretty much since I was aware of having a name. Worse, my parents didn’t even like it, it was imposed on them through family circumstances. So I changed it to a name I’d often used as a pen name.

My parents still haven’t fully forgiven me. And it makes it awkward, not just for them but for me to tell stories of childhood, etc.

I do know people who have transitioned and who have good relationships with their parents. They’re very rare. Normally transitioning means severing relationships with all family: parents, children, extended family. And often with your entire group of friends up till them. Sure you can say it shouldn’t be that way. But it is. And as one of the friends in one of those cases, it happens even if you don’t mean to. There is a natural awkwardness of not knowing how to relate to someone who frankly is no longer your friend but is also not a stranger. The effort required to remain friends becomes very high. It’s easier to drift away.

Now, sure, if only everyone decided…. but never in the history of ever has that ever happened. In human history there is no such thing as everyone doing something all at once, without dissidents or protest. Even things easier than this.

So, true change is impossible. Does this mean people shouldn’t be allowed to live as the other sex, or even take hormones if they are full adults who so decide? (I honestly think that it should be held until the brain stops developing at 26 or whatever. Our legal age being 18 is ridiculously high for some things and biologically low for others.)

Meh. You do you. If you honestly think it makes you feel better to present a credible pretense of being the other sex, who am I to interfere? There are certainly worse hobbies. If you find peace and contentment in it, good for you.

If you were someone I cared for I’d strenuously and loudly plead that you not take hormones and not have surgery (except perhaps for softening the face and hair removal — that being honestly your choice. I think it might be weird if you decide to go back to male — if you’re a male hoping to pass as a female) for a good long while, if ever. There are no risks, other than social to being a male who passes as female or a female who passes as male. And while the passing won’t be as full as with hormones, etc, it will be far less risky for you.

Look, hormones affect everything including your thinking. Women transitioning to male are not equipped either by raising or by the rest of our — already hormone shaped — nervous system to cope with testosterone influx and its associated mental and emotional effects. There is a reason most of the trans-killers have been female to male transitioners.

Which brings us to the other thing: part of the reason I imagined I was really a male, as a young female, was that I imagined males as cool and collected. They didn’t have to go through the cyclical thing and have their moods affected. Would you believe I was in my thirties before a male told me otherwise? Being a male is to be at that point where you’d gladly shiv your best friend for looking at you funny that some of us women achieve on the first day of our period, but forever. And you have to learn to control it, if you hope to live a normal life.

I’m sure there are things. I don’t know. I’m not a male. No matter what I thought as a kid, I’m not even an unusual female. I’m an unusual human, mostly due to auto-immune, etc. oh, and to what I’m sure you too have been told is Thinking Too Much.

Am I a stereotypical woman?

Oh, please. No one is. I have friends who are all social oriented and like fashion and all the girly things (I tend to be friends with them in small doses, because we are so different) and even they aren’t stereotypical females. The stereotypes ARE social constructs.

Sex is real. It comes with certain inclinations and interests because our brains were shaped differently during gestation. But all statements made about men and women are made about the aggregate. I.e. statistically women are more people-oriented and men more thing-oriented. Some of us…. fail at that. And that’s okay. It doesn’t affect the aggregate if one or many individuals are different.

My most stereotypical female characteristic is an inability to reason spatially, but that seems to be a brain-damage thing, so it’s hard to tell. Oh, and I have an unclean love for pretty shoes. Though frankly, my hips have negated my wearing them, so that’s not immediately visible. Other than that… I’m passionately interested in economics, world affairs, space exploration, etc. etc.

It also turns out I like cats and infants (And some — usually very odd — children.)

Now that I’m on the other end of life from pre-teen and all the worry about being pretty…

No one is pretty as they age. Some people manage to do it with dignity to a point at least. Last time I saw dad, he looked like he’d not so much aged as hardened in place, turning into some material stronger than mere human flesh. But having seen others age…. the ugly will come. If you live long enough, or die of a bad enough disease, you too will be ugly at the end. Male, female or otherwise.

And as you age too, you stop caring if you’re acting male or female or if what you do will be thought of as x or y. For women, at least, there is a great empowering that comes over you at about forty, particularly if you have had kids. It seems to be when you decide you’re going to be yourself, no matter what.

That is the thing to aim for. So…. you’re weird, and you don’t feel as if your body fits. Big whoop. Welcome to the human race. Here is your accordion. Yes, I know you’d prefer a piano, but you have an accordion. Make the best of it you can.

My body has disappointed me in so many ways if I start to list them I’ll forget something. Take the tendency to gain weight because of autoimmune attacks. The autoimmune itself, and the sudden illnesses that trace to that and which rob me of months or years. And then there’s the things that seemed white-hot important as a kid, such as my inability to coordinate enough for most sports. (Who am I kidding, I tripped over my feet while standing still until 18.) Or the fact my fine motor coordination was enough of a disaster my handwriting was incomprehensible.

It turns out I didn’t want a career as a professional cyclist. Or if I did, I never even started, so who cares? In what I do every day, my issues don’t matter much. (And the fine motor coordination got better with time and practice.)

Turns out for what I wanted to do and be, my body was okay. I mean, I still would like another three or four kids. And I won’t lie to anyone and say being pregnant or nursing were my favorite things. Very Strange is the best I can say for them. But I got the boys. And the boys are totally worth it. And while I thought I was ugly and strange, my husband seems to like me, and that too is completely worth it.

Even if you could change your body to the other sex, for most people it is likely to be the least of the things you’d like to change about yourself.

At least at this point, if given the opportunity, I’d turn it down in exchange for a normal metabolism, or naturally curly hair, and I’d turn it down double quick in exchange for getting rid of the auto immune.

It’s not that I’m any less of an atypical woman. I’ve just learned that being typical male or female or whatever is a construct of mass media and narrative. No one is typical. And even if I’m more atypical than most, so what?

Now some people — I’m looking at you — will read this and say all this is my coping with being gender queer or whatever the current designation is.

Perhaps. I mean if gender queer means an extremely atypical woman, you’re probably right. But so what? Would my quality of life have been improved by pumping myself full of hormones that themselves altered my thinking? Having surgery to pass as the other? Or even by pasting a label on myself and marching up and down demanding that everyone respect mah identity? Why?

To satisfy a bunch of strangers who sneer at me for not being true to myself in the way they specify? Why would I care?

In everyday life what a bunch of strangers think about me makes not a whit of difference. And my family and friends are used to my weirdness such as it is. Plus, I’ve maximized the advantages of my unfeminine ability to get stuff done and not worry if it’s pretty and to ignore the opinions of the group, or the back-biting and gossip of women-associations. I’ve also back-engineered the advantages of being a woman, the same way most of us have had to back-engineer social interaction because it’s not there naturally. I’ve learned how to be cute little thing, or these days, hapless confused grandma, when it gets me immediate help from bystanders. (Yes, I know, terribly unfeminist of me. But you see, one of the many things I’ve learned is that I don’t owe anything to any cause anyone thinks I should enlist in simply by being born female, or Mediterranean, or whatever.) I can tell you men don’t get to do that (except in highly specialized situations.) They have their own advantages, and I enjoin them to use them to the full.

If you absolutely must change, I’m not judging you. Only wait till you’ve lived long enough to know yourself. And don’t mess yourself up more than you need to physically or physiologically. But you know, if you’re an adult, it’s your lookout and there are worse things you could do to yourself.

For me? In the end, I’ve come to believe Terry Pratchett was right. Success comes when you learn to be yourself as hard as you can.

And your SELF is both body and soul, and those weird quirks of personality that really annoy you.

Minimize your downsides. Lean into your advantages, and make the best of what you are and what you can be.

All those beautiful happy people who look like they were just born that way? Have you considered you only think that because you’re not them?

It never occurred to me, back when, but it turns out everyone of those effortlessly perfect people I met are so. And some are far bigger messes than I am even.

Being human is difficult. I think everyone struggles with it.

The good news is humans were born to struggle.

I wish you joy in the battle, even if the battle is against your own body. And I hope the solution you find allows you to be yourself as hard as you can.

I’m happy as I am. Mind and body.

Lately I’ve become an awful old woman. My reaction, during the con, to the little card hotels leave in your bathroom, in the hopes that you’ll save them laundry money — you know the one that says that if you want to help save the Earth or the Environment (I don’t remember which, precisely, these pagan divinities all run together in my head) you’ll hang up your towel and use it another day — was to sigh and say: Deary, the Earth has been here for billions of years before I was born. It will be here for billions of years before my very atoms have been dispersed in its general Earthness. I can’t save it. There isn’t a tupperware large enough. And besides where would I put it? Who would dust it?

In the event, the only audience for my musings was my husband who consented to chuckle at it, as he went on. And we didn’t hang up the towels. We might have, had they made a sensible business appeal “if you save us money, we’ll be able to keep our prices lower” but we’re not at home to religious pandering to religions not our own. As far as I’m concerned they might as well ask me not to use electricity so as to spare the feelings of Zeus, god of thunderbolt.

So, yes, you see, I have become an awful woman. Or if you prefer, I’ve become a fool or a sadist in Heinlein’s definition of such: Someone who tells the truth in social situations.

But you see, I am so very tired of all the genuflecting and bowing to the doom du jour, as well as the market distortions, worsening of problems and outright damage to people and deaths or grievous arm (not to mention not being born) while trying to avoid largely imaginary dangers and issues.

What do I mean? Well, how many people had no children because they were pounded about the face and head with the impending doom of “overpopulation”? How many of those people, now nearing their last decades, bitterly regret the childlessness? Worse, how many people in how many third world countries were encouraged to be sterilized due to both the “coming doom” of overpopulation, and the horrific mid-century misapprehension that children caused poverty? How many women in China were forcibly aborted? How many toddlers confined to dying rooms? How many women in India were strongly persuaded to abort female children, or expose unwanted ones newly born? (Yes, I know it might have happened anyway, but the westerners were encouraging people to have fewer and fewer children, which only fed that nonsense.)

Other dooms? So many dooms, so little time to catalogue them. When I was little, I knew I’d probably starve or die of thirst due to overpopulation. What was worse, it was overpopulation far away, since most people near me couldn’t afford more than one or two kids, if they ever hoped to live a middle class life. (Spoiler: it was taxes, requiring work from both parents that caused poverty, not an excess of children.) I also expected to freeze in the coming ice age, caused by all the pollution, from people making things in factories, having cars, and using electrical light. Also, as it happened, in the seventies we were told fossil fuels were running out, so while we were freezing, we wouldn’t even be able to take a flight somewhere warmer, to escape the advancing glaciers. But that was all right, because we were all going to die in a nuclear exchange that would happen any day now, in a conflagration between the USSR and the US, whom we were assured were absolutely equal in morality, and both just wanted supremacy for…. no reason really.

Of course, the things urged to stop all of this ranged from criminal — the aforementioned forced abortions and killing of children — to the merely dangerous — urging the nuclear disarmament of the West (mostly propaganda from the Soviet Union, mind) which we were assured would bring about peace and not world communism (which in the way of such things would shortly after be followed by world famine and world depopulation.)

By the time the Gaia cultists flipped from a fear of freezing to a fear of boiling, I only half went along, and only until I realized once more it made no sense whatsoever.

Fossilized bits of these nonsensical panics — Ehrlich the anti-prophet claiming wed run out of potable water in the…. late seventies? eighties — stay around, because of the cultist needs to be seen to be doing something, even if the something is utterly silly. Hence all the reduction in flushing capacity, the energy saving, low water dishwashers and washers, and the endless genuflecting about not washing towels. (I’d maybe be less salty if eczema flare ups didn’t require me to use freshly laundered towels every day, even at home, lest they get much worse) which granted aren’t killing us but are swelling our water bills, and making us smelly.

What do I mean by that? Well, our current low flush toilet does a passable job, but previous ones, over the last twenty years introduced me to a new hobby, called Flushing Your Toilet for half an hour. The minimum flushes for anything beyond liquid ranged from five to ten, plus waiting for refills in between. This was compounded by our living in Victorians, which, of course, have smaller pipes and are more likely to clog, but still. Low water washers? Well, until we bought the current one, which has a button that defeats that setting, I was stuck washing my clothes as much as four times over. (Even in the current one, I wash twice. Its not low water, but its not the water quantities of the seventies, and I have ridiculous skin.) Which meant my entire life — MY ENTIRE LIFE — was devoted to wash, whatever else I was doing at the same time. It got to the point we were running the washer whenever I was awake. Which, oh, yes, btw, also added to electrical bills. And btw, I have an eighties dishwasher in this house. When we moved in, it broke, and we’d bought one of those home warranty things, which meant someone came out. He was somewhat frustrated by very old parts, so he decided to order all of them, basically building me a brand new dishwasher in the shell of the old. I can’t begin to tell you how happy with it I am. It’s not just that it actually washes. I don’t have to wash the dishes before they’re washed. And it’s not just that it heat dries, instead of popping open to let the dishes air dry — a thing that in a house as blessed with cats as we are makes the mind run cold. How much cat hair do I want wet dishes coated in, exactly — but I’d forgotten how much SPACE there was in these old dishwashers. Nowadays, because of requirements for lower electrical use, there’s so much insulation that there’s hardly room left for dishes. In our last house in Colorado, after both kids were on their own, even with just the two of us, I found I often couldn’t fit all the prep and eating dishes in the dishwasher, and as an alternative to running the dishwasher all the time found myself doing dishes by hand. Here, even when we have younger son and his spice (Long story, but its my new name for their spouses) over for dinner, and even if I made something complicated AND baked dessert, I can fit it all in one load, or at most two. The difference really is that dramatic, and again nothing is saved in the “energy saving”. When a load becomes two, becomes three, becomes ten, you’re actually using more. More water, more energy, and certainly more human time and frustration. But, ah, it passes new government tests, installed to appease the cult members.

Then there is the stinky part of our program. While I have in fact escaped this by buying a machine where I can turn the water-saving features off, the multiplication of deodorizing this that and the other for your clothes hasn’t escaped the keenness of my int elect which — I don’t say this to brag — can read print when its in letters of fire, six feet tall, and right in front of me.

The point is, right now our doom is likely to come through a multiplying of doomsayers, rather than through anything else.

None of the dooms were actually dooms, and the attempts to avert this imaginary doom are the actual harmful actions.

So, please, before you preach doom by AI (rolls eyes) or excessive computer use, or the heartbreak of vitamin abuse, or whatever silly thing they’ll come up with next, do consider what horrors the mitigation of such imagined doom might bring upon us. And how little necessary all of it is unlikely to be, in light of previous panics.

And anyone saying anything about plastic in the ocean shall be hit with a carp, because frankly those “islands of plastic” only seem to exist after tsunamis (and the photos are carefully cropped.) So you might enjoy sipping your drink from soggy paper straws, but leave the rest of us alone.

Yes, sure, human actions have consequences, and sometimes course corrections are needed. The amazing thing is that we — as clever apes — tend to make those course corrections as soon as a superior solution is viable.

Unless you scare us with doom and gloom, and cause us to embed in our normal life things to avert this imaginary doom. Things that themselves cause problems and suffering. I mean, do you see any other reason we aren’t using nuclear energy more widely? Or that places like Germany and France should be DISMANTLING their nuclear plants and …. burning wood?

Proclamations of doom seem to do nothing but cause people to do stupid things while patting themselves on the back.

Little known fact, Atlantis sank beneath the waves because their doomsayers were convinced it was at risk of bringing about an ice age if it didn’t dynamite its seawalls and destroy its flood control devices.

What? It is far more plausible than the others.

Next time you see a raving lunatic telling you the world is going to end due to some innocuous or pleasant human activity, chase them down the street, hitting them on the head with their The End Is Near sign. (In minecraft.) It will relieve your frustrations, and maybe it will rearrange his ideas enough to make them somewhat useful.

Doom will come. Eventually. Probably not through anything you — and unlikely through anything we, in aggregate — did or failed to do.

Stop saving the Earth. Where would you keep it? Who would dust it?

Sorry for the very weird and spacey posting, but as you’ve probably gathered we’ve been at Liberty con in Chattanooga TN.

This year was very weird for us, because we didn’t know if we’d be able to go at all. We had a big family thing in the second week of June, which took about a week, came home for five days and I found I needed to rest, a lot. And then we went to LC.

However, until late May we didn’t know when the family thing in June was. So, we kept the liberty con people up in the air, as we juggled potential engagements. Props to Rich Groller who came through beautiful, even though we’ll have to talk later about his using me as an aimable weapon.

There were some very odd panels, which I think came from confusing me and Dan, so at the same time we were in “What is happening now in space science”, where I was the only person who didn’t work in aerospace, while he was in starting a low tech colony, which was definitely more my area. Or to make this more clear yet, you see my current book is about a colony that rapidly rebarbarizes, while Dan has the degree and expertise to talk space science. As is, I wasn’t totally useless, because I could pour a bucket of cold water on “China is way better than us and is going to lap us in space and reeeeeeeeeeeeeee.” (Yeah, I do get some of their points, but to ignore both the loosy goosy nature of Chinese “science” which extends to this, the inherent inefficiency of totalitarian regimes.)

I’m very glad we had “Virtual Younger Son” for the comics panel, since his knowledge of the field was invaluable. To explain, he was hoping to go, but he couldn’t do it, so he facetimed in. Again, his expertise was invaluable and the panel was interesting because of how much he contributed. I really didn’t have a lot to say since for now I’m benched on comics, don’t know if I’ll get back in, and am not doing much to get back in since I have a ton of books to write.

Other panels…. the other two were round tables for anthos I was in.

I was again on the panel on Dystopia. This always upsets me mildly, because while I have written dystopias I don’t write — or read — the dystopian subgenre. I find it annoying, more unbelievable than fairy tales and also attracting the sort of mind who thinks that that humans are widgets.

Note I said DYSTOPIAN SUBGENRE, not dystopias like Black Tide, or for that matter the reign of the Good Men in Darkships. Dystopias of that type is fun, because people are not only fighting, they’re on the way up.

The Dystopain subgenre, OTOH at least to my eye rejoices in the likes of Brave New World or 1984 where there’s no way out and no way up. Note both of those were written by red pilled convinced leftists. They might have realized communism was evil, but their concept of humans was still as widgets. And therefore they believed that type of command and control top down dystopia COULD work and it could go on forever.

While recognizing dangers on liberty and even now classifying myself as an apocalyotimist — I think everything is going to shit, but it will end up all right — I am deeply aware of the limits of tyrannical authority. This can be summed up as: Even the PRC, which has no soft western notions, cannot control their internal opposition (and in fact can’t tell how bad it is because the information problem is killer in dictatorships) and therefore 1984 or Brave New World, let alone the less skillfully written johnny come latelies of Apocallypsia are invalid.

Write them and read them if you wish, but don’t try to act all big and bad and like you’re telling truth to power. The setup is unrealistic. The whole thing can’t work with human beings. Human beings are infinitely adaptable, and poke holes in everything including systems of oppression. If it seems to you like China completely controls its people, or Russia does, or whatever, I say onto you that’s because they control the information that gets out and we foreigners are GULLIBLE. And if you think oppression works and can work infinitely, you not only have no experience of it, you are as wishful thinking as those who wish to apply it.

Why am I going into this? So, I was put in as moderator of the dystopia panel. And there was a mild kerfuffle. I would like to say it wasn’t my fault, but perhaps it was, I don’t know.

You see, the topic annoys me and last year voices were raised with a gentleman who calmed down markedly when I was given three axes by the Minotaur.

THIS year, I was put as moderator on the same panel, and one of the gentlemen not only had no sense of humor at all, but went into a spittle-flecked rage, apparently because I was doubting his expertise.

I started by pointing out that while I read — and write, though I might have forgotten to say that — dystopias, I don’t read — or write — the dystopian subgenre. I’m a depressive. Under no circumstances do I need to feed that with unrealistic doom and gloom tales. I further added I didn’t want to hear any arguments about how we’re all “in reality” doomed, because that is only comforting to those who wish to give up and not fight anymore.

This… person…. took it to mean I never READ things like 1984 — I am in awe of the type of mind who’d think you could grow up in the 21st century as a person of the written word and never have come across that — and was very upset that I don’t think the computer-collected data plus AI means game over, man, game over.

If I need to explain the computer collected data includes a never-end stream of chaff. Take the fact that I’ve never bought anything from Temu, ever. And don’t want to. But last week my mouse had issues, and every time I clicked on a page, it also brought up the first ad on that page, which was Temu once, probably accidentally and then was always Temu because of the accidental double-click. At one point I had 40 temu tabs up. For what? I don’t actually know. Greenhouses, I think? I didn’t look super-close as I ARGHED and closed it. The number of such occurrences is NOT trivial. In fact, I’ve never opened an ad directly from a page, but my browser has. Add to that the “They know when you stop on or hover over something” which usually means “Where I happened to be when my husband came into the room and I remembered to ask him about the laundry.” Or “where my cursor was sitting when I had to jump up to go fix a falling gate.”

Is there real data in what they collect? Oh, undoubtedly. But mostly? Because my life is chaos layered on insanity that’s what they’ll collect. And in this I don’t think I’m that unusual. It’s mostly how that works. A good movie to watch to understand the more data the more chaff is The Lives of Others. “But AI” fails because AI isn’t. AI is even more likely to be confused by chaff than a human being and will take “preponderance” which is usually chaff.

Anyway, since that gentlemen also referred to the Feds using cell phone data to catch the perpetrators of the “atrocities” of January 6, I think our clash was inevitable. And while I’m by no means innocent, in that I went into the panel primed for a fight from my previous experiments, I was also — I think — half joking in everything I said, while he had no sense of humor at all and was HIGHLY pissed off at me. Which is his choice, but I don’t think it sold him any books.

Anyway, I’d like to sigh, because when I told Rich, while saying goodbye that if he kept putting me on that panel, sooner or later I was going to shiv someone, he got this happy smile and said “You are so good in that panel.”

So, apparently I’ll be on that panel again next year? And if you’re attending you might want to come and perhaps hold me back? Or help me, whatever your inclination.

As usual the best part of Liberty con was seeing fans and friends, groups that increasingly blend and bleed together. I know a lot of your names, your kids, your jobs, your idiosyncrasies, and yes, I do love most of you. Or at least like you very much. It’s why I go to cons at all (particularly Liberty con) in the age of indie. And why I’ll keep going.

My only complaint is that Liberty con is now huge, so I ran into some friends rarely — I think I saw Jonna Hayden for maybe 15 minutes — and others — Old NFO — not at all. But that’s the price of success.

Two other complaints over the last few days. My laptop keyboard started dying on the trip so I couldn’t finish my book while being a passenger in the car. AND when I got home, I touched the six foot tall baby gate into the living room and it FELL on me, because engineer cat, Indy, had used his large and freakishly agile paws to undo the pressure adjustment on the side. Dan fixed it. Indy never got into the living room. But he was THIS CLOSE. If we’d been even an hour later, he’d have been in, and trying to get at the quail who is in there recovering from expelling all her guts. (Long story.)

So, now that I’m home, I’m going to write my book and keep an eye on engineer cat.

Wish me luck.

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Origin Stories (Chronicles of the Fall Book 11)

Six stories in the Troystvennyy Soyuz on the run up to and during the Fall of the Alliance.

Young people with problems with the brutal society, and all too often their own families. Young men and women reaching for a better future, as everything changes around them.

FROM ROBERT HANLON AND SCOTT MCCREA: Timber: U.S. Marshal: Strike Flint: A Western Adventure (A U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint Western Book 2)

Timber: U.S. Marshal and U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint are working together in this exciting new adventure from Robert Hanlon and Scott McCrea!

U.S. Marshal Ezra Flint is called in by William Burroughs of the Burroughs Bank, located in Misery, Kansas. A fellow banker in Texas has been embezzled by an employee; the bank needs an infusion of gold to remain solvent and the entire matter hushed up. For that reason, no military escort can be involved. Flint is hired to safeguard the shipment of gold to Texas.

Flint wires Jake Timber, legendary lawman, and asks if he would join him when he reaches Texas. He is delighted when Timber agrees to meet him on the trail.

Leaving Misery, Flint engages a retired gunman, Seth Thyne, to help out, and with a mission to complete, no holds will be barred to bring criminality in Texas to justice.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: A Hymn for Those Who Fall Forever

Endings always hurt, but Vitali Grigorenko never expected a nightmare in orbit.

Assigned to command the last flight of the orbiter Baikal, Vitali had started the mission in a nostalgic mood. That went out the airlock when he saw the body tumbling through space just beyond the flight deck windows. A body in NASA blue, not Russian tan.

Now he’s trying to get to the bottom of a murder in space, and his own country’s space program as much a hindrance as a help. It’s becoming clear that politics is involved, on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain, and he’s going to need to go clear to the top.

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Lion and the Library

The library holds many marvels. Lena and her betrothed Erion had found things that helped the beleaguered Celestians of the city.

But when the king’s caprice decides to sacrifice Erion to protect himself, Lena can only hope a legend can help her. A legend of just kings. And lions.

FROM BECKY R. JONES: Night Mage (Academic Magic Book 2)

After fighting a demon in the middle of Philadelphia, Zoe O’Brien wants nothing more than to return to her normal, if stress-filled, life as an assistant professor of history at Summerfield College. But she’s an Elemental mage and that means when there’s potential magical trouble on campus, the squirrels come to her. Who or what is the dark presence moving around campus? Why is it here and what does it want? Zoe struggles to come to terms with her mage powers and the leadership role her colleagues have given her. Complicating everything are all the papers that have to be graded, classes that need to be prepped, and most importantly, cats that require attention. Oh, yeah. She might actually have a boyfriend as well.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Transport and Deliver: A Martha’s Sons Short Story

When escape on a boat jeopardizes all a family has worked for, can an errant son risk his life to save their future?

The Luwenthals—second generation settlers on the lost planet Not What We Were Looking For—confront the destruction of their past life, and are forced to flee. As the boat containing the family’s prized linotype crosses a river lit by the flames of the printshop they had to abandon, fifteen-year-old Tobias Luwenthal must face his father’s ire over what he sees as his son’s betrayal. Disaster strikes, but will Tobias seize the chance to redeem himself at the cost of his own life? Will his father learn from his son as Tobias has learned from him?

A short story that picks up right at the end of The Gear Engages.

If you’ve enjoyed the Martha’s Sons series, start reading now for a glimpse into what happens next in this dystopian lost world!

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Universal Donor (Modern Gods)

Same liver, different vulture…

When you know you can regenerate any organ, fast…why not donate your kidneys?

Prometheus has been a teacher all of his life, nearly. Sometimes, like with teaching Man to harness fire, it got him in trouble. Sometimes, he’s able to make an even bigger difference for his students. Especially when they need a kidney as much as they need knowledge.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Neither Here nor There

This is a stand alone story unrelated to any of my other books or shorts.
So many scientific discoveries have been serendipity rather than a goal to which someone worked as a logical progression. Instead, it was a spill or a misplaced item.
An ingredient measured out in error or from the wrong bottle. Often, a mistake over which someone was bright enough or curious enough to say: “Oops, but that’s interesting, isn’t it?” Uranium ore left next to photo plates, adhesive that wasn’t as permanent as hoped for, but still usefully tacky, or foreign growths in a Petri dish acting strangely…
A major revelation could be a blessing indeed, or if it was big enough to be a life changing development, one might have a tiger by the tail. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

FROM KAREN MYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 2)

TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES, CAN HE FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEFEND ALL THAT HE VALUES MOST, OR EVEN JUST TO SURVIVE?

It’s the dead of winter and George Talbot Traherne, the new human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is in trouble. The damage in Gwyn ap Nudd’s domain reveals the deadly powers of a dangerous foe who has mastered an unstoppable weapon and threatens the fae dominions in both the new and the old worlds.

Secure in his unbreachable stronghold, the enemy holds hostages and has no compunction about using them in deadly experiments with newly discovered way-technology. Only George has a chance to reach him in time to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, even if it costs him everything.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: COACH

*So I meant to write a post, but the minute we got in the car, the keyboard went weird again. Might be how its held in the car, or something to do with power supply. But since I cant do apostrophes or quotes without parking my finger on the key and pushing a million times, I cant really write in the car. Anyway, I stumbled on this last week, and I’d forgotten I even wrote it. So forgive me for reposting. SAH*

“Sir,” his servant said, bowing very properly. “Your car is waiting.

Kyle looked up from his computer game and blinked. You see, he didn’t have a servant. Or a car. In fact he lived in a spare room in his parents’ house, and worked just enough — usually as a day laborer or temp, to get whatever game he wanted.

Had he fallen sleep in front of the computer? Was this a dream?

The servant wore a tux, or something like that, and he stood expectantly.

Well, if it was a dream, Kyle was going to make the most of it. It seemed more fun than any game he’d ever played.

“Sure,” he said, getting up. “Sure… er…. Jeeves.”

The servant didn’t protest being called Jeeves. Somehow, he’d acquired a little silver tray, with keys on it, and extended it to Kyle. The keys had a weird emblem, with a dragon on it. But they looked classy. Definitely a dream.

The car was waiting outside, in his parent’s driveway, making their BMW look like chopped cabbage. The Car — in Kyle’s mind it was written in capitals — was low slung, curvy, bright green and glistening.

He pressed a button on the keys, and the driver’s door opened with a silent, gliding motion.

Inside, the seats were dark green leather, pliable to the touch. Not like other car seats. More like some very nice leather jackets. The kind Kyle had never been able to afford.

The wheel was covered in a similar material, and was a pleasure to hold.

Afterwards, Kyle couldn’t explain where and how he’d decided to drive. Or how long he’d been away. Driving The Car was like dancing with a beautiful woman. It wasn’t the destination but the journey. They glided together over roads, and he had a memory of sitting in the car, watching the sun set on the water.

When he got back home his parents must have been asleep, because all was quiet.

At breakfast his mother asked him about the car in the driveway. “Oh, it’s a friend’s,” Kyle said. “I’m keeping it while he’s on vacation.”

He was stung his parents accepted it so easily. Like they thought he wouldn’t have the initiative to steal it or something.

That afternoon he went for a drive again, and he stopped by the sea. For the first time, he noticed a golden castle atop a cliff. He blinked at it, in confusion, as he didn’t remember a castle there before, and he was sure his parents had come to this beach with him a couple of times when he was little.

When he got home, his servant was laying out a tux and snowy white, frilled shirt on his bed. “What–” Kyle started.

“It is your clothing for the ball, sir. I assume you’ll want to attend the ball.”

There was an invitation on his desk. It was gilt edged, and written in elegant calligraphy, and invited him to Miss Drake’s come out ball. It was signed by Mr. and Mrs. George Drake.

“Now, sir,” the servant said. “It might be best if you attend, but try not to catch Miss Drake’s attention. While she is very beautiful and very wealthy, if you try to attract her and fail, she will surely eat you.”

Kyle was sure he’d misheard it. Just like he knew without asking that the ball would be in the castle, by the sea.

Indeed, when he got to his favorite parking spot, near the sea, there were valets, ready to park the car. And the path up the cliff was illuminated with beautiful orb lights.

The castle looked far more modern inside than you’d expect. The vast salons had tables set up with food for the guests. All except for one, which was the ball room.

And that’s where Kyle met Dulce Drake. She was–

He stared at her, and he was lost. Flame red hair. A body that he thought only existed in the best drawn computer games. And she wore a cocktail dress the exact color of his car.

He asked her to dance and she agreed, and somehow even though he’d never learned ballroom dances, he could do it perfectly, gliding with her in the ballroom, and being so perfect together that all other couples eventually ceased dancing and just stopped and watched.

He left that night with his mind in a glow, his feet seemingly walking on air.

“Now, sir,” the servant said, materializing in his room, as Kyle came out of the shower. “I’m afraid you shouldn’t have done that. Now Miss Drake will surely eat you.”

He handed Kyle a letter. It was written by George Drake and it pointed out the terms for winning his daughter. Kyle had to have a job that would support him, he had to have an aim in life, and more importantly, he had to defeat her in her dragon form in single combat.

Somehow it all made sense to Kyle. He had no resume to speak of, but he wanted to glide with Miss Drake in the endless ballroom again. So he went out and applied at the first place that said “Help wanted.”

He worked very long hours and learned a lot — it was, as it turned out, a pet shop — including the care and feeding of small animals and… well, everything. After three months, they promoted him to assistant manager, and then the representative for one of the pet food brands asked him if he wanted to come work for them in testing the foods to see what the animals preferred.

At the end of a year, inexplicably — except for the fact that he worked very, very hard, and tried to learn everything — he was doing quite well at the pet food factory. Everyone told him he was headed to VP of the brand.

And he received an invitation to the ball at the castle. Once more, Dulce Drake favored him, and he danced with her all night long.

He went home and drew up a plan to start his own pet food business, all fresh and mostly raw food. It would have to be stored in the refrigerator, which would cause a problem for stores carrying it, but not an insurmountable one. He took his plan to a bank and was almost shocked they gave him a loan.

And after the next ball, he was told he was now at Miss Drake’s mercy. They walked outside to the terrace, and she shifted, without his knowing how, into a giant red dragon, who flamed at him.

Kyle didn’t know what to do. He’d never fought anything except in games. And he didn’t have a magical sword, which he felt would be necessary for killing a magical dragon. Also, he didn’t want to kill her. She was a giant, flaming dragon, but in her eyes, he saw fear. Fear he would let her win, fear he would leave. Just fear. He didn’t want to kill her. He didn’t want to hurt her. The last thing he wanted to do was make her unhappy.

So he ran around, avoiding her flame — he had got pretty good at running around, when he was managing the pet food factory — until he finally ducked under her flame stream to get to her head. She was furious at him, he sensed, but also starting to tire.

He ducked under the flame and kissed the side of her scaly face. “My darling,” he said, “I love you no matter what form you take. And I would never hurt you, but you must stop this.”

There was an hesitation, a shimmer in the air. And then suddenly he was holding Dulce Drake, in her shimmering green dress. And she looked up at him, still afraid but somehow reassured.

When he kissed her, the guests applauded, and George Drake invited him to his office to discuss the future.

They were married a year later, much to the confusion of Kyle’s parents, who didn’t even know he’d been dating. And the servant and the car, somehow, came with the house her parents gave her.

Kyle never asked where they’d come from initially. He thought there were questions best not asked of fate.

The servant and the car had saved him from life in death, and given him Dulce.

And he wouldn’t say she never again turned into a dragon, but he was always able to gentle her back into her sweet human form.

And we wouldn’t say they lived happily ever after. But they were more happy than not. And they raised three sons and two daughters, none of which needed the assistance of a magical car to grow up.

And that’s all anyone can ask for.

Promo post tomorrow. It’s difficult to do on the laptop, and impossible on the laptop while driving, which is when I CAN do it.

So possess your souls in patience.

I’ll be Bach.

John Lennon’s Tooth and The Machinery of Fate A Blast from the Past April 2014

It is a given fact that you guys like to disturb me. I don’t know why that is. I’d take it for granted that, in fact, life disturbs me enough. Take taxes, for instance — oh, wait. Los Federales already did. They have great need of money to eat it or something. Never mind.

Perhaps in an effort to distract me from running around the house repeating RAH’s dictum that you should be wary of strong drink: it might make you shoot at tax collectors and MISS, one of you told me about this dentist in … Alberta? Who bought one of John Lennon’s teeth (who even sells that?) and who plans to “clone John Lennon.”

Okay, as publicity it might be okay, though – I don’t know about you – I’d be hesitant to go to a dentist – any doctor really – who is into macabre souvenirs.

But the idea…

My answer to the reprobate who told me about it was to point out that we already have plenty of broken misfits around. I think he was a little taken aback, so I had to explain.

This is not the case with every one, of course, but speaking for me and a lot of other writers I know – and Lord help us, plastic artists are WORSE – art is what happens when you break somebody, then put them under unbearable pressure. Imagine if you will living, animated, sentient coal, and you’re trying to make diamonds. You apply enormous pressure…

And sometimes you’re going to get the diamond. The misfit will reorganize, re-integrate, find an outlet, and the result is something rarer and far better than mere human coal. But this being humans, most of the time you’re just going to get coal dust or perhaps diamond chips.

The resemblance between artists and madmen has been noted through history, but it’s slightly sideways from the truth. The truth is not that artists are mad, but rather like they achieved a state supra-madness where they function fine because they have that artistic outlet.

Now, I’m not quite that way, but then as you know I’m more craftswoman than artist.

Anyway, what shocked me about that story is that artist or not, Lennon’s success; his fame; his contribution to the world of music and the performing arts, is even more dependent on chance, on just how high that pressure was turned, when.

Regardless of what you think of his solo career it came after the Beatles, and might never have been what it was without the Beatles, and besides the Beatles is arguably his greatest contribution. What I mean is, absent the Beatles, he’d never have been the John Lennon he was, for good or ill. (This is something I tried to capture in Superlamb Banana. And yes, oh my, that does need another cover. Sigh.)

And that surely isn’t expressed in his genes. Unless you think of genes as sort of a magic destiny, the sort that the fairygodmothers used to give people over their cradle.

You might, of course. It’s a new and popular theory. Everything we are and everything we achieve is supposed to be there, in our genes, ready to happen. This Calvinistic (but not religious) view of humanity of course presupposes that the future is pre-written. We are, if you will, lines of code in a program we can’t help follow.

This is very similar to the Portuguese idea of fate which, Portugal being heavily influenced by Islam, is still central to the culture. You hear even educated people say things like “We all follow our fate.”

And it annoys me. It is, if you will, part of the Widgetization of humanity.

The left is going for this in a big way, without ever admitting it’s what they’re doing, just their their assumption of culture being genetic is never admitted to be full on racism. (It is. What else would it be? White people are endlessly protean, but if you are an interesting sub-race/culture, then you have to follow a script and know your place? Straight up racism!)

They’re going for this fate and pre-ordained thing in a big way because it’s a logical follow on their idea that nothing is your fault. If everything is scripted, its’ wrong to hold crimes against criminals. It also fits right in with the number of extreme left people who are radical losers. You might have an IQ of 180 and be living in a trashy apartment and raiding trash cans for garbage, but it was all planned, and it’s not your fault. Oh, yeah, and you can’t escape, so making the effort to actually integrate into society? Not possible. It will only fail.

Of course this destroys human freedom.

I’ve said of this before, that even if it were true (and if it were, we couldn’t prove it, barring proving the entire universe is a computer program) it would be evil to believe it. It would rob all existence of meaning and all humans of individuality. However, what we know seems to show it’s not true. I mean, maybe someone scripted me to have my particular life so far, in which case you have to wonder if they were sane (sorry) but I, like all of us, can see the errors, the failures, the slips – and what might have been. And it was not forbidden to me.

Of course, the jokers who believe this bilge then say that you don’t really think: you just follow a script, and then rationalize your actions.

While a lot of people do this, and a lot of us do it at times in minor stuff — like we forget we were going to make a cake and when we’re halfway through making a soufflé, we do the cat thing “I meant to do that” — I beg to differ. Major decisions are usually weighed by everyone but the very infantile, and the ones who believe that they can’t help themselves.

Again this is the widgetization of people. It’s making people things who would all act the same way given certain genes. Yeah, some twin studies purport to show that, to an extent, but I always wonder about the ones that don’t make cute lifeline stories. Oh, sure, the tendencies are in your genes. But what you make of them is your choice.

You’re not the sum of your ancestry. You’re not a widget. You’re not the slave to the culture you were born in. The future is yours to mold.

And as for John Lennon, poor man, who the heck needs another kid with funny glasses, a lot of uncontrolled aggression and some musical talent? He left children, in the normal way of mankind. Let that be enough for his contribution, and let him rest in peace.

You guys know what I read as the pressure climbs, right? Yep, yep, Jane Austen fanfic. But what happens if the pressure climbs above that and I’m running on empty?

If you said “books about great lost civilizations” you get a prize. I’m not sure what the prize is, but it’s probably a booby prize. Anyway, so in the five days between two drives across the country, I fell into a series of “I totally know where Atlantis is” books.

And I ran into it. Head first.

Noble savages. The whole genre is full of noble savages and their ancient ways of knowing. They’re soft pedaling it on the great goddess these days, possibly because the sound of raucous laughter has made them back off. But oh, the noble savages, and the evil Western civ.

Here let me interject that for just a moment that it’s understandable that all the “ancient lost civilization” people are new agers and often sound like they inhaled a bit too deeply from the peace pipe. Because counter-cultural people — truly counter-cultural — aren’t usually the sanest or most respectable people around. Mostly because if they were they would walk the line, trying to keep their jobs, pensions and benes.

Oh, and don’t sing me your sacrosanct science of archeology song. I still think mostly they’re looking under the street lights, and even so I’ve seen them revise their “certainties” over and over again till what was “science” when I was young is now “we used to think.” The problem with archeology is that it’s just soft enough that a few dominant personalities with a theory can stop new discoveries. Or if you prefer, science changes a grave at a time, and none more than archeology. You people in STEM, even if you dive into their writings, probably don’t catch the whiff of “Stompy Stomp because I said so” that I do, because of having been forced — for my sins — to study literature so they’d let me study languages. But trust me, it’s obvious to me. And impossible to ignore. Like a stompy stompy skunk just got run over.

While on that, and as a side bar, are there ancient lost civilizations? Oh, almost for sure. Humans create civilizations as they breathe. And advances are often lost to cataclysms or self-goal even now.

Was any of these civilizations at our level? No. Or at least highly unlikely, because well… a lot of things had to hit just right to get us where we are when we are. 19th century or even 18th century level? Don’t know. It’s possible. But…. no trace? Well, none we’ve found. Remember however that if it was before the ice age, it could have happened and left no trace. That kind of change scours the landscape. Now Egypt or Babylon level? 99% sure there are some we haven’t unearthed. You see, those tend to be…. smallish in scope, and therefore easier to completely destroy. Trade goods found elsewhere would not be easily found. or if found, they wouldn’t necessarily be obvious. Or classed as “anomalies”.

But that’s not the point. The point is that everyone accepts that lost civilizations don’t exist, and so anyone bucking the “everyone knows” is likely to be slightly peculiar anyway.

Still must it always be noble savages? In the name of the gods of sanity why?

I read well-intentioned descriptions of children burials and how sad the kids’ parents must be, while … well, let’s say I’ve read enough about pre-history to know what a child sacrifice looks like. And the fact this author is incapable of “seeing” it is scary and infuriating. Actually the fact that all of them all the time ignore signs of sacrifice, cannibalism, tribal war, etc.

And it’s like that with everything. Absolutely everything. “Western Civilization evil/bad” and “If only we listened to the wisdom of the noble savages.”

The problem is the noble savages are a myth. And possibly the most harmful myth of all, ammunition for oikophobes and haters of civilization and the west. It also encourages the soft-headed and young to think that if they destroy civilization they’ll get paradise. These born-again Rosseaunians have been plaguing everything that still works and thinking life will improve if they destroy it. Then taking the increased problems as a sign that we need to destroy more. And I’m tired of it.

For the record no ancient civilization other than Israel (and there’s a troubling passage in the Bible about whatshisname promising to sacrifice the first person to come greet him out of his house, and his daughter does. Yes, there are other explanations, and maybe it was just shutting her up in a nunnery or something, which is still weird, but not as much) is free of human sacrifice. We now know even Greece and Rome sacrificed young people when under pressure, duress and fear. I’m not sure how widespread cannibalism is, but it still happens in current day, so why shouldn’t it happen when there was no strong moral repulsion of it? It gallops through African fairytales and legends, for instance. Other things? Well, let me disabuse you: no, it wasn’t white people who brought rape and female exploitation to the Americas. You might not find any references to it in old legends for the same reason you don’t find us stopping to say “Oh, by the way we breathe air.” Also rape and female oppression wasn’t a crime. It was “the way things are.” Pretty much for everyone till those Judeo-Christian weirdos decided that women too were children of G-d and ought to be respected as such. Which threw a spanner in the works right and proper. And even so, because men’s physical strength is and has always been (no matter what lies the moderns tell) immensely larger than women’s, it took centuries — centuries — and technological advances (G-d bless Smith and Wesson) for the idea that raping women or pushing them around was a bad thing to fully percolate through society in the West. Yes, yes, the anglosphere was better, particularly the colonies, but I still grew up with “He beats me but he’s my man” and my family being weird because the women would straight up shiv you if you disrespected them.

Primitives, living close to the land? Oh, please. The only reason that raping a woman was wrong was because it somehow injured the man she belonged to. That’s it. Which is why even in Regency England (or in the Portugal of my childhood) the remedy for rape was to marry the woman to her rapist.

So, great civilization of the past better than the West? Sorry not buying it. Particularly when you’re carefully avoiding seeing the signs of horror and evil.

Someone whose mind and “sense” I greatly respect said he sensed evil all around Gobekli Tepe, which checks with Peter Grant saying that the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are viewed by locals as terrible places where terrible stuff happened. I know how I react to eve pictures of Aztec pyramids. Is it because I know what happened there? Sure. Probably. Maybe. And?

Civilizations can be the best of their time, and technically accomplished and still be rank and utter horrors.

A lot of people, even the right, look for perfection in the past. It won’t fadge. No the Victorians weren’t better than us. The eighteenth century wasn’t better than us. And no, the early twentieth century wasn’t more “moral” than us. Oh, sure, the ethos, the in your face public displays were. And they hadn’t (yet) been invaded by an oikophobic and destructive elite who tried to make a mockery and a destruction of everything good and moral.

But the real people, the people living day to day were about the same. The US remains the most religious place on Earth and, look you, Christendom remains Christendom. Yes, people will say they’re agnostic or atheists in polls a lot more because in the past it was frowned upon and no it’s lionized. But what they feel and think, at base level hasn’t changed a whole heck of a lot. We still have our fair share of saints, even if low key and not talking about it. And they had their high share of scoundrels, perverts and evil people, same as we do. It’s just in the past they used to hide.

(Yeah, yeah, church attendance is down. Have you looked at the mainstream churches recently? Because I have to make a constant effort to find the one of my denomination that’s not insane at that moment, and sometimes this means driving two hours to service. If it weren’t because I feel I need it I wouldn’t bother, either.)

The kids, whatever the media tells you, are still all right.

There is no perfection in the past. The savages were by and large less noble than we are. And our recent ancestors too. Which doesn’t justify erasing the memory of their great deeds, btw. But it also doesn’t justify treating ourselves as if we can’t achieve greatness.

There is no perfection in the future either. Only fools, children and leftists (BIRM) believe that. Don’t aim for perfection. Or do, but know you won’t achieve it.

If anything requires that “everyone” does something to achieve it, it’s not achievable. If you think any society is a failure because there’s the occasional rape or murder, or because your neighbor is a rough-talking heathen, you’re just going to enshrine barbarism.

Instead improve what you can. Do the best you can.

Oh, and do study the past and learn from it, both the good and the bad, without trying to worship your ancestors. That was always a crazy heresy.

And please, please, please, get some sane archeologists in the game. (Which might require taking it from academia.)

Now I’m going to return to writing my fascinating and not wholly noble savages. Catch you later.

*We’re finalizing our preparations for LC. OBVIOUSLY we’re not leaving in the morning. (Work stuff. Not mine.) Anyway, for those of you making it to the range, this seems like an important post. I’ll try to write one tomorrow. Time not guaranteed, as we’ll be driving and sometimes connection is iffy. Same Friday. Anyway, stay safe. Practice responsible bang therapy. (Not that kind of bang, you sickos. Well, that kind of bang maybe too, but I don’t want to hear about it. Ew.) – SAH*

Range PPE by David Bock

I’m sure the majority of our regular readers are aware of the importance of range safety.  Most people know this means following range instructions from the range safety officer and/or match director, keeping your muzzle down range, and other basic safe gun handling.

But there’s more to it than that.  Range safety also means personal protective equipment (or PPE) which includes dressing properly for the range.

I’d like to think everyone knows about the importance of eye and ear protection, but experience as an instructor and Range Safety Officer has taught me better.

While many modern plastic prescription lenses have similar attributes to safety glasses, they are not the same thing.  For one, regular eyeglasses do not generally have side shields.  There are too many stories of people getting eye damage from a piece of bullet jacket, an empty casing, or a ricochet hitting them from the side.

Prescription safety glasses are available as well as regular safety glasses that will fit over your everyday glasses.  Yes, they might not be as comfortable, but I’m willing to lay odds they’re more comfortable than an eye patch.

Moving on to ear protection, hearing damage is cumulative and permanent and over time, it affects us all.

The unit of measurement for sound is the decibel. The decibel scale is logarithmic, this means that a change from 10 to 20 decibels is not double, but ten times the volume. Another aspect of hearing damage from sounds is duration.  Exposure to a lower volume sound for a longer period of time can be just as damaging to our hearing as exposure to a loud sound for a shorter time.

Any sound in excess of 140 decibels, without hearing protection, can cause instant hearing damage.  A .22 rimfire pistol generally exceeds 150 decibels at the muzzle. The volumes go up from there.

Both the National Institute of Health and Safety (NIOSH) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have more information on both hearing loss and hearing protection.

Here’s a decibel chart with a specific emphasis on firearms.

Here’s a more generalized chart of common noise levels.

Hearing protection is listed with a noise reduction rating, or NRR value. For hearing protection to be good for use while shooting, it should have a NRR in the 20s at least.

Keep in mind that the actual decibel reduction is not what‘s listed on the package.  To determine this value, take the NRR number (as decibels), subtract seven, and then divide by two. As shown in this 3M Hearing Protection Guide (PDF warning).  So a product with an NRR rating of 27 would reduce volume by 10 decibels.

Some people like to double up their hearing protection, wearing plugs and muffs, for example. However, the two ratings aren’t added together, five decibels of protection are added to whichever element has the higher NRR value.

In addition to these two main elements, there’s also making wise clothing choices.

The general recommendation is to wear a long sleeved, high collar shirt, long pants, closed toed shoes, and a hat.  Avoid low cut tops.

All of this it to keep brass off our skin.  Brass gets hot when fired.  Anyone who’s ever gotten a piece of brass down their shirt knows just how uncomfortable this can be.

One of the main benefits of the metallic cartridge case is that it takes a significant amount of heat with it when it leaves the gun. I don’t think any of us want that heat transferred to our skin. As I was told during firefighter training more than once “people cook just like chicken.”  I’d say more like pork, but whatever.

There are many good reasons to wear proper protective equipment while shooting.  It won’t protect us completely, but it can go a long way to making our experience safer and more enjoyable.