Since I’m writing about a re-barbarized culture (yes, in the cursed book. Deal) I have been thinking a lot about barbarism and civilization.

The culture in the book is one that went into barbarism with a hammer, being the result of genetic and cultural manipulation, which robbed them even of the legacy of languages evolved on earth and made to serve mankind With the language, they lost the final tools to keep a high-level (or any level) of technology when the ship crashed and all adults but two died. Those adults were bizarrely or perhaps desperately trying to gestate all the embryos in artificial wombs, to leave the planet with a viable population. This allowed them not to scuttle their grand design, and to have their off-shoot of humanity survive. But it left them no time to teach the children. Which might be better and worse than if they had.

Worse, because the children could live with the stuff left to them, but were in essence primitives. Better because the crazy assumptions of the grand experiment weren’t imposed on them and allowed them, after very dark times to rebuild a civilization of sorts, even if not really a civilization.

There is an underlayment of barbarism to the culture, that I don’t know (quite) how to depict without making the people unsympathetic. The environment is hell on the very young and the very old, due to the cold equations of maintaining the lives of those who can’t contribute to their own care. True barbarians don’t care, but nascent civilizations, while still barbaric, have to come up with justifications for what they do. they might not even fool their own members, but they are, nonetheless, necessary for sanity.

But there is more, because of the nature of the world — yes, the damn hermaphrodite world — it is to some extent every hand against every other hand. They’ve had to band together to an extent, hence the nascent civilization, simply to survive, but there’s not the hard lesson humans had to learn about caring for pregnant females (they’re mostly self-sufficient on that, though at the risk of tremendous infant mortality that almost destroys the sub-species) and there is marginal advantage to that sharp-edged competition of women in the seraglio. To put it it bluntly, more or your children is fewer resources for mine.

Even in nascent or at least attempted civilization, millennia in, the best of them are what we’d consider unholy prickly and capable of sudden and horrifying violence. I have to write such a scene, and still don’t know how to make it both startling and horrifying to my civilized-world visitor/dropped-in unfortunate, and yet justifiable enough that the character doesn’t lose all sympathy. Because he (yes, way back in the eighties I was told I could sell it if I referred to them as “she” but that’s the entirely wrong image for the civilization I created) IS a good person and surprising gentle for their culture and time, and its exigencies. And yet, he has to commit violence at the drop of an insult, or risk being killed.

Now to an extent it’s a very fun civilization to write: Connan the Barbarian meets Jane Austen, with something approaching magic. The response to someone outside very specific conditions (Which have edge cases) calling you by your given name, for instance, is to threaten to cut their tongue out. And to try to make good on the thread if they succeed.

Barbarism is fun, in the same sense adventure is fun: if it happens to someone else far away.

Humans in a state of barbarism are subjected to pressures and imperatives that make the rest of us blench. And the exigencies and impulses of a barbaric culture make them very bad neighbors indeed, so note that barbarism is only fun far away from us.

And barbarism is not only the default nature of humans, when our carefully indoctrinated civilized imperatives are forgotten or stripped away from us by circumstances, but it remains in some part even in the most civilized of us.

It is nature, red in tooth and claw, inside our brains, against the best imperatives of our brains. And it hides itself in myriad ways. See women in offices and corporations often recreating the behavior of the seraglio, with “death of career” substituting for “death.” And “cancelling” for “throwing to the outer darkness to die with her children” (Or his.) See men who haven’t been socialized to harness and husband (I speak advisedly) their greater strength becoming “toxic” and abusive to those weaker.

The best civilization can do is NOT banish the barbarism in each of us, but harness it, in the service of greater humanity.

And greater humanity is the point here. The tribalism of the savage does not serve civilization. It allows some very ancient and barbaric impulses to survive.

Because, despite the appearance, this is not a writer nattering about her cursed book, but serves a purpose, let me start by telling a “joke” in very poor taste.

All of those screaming that Israeli response to the Einsatzgruppen LARPing by the Palestinian barbarians MUST be proportionate are out of luck. No one can convince the IDF to run around raping women and children, beheading babies and setting fire to children.

In fact, they are at risk, rather, as all civilized people are, of having their best impulses used against them. Already, in Twitter, there are idiot Hamas Bots demanding if I’m as horrified by Israelis “killing Palestian babies” for however long. I don’t answer them. Because I don’t answer questions with made-up premises. I might as well ask them when they stopped honor-killing their wives.

Yes, Israelis have killed some children and babies of Palestinians, over the years trying to defend themselves from a relentless enemy, but never on purpose. In that they take more care than these children’s parents. For the record, it’s not a war crime to bomb a weapons depot or missile launching station placed atop a nursery school or a hospital. It is a war crime, and despicable to a horrible extent to place such installations in places where you will use the children of your own tribe as shields.

It’s also a learned behavior. The Palestinians and other modern day barbarians wouldn’t do that if it weren’t for the fact that they’ve learned their scrupulous and civilized enemy hesitates to hurt innocents. The fact that they value winning against the civilized enemy over their own children is more a demonstration of how sick their barbaric culture has gotten, and how much it sees itself as inevitably defeated. Otherwise, they would value the future. If they thought they had one.

So, should we feel sorry for them because of their lack of future? We can’t afford to. When a culture reaches that level, there’s only one thing that can save it. And “save it” only in a very general sense, that their genetics have a shot at the future: Take every child under three away and raise them in civilization, with a different language, different parents, and never tell them they were adopted.

No, we won’t do that. Civilized people have learned to be wary of that sort of impulse, which in a way is too bad.

The myths and idiocies of the “noble savage” have caused us to allow generations of children to be raised in barbarism crossed with a sort of welfare state where everything material is provided for them, but they are taught only the impulses and practices of barbarians.

It is actually no wonder they hate us. It’s just that they hate us — and in the Palestinian case, both us and the Israelis — for all the wrong reasons. They also have an internal myth that goes something like: “Commit horrible acts of barbarism — ?????? — Victory.”

But they can’t have victory. If, unlikely as it is, they were to “win” against civilization, their barbarism would just consume them. And their lack of interest in their own tribe’s future would end them.

Not to pick on Palestinians, only. You see the same behavior among the lost and broken “ante-fa” and the other barbarians of our left. It’s all “Commit horrible acts of barbarism — ?????? — Victory.”

It’s all based on the idea that civilized people will behave as the barbarians will. That they will fight at the same level, but impaired by being “civilized” which for the barbarians translates as “weak.”

They miss the mechanism of civilization. The thing that kicks in, when all of us feel threatened with extinction.

Civilization allows individuals to be fat and sassy, and consider themselves secure enough we are horrified by violence, and don’t respond with the same level of violence, or not close enough for barbarians to understand.

The Einsatzgruppen LARPing was typical barbarian aggression. When tribe of human meets tribe of human in the wild, one of them will commit the worst atrocity they can think of, to cause the other to run away. This saves lives on both sides because it spares the tribes endless war.

However it works very, very badly when tribal humans meet civilization, where all humans are considered part of one’s “tribe”.

Oh, a lot of attacks are ignored, because civilization removes the knife from the civilized throats. We have lives to live. We are momentarily horrified, then move on.

Until an invisible mark is hit, one that is hard to quantify, so it’s always a surprise for the barbarians, but that mark does get hit in every confrontation between civilization and barbarism. Some atrocity so horrible, some outrage so immense is perpetrated by the barbarians, that the civilized cannot forgive, forget or even conceptualize. At that point, the switch in civilized society’s brain gets flipped, and they go utterly destructive. They turn against barbarism with a fury that can only be described as “exterminate them root and branch.”

The nuclear conflagrations in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the response of a very, very civilized culture. I’ll just remind everyone of that. As was the bombing of Dresden. (The Nazis, themselves, were bizarrely an advanced civilization which, under various pressures, had decided to embrace the worst features of barbarism. Let that rest under “humans are weird.” They were weaponized barbarism, though, once again showing there’s nothing as dangerous as civilization choosing barbarism.)

How close is that switch? It might already have tripped, though I suspect the barbarians are going to try for a coda, because, heaven help them (we won’t) they think they’re winning and that it’s business as usual.

Those barbarians in the Middle East, and our own rebarbarized left, for that matter, so in thrawl of the noble savage that they achieve savagery with no nobility whatsoever.

In the end, civilization always wins. But civilization can be shocked and left harder and harsher and closer to barbarism than it should be.

Which leads to very dangerous times indeed.

We’re sailing very perilous waters. For us, for our would be enemies, for humanity itself.

Be not afraid. Hold on to what civilization you can. And stand by to defend it and rebuild it.

Book promo

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 JERRY BOYD: Cleanup on Aisle Squatch

Bob and the fleet are doing their best to keep a lid on things at Earth, when a desperate call for help comes in. Topper and Dingus ride off to square things away, until Bob gets another call, and joins the fleet. Can they handle what they’ve found? What’s going on, way out there in Commonwealth space? Only one way to find out!

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Dragon’s Sister (Timelines Universe Book 7)

Two Sisters, Separated By A Timeline

When most people find out they have a long-lost twin sibling they never dreamed existed, reactions can range from happiness to anger.

In the case of US Space Force Marines Brigadier General Mei-Lin Lai, her “twin” is her timeline analog she was told did not exist. And because of that reassurance, the expatriate Chinese taikonaut migrated to Timeline Zero from Timeline One Right, to take command of United States Space Force Base Terra Meridiani, on Mars.

But her analog did exist. And was pulled out of a cold-stasis chamber in Chicago eighty years after she’d been recruited into a failed plot to disrupt an American presidential election.

Twenty years later, Mei-Lin must grapple with a woman who is her genetic twin and wishes to join the Space Force Marines as a medic — and will go through Basic Training on the planet where Mei-Lin is the boss Marine.

Will the two women, identical but different, be able to form a sisterly bond? And will Mei-Lin finally come to grips with the very existence of her other-timeline twin?

FROM MONALISA FOSTER: Lineage (Ravages of Honor Book 3)

Darien and Syteria have been to hell and back. Their wounds and scars remain a part of them and who they are as they fight to stay together and prevent civil war. But when an old enemy is found alive he threatens their most precious secret as well as the future of both humans and donai. Will they be able to forge the new alliances needed to keep the Imperium from rising from the ashes? Or will the Imperium’s old guard carry out a genocide that will doom the donai to extinction?

FROM JOHN TALONI: Crisis on Stardust Station

The cats of Stardust Station have long hidden their intelligence from the humans that live there. Now a crisis threatens them both. Can the cats and humans learn to work together in time to save both the station and the planet below?

A few hundred years from now, Earth has gone to space…and come back. The remnant of a once vibrant space effort persists in the form of a few hundred solar power satellites that provide half of the world’s power. John Aldrin is one of four people crewing the last remaining space station, with the mission to keep the satellites operating. But Earth has neglected them so long that they are on the verge of breakdown.

Benign neglect has allowed something else to happen: In the station’s forest habitat, a group of genetically modified cats have grown to intelligence. Some have been adopted by the astronauts and brought to their living area. Natural telepaths, both groups of Cats have agreed to keep the knowledge of their intelligence secret from the humans.

Their equilibrium is destroyed when a solar flare strikes and knocks out the satellites. The Cats must reveal their secret to save both their station and the world below. But can they convince a skeptical Earth to work with them?

FROM BONNIE RAMTHUN: The Awful Solstice: Book Four of the Centerville Chronicles

The exciting conclusion to The Centerville Chronicles is here…

The Awful Solstice is just a few days away. Ray doesn’t know if he’s ready to be the Shining One, but he’s determined to try. For a kid whose biggest worry used to be trying out for the baseball team, it still seems crazy to be carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders.

But now Ray has new allies – which would be great, except all of them have their own ideas about what he’s supposed to do. Between strange prophecies and self-important secret societies, everyone wants to tell Ray how he’s supposed to behave.

Worst of all, these new allies keep herding Ray and Clancy, his best friend, from one catastrophe to another

The final battle is almost here. The forces of evil hold all the cards – they’ve got gods, monsters, legends, and the nastiest sorcerer who’s ever cast a curse.

And Ray knows that only he can make the choice that will decide the fate of the world. Ray never asked to be The Shining One. But he’ll see it through his way – or die trying.

FROM RICHARD MEREDITH: MASKIROVKA – The Russian Science of Deception

It may have changed its name, but the KGB is up to its old tricks, only this time with a new puppet-the American Public!

Steve Nguyen, a newly minted homicide detective with the San Francisco Police Department, is cut loose on his first solo case-the mysterious death of a young accountant with a public-interest foundation. Everything points to natural causes, but Nguyen, to the dismay of his chief, isn’t ready to close the book. With no motive, means, or opportunity, the anxiety-racked law school dropout starts digging anyway.

Nguyen’s tortuous investigation leads through the halls of Congress, the gritty oil fields of the Siberian tundra, stately Black Sea palaces of the petro-czars, and the mean streets of San Francisco. Aided by his misfit cousins, Tina Ngo, an attorney with a special practice in feral law, and Tommy Tran, a computer geek straddling the tightrope of legality, Nguyen unearths a malevolent alliance among a billionaire Russian oligarch, a duplicitous foundation director, and a renowned philanthropist hell-bent on tightening Russia’s monopoly on the European energy market by choking-off American exports. If it means corrupting the American electoral system through illegal campaign contributions, political blackmail, and a few dead bodies, so be it.

In this dark world of Russian deception, Nguyen unravels a complex tangle of illegal offshore accounts, shell corporations, and front companies, all while ducking the crosshairs of the SVR’s most skilled assassins. He may solve a murder and maybe save a republic.

FROM ANDREW FOX: The End of Daze

Jacob Zvi has turned his back on everything he was taught to value. His faith, his family, his citizenship, and even his morals. Yet seemingly divine fate introduces Jacob to the struggling members of an Orthodox congregation in the middle of a ghetto in New Orleans while terrorists explode a purloined Soviet nuclear artillery shell atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

But things quickly take a turn for the Biblical, for the worthy dead are returning to life to build a Third Temple atop the now radioactive Temple Mount, scoured empty by the atomic blast. They return not to bodies of flesh and blood, but to cybernetic bodies produced in an advanced robotics lab on the Tulane campus, part of a secret project funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

The End of Days has begun, but unlike anything that has been anticipated by Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim. When Jacob is inexplicably selected to serve as God’s mouthpiece, and he finds he makes for a clownishly awkward prophet of God’s Kingdom on Earth.

But he will have to up his game immeasurably in order to broker peace with all the factions who bitterly reject this version of the End Times—chief among them progressive Jews themselves! THE END OF DAZE is a science fiction eschatological satire fitting for the End Times encroaching on the twenty-first century.

FROM DANIEL ZEIDLER: Cops and Dragons

This collection contains three Cops & Dragons stories: The Constable’s Quest, a Circle of Stars, and A Test of Time.

The Constable’s Quest – When a dead red dragon crashed in the alfalfa field on the outskirts of the city, Watch Sergeant Sigurd Arnson hoped it would attract the King’s attention to the remote frontier territory and the increasingly cruel duke who administered it for the Crown. What the dead dragon attracted instead was a runaway teenage girl with a magic talent that could lead her to the dragon’s lair and the treasure within. Now the duke has ordered Sigurd to take the girl into the Wilds and find the unclaimed hoard within seven days or they and their families will suffer the duke’s wrath.

A Circle of Stars – Brynn Starsinger, Lieutenant of the Queen’s Watch, is an anomaly among the elves of the City: an orphan seemingly born with no ability to work magic. After being falsely accused of murder, she is sentenced to face the justice of the mysterious Fey Lord. Though Bryn fears her life is over, the Fey Lord angrily declares the covenant had been broken and merely sends her off to sleep. When she is awakened by Turo, a dragon of many questions, and Bryn discovers the Fey Lord has been defeated, his forest left devastated, and everyone in her beloved City has vanished. Now Bryn and Turo must race against time to not only save the elves of the City, but also thwart the sinister plans of the Cult of the Fallen God.

A Test of Time – As Captain of the City Guard for the Market Precinct, the biggest challenge Saxon Tage usually faced was the occasional bellowing merchant-chief. Now he finds himself confronted by a serial killer, a mysterious woman who is either a witch or one of the fey, an ancient evil intent on bending him to its will, and a secret that will forever change his life.

BY G. J. WHYTE-MELVILLE, P.G. HAMERTON AND MORTIMER COLLINS, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Victober Collection 2023: 3 Classic Victorian Novels.

Black But Comely

Born to gypsies, raised by Jews, Jane Lee turns eighteen and decides to win her way into the upper classes of Victorian society. Her heritage won’t let her go, but her single-minded will and cunning are a match for any gypsy plots against her.

Marmorne

The British Segrave brothers were as different as could be. Emil, the eldest and a solicitor, was passionless and precise. Julius, the middle brother, had enough energy for three normal men, so his decision to mount an expedition to Africa was no surprise. Youngest, Adolphus, was the peacemaker between the other two.

How their fates became tied to the quaint French village of Marmorne, and the Prussian invasion of France, none of them could have foretold…

Sweet Anne Page

Sweet Anne Page is an ideal to everyone who meets her. To Stephen Langton, she is the youthful ideal of love. To Humphrey Morfill, she is the ideal way to marry into money. To Claudia Branscombe, she is the ideal foil, a distraction that enables her plots and intrigues. And to Raphael Branscombe, she becomes the ideal path to revenge…

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox

To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past to change it. And in the face of extinction, you do what you must, regardless of who stands in the way.


Cataclysm

Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…

Heisenberg’s Point of Observation

Thomas Sutton was not your average fourteen year old, not even in an Ark City. Born in one of the three refuges of the last remnants of life on earth, deep underground, he knows his history. A century after an asteroid shattered and struck the earth, they have been trapped below by volcanic eruptions, toxic gasses, and radioactive dust. But what if he could…change things? What if he could reach the past, to prevent the asteroid’s impact?

Entanglement

Tom Beadle only volunteered for NASA’s neighborhood watch program when his department said it would maybe help him get tenure.None of them counted on the Neighborhood Watch becoming a mortifying political liability when a malfunctioning probe accidently reveals an asteroid hiding behind the larger outer planets, setting off impact alarms– and politicians looking for blame. When their answer is to defund the Watch program and fire all involved, Tom’s only chance to save the earth is to lie through his teeth and try to deflect the asteroid under cover of harvesting rare not-of-this-earth elements. And even that may not work.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Shadow of a Dead God

What secrets lie beneath an alien world?

A routine archeological dig on a world once ruled by the mysterious Star Tyrants. For Moon-born Liu Shang, working on a planetary surface might be unsettling, but she could manage — until the dreams started.

Unwilling to drag others into a harebrained search, she headed out alone, contrary to mission rules. Just as she was about to give up, she found an unlikely artifact.

Handling it connects her to the mind of a long-ago rebel against the Star Tyrants’ rule. Nothing will ever be the same.

A short story.

FROM KAREN MYERS: To Carry the Horn – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 1)

AN ENTIRE KINGDOM BUILT AROUND A SUPERNATURAL NEED FOR JUSTICE, ENFORCED BY THE WILD HUNT AND THE HOUNDS OF HELL.

What would you do if you blundered into a strange world, where all around you was the familiar landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but the inhabitants were the long-lived fae, and you the only human?

George Talbot Traherne stumbles across the murdered huntsman of the Wild Hunt, and is drafted into finding out who did it. Oh, and assigned the task of taking the huntsman’s place with the Hounds of Hell, whether he wants the job or not.

The antlered god Cernunnos is the sponsor of this kingdom, and he requires its king to conduct the annual hunt for justice in pursuit of an evil criminal, or else lose his right to the kingship, and possibly end up hunted himself.

Success is far from guaranteed, and no human has held the post. George discovers his own blood links to the fae king, and he’s determined to try. But Cernunnos himself has a personal role to play, and George will have to sort out just why he’s the one who’s been chosen for the task.

And whether he has any chance of surviving the job.

Find out what it’s like to live in a world where you can help the Right to prevail, even if it might cost you everything.

To Carry the Horn is the first book of The Hounds of Annwn.

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: MOTHER

Writing is a sort of madness. Undoubtedly. Or at least it is as I’ve experienced it and as a lot of my mentees, friends and associates practice it.

There is danger in dreams. Every human myth records that. The danger of the dream, like a deep ocean. You can get sucked into the dream and never find your way out. You can confuse your dreams for reality. You can suck others into your dreams too.

The Victorians weren’t entirely wrong that fiction is dangerous. Yes, yes, I know. It’s fashionable to make fun of the idea that novels made young ladies silly and immoral. And, as far as it goes, it is silly. Young ladies were — and are, like all humans — naturally silly and immoral. It’s just that the novels — of the time — didn’t provide any bulwark (ah) against that. Attempts to do so, hilariously, created the moralistic, annoying books my grandmother read in her childhood and adolescence (And I did too, because they were still kicking around, and no book is safe from my reading it. Even if they were so predictable they made me giggle, and even if in the end they gave you the moral in straight forward words, in case you had forgotten.)

Those novels, the moralistic ones, were not really dangerous, for the main reason that they were not really immersive. You could see the characters’ being manipulated by wires. You could see as each movement was prescribed by the author. It’s hard to forget someone is lecturing you, as they’re in full Karen mode, nose in the air and none of their characters breaks mold or experiences anything startling.

To an extent this is what the leftist mind-set has done to fiction once more. Because they are in their own way as “moralistic” as any Victorian, following received wisdom from a Victorian, even if some of the applications would make that old lecher and grifter Marx blench. But more on that anon.

The fascinating thing in the link that Steve keeps putting in comments, and which I saw first in my fan discussion group with direct link from Twitter: Hot take: Fictional characters can’t consent because they don’t have ‘agency’. (link) is that it goes way beyond the divine madness of writers. And is self-contradictory, which leads me believe that the person who posted it is trolling for attention.

Though heaven knows, I’ve at times assumed the same about other leftist shibboleths, like the idea that people who tan can’t be racist, because blah blah power relationships, (ignoring that in many countries people who tan are in fact in power. In fact, people, I saw my first blond at the age of 6. Scared the heck out of me. I thought he was a plastic doll come to life. I had nightmares.), or the idea that only women can be harrassed/raped, because men are just so darn persuasive, or the idea that a 120 lb woman can physically beat a 300lb guy who is neither paralyzed nor tied down. All of these are on the face of it so patently absurd that they can’t be believed, entertained, or even thought of for more than two minutes without evoking belly laugh. Unless they’re religious pronouncements, which of course they are, and therefore immune from examination.

Here’s the thing, and please keep in mind as I type this there are writers trying to scale my house walls to stop me, since I’m about to give away a trade secret. (Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but it is a trade secret.)

I know you’ve heard writers in conferences and workshops telling you they create their characters piece by piece, assemble them like a puzzle, “fire” them if they’re not working, etc.

They very well might. Or they might be lying like people who dream for you wholesale would do. Or they might be lying to themselves because the truth is uncomfortable to anyone trying to stay sane.

I don’t hide from anyone — because frankly I believe in telling the truth — that I am a gateway writer. I get the stories pretty much wholesale from my subconscious. (Well, I sleep better thinking it’s my subconscious and not some sort of portal in my head that beams in the events of some alternate universe.) Now, 90% of the time, this is not as effortless as it sounds. It really isn’t. Because I get the whole thing in a bolus. What the character believes and his life and death battle, and also what he ate for breakfast on his third birthday and what his favorite toy was, and how he had this deep talk with his friend when he was ten. And I don’t get the words. Most of the time when “block” it’s not lack of story. It’s lack of distance, to clean up the mess that dropped in my head. Or being too tired to think of words. (Today there is a blinding headache added to it.)

Note 90% of the time. Have I got the story words and all dictated to me? Sure. Couple of times. One of them is A Few Good Men. I was typing at the limit of my not inconsiderable speed, and I saw about a page ahead of what I was writing. It must count as one of the most unnerving experiences of my lifetime, since I didn’t know how the story would continue, or if it would, or if it would suddenly leave me halfway through. Worse: I didn’t know where it was going. Would it devolve into something unutterably senseless? Would it have a conclusion I didn’t like?

Look, I only wrote it at all because it was coming out at speed. if I didn’t like it, it was 2 weeks of my life, not a year. I could put it in a drawer and refuse to admit I’d done it. Or burn it, so that the boys didn’t get brilliant ideas after I was dead. (I think I have, at this point, destroyed all copies of my first ever written novel, but heaven knows. I keep finding others when I least expect it. So I’ve told them I’ll haunt them if they publish it. On the good (?) side, my notebook of poems — 8 to 25 years of age — seems to have disappeared in the multiple moves. It’s probably a good thing, yes?) But it turned out I liked the book. Though if I had to do it again, I’d probably have called it something else. But hey. I never get titles, ever, and was struck by the punniness of it all. It happens.

However, there’s the other books. I’m not going to pretend that when I got the call to write –work for hire– Plain Jane (the story of Henry VIII’s queen, Jane Seymour) I was seized by sudden inspiration, or had the creature come into my mind and dictate.

I wrote it because children needed shoes and school books, and we were paying two mortgages in the middle of a house-move.

But here’s the thing, as I found a POV that allowed me to write it, having done the research, I HAD TO BELIEVE THE CHARACTER ‘Existed’. I had to believe in the character’s and the story’s intrinsic truth, and I had to let it escape my total control.

Because writing is like playing chess with yourself. As you turn the board, you have to forget you created it all, so it works.

And — in my opinion. I know writers who say they don’t do this. They’re writers. Lying is always an option — I have to let the creations escape my control a little, or none of it is worth anything. (Ah. And now you know. G-d is a pantser.)

Now, the level of control the characters’ and story has depends on how it came to me, and how driven it is. When it’s fully driven, a thing with a life of its own…. well, weird stuff happens. Like the character balks me. “I wouldn’t do that” is the basic description, though mind you, it’s not words most of the time, just a feeling of utter wrongness. You can force the character, but if you do the character dies, and you’re skin-suiting it, and the book becomes horrible or worse, dies. And sometimes it’s a lot of characters.

It used to confuse Dan when he came home and I told him I’d had a terrible day at the office (down the hall) because the characters wouldn’t and I had to find what they would do that worked. I think he understands it better now.

However, I think all of us at some level must believe the character exists somewhere, to make it seem real to others. Secure your dream-magic-mask, before applying it to anyone else.

Which is why the hot take that it’s immoral to make your characters have sex they didn’t consent to is both terrifying and hilarious.

It means you’re required to think of the characters as their own people, self-actuated, with some sort of free will. Because otherwise you’re being accused of violating the consent of puppets.

But if they’re self-actuated, and have free will, you can’t make them do what they don’t want to, because frankly it’s way too much work to force it.

So this hot take is simultaneously crazier than the average writer, and completely incoherent in application.

Either the characters are alive elsewhere — I call it character world — and you’re just telling their story, or they’re not alive at all, in which case…. well, my socks don’t consent to be worn. My blanket doesn’t consent to be washed. Objects can’t consent, even if they’re mind objects.

I can tell you it’s almost impossible to force into sex characters who just don’t wanna or aren’t there yet. (This once led me to send a note to an editor who was demanding more and more explicit sex in a book — no, not Baen — that said “Look, I can force half a page of generalities, but if you want more, you’ll have to write it yourself.” …. which didn’t do wonders for my career with that house.)

I’m still assuming the whole thing is a massive troll. However, having seen 4chan trolls, like “Free bleeding” be taken absolutely in earnest on the left, there is no telling this won’t be.

I anticipate in some giggling the trad pub — because it will be — books being published with statements that the characters have been interrogated and consented. (And to my friends at Baen, yes, it would be hilarious if you guys do it, though I’d just put something blanket on the website. Or not. I remember that storm of stupid from the left about the bar. Eh.)

However if the left buys into this, they will finish completing, sideways and backwards, their transformation into the Victorian moralists they claimed to despise for so long.

Their objections to the male gaze, their contempt for anything that isn’t useful to their Marxist religion, their belief in the superiority of their beliefs and evangelical fervor to the “benighted” communities, which in their case seems to be anyone having fun. (We won’t wear pants, even if they make us, so there.)

They are the new Victorians. And unlike the originals ones, which at least had a clear view of humans and their behavior, they’re as delusional and insane as a hedgehog on mescaline.

I guess first as tragedy, then as farce.

On with the motley.

*I am in fact staying away from current events, yes, because just screaming incoherently how angry I am does nothing. I’ve come close to that in my instapundit stints, for which I must beg your indulgence. Yes, it will get worse before it gets better. Like Heinlein refusing to read current events during WWII (If I remember he only read month-old newspapers) I’m just trying to keep a small sliver of sanity, so I can clean the house, and cook, and yes, write without standing in the middle of the street screaming. Bear with me, therefore for a week or so. I’ll return to the fray. I can’t help myself. It’s just a little time to catch my breath. (And yes, I’m fairly sure that Steve keeps posting that link to distract me from the serious stuff ;) I’m onto him. ) – SAH*

Son of Silvercon was full of interesting talk and cross-conversations, and conversations that mutated and changed and became now serious, now funny. — Talk was ongoing, wherever people from the con gathered. In fact because I often forgot the numbers of the rooms we were supposed to be in, I just followed the constant, babbling brook of voices — Funny things happened, like when I mentioned that every few years my blood pressure plumets and I end up in the hospital. This happens to my dad too, so it must be genetic. M. C. A. Hogarth said that I came from a line of fainting goats Caitlin Walsh (the artist who did Odd Magics) drew me like this:

They weren’t actually making fun of me, as such, it was just that all throw away lines were cartoonified, since Caitlin has a drawing problem: she can’t stop doing it. So this was the only con with a continuous stream of funny drawings. At one point all of Holly Frost’s family became lions. Adorable lions who still looked like themselves, but also lions in Caitlin’s drawings.

Anyway, in a sudden serious turn, as we were sitting around and I mentioned the fastest and the slowest books I’ve ever written, and had to confess I’ve written a book in 3 days. (Though 2 weeks is more or less average. It’s the silence in between.) M. C. A. suggested that perhaps the silences are because I refuse to write a series that’s been nagging at me for 45 years, because I’m still trying to write saleable, or to market, even the market has changed.

Which is funny since, as I told Dave Butler, my main reason to remain indie right now, is that I want to finally write all the books that have waited this long, instead of subsuming them and writing whatever the house wants/needs instead.

But old habits die hard, and when you’ve worked all your life to fit in, and do the next book, it’s hard to break out of the frame of mind.

Is it what is depressing me? I don’t know. Heaven knows I’ve had plenty of other reasons to be depressed this year. Mostly deaths. I find a lot of us seem to be afflicted with a lot of deaths of family and friends, and yes, pets, in this last year. It would be easy to say it’s the time of life, but seriously, half of the deaths were of babies, either human or animal, or of young people.

Anyway– It is a possibility. Partly because — and this took me a time to explain — the series that is demanding to be written is also “dangerous” in many ways.

No, look, it’s not going to blow up. It is not — unlike The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress say — a blue print for revolution.

But it is dangerous for the perception of me among my readers. Like this: These days The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress would be dangerous for a writer’s reputation. While it is a love letter to America and the American revolution, it has all this plural line marriage stuff, and a bunch of things about how the marriage (Manny’s) was interracial.

People these days have become hardened. Okay, the left has been for a long time. But the right is hardening too. And I get it. Dear Lord, I get it. Because we’re so tired of being lectured. It’s hard to come across a female — or gay — character and not immediately ask the lecture on oppression and the finger wagging. So we flinch away, and we find excuses not to read on. “The writer has gone woke” or– “This person is now obviously leftist. I was wrong.” Or–

When in fact, a lot of SF worlds are just weird. If done right, science fiction is weird, and will have things that perhaps we know don’t work in the “real world” (Line Marriages) but might who knows work in other times and places and under special circumstances, because that’s what science fiction is all about: mind-experiments about the weird, the unusual and the edge situations. (No, I don’t think it would work, but Heinlein clearly thought so, and for the duration of the novel he SELLS it, which is the point.)

M. C. A. said that artists shouldn’t be tame. That something about us or our works should always make people a little uncomfortable.

Now, I disagree with the words in that previous sentence, but I don’t think that’s precisely what she meant. Yeah, okay, I’m going to quibble with the idea that I’m an artist. She is, but I’m basically a craftswoman, like someone who does cross-stitch (which I used to do) or paints rocks or something. In fact the process by which I make books is much like the process by which I make crafts, from the idea that won’t go away, till sitting down and actually doing it. But I’ll concede that what I call it might not be what others call it. Perhaps it’s all the same and artist or craftsman is just a different name for it.

However I really think what she means isn’t uncomfortable, precisely. Or I hope it isn’t. Look, “uncomfortable” is what the left keeps pursuing. Afflict the comfortable” and all that. You know? Pour epater les bourgeois.

I don’t think that’s what M. C. A. does or I do. Or aim for. It’s more that we will do surprising things. Because we’re individuals. If we are not afraid of our own minds, afraid of saying/doing something that will get us cancelled, or whatever, the way our minds work, as people who like creating worlds, will naturally bring up one or two details or ways of putting things together that no one has thought of. Or at least not thought of that way and not recently. Or at least it just seems to happen naturally to me, and I suspect to her.

I mean, it’s not that we’re aiming to make people uncomfortable, or even surprise them, but that it’s guaranteed almost one thing per book will be “well, I’ve never seen that used THAT way.” And sometimes, sure, it will make people uncomfortable, though only because we live in diminished times. In the old days, or at least from my reading of a lot of pulp SF I surmise, making SF/F readers uncomfortable was normal. Not uncomfortable in the sense of being shocked, but in the sense of “Well, that’s an interesting idea, even if it offends me” or just in the sense of stretching your mind in a way you haven’t done before. Surprise them, might be closer, because there was often delight in it too.

Which brought me around by a weird way to some advice I got when I was first starting out and that I heartily disagreed with. “Reach for the third ending.” You know, you’re writing the story, and an ending presents itself, discard that. Then there’s another obvious ending, and you discard that too. And you reach for the third ending because that will surprise people.

The reason I disagreed with it, is that it often surprised everyone by not making any sense whatsoever, or simply by being the stupidest thing imaginable. Also because there is no particular virtue in balking the reader of the anticipated ending.

That’s when I realized that by then — 35 years ago — the minds of traditional science fiction houses were already closed enough that you really couldn’t write something intrinsically surprising just by virtue of being, well, different. That would be bound to offend one of the many shibboleths of the left, the received wisdom that must not be questioned, and which if accidentally shaken might send you to the hell of the quietly cancelled.

But people remembered when there used to be excitement and surprise, and they felt something was missing and that they should not expect all of it. Hence “reach for the third ending.” (It’s noteworthy that Baen never pushed for this, and while somewhat limited, in the sense you always are when interacting with the people that sell the stuff (ask software developers sometime) they are the most open-minded of houses, so there were other ways to surprise.)

I often say that things feel fraught because we are finally, after almost a century, fighting back. In the same way, now that we are finally able to fly solo?

Don’t reach for the third ending. Don’t reach for anything. Just let you, yourself, guide what you write, in all its profound weirdness.

If we have to re-teach people that not all books with female characters are going to lecture them, or that you can have a gay character without endorsing Marxism, or for that matter that some weird sort of social experiment in your book might not be something you endorse, let alone dream of, so be it.

We’ll teach by doing it.

Only the stultifying boredom of leftist science fiction is truly verboten. Not because it is in fact forbidden, but because you’ll fall asleep halfway through.

If you’re a writer (or a reader) go forth: Read, write, and be not afraid.

I know I promised to be fully on today, but my house is covered in cat litter, and everything smells bad and needs cleaning.

I’m going to post kitten pics, and let you ooh and ahhh. I’ll write a post tomorrow, promise.

Patience by the Balloonatic

My sister-in-law used to tell us about how she struggled after her first son was born. She was having trouble keeping up with everything, and so she began to pray for patience. When her son was 14 months old she gave birth to twins. The moral of the story is that when your pray for patience, God sends you something to teach you patience.

As a “crafty” person, who likes to work on things like cross-stitch or home-made blankets, and major home renovations, I often have people comment on how much patience I have. I laugh and tell them that it’s not patience, but impatience. If I had patience, I would be taking my time. Instead, I am impatient and work hard to get it done because I want to finish this project so that I can move on to the next. One of my theme songs is definitely Queen’s “I Want it All.” I want it all, and I want it now. I don’t want to have to wait. I don’t want to be patient. This is one reason I didn’t like being a manager at  work. It’s hard to take the time to show someone how to do the job correctly and so much easier and quicker just to do it yourself.

And yet now, as a parent, I see the need for patience. As my son struggles with his homework, is it really going to help him if I get impatient that he doesn’t understand and just give him the answer? What does he end up learning that way? Isn’t it better to slow down and break up a problem into steps and guide him into finding the answer himself? I had one of my proudest moments this year when I was asking him if he was done his homework yet, and instead of asking me for help, he said no, he was trying to find a way to expand his answer and it was going to take a bit longer. And then after years of trying to show him how to change from a one sentence answer with all the facts to get it over and done with to  instead breaking up his points into multiple sentences to give a complete answer, he finally got it and did it on his own. He came home and told me that his teacher said that she was going to use his assignment as an example for future classes.

And yes, while I tend to think of myself as an impatient person, someone who doesn’t easily put up with stupidity, and someone who tends to speed because I want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, that really isn’t the full picture. This is the time of year where I slow down to admire the beauty of the fall weather and the gorgeous panoply of green, yellow, orange and red in the trees that line the highways. And when I’m working on my house, I don’t rush and do a sloppy job just to get it done. I actually have learned to take my time to do it right because I really don’t want to have to do it over again.

Patience isn’t something that comes easily to most people. I’m sure I’m not alone in my struggles with it. We look at the world around us and we wonder how long do we need to wait before things improve? How long can we put up with the craziness around us? Patience isn’t easy to come by, and yet it is necessary. How many times has there been something in the news where people jumped to immediate conclusions instead of following the 48 hour rule? Often, after those two days the media narrative falls apart. Sometimes, as with recent events, we find that it is even worse than we had imagined it would be. There are those in this world, however, who want us to jump to conclusions and to actions without patience, without taking the time to consider the consequences and to look at all of the possibilities. They want us to be hasty and make foolish mistakes instead of careful consideration and planning for what we need to do and what can go wrong.

It’s like working on a home renovation project. If you just start working on something and rushing through to get it done, you will likely have to do it over again in the future. And what could have been a quick and simple job if you had taken the time to plan and prepare ends up taking a lot longer with multiple trips to the hardware store to get that tool you needed or that missing part that you didn’t find ahead of time. It would have been better to be a little patient and remember the 6 P’s: Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Perfomance. Right now, when it feels like the world is falling apart around us and we need to take action, any action, just to be doing something, let’s stop instead and be patient. Let’s think, let’s plan, let’s get all the facts and be prepared. This time, let’s do it right.

It occurs to me I up and disappeared without much warning, here or my serializing substack, or my newsletter, or Patreon, or instapundit or– well ANYWHERE.

I was at a convention in Las Vegas NV. Since there were noises being made about masks on planes, and I’m all out of patience, we drove. In fact, we’re still on the road, and will be till the wee hours of Wednesday.

The convention? Son of Silvercon. It was an inaugural convention, and things went wrong. Don’t they always? But despite being tiny, it was very good, and now I’m very tired, but not depressed. This despite the fact that three NAMED quails, either escaped or were stolen while we were away. (I’m inclined to stolen, because one of them had a deformity that precluded flying.) And yes, one of them was the very sweet Deposed King. I’m kind of bummed, but not spiraling, so….

VERY tired, though. Extremely tired. Between con and… um…. let’s see, we left at 8 this morning, got here at 10 and hit the road at 7 tomorrow…. yeah.

See you on Wednesday, okay? I’m going to bed.

Neener neener I got our hostess! Also her husband!

Ok, actually they tried to steal my son, but he has college classes. But still. (I think they’d give him back after he ate them out of house and home.)

Son of Silvercon is a lovely, friendly little convention, and you all should consider booking yourselves into it next July.