According To Hoyt

Human societies hanker towards conformity.  This is the result of us being a social ape species.  Whether you think we were created out of the “clay” of Earth or you think we just growed, that’s the basis we’re built on.  If you’re a believer, it affords all kinds of cool commentary and speculation on the difference between fleshy self and divine ideal, and if you are a Christian more speculation can be added on the fall and Eden. None of it will be new, but it passes the time.  It’s useful when you’re all dead tired and want to talk to stay awake.

A comment in passing on the last post about how most of us Odds have been bullied as kids, and about how I like science fiction cons because I can be my own weird self was misinterpreted by a commenter (and incidentally, that commenter’s name comes up again and again in regard to White Supremacist, Holocaust revisionist sites.  Might be just a coincidence, but he/she/it bears watching.)  He decided I want to go to SF cons and be as outré as possible, and that you know, all of science fiction fandom is like that, and also that all of us should just have sucked it up and made ourselves normal.

I daresay most of did, in adolescence, or at least most of us probably can fit in daily conversation as grown human beings, with no issues; most of us have jobs; most of us have kids and managed them through school.

There is a difference between fitting in externally and breaking yourself to fit in.  This is why I compared it to being gay in the old bad days.  Most people could pass in public, but from what I understand from friends, it was good to have a place you could go and just talk normally without watching every word – even if the place wasn’t about sex (And yes, a lot of them were but a lot of them weren’t.  What Card missed about the gay community, possibly because he knew it best when he was young and so were his friends, is that a stunning lot of it is not about sex, but about acceptance.)

Science fiction and fantasy fans tend to be the same.  I’ll leave it as an exercise for the practical psychologist with time on his hands to determine whether we’re attracted to the genre because we’re odd, or if we’re odd because we’re attracted to the genre.  What I mean is, most writers and readers of science fiction are – to my knowledge “outliers.”  We do tend to be more creative – not a brag, for a lot of the fans and even some authors it’s largely undirected creativity — and more bookish/studious/interested than most “normal” people.  We also tend to be strange in another way.  People call it “spectrum” meaning autism spectrum, but I’ve found the correlation less than 100%.  My affect is not at all autistic or aspergers, and neither is my kids’ or my husband.  (Of course, for SF/F we’re almost scarily social, across all types of people including non-fans.)  What we are is people who are, as I indicated in my other post, likely to think about stuff no one else bothers with because it’s “normal” or “everyone knows.”  We will go “Okay, so everyone wears hats on their heads and shoes on their feet.  Why not the other way around?”  Now nine times out of ten the answer is immediately obvious and the fan over the age of 10 will get over it.  But sometimes there REALLY is no good reason.

My husband accidentally once found himself working in a group of all sf/fantasy fans.  The manager who didn’t read the genre once speculated that might be why they were the most creative and out of the box group he’d ever managed.  (They still couldn’t convince him to read it.)

What I mean is we consider and study stuff that other people would think is insane.

I’ve had moments of inducing sheer terror in total strangers while just hanging out with the kids.  Like the time Robert and I were discussing – purely in the b*llshooting mode, whether Neanderthals could be responsible for the legends of elves.  We were stuck somewhere for two hours, had to keep awake, and yep, the conversation went from theology and legends through biology, to anthropology and the latest archeological finds and back again.

Showing off?  Oh, heck no.  Most of it was qualified with “I haven’t kept up this year, but—”  We were JUST talking.  I noticed the couple stuck in the room with us looked first alarmed and then hostile.  (I’ll point out we weren’t being loud but neither were we whispering.)  Robert didn’t notice it until we were about to leave and the lady shrunk away from us, as though we were contaminated.  Then he asked me why and I explained.  A) they thought we were showing off.  B) they thought it was for their benefit.  C) they might have thought we wanted to intimidate them.

Robert’s reaction to it was “WHY WOULD WE.  THEY’RE STRANGERS.”  I pointed out to him that was why I’d let it go on, and not stopped it.  They’re strangers.  Their opinion doesn’t matter (due to circumstances, the chances of us ever meeting them are zero, just about.)  BUT learn to be aware most normal people have that reaction to our chit chat and avoid it when you want to avoid hostility from people you’re likely to meet again.  This too flabbergasted the young one “But mom, we weren’t even serious or deep or anything.  I mean, we couldn’t be without references.”  Then I had to explain his “odd meter” is calibrated wrong.

So, that’s our people.  I’m making no mention of weird costume (I dress appropriately to the occasion.  At steampunk cons that involves as close to Victorian attire as I can get without making a whole new costume.  Street clothes stick out.), Odd makeup (that’s mostly the young kids, unless it’s for a costume show), Odder piercings (the new normal in my kids’ age group), or bizarre tattoos (ditto.)  Some people decide if they’re not going to be accepted, they’ll go the other way, but most of us remain normal enough to hold jobs and look decent.

What I meant was that at a con, I get to say “Well, you know, I wonder how this or that would change if we went to the stars” and no one looks at me like I’ve just grown a second head.

Also, most of us were REALLY bullied in childhood.  I might be the exception.  I was outsized for a Portuguese kid of my generation and because my parents had a policy of “no tale bearing.  Deal with it yourself” I learned early to fight back.  This meant that people DID try to make me fall in line by shaming/beating/stealing, etc and got it right back with interest.  (And btw, as a kid my oddities that led to attempted bullying were as follows: I was too big.  I didn’t have pierced ears.  And I wore pants (I was very sickly and mother thought I was better in pants than in the skirts all other little girls wore.)  So, as you see, my weirdness DID indeed need to be curbed – rolls eyes.)

The commenter was right this is in fact “normal.”  When an ape cub is too different, the others kill it – and that’s if the parents don’t do it first.

What he fails to explain is how this is desirable, other than maintaining genetic cohesion.  He/she/it also fails to note that in fact had this not slipped now and then, there would be no humans, only apes.  Perhaps he thinks that’s better.  I mean, apes are more normal, after all.

To those who try to make SF fans fall in line with the rest of the world because it’s “normal” as well as to the new arrival making vague accusations and trying to shame me to fall in with the rest of science fiction  (Check out, what?  I’m not going to spend the day googling.  I’m not an aut’eur.  I work  for a living and I have books and stories to finish.)  my answer is the same it was to the bullies in school: you’re insecure and small and therefore try to control the thoughts and behaviors of others.  You can’t.  You can only control your own.  DO try it, for a while.  It will be healthier for all concerned.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. – Robert A. Heinlein.

That goes double with sugar on top for any fandom (even when referring to other author’s blogs) and any enforcer of normalcy in or out of it.  You can’t win here, and we will not back down.

Weirdly, this is not a post about national politics.  Yeah, I know, I’m deceptive that way.  It’s on account of being one of them unreliable science fiction authors.  We won’t go into all the other kinds of unreliable I am, either.  That is likely to come out during this post and most assuredly you shall have to deal.

First of all the links on this post are going to be nonexistent, except for the original one, though I don’t object if people supply them in the comments.  I’m not linking them because just revisiting those sites will have me reaching for the blood pressure medicine I don’t got.

For those who are not of my people or who are and have been living under a rock – I was, until someone enlisted me by rubbing my lamp three times.  The rock is called novel writing.  It’s what I happen to do for a living.  It puts groceries on the table – there is a civil war going on in science fiction.

It started when one of the icons of the field, Orson Scott Card wrote something FOR HIS CHURCH MAGAZINE saying that you couldn’t be a practicing homosexual and a member of the church.  That’s where he started.  I don’t know what he said since, when provoked – I had occasion to witness on this very blog rational people who have more in agreement than not going after each other with rapiers once the “your mama too” started, so I think what people say once an argument starts should not be held against them.  (If it were, my 28 and change year marriage would have ended at the one month mark.)  In fact, if it’s someone I’m arguing with, I try to forget the unforgivable things we BOTH said.  I’m pretty good at it.

Anyway, I don’t know if Mr. Card got more vociferous and general as he went on.  One of my gay friends told me he had advocated having all gay people killed which, having read the original article and Mr. Card’s fiction, seems HIGHLY unlikely.  I trust my friend, but I think she got something at a third or fourth remove.

To begin with let me say I disagree with Mr. Card’s premise in his article.  His premise is the idea that if someone belongs to the “homosexual community” one will not be able to belong wholeheartedly to another.  I’m not disputing how he came to that conclusion or that the conclusion was right for his time and circumstances.  Part of it is that he identified the “homosexual community” as one that “gives access to sex.”  While it undoubtedly is that, I can tell from my friends who stay in it when they’re in monogamous relationships, or whose community includes homosexuals of the other sex that this is not it.  It’s “a community that grants you acceptance” and “a community where you don’t have to pretend.”  (Keep those key phrases in mind, they’ll come up later in a different context.  Also, there will be a test on Friday.)  And this is the difference between giving that community all your allegiance and considering it just a part of your life, and not incompatible with your religion.  When any community is excluded, goes underground, it becomes an all consuming milieu, reaching out to confuse your other allegiances.  See, for instance, Catholics in Tudor England.  It doesn’t however make that an inherent characteristic of whatever caused the community to appear.  Presumably, in a world in which homosexuality is universally accepted with a shrug (whether such world is ever possible I leave for the science fiction writers in our midst.  I doubt it) it becomes just one of those things.  “My friend Mike is a nice guy.  He likes cats and he reads science fiction.  He makes cute sculptures of dragons.  His husband is trying to get him to enter a con art show.”

BUT all that is to our purpose nothing, because the point is not whether I agree or disagree with Mr. Card or whether or not homosexuals are unable to participate in other communities because of dual loyalties.

No, the point is that as people talked more and more about what Card said, Mr. Card – who is to the left of me by some miles – became a pariah in science fiction.  No, wait there.  People attempted to make Mr. Card a pariah in science fiction… for saying that he didn’t think homosexuals could be good practitioners of their religion.

This would be like my writing an article for my church newsletter pointing out that you should pray daily and people coming down on me like a ton of bricks saying I wanted to force atheists to pray.

Wait – what?

A magazine devoted to a faith, saying who can or cannot – according to this person – in good conscience practice his faith while being true to his orientation has made a storm in science fiction as people posted defending and attacking him.  HOW does that even happen?  WHO CARES what the man thinks about who can and cannot practice his faith?  Most of science fiction is atheistic, with some form of Wiccan running a close second… so far as I know.  (That too will come up for discussion later.)  For years I assumed being devout in one and steeped in the lore of another traditional religion I was an odd being and it was best for all if I kept my lip buttoned up in public.  What do they care – truly – if Mr. Card believes that homosexuals can’t be good LDS members?  I’d assume the LDS homosexuals among his readers would roll their eyes and go “place and time, and the man comes from it” – i.e., his opinions belong to a certain place and time, and then wonder when his next book will come out.

If I told you that those among you who have split fingernails cannot now nor ever join the Holy Church of Ritual Martian Flogging, would you go nuts?  Would you engage in ritual cries of “kill the witch”?  No?  Okay, maybe it’s because the church is made up, so let me try this again with something not a church.  How about if Orson Scott Card had said in a Chess Fanciers magazine that unless you knew how to play chess you shouldn’t join the club.  Is that reason for outrage?

I mean, you can disagree with him, and with his analysis of the situation, but would you call him names over that?  No?

Then why has this ignited a civil war, that has caused people like Brad Torgersen to be considered very bad for defending Card?  What has caused the rift splitting the increasingly more irrelevant SFWA?

First of all, this civil war is a sign of a very sick community.  Second, like the spike of fever that kills the virus, it’s a good thing, even though it looks like it might kill the patient.

We’ll start on how science fiction has been sick – onto the death.

Brad Torgersen says that science fiction should be a place to explore ideas, even (particularly) offensive and outrageous ideas, and that recently we’ve become bland.

It’s the particular way we’ve got bland and boring that is weird.  REALLY WEIRD.

Science fiction is a literature of the Odds.  That’s central to who we are.  Most people don’t think about the technology and society they’re steeped in, for the same reason most fish (if they were sentient) wouldn’t think about water.  But we do.  We think about what societal what causes this, and how technology changes that, and then we foretell how it would change things.  Or we say “in a society with magic, how would that affect—”

It’s our job.

At its inception science fiction gave free rein to all thoughts of weird thoughts.  To this day science fiction allows a great leeway to personal behavior.  If there is a place on Earth you can show up wearing a live duck and have people ask you about the technical details of the costume, it’s science fiction.  To that extent, fans and other authors are “my people” and it’s a place I can decompress.  Like gays in the bad closet days finding a place they could be themselves, science fiction conventions allow me to be my own weird self without people shying away from me.  As a friend of mine puts it “we are the plaid sheep of our families.”  And the best place to hide is the flock.

The problem is that any community – ANY community – but particularly an excluded community (see what I did there?) will tend to try to form cohesion along the lines of common thought and common belief.  You might think that Odds would not try to enforce a rigid conformity, but you would be wrong.

It happened gradually.  Part of it is that most of us are used to be looked at askance and treated like abnormal.  A stunning number of us were bullied as children.  This means we tend to have an over developed empathy with any group identified as “victims.”  That, plus the fact that the publishing gatekeepers are the result of the long march and are – no, this is not under dispute – varying shades of red going from slightly to the right of Lenin to slightly to the left of Stalin. (Why is this not under dispute?  Because of the number of authors who identify themselves as communist.  Because there is in Science Fiction a young communist authors group.  People OPENLY identify as communist, and there’s no repercussion in their careers.  People don’t openly identify as conservative UNLESS they came in at a different time and their careers are secure.  If you think that’s because only leftists are creative or that this means the community is becoming more enlightened, you are part of the problem.  Go to the corner and meditate how identifying with a regime responsible for the death of a hundred million is “enlightened.  Or how any community EVER has achieved uniformity of opinion, unless it is EXTERNAL and enforced by authorities.  Good Lord, even today we have flat Earthers.  BUT you think that everyone who writes science fiction just is magically “left”?  I hope you are a fantasy author.)

I swear the eighties was a long slog of abused women in science fiction and fantasy books.  They were always abused by their fathers, too, who were tyrannical evil sobs.  The idea that mothers can be horrible parents too, never seemed to occur to these female writers. There was always a sisterhood of women.  As someone who has known any number of ‘orrible mothers, and who went to an all girls’ school the whole “sisterhood of those who possess vaginas” made me want to shred kittens.  (Shuddup.  I didn’t do it.  I’m just saying how mad it made me.  You know how I feel about cats.)  Even when the books were somewhat acceptable otherwise, it annoyed me to the point a lot of them went unread.

Then came the every woman a hero every man a wimp movement.  (Yes, Athena is more than normal.  Yes, she is strong. She is also hotheaded and foolish and, btw, Kit is far more than a match for her.)  And then…

Well, every fad of the left falls into science fiction and fantasy books, even the patently, absurdly ridiculous.  Like, oh, for instance, the idea that all male sexuality is dangerous, the idea that a society of women would be peaceful forever, the idea–  Too much to go on.  Suffice it to say the most awarded short story in our history – receiving every award in the field – posits that life in an American Suburb is more exclusionary and worse than life during China’s cultural revolution.

HOWEVER commentary by someone otherwise respected in the field, in a CHURCH magazine to the extent that homosexuals might have conflicts with being good LDS members occasions cries of “kill the witch.”

Oh, my people!  Not only are you trying to enforce conformity, but you’re trying to enforce a conformity so out of touch with the rest of society that what you think is right and worthy to publish strikes most people as “OMG, kill.”  Which probably explains the spiraling down print runs.  Those of us already fans and writers yawn, the rest of the world backs away screaming.

This too is human – any excluded community will become more and more extreme – but is it art?

It’s been like this for years.  In a way I’m gratified to know that indeed what we say and do even in other contexts is being tracked.  Those of us on the right (to the extent a libertarian who, in the words of the Professor, believes it’s a good future when married gay couples have closets full of assault weapons and their kids once of legal age can buy pot at the corner store is “right” – which by itself is a mind-blowing idea) have long suspected this.  Now that we see the enforcers of conformity publically turn on an icon in the field, all the stories we heard of silent blackballing at publishers, of whispers campaigns among fans seem starkly plausible.  Likely even.  Which is good.  You’re not paranoid when they really are out to get you.

Again, the fact that to get published we had to go through a funnel of ideologically left editors and publishers (with the obvious exception) didn’t help.

So in a way, the civil war in the field has been going on forever.  It’s only that it was a cold civil war.  The rest of us wanted to get published.  We kept our mouths shut.  If we opened them only Baen would take us, and Baen has a limited number of author slots.  (Plus some of the stuff we wanted – and by that I mean I wanted – to write is not Baen-like.)  And baby had to have shoes.  (In my case baby always wore specialty shoes because… well, at 21 he wears size seventeen.)

At World Fantasy, in 2003, the speaker, apropos nothing, assured us that Howard Dean was our next president.  I can’t speak for my fellow righties in the closet (when a community is excluded it goes underground) but I could literally feel my face freeze at that.  We were a captive audience, and there was no reason on Earth to bring in politics.  Except the speaker could.  And the establishment approved of it.

Think – would this be tolerated at any company dinner?  Unless the company were “ye old factory of Democratic Party Buttons,” probably not, and even then, you know, supporters of other candidates might feel abused.

But in science fiction and fantasy, it was expected.  It garnered applause.  And those of us who were sick to our stomach had to applaud too.  (In North Korea Dear Leader has a hundred percent of the vote and is applauded at every parade.)

So what has changed?

You know we’ve found that revolutions happen not when oppression is at its worse, but when it starts to liberalize.  THEN, when people have options, they show what they always felt.

And so the civil war has gone hot, at least to the extent of heated words.  I should mention here the kerfuffle between the Locus April Fool’s Day article and the ever more stereotypical Wiscon, in which the April Fool’s article having suggested that every con goer should have to wear a burka (which would be available up to size 5x) the feminists of wiscon became determined to prove they are in fact stereotypical feminists (how many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?  That’s not FUNNY!!!)  The last I heard that particular sub-branch of the civil war had devolved into feminist whining (yes, I’m going to get crucified.  One wonders if they ever hear themselves) that this is just bullying and that noooooo one should say anything mean about either Islam or feminism.  (What the h*ll makes THEM out of bounds?) and that besides, it stereotypes every feminist as fat (apparently this is based on a lack of reading comprehension.  They missed where the burka was for BOTH sexes.  Size 5x?  Likely.  Look, guys fandom is hefty.  Maybe ebook readers that require us – yes, I said us.  Could use losing sixty pounds — to run to keep them on would help?)

The beautiful thing?  Despite the “that’s not funny” foot stomping, the “right” of the isle is not stopping.  That Locus article got published, which I don’t think it would have been even five years ago.  And authors are taking to the internet to mock the screams of “bully” by the people who don’t want EVER to be the bout of a joke.  (Dear ladies, and particularly gentlemen, welcome to humanity.  LEARN to laugh at yourself.  It makes other jokes less likely.)

A lot of my colleagues who are engaging the left are DEPENDENT on traditional publishing other than Baen, which makes their stand even more brave.

However, even for those not engaging in it, there is already the awareness indie is there.  Opening your mouth the wrong way doesn’t mean the end of your career.

Which means the war isn’t going to stop unless one of two things happens: one side emerges victorious; an armistice is reached.

News for my colleagues on the left: For years we’ve put up with whatever you dished out.  We had to.  We didn’t scream, we didn’t complain.  We are even tolerant enough to like your books and admire your artistry, EVEN when we think what you’re proposing is wrong and perhaps evil (a world of all women.  Communitarian worldwide societies.)  We understand the difference between ideas and those who have them.

It’s harder for you.  Politics is your religion.

However, I URGE you to come to terms as soon as possible.

Up till now given a limited output, already pre-veted, it was easy for you to freeze out anyone who outraged you.  But indie has opened the sluice gates.  You might (for all I know.  Again, when a community is excluded, it goes underground) be a majority in sf writers now for all I know.  I GUARANTEE you’re a tiny minority in the population.  Now that the gates have opened and anyone can write SF and sell well and be admired, it probably won’t be long before you’re a minority in sf/f writing.

Do you really want to put what “we don’t all agree on” out of bounds.  Is that what you want to do?  Do you want to have horrible things said about you in the future because your character isn’t religious?  Or heterosexual?

As someone who believes in equality before the law and definite differences between the sexes, someone who is – furthermore – a religious, heterosexual woman, I have found myself writing a super gurrrrl and a gay hero.  Much to my own shock.  Art is like that.  It comes out of nowhere, womps you on the head and, if you’re lucky, the truth you write is bigger than yourself or your times.  (I’m convinced Shakespeare thought he was writing regime propaganda and bawdy jokes.  BUT his subconscious or his muse or G-d or whatever you wish to believe is behind it, had other plans.)

I don’t want to have stones thrown at me by the right OR the left because whatever I wrote doesn’t fit the message.  You want a message?  Use Western Union.  You want art?  You have to allow it to happen.

Which means you have to allow people the right to think freely.  Yes, a lot of them will have stupid ideas.  (What, you think your sh*t don’t stink?)  Yes, a lot of them will offend you.  (Communist ideas offend me, but do I come and shut you down?)

Unless someone actually has the power to send police to your door to enforce their stupid ideas, you can learn to live with it.

You do not in fact have the right to stop people thinking thoughts you don’t like.  No, it’s not unfair and bullying if people laugh at you.  Yes, it hurts like hell but there’s a reason for the old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones.”   And besides, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve been aiming ridicule at the other side for years, in the firm belief there was no one here but us chickens.  (Some of us are dragons.  We just also happen to lay eggs.)

Now, either shake on it, shrug and go “the other side is a bunch of loons, but heck, some on my side are too” and then go write a novel or continue your fight to the death and make cons a lot more entertaining (I’ll have to attend more!) as you reenact the Hatfields and the McCoys.  I’m fairly sure which side will win.  And in either case, I don’t much care.  As long as no one physically stops me from writing my own odd stuff, I couldn’t care less.  And with the gatekeepers down, who is going to stop me?

The civil war turning hot just means one side is not being iced out.  It’s a sign of freedom, and a sign this field might yet become healthy again.

And I have a novel to write.

UPDATE:  Hey, look, I remembered to press the publish button!  Kudos for me.  I think that novel writing should come with a label “Warning, writing a novel might make the writer unfit to operate heavy (or light, like blenders!) machinery, mind small children, tie his/her own shoes or cross the street unaccompanied.

UPDATE: to subscribers, there will be content up this evening.  This is tax-weekend and I just had “unexpected errands” tm as the tax preparer in the family is in the office dealing with the numbery (totally a word) things.

I WAS WONDERING WHY THIS HAD NO COMMENTS.  DERP.  IT’S BEEN HERE SINCE 9 am.  I THOUGHT I’D PRESSED PUBLISH.  DERP DERP DERP.  I’m sorry.

*This is the new free novel I’m posting here a chapter at a time.  For previous chapters, page back to two weeks ago.  This is pre-first-draft, as it comes out.  It is a sequel to Witchfinder which will soon be taken down (once edited) and put for sale on Amazon.  Meanwhile, if you donate $6 or more, I’ll get you a copy of Rogue Magic, once finished and edited, in your favored ebook format.  Of course, if you’re already subscribing to the blog at a level at which you get whichever books come out that year, you don’t need to worry.   This book will acquire at least a temporary cover soon, I swear.  BUT not this week, because I’m still working on my website, I have a couple of short stories to finish and — this being the last weekend before a bunch of busy weekends, I’m going to take sometime off too.*

The Devil’s Child

Wolfe Merrit, Overseer to the Earl Of Savage’s properties and manufactories:

I guess my problem has always been birds with broken wings.  When I was little those were real.  There were any number of birds with broken wings, and of sad naked things fallen out of nests that I’d brought home, all wrapped in my handkerchief, and which my mother let me nurse by the kitchen fire.  Most died, of course, though that got less so as my powers came on.

And what can any man who is a cottager and the son of a farmer want with magical power, much less a magical power that’s bent on healing, who’s to know?  I misdoubt me that my dear mother was ever unfaithful to my father, besides the fact that I have my father’s same identical face. So, wherever the magical power comes from it must be from very far in the family.  Some Lord’s daughter that fell from grace, or some cottager girl who strayed with a Lord.

That was shame enough, that I had the magic, but you couldn’t hide it, and if we tried to then the village was more likely to say that there was something shameful in it and that it was my mother’s fault or my father’s mother even.  And so, I was sent to magic school proper, though that meant going to classes at the local elf-orphans home.  But I was treated right, as an out pupil, and my mother paid for it with the money from taking in washing, and when a position came up with the Earl of Savage I was ready to take it.

We’d just never told anyone that it was healing magic, because, as my father said, that’s woman’s power, and what did a man want with a woman’s bend on his magic.  Not as bad as foretelling, but bad enough.  And there was no point making people talk.  My marriage was bad enough.  And the child.

The thought of Jimmy, as I sat here, across the desk from the Earl of Savage made the doubt come up in my mind again, but I tried not to think of it.  I sipped the brandy to steady myself and said, “Yes, sir.  It’s gone rotten.  It comes apart and it does things as it was not meant to.  And that’s the long and the short of it, milor’.  And I think the strain comes from another world.”

Which of course, brought to mind Jimmy again, and Jimmy’s mother too.

It was the bird that falls from the nest thing, all over again, that is what my mother said.  And she was right too, even if she said it with her temper flaring up and that tone in her voice, like she disapproved.  Which she undoubtedly did.

Because what business a farmer’s son has either bringing home a naked elf lady he found wandering the forest, all out of her mind, or marrying her either, no one knew, not even myself who’d done it.

But we’d kept it from the Savages, and the marriage had lasted so little – she’d disappeared right after Jimmy’s birth – that there was no reason they should know.

Except Jimmy.  Fairyland was another world, wasn’t it?  And couldn’t they be tainting the savage magic through me?

“What did you use to determine that?” the Earl asked.  He’s a well setup man and some would say handsome, though as I thought that I heard my mother say in my head that handsome is as handsome does, and right enough, and what the Earl of Savage looks like is his grandfather, and what his grandfather done wasn’t handsome by any description.

“I used the Vanal variations,” I said.  “And I ran the Terobynian formulas.  It all points to magic from another world, milor’”

He looked at me, his eyes narrowing in speculation.  When I knew his grandfather he was an old man, leastwise when I knew him as an employee.  I knew of him since my birth, just about.  The women in the village called him old Nick and not just because his name was Nicholas, and cautioned any comely young girl – or boy, the old soot not caring much – to keep away from him.

He had been a handsome man, even then, well set up, with a full head of dark hair, and that unlike his son as would make anyone else doubt the relation, particularly since the village – and other villages around – were full of cottager children with that same handsome physiognomy.

The thing was, the old man wasn’t bad.  Not when you considered his son.  He was a lush and a lecher, and he didn’t do repairs to the cottages, and he didn’t care for the land and let it go to rack and ruin, and it was said he spent more on a pair of horses than a family would make in ten years, and he didn’t care, but he wasn’t bad.

You could sit – I found – and talk to him, and if you had a real problem, he would help you.  He had magic enough, and he did a magic examination of me when he hired me, that he must have known about the healing pull in my magic, and he’d never cared.

Yes, I understood I was lucky enough that when I was hired at eighteen the Good Lord had already blessed me with a face that would make no one weep but my mother and that not for joy, and that I was built like the men of the land, squat and blocky and not lank and graceful as old Nick liked them.  But to me, in his dealings with me, he was a fair master and a good one.

His son, on the other hand—

It had started with “I like to have the distinctions of rank preserved” all from that pale, tight lipped mouth, with those eyes that looked at you like you were dirt.  And while I’m not some kind of radical, nor meaning to overturn the order of society and magic, there is no reason to behave as though you’d like to trample others under your boot, that there isn’t.

So, now I watched the new Earl.  I hadn’t exactly cried big tears for the old Earl, not I, but my grandmother used to say “the devil that comes after me will make you fond of me” and that had been the truth right enough with the last two earls, and I wondered if it would be true again.  He hadn’t treated me scaly, and he didn’t seem high on the instep.  His verifying questions were what any man might ask, faced with the problem.  And he looked like his grandfather, though that might not mean anything.  He and his sister, Lady Helen, were the only ones in the family that looked like the old devil.  I’d caught a glimpse of her, once, long ago, going around a corner, and I remember thinking as you’d never know such a face as the old boy had could flatter a woman but it did.

The Earl of Savage turned from fiddling with things on his desk.  He looked tight controlled, like his father, and high strung, and very much in command, but then he looked at me.

I’ve seen a horse look like that, once.  He had broken a leg and lay, in pain till we could give him mercy.  Only there wasn’t anyone with a pistol, no one who could shoot him, and we didn’t want to hack at him with a knife, and he lay there so long that his screams ceased, and he was alive, but looked like he’d rather be dead.  His eyes had been stony with suffering, and that’s what the earl’s eyes looked like.

First you might think they were proud or closed-off, but when you looked close it was just he had gone through so much pain that at some time he’d quite shut off.

He dropped to his chair, behind his desk, and looked at me with those stone-suffering eyes, and said, “Well, what can we do?”

And I said “Milor’” because the man was only ten years or so younger than me, so I couldn’t call him “son” which was a good thing.  It would be a right mess if I had, and besides, an Earl is rather too large a naked bird to be wrapped in my handkerchief and brought home to mother’s fireside.

“If we don’t do anything, the manufacturies will close.”  A shadow crossed the suffering eyes.  “I don’t suppose we can live off the land.”

I shook my head.  Old Nick had done for that and well enough.  Too many years of selling off any piece that wasn’t entailed.  Too many years of taking it all out and putting nothing in.

“No,” he said.  “I didn’t think so.  And my sisters must have their portions.  My brothers, too, must have something to start in life.  I suppose I could sell myself on the marriage mart.  A title must be worth something, even with my reputation.”

I didn’t say anything.  I’d heard some of his reputation, which was that he was following in old Nick’s footsteps.  But his tender concern for his siblings was something I’d never heard from Old Nick.  No, and not from Old Nick’s son, either.

He rubbed at his nose, a gesture that made him seem all of three years old.  “Well.  What can’t be cured, must be endured.  We’ll do what we can, and hopefully get enough at least for my siblings’ needs.”

Which is when we heard the running steps outside the door and someone burst in, behind me.  By the time I turned around, I’d already seen the Earl’s expression freeze, and when I turned around I realized why – the person who’d come running was a maid.  Truth be told, she was probably a twinnie, somewhere between kitchen drudge and cleaning maid and no more than 13 or so.  That she’d burst running into the Earl’s office bespoke a lack of firmness on the Earl’s part that made me want to throw the whole thing over and go back to the land and be a farmer, like my father.  Only at the price corn was bringing…  And besides, my older brother Tom had the land.

But the girl bobbed three curtseys in turn, one after the other, then said in a fainting voice, “It is this letter milord.  It was on Lady Helen’s bed when I went to make it.  And… and her carpet bag is missing, and I thought–  I thought you’d want it right away.”

I wasn’t so stupid that lady Helen, the carpet bad, and the letter didn’t add up to an awful picture.  My mouth dropped open as the very pale earl of Savage reached for the letter.

It was a whole family of birds with broken wings

Mike Resnick once got in horrible trouble for saying “Poor f*cked up Africa” in public.  I wonder what “poor f*cked up Western Civilization” will get me?  Probably nothing, because as a culture we love to beat up on ourselves.  Which is rather the problem.

Humans are tribal.  We in the United States tend to forget that, mostly because any family can have about ten different shades of skin and because we all (okay, not me) have at least a grandparent who spoke another language.  So we think of ourselves as tribe-free.

We’re not, of course.  Our tribe is not defined by blood but by the words of the Constitution and the birth certificate that is the Declaration of Independence.  (You should see the VERY puzzled emails I get from friends abroad who read A Few Good Men.  “I like the story, and I love the characters, but it’s so… so… political… and American… and Political.”  And for the record, no, I wasn’t even trying to be political.  It’s Nat and Luce’s book, and they MADE me write it.)

The tribalism in the US is loose, and it has always been.  We’re a nation of scraps.  We can – and do – condemn the actions of our own country rather vigorously.  They weren’t necessarily (or probably) our ancestors.  But it is still there.  G-d help us if it stops being there.

But we tend to forget tribalism abroad. And h*ll EUROPEANS who should know better tend to forget tribalism.

Part of the reason I’ve been foretelling doom for the UE since before its inception was three fold: Economic – part of the issue is that the meetings I was present at, they assumed what made the US successful was size.  (No, seriously.  Of course, we’re now on our way to proving that what made the US – once – successful was no central micro management.)  Demographic – population had already started falling with my generation, and it’s gotten worse since.  Tribal- this was the most important.  I’m shocked it is not the first one to hit.  Europe can be tribal at a level Americans can’t even understand.  While you guys who grew up here had grandparents who zipped in cars the length of the country (okay, zipped might be an exaggeration, but while at the Naval Academy, Heinlein bought a car and drove cross country with his friends) I had parents for whom a trip to the next village over was an all-day endeavor.  Oh, they had buses, but the schedule as iffy, the stops frequent and…  My mom will still say, in complete lack of irony “Those people from that village, they’ve always been—” even though these days that village is mostly a dormitory for the big city, as is ours.  (Sometimes the reasons for this are literally tribal and can be inferred from the name of the village.  For instance we had a very poor opinion of Alfena.  Americans are now all too familiar with that first syllable, so I don’t need to explain.)

The reason – as I understand it, but correct me if I’m wrong and if one of you is a specialist (not even rare on this blog) – that Indo Europeans, which we now think were not a race but a conglomeration of peoples, a loose federation of culture if you will, did so well was that they could somehow set aside tribalism.  It was a mental hardware reboot.  Instead of taking over the fallen enemy, killing all the males, raping all the women, making all the pre-pubescent boys slaves, they co-opted them.  In fact, they co-opted people who weren’t even enemies, but just at the periphery of their expanding area.

Now, the theory – my favorite, for obvious reasons – of how this happened, was stories.  There were the old men of the tribe, who stood up and told the sagas of heroes.  It’s hard to tell exactly, because that we know (this might change.  We’re discovering far older writing than we knew existed in various regions all the time) these people had no written language.  HOWEVER so far as we can tell from remaining fragments of sagas and poems (which stayed in the culture long enough to be written down) the culture was based on and expanded through great big banquets at which long sagas that made the Iliad look tame were told.

I like this idea, because it means western civ, at its oldest implementation was ultimately based on a story.  On the story of who we were.

Unlike all those little tribal societies, based ONLY on shared blood and the amount of shared blood, at that, Western Civ existed solely based on the idea of western civ.  Christianity added to this. It created a supernational identity.  But it was still a Western Civilization identity.

And it evolved, as Christianity gave way to enlightenment, as the divine right of kings gave way to republics, because the story remained.  The story went something like this: “We are the biggest, baddest fighters around and the most civilized too.”

The two were intertwined.  Partly I think because of that Christianity overlay, though probably going back because of a tribal G-d overlay.  “We conquer because we our gods kick their gods’ asses.” Became “We conquer because we have the G-d of Christianity on our side.”

Military victory was proof of righteousness and vice versa.  This not only gave you the ability to deal roughly with the other side (though Western civ was NEVER as rough as the more basic, tribal civilizations) but to impose our laws on them mercilessly.

The fact that by and large Western civ is the most successful (in terms of bringing about prosperity and unlocking individual potential) of the human mental hardware we call culture isn’t invalided by the fact that in certain times and in certain places we were more brutal than the savages.  (To believe so is something College Professors do, but they themselves are a weird primitive tribe full of strange and atavistic beliefs and we need not regard them.)   Atrocities are part of being a human beast.  Christianity both teaches that, and makes people want to deny it.  As it filtered through the culture it changed “We’re good because we beat the other guys” to “we’re god because we’re kind and merciful.”  This is not a bad thing, as it makes international commerce easier.  Or at least less explosive.  It meant, though, that Western Civ started self criticism.  What allowed us to beat our swords into plowshares, also set up a deep cultural conflict over war.  (We can debate whether or not communism hooked into this as a virus hooks into a healthy cell, as a way to destroy us.)

It was perhaps inevitable that eventually the new ethos would go to war with the old ethos.  What was not inevitable was that it would rip the culture apart.  Though it was inevitable once the power of stories had taken to the news press and started being in the hands of a small elite who had their own principles and purposes (and here we come up against the aims of international Marxism abroad.)

I’ve said before that we were still suffering from WWI.  In fact we’re suffering from both wars, the long war of the Twentieth Century.  As RES has mentioned in comments before, the war paused just long enough to grow another generation for the butcher mills.

Part of it was that the early twentieth century was the end diffusion of Christianity.  Which by itself tells you how long an idea REALLY takes to diffuse through a culture.  Look, we see it in the US with Political Correctness.  Does anyone really believe all their shibboleths? (MAYBE the organizers of Wiscon.  Sorry, ran into a post yesterday in which they screamed outrage (again) at the April 1 post and justified EVERY stereotype about feminists.)   No sane person could.  “Women must always be free” can’t mesh with “Muslims have the right to put women in burkas and treat them like chattel.”  (And sorry, Wiscon feminists.  While not every Muslim does that, the culture DOES devalue women.  And every country that falls under the sway of a Muslim government does that.  They also kill homosexuals, which meshes badly with “everyone must be allowed to be who they are.”  Personally I have a pact with a gay friend.  They’ll push a wall over him the minute after they put me in a burka (which will take killing me) and vice versa.)

People can pretend to believe the strangest things and go along to get along, but that’s not how they act when they can get away with it, and…  Things don’t always match words.  So, Christianity was accepted because the king had accepted it (most places) and it made life easier.  But the old “we can kick their asses because we’re us” ethos of Indo European culture remained, beneath.  It is as I said what created “We win, because G-d is on our side.”

This was a reasonable compromise while the enemy wasn’t – largely – Christian and part of Western Civ.  When it was – WWI – it set up a bizarre splitting reaction.  Part of Nazism – besides bad economic ideas and crisp uniforms, which are also a penchant of the human race everywhere – was a return to the ethos of paganism and tribalism.  “We can beat their asses, because our race is superior.”  It can’t have been taken seriously by most people.  It just can’t.  Even Germans knew they had many races within their country.  (As “races” were defined then, in which definition, I’m a different race from my husband.  I’ll note my family refers to our kids as “mixed race.” Tribalism.)  BUT it was a reaction to “we’re the same people and we just killed masses of each other.”

And because Germany was point-man for Western civ the revelations of what was really happening after WWII didn’t help the self-image of Western civ.

(And it’s no use at all saying “every German knew.”  You know that’s bs, and I know that’s bs.  How many people in the US do you think know about no-knock raids or drone killings?  Some, sure.  But we live in a world with internet.  Never underestimate the power of a compliant press.  We did that in November.  We’re still doing it.  How much worse was it without the net and divergent voices?  Yes, the people down from the death camps knew – PROBABLY.  But what were they going to do about it?  Storm the camp on their own, yes?  How?  Remember they had the most efficient army in Europe, and the internal image was more so. Yes, some people were utterly despicable.  Maybe as many as half of them (though I doubt that.) but most were just human. Humans go along with the group, in general.  Humans try to survive, in general. The same, btw, goes for every country occupied by this malicious idea.  I have my own dark opinion of the French character, having read literature of the time.  But it is perhaps worth noting I have had a bad opinion of the French since the French revolution.  My opinion is biased, and I know it’s biased.  Remember too if genealogy is true both my husband and I have a decent peppering of French blood.)

Now… now we’re in a position where the majority of Western Civ – Europe, by and large, certainly the educated classes (the plebes are saner.  They have to be, or they wouldn’t survive) – hates itself and bares its chest and pounds on it every chance they have.

Part of this is because they’ve been taught Western Civ is UNIQUELY despicable.  A lot of human traits are being taught to them as uniquely a problem of the west: expansionism; imperialism; triumphalism.

Brother!  The reason that other civilizations haven’t conquered and gone forth is NOT that they’re “cute little brown people, who live in a kind of primitive Eden” (when this is applied to me, it always makes me scream, because I feel like “you’re saying Portuguese are too stupid to be oppressors” which, beyond betraying a stunning ignorance of history, is bizarrely dysfunctional.)  Look at the way they treat their own people – you can find out, though our press won’t report it – and imagine what they’d do to the defeated.  (Vae Victis) and all that.

But because our children have been taught that way, and because since WWII we’ve lost confidence in the story of who we are, and lost the idea that we triumph because we’re the best, we’ve acquired the idea that “we triumph because we’re the worst.”  Therefore triumphing or doing well in general is considered proof of how bad we are.

Yes, Marxism – which btw, in practical fact, under the name of “liberation” acts like the empires of old, putting all to fire and sword – has made things worse, with its pious mumblings about how all property is theft (unless a party apparatchik has it!  Because then it belongs to “the people”) and how all war is evil (unless we’re liberating the oppressed) makes things worse.

But Marxism and the insanity that was the USSR wouldn’t have survived long if the trauma wasn’t already there and the pain already there.

Maybe there is a limit to how large a civilization can get.  Maybe for humans to eschew tribalism is already a form of madness, violating the creature we are, and the end is foretold.  Or maybe we’ll yet find a way around all this.

The one thing certain is we can’t go on as we are.  We’re still bleeding from the wounds of the long war – not because it was unique, people here mentioned the 100 year war before that – but because it was brutal AND well propagandized.

Our efficiency at telling stories increased just in time to publicize self doubt and self hatred.  At some level all of us still know our civilization is the best thing ever.  (No?  Would you voluntarily move to Algiers?  Or let’s go to parts of Western civ but more unsteady, like Portugal?  Mexico?  Yes, some people do, but not many.)

The stories that made us have turned poisonous.  Note they’re now going after not just western civ but humanity itself and, in some cases, life itself.  Can we fix them in time to save ourselves?

I hope so.  But first we need to know that the problem IS in the stories, in the image of ourselves.

Yes, the long war of the twentieth century was terrible.  So was the 100 years war, the French revolution, the Napoleonic war (I was listening to bios of the time the other day, and let’s say that there were reasons Napoleon is called The Monster), the American Civil War.  I suspect that the Roman invasions were no picnic, and BOY could I tell you stories of the Moorish invasion and the Spanish occupation and…

War is what our species does.  No, we can’t study war no more.  Unless a miracle occurs and the entire world can love each other as brothers and sisters (ah) war shall always be with us.  And often its justified.  Atrocities happen in every human culture.

And the abattoirs of WWI and WWII were – like the Roman invasions, if you think on it – more the result of what the technology was at the time, than a problem of western culture.

Yes, wars will happen.  We are human.  Yes, as civilization gets better at other things, it gets better at war, too.  Yes, this is bad.  But removing civilization doesn’t remove death, pestilence and famine.  It just makes them more constant, more local, and the peace times worse.

Regardless of what my colleagues think, it is unlikely, short of a religious redemption, that there will ever be a utopian civilization where there is no war. (And OMG, a civilization of all women is the worst way to achieve this.) We’re not designed that way.  And war is not always the worst thing.  Look at North Korea.  A civil war might be preferable to that.

Yes, going to space might reduce the instances of (at least) intercultural war.  It will also reduce at least the destructiveness of civil war, at least while the population is sparse.

Western culture, as mental hardware has the best chance of getting us there and of getting us to the point the human race doesn’t become extinct.  (Yeah, we have problems.  But I’m human.  What species would be better? Angels are not in the running.)

Can poor f*cked up western culture figure out a way to get there?  Who knows?  Things look rather bleak right now, don’t they?

As I’ve said before, though, it’s always darkest before dawn.  Tech is now going towards less centralization.  And we’re changing too.  The centralism and Marxism many people mouth are less than skin deep.  Beneath it is a roll-up-the-sleeves-and-get-to-it ethos that goes well with the new distributed tech.

We are a people of stories.  Stories have turned against us, but they can be changed.

Let the best saga-writer win.  Our ancestors told the stories that made people want to join them.  Can we not do the same?

My son says  that we’re being told pretty much everywhere, from all sides of the political spectrum and from people who aren’t political at all “keep calm and carry on.”  The fact that we have the lowest workforce participation since 1978?  Keep calm and carry on.  The fact kids – and adults – are having trouble finding work?  Keep calm and carry on.  The fact that families are having trouble making ends meet?  Keep calm and carry on.  Europe imploding?  Keep calm and carry on.  The Norks rattling sabers?  Keep calm and carry on. The tech change reshaping so many of our fields so that somehow we’re all a lot more busy and barely making it – or have found ourselves having to retool entirely, or both?  Keep calm and carry on.

He told me in some exasperation that what no one ever tells you is HOW to keep calm and carry on.  And he asked me to explain.

The irony of this will be understood by anyone who knows me.  I have two modes: running around with my head on fire and THINKING I’m calm.  Thinking I’m calm is the dangerous one.  It’s usually when the stress has got so huge I decide to cope with it the same way I cope with other things I can do nothing about – like pain.  I pretend it’s not there.  And I’m so good at that, that I ACT calm and might not know I’m going bananas.  But my skin breaks out in eczema, my sleep pattern goes to heck, and my hair falls off.

HOWEVER publishing has been in turmoil since I came in, and G-d knows in terms of society, politics and government chaos has been normal for most of my life except maybe the years between 85 and 9/11.  So while I might not be GOOD at dealing with stress, chaos and implosion, I have a lot of experience and if you look at the fact I’ve neither dropped dead nor made anyone else drop dead, (yet) I must have developed some good strategies (amid all the bad ones.  Shud up.  Don’t mess with the excitable Latina, okay?)  I mean, it’s sort of like you might start out by being a LOUSY soccer player, but if you keep kicking that ball and not being thrown off the game altogether, you must at least have learned what to hit the ball with.

This, plus the fact that I’m naturally a depressive (not clinical.  The only times I came close to clinical depression was when I was either SEVERELY off kilter hormonally – the joys of womanhood – or physically ill and sleep deprived) in tendency and habit and that one of the things I HATE is insecurity means I’ve had to discover ways to cope, or I’d never get anything done.

So… Keep Calm and Carry On – suggestions –

1 – Stop thinking about it!

I don’t need to tell anyone that politics can terrify me.  In the back of my mind I start hearing the theme of Green Acres that went on the air whenever the Portuguese capital had been taken over by troops (which side?  You won’t know till they have full control or are defeated) and therefore the sub-station in Porto had to throw its one reel on the air.  (Yep, Green Acres.)

How do I cope?  I don’t hit political sites for a day or two.  Some days I put off reading instapundit till I’m done with my work.

The same goes for “what if my book doesn’t do well, and I tank big time?  What if something happens to my publisher?  What if—”

Can you solve anything by worrying?  No?  Then stop.  Just stop.  When the thoughts come around, turn them to something else, pick up a book, grab the phone and call a friend.  If it’s in the middle of the night, consider reading a book or getting up and having a cup of mint (or whatever) tea.

Yes, you have to think of your situation in order to solve it.  But obsessing about your own powerlessness will help nothing.

2- Strategize!

When you have time, not when you’re just thinking “oh, no, oh, ho, oh, no, bad stuff, bad stuff”, sit down and write a list of things you can do to deal with whatever is worrying you.  For political stuff it might very well be “get more involved with poll watching” or whatever.  “Write investigative article” – whatever you CAN do.  For your career it can be “learn new computer language” or “start working on indie venture” or “Start reviewing calculus, so I can go for my doctor” or “if my job goes away, is there some way I can turn this into an opportunity by finally learning to/starting a business…  building customized computers/making creative clothing/creating and selling music on the net…. Whatever.”  I.e. think of ways to turn a bad situation into “what I always wanted to do.”

Now, if these things were easy you’d already be doing them, so the ideas you come up with might be utterly absurd, but write them down anyway.  Don’t let your inner critic shoot them down.  At another time, when you’ve cooled off, shoot down and organize them from simpler to harder.  I mean, sure, you want to start that multinational publishing company, but you can’t do that when you’re in debt and might lose the house any minute.  BUT you can probably start putting stuff on the net, and working to figure out the field and to make money at the same time.

What you CAN in fact do might be very small, but TRUST it.  Go with it.  What I’ve found is that any movement in the direction you want to go is liable to create others.  You’ll meet other people with the same interests; you’ll be at events where you’ll figure out how to take the next step.  A lot in life is showing up.  Show up, even if you’re the short kid in glasses in the back.  A team desperately short on players JUST might pick you.

More importantly, from the psychological point of view doing SOMETHING is better than doing nothing.  When you wake up with your mind going like crazy in the middle of the night, you can tell it “shut up.  I’m doing all I can.”

3 – Work.

When I last posted this type of thing, Ori said in comments, effectively “if you can’t find work for pay, work for free.”

I am, of course, philosophically opposed to working for free, but, oh, shucks, yes.  And I’ve done it too.  If you can, work for free in a field related to the one where you want to work for money.  My apprenticeship writing Austen fandom (after I’d sold short stories, but when no one would buy my novels and then later, when no publisher but finally Baen would touch me) kept me from going stir crazy, helped me build techniques (commenters or lack thereof are a good indication of what you’re doing right or wrong.) kept me connected to a community, built my fandom and – unexpectedly – gave me something – A Touch of Night – to sell when conditions changed.

But even if what you find to do is in an area you aren’t trying to break into, do it.  Do something you think helps the situation or helps someone.  It will tire you out enough you’re more likely to sleep at night; it will give you the impression that you’re doing SOMETHING no matter how small, and it will give structure to your life.  Structure is important.  I know this as a freelancer.  It’s all too easy to let your life trickle away doing nothing when you don’t have any boundaries and any schedule.

4 – Connect.

I’m by nature an introvert.  I’m also averse to authority and I think “group work” is how demons spell “hades.” I think my first grade was “doesn’t play well with others” shortly before they kicked me out of kindergarten.  Add to this that my immune system appears to be made of Kleenex…

Am I really advising anyone – ANYONE – to be more socially active?

Yes.  I actually am.  No matter how bad you are at it, or how dysfunctional, you are a member of a social species.  There is a type of closed-in place you – or any of us monkeys – go when you’re too isolated.  It magnifies despair and increases anxiety.

My social life is mostly online, though – after ten years – I’m rebuilding a social life with people whose company I can tolerate with equanimity.  (It is perhaps telling I first met most of these people online.)

However one thing that Heinlein said in the letter to Sturgeon was absolutely true.  Writers need to cross-pollinate.    If I’m too isolated I can run down and become unable to write.

I suspect it’s the same for everyone else, creative or not, social or not.

So, bug a buddy on line.  Have an inconsequential poke-war on Facebook.  And if you can, if you can stand it, get involved in something that interests you and that has other humans – online or in person.  Limit it to what you can tolerate, and don’t drive yourself nuts, but do try to remember there’s  a world and other minds outside your head now and then.

5 – Get Perspective!

Get perspective on the scope of your troubles, the trouble in the world, how messed up you/your life/this time is.

For the religious, this will almost always include prayer and the sense of touching the eternal.  For the non religious, it can mean anything, including a walk by the sea (it’s really big.  Has been there before you, will be there after you) or reading a history book, or even a paleontology book.  (There is a reason, though, yes, I am religious, that I read books about dinosaurs when I’m flipping out.  So far so good – no asteroid.)

6- Help someone else.

This might be a little depressing, but his (which often combines with 3 and 4) is a good way to forget your own troubles  is to help someone with worse troubles.  Sort of puts yours in perspective, and helps you feel useful.

7 – Take a vacation.

Yes, I know, and I do know what the money is like here too.  Besides, my idea of a vacation is to hole up in a hotel room and write a novel in a week…  which isn’t possible right now, no.

BUT there are “vacations” that take remarkably little money.  Don’t think of it as going to another country or even another city, or staying somewhere exciting or…  I know, what type of cr*ppy vacation is that?

One that helps you stay sane.  One thing Dan and I were discussing was memberships to the zoo and a couple of museums.  Why?  Because it allows you to take a mini-vacation at a very low cost, throughout the year.  Played out for the day?  Head feel like mush?  Can’t work?  Can’t think?  Grab a kid/friend… well, probably not pet, and head to the zoo or the local numismatics museum .  Or watch a silly movie.  Or go mini golfing at one of the cheap places with fiberglass animals.  Or do all of those over three or so days.

To me, to be effective, a mini-vacation does the following: takes you out of your routine; lets you do something you enjoy; allows your mind to stop spinning over itself.  It can be as simple as curling up in bed for two hours with cats and a book or as complex as taking  two weeks off in a hotel – or at home with all the meals cooked and frozen in advance – and doing a bunch of things as a famiy… or anything in between (I dream of that two weeks in a hotel thing.  Or even at home.  Our last staycation was three days.  We can’t make all the schedules mesh longer than that.)  It doesn’t matter, provided it works for you.  (And if you can fly to Italy for five days, more power to you, and don’t feel guilty.  I wish I could and maybe some day I’ll be able to.)  The idea is to “unclench” and stop worrying/thinking/working.

An effective vacation allows you to come back ready to:

Carry on – and stay calm.  If you ruin yourself and your health and your mental balance, what will happen if the worst comes to pass?  You’ll be in no shape to fight for yourself or others.  And if the worst doesn’t happen?  Won’t you feel pretty silly having ruined yourself for nothing?

Keep calm and carry on.

I have an entirely different post over at Mad Genius Club.

UPDATE: If you click on the book links as your gateway to Amazon, I get money for the referral (thanks to a friend in another state who volunteered to be an Amazon associate for me.)  Even if you’ve already bought the books, if you click through there, then search whatever you want, I’ll get the credit for your other purchases ;)

 

One line from the letter of ideas Heinlein sent to Sturgeon when Sturgeon was blocked keeps coming to me.  In discussing the ability to send someone into the past to live in the brain of a citizen of the time he says something about the future being so horrible that “even a time such as this” would be better.

The horrible time Heinlein was referring to was 1962, largely before our institutions fell apart, and (off the top of my head, you guys know I don’t have time to research this every day, and the year is in fact the year I was born) not during any recession or severe economic downturn.  The moon program was going on, Europe was recovering from WWII and even in tiny and (to be fair) repressively governed Portugal, things were getting better.  They were certainly massively better than when mom was born in 1934, or when dad was born in 1931.

It brought to my mind something someone – was it RES? – said in the comments, yesterday: that even were our “experts” not maliciously misseducated in their time, and pumped with the wrong “theory of everything” their learning would now be out of date.

This is something that even the authors of the golden age, when there were benevolent governments running everything in their futures, never took into account.  It is all the more extraordinary they didn’t, because they, themselves, had grown up in a time of massive change (as did I.)

As a kid it was quite normal for me to ask my parents who to do something and be told “I have no idea.  We didn’t have that in my day.”  These were things like what type of bus pass to buy to go to school downtown.  Dad had walked to school.  Mom had to make decisions her mom had never made, too, like “At what age will my daughter be allowed to cook on the gas stove?”  Her family had only a wooden open fire and it had been different.  So I suppose my childhood was closest to those of authors here growing up in the thirties and forties.  SURELY they knew that people’s knowledge became outdated fast.

But I don’t think they did.  Even as they were positing moon colonies by the seventies, they were underestimating what that rate of change would do to society.  There was also this assumption that “at some point society has changed enough.”  Even in the Heinlein juveniles, you got this feeling that despite all the rate of change, etc. society was fundamentally stable.  The kids didn’t run up against things the parents had no clue of, etc.

There was sort of an underlying assumption we’d find the “right” theory: of energy, of society, of manufacturing, of moon rockets.  And then everything would run on rails, provided you learned the “right” way to do it.

Perhaps this was because so many of them were engineers and there are “right techniques” to assemble things.

Anyway, I’m not pounding on golden age writers.  Wish we had many more of them today.  What came after was the equal and opposite assumption – that everything would fall apart and we’d never put society-dumpty together again.

What I meant to say, though, is that, ultimately, that is the problem with planned societies.  Even in a relatively low-change society, it changes too much for anyone to be able to learn something and still be the same way 40 years later.  Culturally Portugal was in slow change mode when I was little, but to ask mom how to write a business letter was stupid – she used archaic language and forms no one used anymore.

We get this impression that there was a time when there was no change – the dark ages, or whatever – but it is not true.  It seems like that from above, but if you zero in on a decade or a century you see change almost as fast as ours, just in different areas.

Meanwhile, even supposing there WAS no change, it would be almost impossible for statesmen to handle situations in the full knowledge of how it compares to the past and what to do about it.

Look, our president has elicited giggles on the right (perhaps on the left too – but possibly not.  They don’t laugh much) because he keeps claiming no president EVAH has faced as serious a situation as he faces now.

I don’t care how much you devalue a Harvard degree, it is impossible the man doesn’t know about presidents during the Great Wars.  It’s physically impossible too he doesn’t realize what Lincoln faced.

No, what is at work here is a human thing – yes, I know.  I keep hoping they find the birth certificate for Xerpes too – in that past perils seem in retrospect mild and almost ridiculous.

This is because humans perceive the past as a story.  No matter how exciting the story, if you know the ending, it seems less riveting/extreme/dangerous.  (Show of hands here – how many people reading a thriller get to the point the tension is unbearable and break its back by looking at the ending?)  And we know the ending of the past.

It’s like when we were moving from North to South Carolina and both cars broke down by the side of the road, in the middle of the night, filled with our possessions.  At the time, this was an awful situation (and it tells you something I don’t remember how we got out of it) but a month later we could tell it to friends as a joke.

Both Heinlein’s comment, and the fact I’m reading a lot of Nero Wolfe short stories (I don’t have time to get immersed in something longer) and keep coming across things about how “it’s the worst times, ever” and “will we ever survive this?” are giving me that sense.

While people are living things they look really scary, but in the history books they become forgone conclusions.

It’s easier for politicians now to discount World War II as something of course we were going to win, but it looked scary enough at the time (particularly the time before WWII when things were closing in and looking darker “the lights are going out all over Europe”) for people to put off or give up on having kids, and for many people to think it was the most horrible time ever.

It’s also easy in retrospect to say “of course I’d have been on the right side.” But I’ll note a lot of the young people saying “of course I’d have opposed the Nazis” are falling for a new version of the old lie.  They just got out of the stories of the past that they should oppose people who goosestep and are racist.  So, as long as the new evil avoids those tells, they’ll get them like they got their great grandparents.  It’s all about youth and the bright new future and the men who’ll be in charge of everything: the best and the brightest.

It can’t be said often enough that even the best and the brightest get old, and their knowledge becomes outdated.  Even the best and the brightest have psychological quirks.  I don’t care if you were raised inside a cotton ball, you don’t get to be an adult without psychological bruises.  And we all have ways of hiding or pouring balm on those bruises.  And even the best and the brightest are human, which means – barring time travel, and even then – that for them the past is a story, and what they’re facing is “completely different” because they’re in it.

Which is why, government being a necessary evil (and I’m not going to argue this, not even if Josh K. should come back.  If the entire world were the US it would be debatable.  The entire world is not and it isn’t) we  should keep it as decentralized as possible, and in the hands of as many people as possible.  We should also rediscover that whole checks and balances thing.  Because humans are fallible, become outdated, and are… well… human.

It is also why we shouldn’t look at our present difficulties and imagine it’s the end of the world or that freedom and prosperity won’t win the day.  There have been worse pinches: the black plague comes to mind, but I’m fairly sure things looked as black or blacker at various points in the cold war.

Yeah, we’re in a pinch.  Don’t assume we’ll win and stop fighting.  But I doubt very much our predicament is the worst ever.  It’s just that we don’t know the book has a happy ending.  But it might have.  And we can work to make it so.

Be not afraid!

Surprisingly, this post is not about detergent. *  It is also not about marital fidelity of lack thereof.

It is about what I believe the Chinese would call “the will of heaven,” though I confess I’m out of my specialty and going on what I’ve heard from more knowledgeable people.

From what I understand the Chinese have sort of a belief in the tides of history or what is “intended” – sort of a cosmic fate pulling All Under Heaven in one direction or another.  When a regime ceases working, they discern it in current events.  This is sort of like reading the future in animal entrails only, in China’s case, the entrails are more likely to be human and far more bloody.  If the regime in power (whatever that is) is deemed to have lost the will of heaven, they set about replacing it.

To an extent this makes them more flexible, I think, and might have allowed their monstrous communist regime to turn into a monstrous fascist regime, which for all its horrors (and it is horrible) provides a better life for its citizens than the hot mess that Mao left them ever could and also manages to be less murderous (which in this case is sort of like being less evil than Satan – you can still be Stalin and be less evil than Satan — but never mind.)  None of the other communist regimes has managed it, and the reason China did it might have been because Communism was viewed as the will of heaven and now it isn’t.

All communist systems morph – usually into  a sort of Marx-right (as opposed to divine right) monarchy where a family inherits in succession and has all the privileges of aristocrats, but communism is paid lip service.  But China is the only one that has morphed into a – marginally.  I’m not defending it – more functional regime.

On the other hand, I’m so far out of my depth about China that if this were a matter of water, I’d be floating in the Atlantic holding on to a rubber ducky.

However, I’m fairly sure I’m right on the Will of Heaven and the way their concept of what is proper and just changes – not relating to some overarching philosophy, but to what they think is “intended” for that time and place.

Don’t laugh.  We’re much the same.

As we start engaging into war against the currently prevalent culture – speaking truth to pow’ah that’s right, what’s up? – it helps to know how it got there.

Part of it is that the Chinese are right, of course.  Or at least they’re right in the way their traditions tend to be right – there is a core of something there, but it’s been distorted by centuries of being treated as a shibboleth rather than a conclusion arrived at after observation.

When we look around an wonder how “progressives” who want to take us back to the 30s gained all ascendance in every position of influence, from news to government, we must remember what it was like when this climb started, and how much of it was viewed as “the will of heaven.”

Part of it is that the truth buried at the back it: the system of government, the system of picking the “elite” in any position of influence is subjugated to the spirit of the time – that is to the way people live and how technology shapes those lives.

One of the funnier beliefs of feminists is that when humans were nomadic, before evil agriculture and civilization, we were both matriarchal and sort of “fluffy anarchist” where everything was owned in common and there was no real “government” – the matriarchy being religious and “inspirational leader” in nature.

The reason this is hilarious is that from what we can tell not just from archeology but from living populations of hunter-gatherers, the nomadic tribes were the epitome of strong man government.  You had to be strong, because nomadic cultures raid more or less constantly.  Like street gangs, not only do they have autocratic leaders, but autocratic leaders with no limits on their power.  (The origin of the confusion by feminists, is that you can find women buried with all the attributes of a chieftain – hint one of them is a war mace, so much for your peaceful utopia – but you can find that under settled monarchies too.  Sometimes the king dies and his daughter inherits.  How long she reigns depends on her wits, of course.)

Agriculture brought about actual monarchy because the king and the land were a unit (though the land might expand and contract.)  The whole notion of being born somewhere meaning you belonged under the rule of so and so would have seemed odd to nomads (being born from someone meant you belonged to the tribe/family.  Different thing.)  But under monarchy as we came to know it, it was inevitable.

The industrial age devalued land and also made rule by one person incredibly inefficient.  No, wait, it was always inefficient.  It actually made it more efficient, by creating a bookkeeping bureaucracy that allowed government to track individuals and for the rule by one person to intrude into the everyday lives of everyone.

While kings were distant, inefficient, and news reporting sporadic, it was possible for the people to hold on to the idea this man ruled because he was meant to, because G-d had set him there.  But it was impossible for that idea to survive exposure to the king’s blunders, pettiness or ignorance.

And so the modern age brought about the end of the rule of kings.  Those kings who remained no longer ruled.

That age started with the belief in the educated individual, with the limitless possibilities of the individual – education was going to make us all like onto the gods.  Unfortunately between that age and ours, a new technology evolution came about, and therefore a new belief about just and proper government.

This was the age I call “science, yay” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  Science fueled so many practical improvements in human life that surely the ultimate society run by “scientists” was just around the corner.

The problem is that the average person had absolutely clue zero of what was science and what wasn’t.  So we got sold Marxism as “scientific government.”

But because the industry of the time was centralizing, and so was the media, people got the idea the government was way more efficient than it really was.  (How many people still think FDR got us out of the Depression?  Can we have a show of hands?)  People believed in rule by the “best” educated, the most efficient.  And technology encouraged that.  Everything from manufacturing to the dissemination of knowledge was, by virtue of technology, central.

While centralized government wasn’t any better at running everything than it’s ever been, it was possible to create the image of efficiency and constant progress.  (See FDR myth.)  It might not be doing very well, but people didn’t know that, and enough technological innovation drove the improvement of everyday life that government’s idiocy was less important.

Well, neither our communication nor, coming soon, our manufacture, is centralized.  The shrill tones you hear in the voices of “progressives” who are trying to take us back to the early twentieth century is that they know it as well as you do.

They can’t create an appearance of success, anymore.  And it’s not even here, alone, it’s all over the world.  News leak out.  Even in totalitarian China, cell phones show the difference between truth and Pravda.

All over the world – because this is a global thing, driven by the changing tech – “progressives” are trying for ever more centralized control in everything, including their attempts to legislate new inventions (green technology!) into existence.  And the more they try for control the more it falls apart.

In the era of decentralized everything and a fragmented market, it’s hard for media or entertainment to hold the bully pulpit and truly convince everyone that the men in charge are doing it “scientifically” and “know better.”

The cracks can’t be plastered over.

They’ve lost the will of heaven.

The  change might – will – be rough, and the waters will be mighty tempestuous, but in the end, we win, they lose.

Be not afraid.

*(As one of those side excursions you guys love – or at least I can’t avoid going into this early in the morning and uncaffeinated – we were a Tide family when I was growing up.  Detergents were the hot new tech in household management – most people still boiled their own soap – had door to door salesmen who did demonstrations.  Detergent companies put prizes in their boxes, the sort of thing we associate with cereal here.  Tell a Portuguese person of my generation “Collect them all” and we’ll say “detergent.”  Anyway, I don’t remember any other US company – I remember Umo [pronounced ‘omo] , which was Italian and Extra which might have been Portuguese, but Tide was the only American one, the one my mom glommed onto and defended it with the fervor of the newly converted.  Of course we didn’t know it was American.  We pronounced it Teed.  It says something about the first impressions of childhood lingering that it took me till I was in my third year of English and my mom sent me to get the “teed” to stare at the box and go “TIDE!  It’s English.”)

UPDATE: Now it can be said — Darkship Renegades a Prometheus finalist.  Will lightning strike twice? Competition being stiff, I’m going to be underhanded right here, and promise an even more interesting award ceremony dress, should I win ;)

Years ago, while I was extremely tight on money (how tight?  Tight enough I didn’t know where the mortgage payment was coming from.  Two mortgage payments, since we’d moved [for good and sufficient reasons, among them, because it’s impossible to sell/stage a house infested by cats – but there were others.] and not yet sold the other house.  For those sitting at the edge of your seat, two months worth of mortgages and a little extra materialized in the mail from Jim Baen, and in those two months the other house sold) a friend who is known to sign contracts and then wonder how to fulfill them, called and offered me half of his advance if I wrote a grossly overdue novel for him.

I know a lot of you are going “What?” but this has a long tradition in the field, and at least, unlike Leslie Charteris, this man was known to pay on time.  (He’s also no big name, but about at my level, so chances you’ve heard of him are low.)  I’ve done this type of work for hire (though normally more private, as in “write my mom’s biography for a small printing just the family”) before, when extremely pinched, though thank heavens (I hate it.  What if this is what sells and does so extremely well that I’m forced to watch my work go out into the world and become famous, while I starve) not in the last few years.

So I sighed and asked my friend when, how long and what.  The when was a month, so doable, for something that would never have my name on it and therefore didn’t engage my personal vanity.  The how long was 80k words which was more than doable.  Then we got on the what.  He’d told me it was a thriller, and it turned out it was one of those “in the corridors of power” thrillers, where a Senator is doing something that will “change everything” and another is trying to stop him and…  I no longer remember if organized crime was involved, but you know what I mean.

I stared in bafflement at his outline and then told him that as much as I needed the money, as much as I wanted to help him (he’s a generally nice guy,) I just couldn’t DO it.  Not with the best will in the world.

Explaining why took longer.  See, he knew I could research enough about DC and lobbyists and stuff to see how things worked and make that part convincing (part of the reason he’d come to me.) and the book was non-political (not that he had an inkling of my real politics.  I think.  Who knows.  Re-reading my old stuff it’s amazing how my beliefs came through when I thought I was being vewy vewy quiet.  In some ways I suspect I was like those gay people who come out at thanksgiving, after thirty years of agonizing in the closet and the family goes “oh, we’ve always known.  Pass the potatoes.”) which sounds odd for this type of book, but truly was – the whole thing being legislation for or against some non-existent shadowy threat.  (Non existent in our world.) Or perhaps it was just something wholly uncontroversial (it’s been a long time.  I don’t remember) like legislation that won’t cost any more money, but will make every child better able to learn.  (Funny, I don’t remember its being fantasy.)

At any rate, the problem wasn’t the plot.  I’ve written more unlikely ones, particularly for hire, where people insist on stuff like that.  The problem for me was that I couldn’t believe in what made the novel exciting, for people who read this sort of novel: I couldn’t believe that one legislator really can “change the world” or that one piece of legislation can be that vitally important, long term.  Oh, it can khak things – look at the health care bill and what it will do to unemployment – but make the world better at the stroke of a pen?  Not a chance.  Not immediately, not without resistance and certainly not without unintended consequences.

(Take civil rights legislation, possibly the least controversial legislation in retrospect, which rather than anything it was supposed to do/be seems to be the “law for making our schools work mostly for the benefit of white females – who aren’t even a minority by ANY stretch and who might or might not be – still are, some places – historically repressed, depending on time and place, and due mostly to biology, but none of whose numbers alive today and born and raised in the US – unless very old – have been held in a position of unwilling subjugation EVER [at least not by legislation.  Private relationships are a whole other ballgame].)

So the whole god-like legislator and the opponents who were unredeemably evil and the piece of legislation that was so consarned important left me mehish.  And if I was mehish, then it would come across in the book.  (I don’t know whom he got to do it, or if he did it himself, but I’ve never to my knowledge come across the book anywhere, so maybe he just gave up on it.)

It wasn’t until yesterday, while the guys were arguing computers in the car (it’s almost impossible for me not to tune out after a while) that I found myself touching the “Why.”

The why goes like this – the world is composed of two types of people.  Those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don’t.  No.  Though that’s true, too.  The world is full of an infinite variety of individuals.  BUT when it comes to their attitude to government or even – and this is what I realized yesterday – large, faceless entities like any large-enough company, sect or association, there are two kinds of people: those who believe most individuals, given half a chance, will do what’s best not just for themselves, but morally.  Or at least that most individuals won’t go out of their way to hurt, crush or thwart other human beings to no purpose.  (This might or might not be true, but we’ll go into this later.)  Then there are those who believe that humans, in a group, particularly when given some magical attribute – divine right of kings, election, ivy league degrees – are necessary to watch over normal individuals to make sure they don’t all kill, rend and maim each other on the streets.

If I understood what Older Son told me yesterday, which might or might not be what he actually said, there is a movie coming out whose trailer, at least, implies that if all government services stopped for a day (forget that this isn’t one government in the US but at least three levels and sometimes more) and there were no police, etc, people would be killing each other on the streets and there would be mass mayhem.

If I understood Older Son properly, Hollywood should stick to superhero movies.  It’s clear they have somehow got the very bizarre idea that the only grantor of decent and civilized behavior is the government.  I’ll go into the giant, gaping flaw in this mind set later – but first let me point out if that were the case, if government at whatever level were the only thing keeping any normal average Joe from pulling out a gun and mowing down passerbyes from his car window during his morning commute, we’d already all be dead.

There is no government large and powerful enough – not even China, not even North Korea, where you need a permit to breathe out and they tell you when to breathe in – to keep that sort of mayhem at bay.  There is no police force large enough.  One per citizen wouldn’t be enough, because policemen have to use the bathroom sometimes.  And, as has been mentioned in book after book, if someone is absolutely determined to kill you, you WILL die, no matter how many bodyguards you hire, or whether you immure yourself in a walled compound.

Also – and this is the gaping flaw – if human beings are that inherently out of control and ill-intentioned, then surely either the police and other government services are from Mars (or heaven) or how come there aren’t police to watch over them TOO?  How come they don’t kill everyone in THEIR path?  It can’t be the magical power of groups, because in the end, it’s the individual officer, out there, on the street.

The truth is that most individuals don’t want to go on a rampage.  Most individuals don’t even particularly want to defraud their fellow man.  Morals aside, there is the danger of shredded reputation and/or the problem of having to live with oneself.  My friend Dave Freer assures me that morals – the basis of universal human morals, insofar as those exist “do onto others” if you prefer – are observable and enforced in ape groups.  This makes sense since that sort of give and take is essential to keeping a band functioning and, again, (if it needs saying) humans are social animals, who therefore tend to favor those individuals who work towards group cohesion, and those groups who are most successful at it.  (The reason that Robert and I joke that the gene for “Odds” is not just recessive but possibly anti-survival.  As I said, a tribe of us would starve to death because the moment the chief said “Today we hunt mammoth” half of us would stomp off to look for berries and the other half go set traps for lizards, or become absorbed in learning basket weaving just to “not give him the satisfaction.”)

Most humans don’t want to kill and eat their neighbors (libertarian scenarios of government collapse, always seem to default to this too.)  In fact, most humans if all government were removed tomorrow would go on more or less in the same manner.

Does this mean that government is unnecessary?  Well, no.  There are aberrant, criminal or – if you’re of the soft and fuzzy school – emotionally maimed and hurt individuals out there who will do the worst unless someone watches over them every minute.  They create problems all out of proportion with their number.  The police (and laws, and governments in general) exist on the calculus that if we make it unpleasant/difficult enough for these individuals, they’ll behave, rather than do what they please and hurt others.  (The fact this allows them to stealth and pass on their genes is something else.  I’m not going into Minority Report territory.)  Also, government official or not is necessary to deal with other governments, official or not. The tendency of an hominid group to bash another hominid group on the head to get their territory/dinner/mates remains unabated and ICBMs haven’t made it any less difficult to deal with.

However, the duality remains.  I’m more likely to believe in the lone genius coming up with some way to improve society (say a dramatic new power source) and government trying to thwart him (not out of malice, even, but out of its breaking all regulations) than in a piece of legislation that makes it possible for someone to invent a new power source, by funding his research (removing regulatory burdens is something else.)

I believe government is necessary, but that the balance of power should rest with the individual.  In the end, the individual is the ONLY arbiter of what is best for him.  And even the “necessary and just” functions of government, where say a police officer exists to make sure one of the rare, aberrant individuals doesn’t kill a bunch of others, can be corrupted by giving it too much power.  Because part of what keeps individuals in check is belonging to the group and being afraid of like treatment by their peers, if they go overboard.  When you give someone the power of a faceless group and make them immune from prosecution, you get… well, you get no knock raids to the wrong house that kill a veteran who thought he was defending home and family.

There’s a lot of room there for a lot of play on where the needle goes between “group and government” but the needle is never all on the side of the government – not in a sane society – and removing government will never mean murder, mayhem, cats and dogs sleeping together, the end of the world!

In other words, not only did you build that, you build that every day, day by day, a little at a time.  If the majority of us decided to say “forget that” and give up on civilized behavior, not even the best equipped enforcement in the world could keep us in check.

The weird thing – and I think because of the people attracted to this sort of profession – is that right now both sides of the isle probably believe that stupid movie.  They’re both somehow convinced that government must interfere at a very minute level, to keep individuals from being savages – not the rare individual, not the aberrant, but all of us.  Their areas of focus are different, but both sides seem to believe daddy knows best, and they MUST watch over all of us unruly children every moment.

And that, unfortunately, is what I fear will eventually lead to “there is no police force large enough to hold us in check.”  Because they’ve proven over and over that they do not know best.  Because the very mechanics of politics leads those who believe in the relevance of political power over the fundamentals of economy and every day individuals to rise to power.

Which tilts “daddy government” more and more out of kilter.  “If you kids back there don’t shut up, I’ll come back there and give you whatfor” doesn’t work very well, when daddy is driving full speed towards the abyss.

UPDATE: Because I’m a very great dits (I know that shocks you, right?) I forgot to remove my stories from the last quarter of last year from Amazon exclusive.  That is, I forgot to uncheck the little box that says “remove automatically at expiration”  You can’t do it when you setup the book, and with the holidays and all things went nuts.  They’re mostly expiring late April/May now.  There’s nothing I can do about that, and frankly it only matters because I hope to establish a Kobo account this month.  BUT anyway because I got another five days of “free promo” I’m cycling those stories through free again, before the period ends.  So, if you missed it the first go round, An Answer From The North and Superlamb Bananaare free right now.  I’ll be cycling a free short story every five days, for the next month or so, so if you look for my name on Amazon and sort by price, you should get it, if I forget to tell you.

One of the commenters mentioned on my post on the convention that I might be imagining being shunned.  Well… kind of but no.

Because I am depressive and I know I’m depressive, meaning, I’m likely to view things through the darkest possible prism at any given time.  That means that I consciously compensate for it.  This means that people wishing to offend me or pick a fight with me – you are forwarned – must go to ridiculous lengths for me to get past the certainty that “it was just an accident’ or “they’re joking.”  (Mind you, most of the time it was an accident or they were joking.)

With conventions, it’s localized, it’s, yes, related fandoms, and it’s pervasive.  And it’s wearing down on me.  But that’s besides the point and after all there is a reason that my “home” con (by choice) is Chattanooga TN.

However, part of being naturally depressive is knowing that periodically, for reasons that are hard to pin down, I will go through times of being down in the dumps for no reason anyone can figure, not even I, myself.

For the last week, I’ve been lying awake between three and five in the morning, “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

This could be sheer mental illness, of course, but…  But premonitions run in the family, and I’m sort of a natural mega-aggregator, in that I read a lot of news from science to politics, and sometimes I get an itch at the subconscious level, something I can’t QUITE pin down.

The number of times that turns out to be something disastrous at the local/personal/national level is rather high.  That said, I don’t believe in ghosts (or premonitions) I just hope they don’t believe in me.  It doesn’t help this is accompanied by the signs of the cats being anxious too – manifested in an endless amount of peeing in odd places, the new and creative location being heating vents.  Next house?  NO VENTS ON THE FLOOR, d*mn it.

Of course the cats could be feeling my/our mood.  In fact, the whole family could be feeling my mood, and that’s probably all it is.

I’m kind of getting tired of the middle of the night horrors, though.

And just like my mom’s bipolar swings found excuses in the surrounding world, my mind has decided to have a fit of anxiety over A Few Good Men and how it’s doing.  Part is justified.  By this time with DST I had more emails/fan mail, and there was more presence in local stores.  But how much of this is real, and how much the result of the ever imploding printed book scene?  And how much of it is the fact that almost everyone I know has lurched between being sick and very sick for about five months?  My friend Rebecca Lickiss who is a genius in some ways, had a short story about a time traveler going back and altering history by disseminating the flu.  I mean… we always think killing one’s grandpa, but of course, if everyone is out of sorts, work won’t get done and the defense forces won’t be as on the mark and…

But I am anxious about it.  Part of this is that this is the only book in – ever – that I haven’t sent bookmarks or t-shirts to baen for.  I asked for the address to send it to (I lose everything) and never got it, and then I got sick…  Do the bookmarks do any good?  Who knows?  If you’re going to a con in the next two months, let me know and I’ll send you bookmarks and a t-shirt (AFGM or DST if you’re bashful) to wear.  (The t-shirt, not the bookmarks.  Though if you’re comely and wear the bookmarks it could be very good for everyone ;) )

There are books that leave trails in your heart and this one is one of those.  No, I can’t tell you why.  I love every book I write – okay, okay, maybe not Plain Jane, which is why I wrote it in three days J  But I love most books I write.  Some I just “feel” more than others.  I know it’s a complex book and that my usual luck applies making the whole thing far more insanely controversial than it should be (AND getting me hit on NOT embracing the controversy, too, on reviews) but part of me still wants to believe that if you write a good book, it will do well.  It worked for DST which, when written, was my best book to date.  Maybe it was a fluke, but I want to believe.

And even as I worry about the book I KNOW most of my issues and probably what’s causing the depression is just not having fully recovered from the weekend.  You see, I AM used to compensating and to monitoring the other things in the environment that might be causing the issue.

Yes, it is probable that uncertainty over Dan’s job – and uncertainty over what kind of employment the kids will find when they graduate.  I mean, we’re doing the best we can, but – is wearing on me.  Also, I’ve been ill – nothing lethal but an annoying succession of “bugs” and am barely recovered from the last one.  Then the con twisted my sleeping schedule to bits…

 

And I’m worried about the crazy book business…

 

Which means this depression is probably more organic than anything else.  But all the same, if you liked AFGM mention it to ten friends you think will like it, if you get a chance.  I’m putting my webpage up with excerpts (why is it I can’t find a theme that I can put columns of pictures on the side?  Never mind.) and I’ll probably buy some ads on Project Wonderful (they’re very cheap, they did wonders for DST, and I suspect would be even better for AFGM.)

 

Meanwhile, the Shakespeare Trilogy – while breaking no records – made me more money in the last week than it made me from Ace after the first year.  And it promises to be a steady seller.  This is good.  And I’m going to bed with some research on Titans for the framework for the YA fantasy I must finish editing this week.

 

Tomorrow we’re going to Denver on son-business (yeah, yeah, robotics) and also to figure out some stuff on incorporating and which type to do and all.

 

So, I hope you’ll forgive me the scattered post.  More rational posting (possibly.  Well, I’ll try) tomorrow.

*This is the new free novel I’m posting here a chapter at a time.  For previous chapters, page back to two weeks ago.  This is pre-first-draft, as it comes out.  It is a sequel to Witchfinder which will soon be taken down (once edited) and put for sale on Amazon.  Meanwhile, if you donate $6 or more, I’ll get you a copy of Rogue Magic, once finished and edited, in your favored ebook format.  Of course, if you’re already subscribing to the blog at a level at which you get whichever books come out that year, you don’t need to worry.   This book will acquire at least a temporary cover soon, I swear.  BUT not this week, because today I’m going to post this, then do a quick fly-by cleaning, then redesign my website and rearrange stuff here too.*

A Wolfe At The Door

 

Jonathan Blythe, Earl of Savage,

 

The problem, of course, was that I had moved out of Papa’s study.  Not that it was a problem, exactly that I’d moved out of his study.  What I mean to say was, after all, Papa had blown out his brains while sitting at the desk, and while the servants had done an impressive job of cleaning and I was sure I wasn’t likely to run across forgotten brain matter on the key to the accounts due drawer, yet I didn’t feel comfortable working there.

Truth be told, Papa and I had had no love lost between us.  He didn’t understand me and deplored my unsteadiness and I—

I used to think, when I was very young, that my father, unlike the other people around us, wasn’t quite real.  Oh, I knew there was elf blood in his line.  At least, from the time I was seven or so, I’d heard people mutter about it.  Usually, I’d heard people mutter about it while hiding under the drapery of occasional tables in mama’s sitting room during her at homes.  I don’t know if mama knew they muttered.  But anyway, I knew that Papa had elf blood, and also that this was supposed to make on distant, cold, and – somehow – unreliable.

But papa didn’t strike me as an elf, at least not like any elves I’d read about in the stories in the nursery.  Instead, he struck me as… glass.  I used to have dreams in which my father was a statue made of glass that had, inexplicably, come to life.  Not that I saw Papa very often.  In later years I’d wondered at how many children my parents had produced since, even when they were in the same house, they seemed to dislike intensely being in the same room.  And yet, from the look of my siblings, and also the fact that she is the most proper of scolds, I was almost sure Mama hadn’t improved the bloodline.

In any case, there was no love lost between Papa and I.  When I’d reached the age of reason, or at least the age to leave school and be able to set up my own establishment, he’d paid my bills without protest, and he’d furnished me whatever I needed or wanted, from decent horses to enough money to keep a couple of round heels happy and devoted to me.

But if you added up all the time we’d spent together in our lives, when we didn’t just happen to both be at the same party or dinner, I’d wager – and high too – that it wouldn’t come to more than ten hours, altogether.

Which just goes to show you.  There was no love lost, and no reason I should mourn him.  And certainly, while I had not held the pistol that blew out his  brains, I’d told him that I knew about his malfeasance, and given him reason to blow out his brains.

All the same, I’d found I couldn’t concentrate, attempting to work in the room where he’d breathed his last. Not that I believe in ghosts.  Or at least, I don’t believe I would see ghosts.  Mostly because I never have, and if I were going to start, it would probably be Freddie, who was like a brother to me and who died on that curricle race. But on the other hand, what a start it would be to have Papa’s sour tones call me from the perusal of estate documents with “Jonathan!”

So I’d moved my study, and I’d moved it to the only room I could think of, which would take all the bureaus and secretaries needed for the task to run the magic business, the manufacturies and the farms: the little receiving hall by the front hall.

And that was the problem.  As I came down the main stairs, at a clip, Ginevra’s letter clutched in my head, and trying to decide what spell to use on that writing, to discover my fair unknown, I found our butler arguing with someone.

“Milord will see you at a proper time,” the Butler was saying.  His name was Harving and he had been in our service since I was very young.  Hearing him talk of Milord always made me expect Papa to show up.  “Surely you don’t expect to be admitted without an appointment.”

I stopped, halfway down the marble stairs, hesitating.  It was still in time, I thought, to escape back up those stairs.  For one, should it become known around town that I am up at shortly after cock’s crow, my reputation will be quite in shreds.  People will start referring to me as old somber sides, and probably demanding I live up to my station in life.  Worse, they might decide I need to get married and raise up a whole generation of Savages to my title.  Which, heaven forfend.

So I froze.  The person talking to Harving couldn’t possibly know me.  He looked like a rustic, with coarse dark hair which appeared to have been cut by the method of upending a bowl on one’s head and cutting anything that strayed beneath.  And he hadn’t shaved that day, if indeed the day before.

But he didn’t dress like a rustic.  His suit, though dark brown was of good cut and material and would not have disgraced a respectable merchant.

Still, he could not know me.  He did not look in the least like the sort of man to join the groups in which I ran.  And I was sure I’d never met him by himself.

I started to turn around, trying to make the movement natural.  The man was talking in a low rumble to Harving, and I could feel Harving’s stony rejection of him behind me.

But just as I turned, the man’s voice called out, “Milord!  Lord Savage.”

It took me about a second to realize that running like crazy up the stairs was not something an Earl could do.  It probably wasn’t something I should even have done as an Earl’s heir.  But this didn’t mean I had to like it.  I turned around and descended the rest of the stairs, in the most stony manner possible, folding Ginevra’s letter and putting it in my breast pocket.

The rustic was holding his hat and looking up at me as though I were his hope for salvation, and Harving was stonily disapproving, if of me or of the rustic didn’t bear thinking.  Being stonily disapproving was his default mode towards me, anyway.

“Yes,” I said, as I reached the bottom step and stood on it, to maintain the advantage of position over the two of them.  “And you are?  I don’t have the pleasure—”

“No, milor’” the rustic said, and his voice was cultivated, while bearing a trace of the North country.  “I’ve been traveling and there would not have been any occasion to have met you, though I have corresponded with you often since–  Since the unfortunate demise of your esteemed parent.  In fact I only recognized you from your resemblance to your grandfather, which is marked.”

“And you are?” I said, again, coldly.  If he’d corresponded with me often and often, he was likely one of our suppliers or managers, but which one?  There were a good fifty of the creatures.

“My name is Wolfe Merritt, Milor’”

I made a sound, because of course, Wolfe was our main manager, the man responsible for Blythe blessings.  I should in fact have met him, if I’d either given any attention to the business before Papa’s death, or if Merritt hadn’t been on some trip of inspection since papa died.

Which meant this was important business indeed, and Harving should have been standing on position.  I dismissed him with, “That will do, Harving,” and feeling Ginevra’s letter like a weight over my heart, I realized it would have to wait.  I turned to Merritt, “Come with me,” I said.  “Into my study.”

I’d had the study furnished in all new furniture, and it was all light and airy figured walnut.  The chairs were comfortable, too, because if someone was important enough to be admitted to my study, he wasn’t an adversary and, unlike Papa, I didn’t view everyone I dealt with as an enemy to be conquered.

“What will you have,” I said, sitting behind my desk and ringing for service.

“Nothin–  Nothing milor’.”

“Teetotaler?” I asked.

Something like a shadow went across his face, and his lip tried to lift in a smile.  “No, Milor’.  But your father didn’t like–  That is—”

“Forget my father,” I said.  “I’m doing my best to.  Now, what will you have?”

“Brandy, Milor’.  If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all.”  I approved of a man not afraid to drink brandy this early in the morning, and I relayed the order to the serving man who appeared.  Then I turned back to Wolfe, “You were on a visit of inspection to manufactories that were having some trouble, and I do not know why, nor what you found.  So perhaps you’d care to enlighten me?”

Wolfe drew in breath, puffed out his cheeks, then let it out with an explosive “Pah” sound.  “Well, milor’  That is the problem.  In fact, I don’t know…  That is, it started as something so uncertain that we couldn’t be sure, but then…  But it didn’t seem right, and your father was busy with… with other matters, and this left me to look into it.  I thought it was something to do with the spells we’d used last year not being quite right.  Sometimes you get flighty head magicians and—” He shrugged.

“Understood,” I said, though I actually understood very close to nothing.  Harving himself came in, gave me a disapproving look, and set two glasses and a decanter of brandy on a tray on my desk.  I dismissed him with a nod, and poured brandy for myself and Merritt.

As Harving closed the door behind him, Wolfe grabbed for the glass of brandy I extended him, tossed it back in a single gulp, looked at me with woebegone expression and said, “It’s gone rotten milord.”

“What?  What has?” I asked, wondering if there was a reason, after all, that Papa didn’t let Merritt drink.

“The Magic, milor’”

“What magic?  The spells we sent to the manufactories, or—”

“All of it,” he said.  He sighed.  “All of it.  All the spells sold by Blythe blessings, but the industrial magic sent to our manufactories too.  It’s all gone rotten.  Mostly it does what you expect, just oddly or weakly, but then there are times when a spell or powering magic will go… disastrously wrong.  There was that child in the factory in Liverpool who–  never mind.  It doesn’t bear describing.  But it can’t go on.”

I tossed my brandy down my throat, thinking of all of papa’s ill gotten gains going up the spout and leaving us destitute after all.  “I…”  I cleared my throat.  “What can have caused it?”

“A strain of rogue magic,” he said.  “Come from elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere?  You mean, one of our rivals?”  Despite everything my house had done to Seraphim Ainsling, I couldn’t see him taking revenge.  He was one of nature’s noblemen, was Seraphim.  Besides, he’d come out well enough, so why would he?

“No, milor’.  I mean another world.”