According To Hoyt

As we were landing in Porto, after our travel (mis)adventures, my son leaned out towards the window (I always claim as right of she who gave birth, the right to the window seat) at a landscape covered in terraces, in which sit massive white or cream buildings with red tile roofs, and said “Wow, it’s like someone built a Roman Civilization in a game and brought it to today’s time.”

It is impossible to clearly explain – in a way other people would understand – how densely populated Portugal is. Let’s just say that most buildings are apartments, even in relatively rural areas such as where my parents live, and that possessing a stand alone home is a sign of wealth. Let’s also say that the only time I landed in as dense a location was when landing in NYC, and even there you can see more green around the edges.

I remember, when I was an exchange student, being taken on a bus past miles and miles of forest and half-disbelieving it. Everyone knew America was more advanced than Portugal (advanced meaning of course, more urbanized, more cosmopolitan) so how was this possible?

But it is not the elbow room – or the lack thereof – that beggars the mind. It’s the elbow room in the past. You can’t go half a kilometer without stumbling on something that remains from medieval days – sometimes properly noted, sometimes in ruins and forgotten – you can’t walk down the street without stumbling on a statue commemorating some event or other. The only thing even vaguely approaching this are the older parts of Philadelphia and for in comparison they’re virtually amnesiac.

Portugal is steeped in history, ankle deep in its currents. Echoes of events unimaginably old to the average American reverberate through everyday life. The design of Roman farmhouses (some of them still bearing the lintel piece identifying a legionary ancestor and the Emperor who gave him the land at the end of his term of service) is overlaid in tile in designs brought to the Peninsula by its Arab occupiers. The carving of ropes and anchors around a farmhouse window reminds you of the lost glories of the discoveries.

Someone said in response to my bookstore post that perhaps Anglo-Saxons were more obsessed with history. This is not true so much as most Portuguese don’t view history so much as something to study as as something that IS. It would be like taking a degree in air and breathing, if you get my meaning. The histories I’ve found are either painfully generic or of the involved, detail-obsessed sort “history of the castle of a little village of no importance from nine o’clock in the morning on Thursday the thirteenth of August of 1234 to seven PM on Sunday the 12^th of April of 1246.” Also, they tend to ignore the rest of the world in their inward turning, so I had to learn the story of the castle that sits in the center of the village where I grew up from an internet site run by a British couple. (Turns out it was built as a playhouse for the daughter of a local farmer. I knew it was not a “real” castle, but I lacked the story.) And it was a book in the US that revealed to me the history of the mother of Henry The Navigator, that Portuguese queen known around here only as Phillipa of Lancastre.”

I think I got my first notion of the existence of such a thing as history when taking walks with my dad through the fields and forests around here. We’d stumble on inscriptions, demarcation stones, ruins, and many times they identified themselves in Latin, in ancient Greek, or in more recent (but archaic) versions of Portuguese. It had to wait, though, till I saw pictures of this region from above on the net, to figure out that my grandmother’s assertion that the forests had “always” been there was in fact wrong. It is clear those forests grew over abandoned fields, farms and villages, some dating probably to one of the many invasions, some more recent, like the ones left vacant by the black plague or one of the economic contractions the country suffers through with metronome-like regularity.

Portugal is not only incredibly densely populated by American standards, it is, in fact, built on Portugal.

I remember, though I no longer can do this, living as though time were another dimension – locating myself not just by WHERE I am but WHEN I am, and knowing, as far as I could everything that happened in that space in at least the last millennium – feeling all the past generations and their struggles. It was something less than psychic visions and something more than mere knowing what had happened. It felt like an extra dimension in the world, if that makes sense.

I can no longer do it because though America has history and even pre-history, it is not of the same sort, not as densely packed, not unavoidable. The closest I came to it was while walking around Dinosaur Ridge, in Colorado.

The feeling it induces is akin to walking by the ocean and feeling its immensity dwarf you and knowing that it was there before you were and it will be there when you’re long gone. It makes you feel very small and very unimportant, but at the same time it also makes your current problems seem negligible as you pause in the presence of something bigger than you.

Unfortunately for Portugal I think it also acts as a ball and chain of sorts. To know that almost everything has been tried, and what you have is the current mess means most people don’t try.

Not that this is why I left for America. I left because ya’ll seduced me by flashing a bit of Constitution, a lot of personal freedom and the swelling mountains of “can do” spirit.

But sometimes I wonder if America will eventually become like Portugal – bowed under the weight of history, warming itself by the fire of past achievements and dreaming of long gone times.

I don’t think this is now, yet. I think we’re more likely to be suffering growth pangs. I don’t think our senescence will come till I’m long in my grave and one of those whose ghostly achievements (I hope) haunt my yet unborn descendants.

And for that I’m glad.

*crossposted at Classical Values*

(A guest post by my friend, Doctor Tedd Roberts, whom I thank for doing this.)

 

I am a scientist.  In a very real way I write for a living.  My Curriculum Vitae lists over 75 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, over 10 chapters in books, and hundreds of meeting abstracts and presentations.  I have written more than 30 research grant applications – about half have been funded, requiring annual or even quarterly progress reports.  Each journal article runs to about 15,000 words, book chapters to 20-25,000, grant applications and progress reports are only between 5,000-10,000 words each.  If all of these were converted to short stories or novels, I would have “sold” around 15-20 books-worth of material and been ranked among the more prolific fiction writers by this point in my career, and spent more time “on stage” than most movie stars (or TV, maybe, but it doesn’t approach theater and stage appearance). 

 

Scientific writing takes a lot of time.  The fiction writers I know spend a lot of time either researching or “ideating” to get the story right in their head, then sit down and pound out 10-15,000 words in a long weekend. Granted, they usually have a target of 120,000 words for a novel and typically cannot keep up that pace until completion; six months for a good draft seems typical.  For me to perform the work necessary for a 15,000 word journal article takes *at least* 6 months.  First the experiments are run – mostly by my technical staff, but I am involved in all of the planning and analysis – then the data is analyzed, charted and graphed, statistics calculated, and I can start to write.  I can get 15,000 words written in a week if I have no other duties, but the work of a professor usually doesn’t allow that.  I have to do most of my writing late at night, when the house is quiet and I am the only one awake. Then comes the editing and re-writing as I pass the manuscript over to a colleague who will approach it from a different perspective.  Meanwhile I remake figures, and run new analyses since I usually realize that the results are incomplete, but I didn’t realize it until I tried to write them.  Meanwhile I am also reading recent papers by scientists in related fields so that I can cite the appropriate comparisons to existing scientific literature when I finish writing the discussion of the paper.  So, six months is optimistic; the more appropriate comparison is 6 months to perform experiments, 2 months to analyze, 4 months to write and edit the manuscript.  *If* it is accepted to a scientific journal without the need for extensive changes, I will not see it in print for a year or more! 

Yes, this is very much like the life of a fiction writer, and it’s my day job. SO, why is it that I find myself wanting to write Science Fiction?

Well, part of it is because I *read* Science Fiction, and quite often despair over the misuse of science in books, TV and movies.  Dr. Travis Taylor says he started writing because he complained loudly about books and TV that were poorly written, and claimed that he could write better.  His wife told him to “put up or shut up.” Five solo novels and six collaborations later, “Doc Travis” is a respected SF writer.

Do I think I could do that?  Well, no, frankly, for all I know, Doc doesn’t sleep.  I do not have that much time in my day; and as I have written elsewhere, my mind can either write science, or fiction.  I find myself unable to alternate my writing between professional and recreational topics.  Once I get an idea for what *I* think would be a good story, I have to clear time to put aside my professional writing and finish the story.  Otherwise, I have to stop the story in mid-thought, so to speak, and will have trouble picking it up later.

Don’t get me wrong, I *do* have story ideas.  I have 5 novel-length stories blocked and outlined, I have even written about 20,000 words each in two of them.  I have 5 short stories and 2 novelettes written and ready for submission, five more in various states of completion, and a nonfiction book nearing completion.  It’s just that I understand that I may never complete the long-form fiction before I retire from the day job.  I read the words of advice of authors – I know not to give up the day job for the insecurity of a fiction writing career.  I know that for my own purposes, I need a secure base and plenty of time before I can devote the effort that I know it will take to be able to write at the professional SF/F level – let alone be able to *sell* any of these pieces.

But I *am* a writer.  I am published.  My record is envious even within my field.  SO why do I feel a need to write?  Perhaps it is because I am a teacher.  I have taught preschool age kids in Sunday school, elementary through high-school as a substitute teacher, college undergraduate & graduate laboratory as a graduate student, and medical and graduate students as a professor.  I don’t teach much know, but I enjoy – not always, I had to *learn* how to teach – but I enjoy it when I can.  As the first in my family to earn a degree in a medical field, I have been called on as “interpreter” to explain what the doctor said to all members of my extended family.  I am asked questions by writers to explain some aspect of science and/or medicine in a way that makes it easy to fit into a story.  Then there’s that little bit about despairing that writers and Hollywood will ever get brain science right.  My compromise between the science-writing and fiction-writing halves of my brain is a blog, and eventual book, which explains brain science in layman’s terms.

And again – why write SF?  Perhaps the best, the most important reason, is that I tell stories.  When I teach, I tell a story that seeks to lead young minds to understanding and knowledge.  When I write science, I tell a story of mystery, detective work, and discovery.  When my children were very young, my wife and I read and sang to them every night.  When their grandparents visited, they also joined the routine.  My mother-in-law sang children’s songs, my father-in-law had a wonderful style of recitation for classic poetry, my mother snuggled and sang and read – but my father told *stories*!  Not experience or personal events – no, my father made up stories on the spot, and the kids were riveted.  My Dad could make *any* simple topic into a fantastic adventure.  *He* is a storyteller, and I guess I inherited that from him.

So I write stories, and tell stories.  It seems to be a common feature, that humans are natural storytellers – some get up on stage, others write it down, and some stories never make it out of the imagination.  In ancient times, people made up stories about the constellations and patterns in the sky.  Cave drawings tell a story, as does oral history.  Science is a story, a story of how things work and in some cases, how we *want* them to work.  Writing stories means I have to give up a few things to do so: a bit of family time, a bit of sleep, even reading more SF.  Do I think I can do it better?  Not necessarily – but to quote Sinatra – I know I can do it “My Way.”

Yesterday while in the car on the way to the seaside, my son remarked that all Portuguese songs are sad. While this is a gross generalization, it is true that most, and perhaps the best, Portuguese songs partake a note of wishfulness or sadness.

You can find the same note vibrating through the poetry and novels, even those that are ostensibly cheerful. This is how, in the same way, it took until well into the late eighties for Americans to master the “nevermind” novel Europeans specialize in. Unlike their European counterparts, Americans always feel as though there is a solution to everything.

It is that feeling that impels our “can do” spirit. P.J. O’Rourke in describing the dismal conditions in a restaurant in the newly fallen Soviet Union/new Russia said that an American with a couple of rags and a bottle of windex would set it all to rights.

It is not imperial aspirations, despite what a lot of our intellectuals think, that lead us to do this, but the rock-bottom belief that every problem has a solution and that the solution can’t be much farther to seek than the next average Joe with a will and a plan. (The endless wait for “experts” is part of the European disease, but more on that later.)

While visiting here, I have to repress a thousand times a day the wish to set something straight that is crooked, clean something that is dirty, straighten something that is fallen. But there is not much point. It would be perceived as, if not “imperial” at least as intrusive. And I’m only here for two weeks and would much prefer not to make enemies. So I endure it, as do those who are submerged in the population and who wish the could straighten and clean and fix. I’m sure that the mix is about the same there and there, of those who prefer to let things be, and those who would improve them. The difference is one of, for lack of a better term, the national soul.

If nations have souls, America is the young man setting out into the world. It has had some smacks on the nose and a couple of pratfalls, but it’s still hopeful and knows the future is bright ahead. On the other hand Portugal….

Portugal as I told my son, has been part of three lost empires – real empires, not the imagined American Empire: Carthage, Rome and their own empire, all of them have vanished. And now Portugal is like the old person sitting in the corner, reminiscing on bygone glories.

Perhaps this is appropriate for a country where demographics has tilted and where in 25 years they expect the population to be halved. (Mind you for a country of old people, they all drive like bats out of hell… OTOH, so do the old people in my neighborhood.)

The problem, perhaps compounded by a melancholy walk around the area, pointing out to my son the remains (mostly ruins) of the village I knew, is that I’m having issues writing space opera. Space Opera is a quintissential American genre. I’ve read French and Portuguese space operas and they fail to convince at the gut level. Here, surrounded by the remains of past grandeur, I find myself wanting to write the sort of epic fantasy that starts with “Let me tell you of the lost city on the edge of the congealed sea….”

It was pithy and charming and had … charm, yeah, it’s charm.  Among its excellent qualities must be counted invisibility, as I don’t appear to have saved it in this drive.  RATs.   I’ll try to get it up later.  I’m at my brothers, at my nephew’s birthday party, and maybe I can go down the street and get my file….

For those who don’t know this, I am in Portugal at the moment, visiting my parents till the middle of June.

 

It’s not quite a return to familiar hunting grounds.  First, I’ve never lived in Portugal as an adult – I went to the States straight out of college.  The rhythms and obligations of a responsible adult in Portugal are completely unknown and often mysterious.  Second, the country has changed a lot since I was here.  When I left there was one mall.  It was a mini-mall, with maybe ten shops, and it was in downtown Porto.

 

So I was a little surprised when a visit to the bookstore, to spend a gift card my dad got for his birthday took me to the mall in what used to be one of the nearest villages.  The mall was both familiar and oddly different.  Yes, there were all the usual accouterments of a mall, including a food court, but the lay out was different, and there were very few people there, and none of them looked like mall rats.

 

The bookstore was different too.  Portugal, in some ways has always been ahead of the US when it comes to book marketing.  Okay.  In a bad way.  You know how towards the end of the old model, there, before ebooks changed the game, no one kept back lists?  Portugal was always like that.  I’m not sure why, perhaps because of the pressures of a smaller market, but the first printrun was all you got.  So bookstores are smaller.  On the other hand, they are still, strictly, bookstores.  There are no cds, no coffee shops, no movies.  Just books, in clearly marked sections.

 

The books are, and this is a reflection of the national character, at least in terms of the people who CHOOSE to read, mostly non-fiction of a scholarly nature.  There were a lot of books I wanted, ranging from a comprehensive history of Portugal (almost impossible to get in the US) to fictionalized biographies of various Portuguese princesses.  Unfortunately I was with my dad, who had announced his intention to buy me anything I wanted.  Even more unfortunately, these books ran in the neighborhood of 40 Euros, which is daylight robbery.

 

When my dad asked me to find him a book I enjoyed, I was stumped.  Apparently, only our more turgid bestsellers make it here, including Dan Brown’s Opus (opuses?) which really shouldn’t sell that well in a Catholic Country.  I mean, people know that the Catholic church doesn’t have assassins, right?  (If they did, I’d be a nun, duh.)   There were also, disguised under historical covers, book after book of undead porn.  (Some of it very good undead porn, but not my dad’s cup of tea, and certainly not the sort of thing I should recommend to my dad.)   There were other bestsellers too and I ended up settling for recommending him a scholarly book on World War II and one of Phillipa Gregory’s historical books.  I probably would have recommended Raymond Feist, too, but I doubt my dad would “get” Fantasy.

 

The good news is that Science Fiction and Fantasy were shelved in the middle of the other fiction.  The bad news is that there was so little of it.

 

How does this relate to where we are, and what the ebooks are bringing?  Ebooks are unknown here.  I had to explain my kindle over and over and over again.  The funny thing is that once explained they take to the concept like ducks to water.  They want them.  Badly.

 

If my dad read English I would, right now, be leaving him my kindle.  As is, though, there is no Amazon pt selling translations of works.  And here I must ask, why not?  Surely I’m not the only writer who is fluent in two languages.  If we’re going to do this thing on our own, why not sell translations?  I wonder if Naked Reader would like a Portuguese translation of ATON?  The sales will be slow, but due to the lack of back list and limited selection, the market is wide open.  It will be slow only till e-readers catch on.  And I think I know someone who can do a French Translation, and I wonder if I can get a friend to translate into Japanese if I give him a cut of the action…

 

This is something we haven’t even started to think about, but we should.  Ebooks are by nature worldwide.  Oh, what brave new world…

 How do you think we should go about it? 

«crossposted at Mad Genius Club.»

Today we went to the fair.  The fair – actually several fairs – take place in various villages around here on different days of the week.  It says something about the mind f the Portuguese people – to whose composition the Carthaginians made a considerable contribution, at least in the North – that the days of the week are not named after divinities of other abstractions but after fairs.  Saturday and Sunday remain from the Roman calendar, but Monday is Segunda Feira – second fair – and Tuesday is Terca Feira, and the rest of the week is properly numbered as the type of fair it is.

 

There are fairgrounds in Portugal still that were established as part of the gift of some monarch or other, and which have stalls made of stone and with proper roofs.  The fairs around here, in municipalities that used to have too few inhabitants to matter, are more ad hoc.  I’m sure you pay a fee to sell there (not sure how much) but after that it’s a matter of getting two sticks on the ground and a bit of cloth overhead.  Mind, these days there are a lot of beach umbrellas and other bits of civilization intruding.  Also these days half or more of the merchandise offered is unlicensed Disney knock offs and illegal copies of movies (the Portuguese are almost as bad about copyright as the Chinese.)  There are also piles of t-shirts, rolls of fabric, mountains of shoes.  The merchandise offered falls into either the “fell off the back of a truck” category or the “discount outlet” category (which otherwise don’t exist in Portugal.)  Tons of knock offs and brand name imitations.

 

The prices are reasonable, too, even for discount outlet merchandise, something that can’t otherwise be said for most of the stuff sold in Portugal.

 

And here and there, like survivals of the past you find stuff that would have been at the medieval fair, likely held in the same spot or close by: redware which I wish I knew I COULD afford to stick in my luggage (the weight is problematic) including a charming stewpot in the shape of a chicken body with the chicken wing and legs as the top; various hand painted wares; vegetables sold by the farmers; and, in vast crates, chickens, ducks and geese, including the young of the species.  (It was hard to convince my son we didn’t need a pet goose.)

 

Overall, the atmosphere was something like what you might imagine a medieval fair might have been.  Nothing of our sophisticated, bloodless shopping expeditions in an air conditioned mall, but probably how most of the world still shops.

 

No, I wouldn’t like to live here permanently, and the shopping is too haphazard (you’re never sure what you’ll find or for how much) but for the writer eye and the writer mind, it was a great experience.  I’d done it before, of course, growing up here, but this time I took notes.  I’m sure you’ll see the results in a future work.

I hope you forgive me having been absent from the blog.  I´d have managed earlier, but we were delayed in travel. It seems inevitable that when taking three flights in a row, one of them international, at least one flight will be late enough to moot all your other reservations.

In this case, I found myself stranded in Madrid for twelve hours.

Someone on Facebook informed me that Madrid is a beautiful city and I should have gone to the prado.  I appreciate the tip, except that I was restricted to the airport, tied down by luggage and other such considerations, not the least being that I was afraid the city would prove as infuriating as the airport.

The experience was sort of similar to landing in Chicago at two in the morning  –we were pointed in a general direction, given no instructions, could find neither personnel nor a screen with information and wandered long corridors in an experience reminiscent of rats seeking cheese.

Airports are always at best a miserable experience, designed for so many people coming from so many locations that itºs not comfortable for anyone.  In this case we had maximum inconvenience complicated by language barriers.  (I understand Spanish, but Spaniards seemed to understand neither Portuguese nor English.)

Yes, I know I sound like a spoiled American.  Iºll cop to the charge.  I think the patience with which people endure poor service and insane behavior on the part of those in any form of authority (and of course airport employees have authority of a sort over jet-lagged, dislocated travelers) breeds more insane behavior, erratic service and capricious rudeness.

I could be wrong, but I know that if any airport in the states were that bad, people would be avoiding it in droves.

At any rate we survived, though sleepless and comfortless.  I am just about recovered now, and hope to resume daily blogging.  Hopefully on more interesting subjects than airport complaints next time.

And fortunately on the way back my connections will be Lisbon and Philly, where I at least speak both languages and — by and large — the natives understand me.

The difficulties of serving two masters are well known, whether they be G-d and Mamon or more pedestrian entities, such as a family and a career.

It is an aphorism in espionage that no one trusts a double agent, possibly not even the agent himself.

However, until very recently, this was the absolute sine-qua-non of being a working writer. to publish, you needed to please the editors/publishers. To sell, after that, you needed to please the public.

Of course editors and publishers would tell you that they picked the stuff that would sell. (Waggles hand.) Most of the time, the truth is that they either had no idea what the popular taste was, or stood at a dignified distance, shaking their heads at it.

There are exceptions. Baen, as always, in part because of the bar, where publisher, authors and fans rubbed elbows in equality, had a good inkling what its market was and hit it square on most of the time. The other houses were hazier.

For a long time, I think the tastes were congruent or close enough. But in the late twentieth century, with all the publishing houses in NYC, and all the editors coming from the same general background – usually liberal arts, prestigious college – and the business managers being corporate entities, divorced from the day to day running of the business and its consequences, the tastes became at times two very different things. This is where the editors came from who thought their job was to educate the public. (Hint – you’re supposed to SELL to the public. All else is secondary.)

Because I’m one of those writers who can do both “literature” (It’s not, but it can pass) and normal, fun books I quickly became aware that the public as manifest at signings, fan letters and the occasional offer to have my baby, liked the second kind. The editors (and a lot of agents) OTOH preferred the first. They wanted to feel like they were facilitating/publishing something “important.”

After a while I learned to walk the line. Put in just enough literary/historical references (a certain number seem to happen spontaneously) to sell the book to NYC and keep it fun enough to sell to the fans. All while – yes – trying to serve my inner drive and need to express a specific story.

Did I succeed? I often listed madly one way or the other.

In the brave new world where authors sell directly to the public, how will that change the character of the books? I don’t believe it means all writing will be drivel. Neither do I believe that all of it will be worthy. But I confess I’m very curious to see how things work out.

(I’m going to be en-route to Portugal for the next twelve hours or so, and after that my access to the net will also be erratic for about two weeks. I intend to keep up my daily posting, but the hours – particularly given my tendency to calculate time zones backwards – might become very interesting.)

Three days ago, I took it upon myself to dispute the conclusions of Michael Levin writing in the Forbes blog and prophesying the end of the book. Not just the end of the paper book, or the end of the book as we know it, but the end of the book, period.

He seemed to believe it was at least in part suicide, with the publishers choosing to publish a lot of things that no one really wanted to buy, and – as it were – metaphorically standing at the end of the abyss saying “stop me before I jump.” In this scenario, Amazon came along and gave the final shove.

Perhaps because economics is my hobby, I tend to look at the same scenario – and I’ll admit Michael is right – grosso modo – about the scenario – and see the free market at work. Or perhaps more accurately, the iron law of economics at work: if there is a market that’s being badly served and someone else comes up with a way to serve it better, the model will chance and the old way of doing things die out. Or in other words (sorry, writing this late at night after a day spent packing for two weeks abroad) if you build a better mousetrap the manufacturers of inferior mousetraps will go out of business.

So far so good. What I disagreed – and disagree – with is the disappearance of the book as such. Michael, who, it turns out, is a good sport and didn’t even get upset at my calling him Mark – Okay, didn’t get VERY upset – (It’s something I do to Michaels. My friend Michael Kabongo has been for some time “Tony” to our circle of friends. No, he doesn’t like it, so I wouldn’t advise trying it.) but his comment in the “about” section of my blog clarified his argument.

Dear Sarah,

Many thanks for reading and responding so passionately to my piece about publishing in Forbes. The reality is that there are more of them than there are of you and me, in that you and I pay for content and others don’t, or won’t in the future. Maybe I’m as wrong as you say. But my first name is Michael, not Mark, so perhaps we both have a right to be wrong! I enjoyed your piece and am glad that you saw fit to write about it. Warmly, Mark no wait Michael

(I think by “passionately” he means that I’m excitable. That’s fine. I am. My husband says so, and he knows me quite well.)

His next statement however raises eyebrows. For more on this, look at the Baen Free Library. Also, note that Baen has long run its ebook section on low prices and no DRM and far from having a loss continues to thrive.

For yet more corroboration that piracy alone won’t kill an industry, look at music. Yes, it’s completely different from before going electronic, but again, provided the price is reasonable and there’s no DRM you’ve eliminated two reasons to pirate: costs, and because it’s a challenge. Music for money still exists and it still supports artists.

The caveat here is that Michael works, mostly, in non fiction. I’m not sure of the mechanics for non-fiction. I know in fiction, most people have an instinctive understanding that only this writer could produce this work, and if the writer starves in his lonely little attic, you won’t have any more… Honor, or Athena, or Captain Vimes, or…

I’m not sure the same understanding applies to non fiction. It’s entirely possible that people just assume there’s no intrinsic virtue to how-to or non-fic, that the info was there, if anyone else had collected. Non-fic might fall under the misguided aprehension that “data wants to be free.”

Also, because some non fic, at least (school books) is unlikely to crawl out from under the thumb of the big houses any time soon, it will probably be overpriced and DRMed to the gills.

So Michael might be right. It might be the end of a TYPE of book. I don’t think so, but I’ll concede the point that on THAT I have no other proof than a gut feeling that once people realize the stuff you can get for free is worth what you pay for it, they will realize non-fic writers need to live also.

However, as I told Michael Levin, in my answer to his comment, the future is notoriously hard to make predictions about, particularly when it hasn’t happened, yet. I will admit for non-fic he might very well be right, which means the market will transmute to another media. I’m going to guess specialized how-to and non-fic blogs, probably supported by contributions.

(I’m going to be en-route for the next thirty six hours or so, and after that my access to the net will also be erratic for about two weeks. I intend to keep up my daily posting, but the hours – particularly given my tendency to calculate time zones backwards – might become very interesting.)

It never rains but it pours.  I woke up at five am with a screaming cat in the hallway — Euclid, being neurotic, which falls under his job description.

Immediatley afterwards, I realized I was in pain.  One of my teeth has been feeling weird for a while, but nothing approaching pain — I’d actually describe it as “encased in cork” if that makes sense.  Well…  it started hurting in the middle of the night, and it is a tooth anchoring a bridge, so it’s not something I can get easilly done in Portugal.  (Yes, I know those are supposed to be dead through root canal first, only this one has already had two go rounds.)

Appointment with doctor — for which I do not have the time — in about an hour.

Afterwards, I’ll try to do what I can in terms of packing/laundry/etc.  It’s going to be a long day, particularly if I end up spending the afternoon in emergency dental surgery.

THIS is the kind of luck I battle against…