While Cedar City does have winter, often bitingly cold, if not nearly so cold as Canadian winters, it does reach below zero [Fahrenheit] temperatures a handful of times most winters, and most winter nights have sub-freezing temperatures. We also have lots of wind. Because at almost 6,000 feet, Cedar City is high desert, we don’t get huge amounts of snow, but it does tend to stay around, and we usually get 2-5 significant snowfalls, significant being more than a foot where I live. And because I do walk a lot for exercise, half on trails and half on streets/sidewalks, when this occurs, as it has in the last few weeks, I do notice which houses evidence snow removal, which do not, and how much is cleared, either by shovel, snow-blower, or plow.

There are those houses, thankfully a minority, where no snow ever appears to be shoveled, and where the inhabitants merely pack down the snow into a solid mass on driveways and sidewalks. Eventually, this turns to ice or a reasonable facsimile thereof. In time, in our dry air, it eventually sublimates, but not before causing slips and falls.

Then there are those houses where only the driveway is shoveled, clearly indicating that the thought that anyone walks anywhere except from or to a vehicle has never occurred to the inhabitants. Next come the houses where the sidewalk to the street and/or mailbox is shoveled, as well as the driveway, but nothing else.

Finally, there are the houses where every walk and driveway is shoveled/cleared. Ours fits this category, except for the redwood deck that’s effectively unusable in winter and inaccessible except from inside the house – although I do clear the access to the bird feeder.

In observing all the different stages of snow removal or lack thereof, certain thoughts have occurred to me. First, clearing sidewalks – especially the walks other than those providing access to house, mailbox, or vehicle – is essentially a matter of both courtesy and safety to others.

Second, snow removal appears to be largely deficient in those dwellings harboring teenagers and young adults, except as necessary to obtain vehicle access.

Third, a high percentage of older couples still manage snow removal, although, understandably, it often takes them longer.

Fourth, after one or two winters, a certain percentage of retirees who moved here from California decide to move south.

Fifth, I’m really glad I have both a snow-blower and an ergonomic snow shovel.

The other day I read a reader review of Heritage of Cyador which stated that “Modesitt’s Utah heritage and belief system comes through in his writing.” That’s about half right. My books do reflect to a greater or lesser degree my beliefs. I believe that to be true of almost all writers, although it is more obvious with some writers and less so with others.

“Utah heritage,” however is another question, since I am neither of the LDS faith, nor am I a native-born Utahan. In fact, if we’re talking “heritage,” I’m a fourth generation Coloradan, who didn’t even move to Utah until I was fifty years old, years seasoned by nearly two decades spent in Washington, D.C., and whose beliefs are probably best described as Anglican/agnostic, and the reason I say Anglican rather than Episcopalian is because whatever religious traditions I do have are rooted in the King James versions of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer, which the Episcopalians abandoned years and years ago.

Why any of this matters is because it reflects on the human tendency to jump to conclusions based on inadequate or inaccurate facts… or even ignoring easily available facts. Since I write in a certain style and have lived in Utah for a number of years, this reader has immediately pigeon-holed me and assumed that my heritage is entirely based on my locale. This is obviously just one reader, but I could have given many examples of other equally erroneous “deductions” buy readers and others. At the same time, several more perceptive readers have deduced my “Anglican” aspects from the ritual passages describing the anomen services in the Imager Portfolio books, but such deduction requires more knowledge and thought, especially when there might be multiple explanations.

One reason often cited for jumping to conclusions is Occam’s Razor, which states that among competing hypotheses or ideas, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected, but all too often those who think they’re operating accurately under Occam’s principle fail to consider the linkage between a fact and the assumptions made based on those facts. Just because 62% of Utah’s population happens to be LDS, and 62% of the current population happens to have been born in Utah, doesn’t automatically or even statistically mean that because I live in Utah my heritage is Utahan – especially when my biography says I was born in Colorado. But it’s so much easier to assume I’m LDS and have a Utah heritage because I live in Cedar City and my writing meets a preconceived notion of what “LDS writing” is like. I explore moral themes. So do other writers. Some are LDS; some are not. To assume that a writer “is” something because of perceived similarities and where the writer lives, especially when there are published facts to the contrary, is not only intellectually sloppy, but also reflects a culture that wants quick and easy answers without much thought or research.

Then, too, it could also reflect the simplest interpretation of existing facts. My wife graduated from a Utah university, and has taught at two separate Utah universities for quite a number of years. I’m clean-shaven, don’t drink or smoke, and generally don’t use blasphemous curses in my writing [other kinds, definitely so]. We have far more than the average number of children… all of which suggests – erroneously – a certain religious affiliation.

And all of this also suggests why I tend to be most skeptical of people who cite Occam’s Razor, especially when they jump to conclusions. Life and the universe just aren’t that simple.

In his book, The Meaning of Human Existence, the noted biologist Edmund Wilson calls for what amounts to a return to “the Enlightenment” with the unification of the sciences and the humanities in the quest for meaning. He argues that the initial thrust of the Enlightenment “stalled” essentially because the sciences alone could provide no real explanations that would fulfill the human desire to find meaning in the universe, and, in response the humanities, especially the founders of Romantic literature, turned away from the sciences in their quest for meaning.

Wilson goes on to argue that a unified approach to discovering the meaning of life is necessary and vital because the conflicts between and within belief systems and religions cannot be resolved otherwise. [This point does assume that human beings will eventually accept factual discoveries that conflict with beliefs, an issue that I’ve raised more than once, since I suspect many humans will find it difficult to abandon belief in a faith-based supernatural.] He also points out, if quietly, that the rate of scientific advance has slowed and will continue to slow as more is discovered, and as more resources are required to research and develop subsequent knowledge and technology.

More to the point of the role of science fiction, Wilson points out that science fiction already plays a key role by using aliens as a means for us to reflect on our own condition. I frankly believe that Wilson ascribes to SF far too narrow a role in regard to charting the future course of human endeavor, although I’m glad to see a recognition in print of at least some of what speculative fiction has done and what I hope it will continue to do.

The Romantic movement sought to find the “truth” about the human condition and “reality” through everything from drugs to the elaborate use of metaphor, apparently because science did not provide an adequate and immediate answer. In a sense, the aliens of science fiction are indeed a metaphorical device for investigating the human condition, but SF also addresses more directly such basic questions as the role of science and technology in society in a way that is far more accessible than any scholarly or academic treatise can hope to do… and in fact in a fashion more accessible than even Wilson’s book. This exploration of the still-widening gulf between belief and scientific grounding in the existing reality of the universe is becoming more and more necessary… but at a time when harder science fiction is being written and read less frequently.

At the same time, I do have to admit that I am concerned about the swelling of interest in fantasy, particularly in the United Stated and particularly fantasy based on permutations and variations of the supernatural, and, equally, about the diminution of overall interest in science fiction grounded directly in scientific precepts and verified facts, perhaps because a great deal of supernatural-related fantasy appears to reinforce the existing dichotomy between the humanities and the sciences, or more bluntly, between romantic/religious faith/fantasy and a fact-based view of the universe.

If that seems a harsh judgment, consider that tens of thousands of people, if not more, have been slaughtered over the past decade by the suicide attacks of “true believers,” many of whom deeply believe they will achieve a paradise in heaven where they will be waited on, served, and serviced by seventy-odd virgins, based on extrapolation of teachings supposedly founded on the words of the Koran. Or consider the hard-core Christian fundamentalists who insist that the world is less than ten thousand years old. Clearly, there is a certain lack of even fundamental understanding of science, suggesting that such beliefs are about as far as one can get from the rational understanding of the human condition sought by Francis Bacon and the early proponents of the Enlightenment.

All of which suggests to me that there needs to be more good science fiction read by more people, particularly those of school age… but then, what else would a F&SF writer suggest?

Last month, Tor re-released The Soprano Sorceress in a trade paperback edition, but the Amazon Soprano Sorceress webpage that linked to me and my other books never showed the trade paperback edition. I brought this up to Tor, because what’s the use of publishing a new print edition if no one knows it’s out there, and, even if they do, they can’t order it? It took Amazon over a week to get back to Tor, and when the Amazon people did, they said it would take a week to fix the glitch. They informed Tor that there is a page that shows the trade paperback edition, but I can’t find a way to get to it, except through the link that Amazon provided. So far, almost two weeks later, the glitch has only been partly fixed. That is, is you search for The Soprano Sorceress, you can find the trade paperback, but if you search for me first, the only webpage for the book that comes up doesn’t have access to the trade paperback [at least as of this posting].

They can find and ship a book in minutes or hours, but it takes a week to find a glitch that’s already been brought to their attention… and another week to fix it?

And this is the high-tech master/monster of bookselling? Except, I forgot. It’s only concerned about obtaining books and ebooks as cheaply as possible and getting as many as possible to consumers as fast as possible. Fixing a problem with a reissued backlist title? That can wait.

And then, there’s still the elephant in the room, or the bookstore… Amazon’s treatment of ebooks and their authors. There’s one factor that’s so obvious to authors and publishers that it’s really been overlooked in the discussions, or those I’ve seen. Under standard contracts, royalties paid to authors for physically printed books are calculated and paid based on the list price of the book. It doesn’t matter to the author financially whether that $27.99 hardcover is sold for $27.99 at the small local independent bookstore, or at $20.99 at Barnes & Noble, or at $17.45 at Amazon; the royalty is the same. On standard ebook contracts, the royalty paid is effectively a percentage of the actual price paid, and it matters a great deal to the author whether that ebook is sold at $14.99, $12.95, or discounted to $9.99… or less.

Series mania seems to be continuing. Fewer and fewer authors are writing and publishing stand-alone novels. Practically every new author that appears debuts with the first book of a series. Now I realize that I have lots of books in series, and a fair number of series, but, given the way I write series, I’d submit that bulk of my series books can be read as stand-alones. If we’re talking pure stand-alone novels, twenty percent of my published work consists of stand-alone novels [all SF, I will admit], and I’ve continued to write them over the years, despite the sad fact that stand-alone books seldom sell nearly as well as series books. The bottom line here, literally, is that if you as readers want more stand-alone novels, you need to buy them, lots of them, because most writers, especially mid-list writers, can’t afford not to write series, and even if they’re not supporting themselves entirely on their writing, their publishers can’t afford to publish many stand-alone books by newer writers.

Several years ago, Southern Utah University named a small room in a campus building after Senator Harry Reid, who had graduated from S.U.U. years before. Earlier this year, a city councilman and the Iron County Republicans mounted a campaign to have the senator’s name removed on the grounds that his name on one small room was discouraging conservative donors from giving money to the university, which is a state institution. The university president capitulated, and Reid’s name was removed. At the time, Reid said nothing. Last week, when he was asked about it as part of a much longer interview in Las Vegas he simply said that the effort to remove his name had been the work of “right-wing whackos.” The Iron County Republicans, an extraordinarily conservative bunch, were incensed by his rather accurate characterization of them as extremists, apparently ignoring the fact that they’re among the most conservative Republicans in the most conservative state in the Union. They’re not extremists; they insist they’re true Republicans who believe in the Constitution… or their interpretation of the Constitution, which includes believing that Obama should be impeached for doing the same things that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush did and that all federal lands in Utah belong to the state and not the federal government.

This rather small episode got me to thinking, because that’s a pattern we’re seeing more and more of these days. Whatever the brand of extremism, the extremists aren’t extreme – they maintain that they are the followers of the true way, and establishing and maintaining that “true” way justifies whatever behaviors or tactics they employ.

Foremost among such extremists, of course, at least at present, are Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS (but certainly the Catholic Church in the 1500s wasn’t any better) in that they insist that they need to establish and maintain the true faith and that killing unbelievers and infidels is totally justified. They weren’t and aren’t extreme, but just doing God’s work.

Correspondingly, the leftwing ultra-feminists who declare that every sexual act between a man and a woman is an act of rape are merely pointing out “the truth.” Just as every right-to-life type who believes murdering doctors who perform abortions is justified in order to save the unborn is following his “truth.” Cliven Bundy and more than half the state legislators in Utah who declare that federal lands belong to them aren’t extremists; they declare they’re true patriots. Ultra-liberals who embrace all change and the newest thing as good are extremists, as are the internet extremists whose truth (“information wants to be free”) effectively embraces the extremes of socialism/communism with regard to intellectual property, but insist that they’re merely empowering the people.

All in all, as we’ve become more polarized in our attitudes, all too many of us have also come to believe that “our way” is the only way… in everything.