This past weekend I was in Denver, visiting family, and I took my usual morning walk along one of the walking/running/biking paths… and it seemed like I ran across more than a hundred people, most of them incredibly fit-looking, not exactly a surprise, given that Colorado is rated as the most “fit” state in the union. As a walker, albeit a fast walker who can almost keep up with the slower joggers, the few other walkers and I were definitely outnumbered by runners and bikers. And I was definitely outnumbered by all those who carried water-bottles and water back-packs; even some of the slowest walkers seemed to be carting water bottles.

I’ve never seen so many people carting water, and I have to ask why.

Living as I do in Cedar City, which is high desert, and dry enough most of the time to make Denver seem tropical by comparison, I’m well aware of the dangers of dehydration. I always make sure I’m hydrated before I take my walk, and then again after I return.

While the average humidity in Denver is around 50%, in Cedar City, from April to October it’s around 22%, and the high temperatures are close to those in Denver. But I don’t see the same proliferation of water paraphernalia in my home town as I was seeing in Denver.

What exactly is the concern with hydration that goes with the physical fitness cult?

I definitely understand the need for adequate fluids, especially on hot days,or if you’re well away from civilization. I certainly understand the need for endurance and long-distance runners to carry water bottles… but for 20 to 40 minute walks or runs, especially early in the day when it’s cooler? But then, when I did a little research, it turned out that if you’re exercising and in good health, it’s just about impossible to drink too much water.

But I still wonder if hydration is being overemphasized. Does everyone need to carry water all the time, especially in the middle of a city?

From my point of view, there are four basic reasons people read: (1) for entertainment, which includes escaping reality; (2) for knowledge, or to learn about things they don’t know in some fashion; (3) for inspiration, and/or to think about matters in new or different ways; and (4) for occupational/scholastic necessity, although I’d hope scholastic necessity includes learning (which it doesn’t, unhappily, for all too many students today).

People also delude themselves about those reasons. Reading about cinema stars or the Kardashians, or reading tabloid stories about natural disasters and the like isn’t learning; it’s entertainment. And reading to obtain knowledge in order to use that knowledge to reinforce existing thought patterns is certainly reading for knowledge, but it doesn’t do much for thinking when the mindset is already ossified.

One of the great benefits of fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is the best of books in these genres can not only entertain, allow a certain escapism, but also impart knowledge and spur thought. On top of that, they can provide income and a following for the critics who review them, although, from what I’ve seen over the years, a certain percentage of those critics neither learn anything from some books nor are able to think about what the book contained, but then they probably weren’t the best students, either.

In any case, F&SF at its best does all of the above, and at its worst still provides entertainment…and that’s not something you can say about an awful of aspects of society today.

So… keep reading.

One of the latest political polls I saw showed that the three “non-political” candidates [Trump, Carson, and Fiorina] for the Republican Presidential nomination now hold over fifty percent of the likely Republican voters. Another showed Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton in several key primary states. Whether these numbers are totally accurate or whether they rise or fall, they’re highly significant in two regards.

First, they show how much anger and dissatisfaction there is among the electorate with professional politicians and Washington, D.C. And second, they show the lack of political and economic understanding on the part of most Americans, not to mention a high degree of hypocrisy.

I’ve already written about the anger, and that’s pretty obvious to many Americans as well as the political commentators.

I’ve mentioned aspects of the lack of understanding before, and some comments in response to my observations also illustrate that there’s a wide-spread failure to understand why seeming “simple” and “common-sense” solutions, as many proposed by Trump and others are called, are neither simple nor common-sense…and certainly not affordable under current taxation levels. A tremendous percentage of the American people, when it comes to government, have no comprehension of the costs involved, one way or the other.

Most Americans believe that wasteful federal spending should be eliminated, but they won’t support the elimination of excess military bases, because they represent jobs in their districts. The army has more tanks than it can use; that’s one reason why the army had no problem turning over excess armored personnel carriers and other equipment to police forces. The BLM runs essentially runs in the red because federal grazing rates are between half and a fifth of what private grazing rights go for. IRS audit rates are the lowest in years, if not forever, and getting to the taxpayer assistance lines takes hours at times because Congress cut IRS funding so much. Lower audits mean less revenue and more successful tax cheats. The list of Congressionally mandated requirements that reduce tax revenues and subsidize special or popular interests, virtually all in response to popular or contributor political pressure, would take pages and pages to even summarize.

There was a huge hue and cry over corporate profits and American companies moving their headquarters abroad, and the popular and political response wasn’t to deal with the reason behind those moves, which is the U.S. tax structure, but to make it more difficult for companies to do that… which is already proving ineffective and giving more companies to move their headquarters abroad — exactly the opposite of what would be desirable.

Minimum wage workers want higher wages, and need them if they are to be able to support themselves without federal aid, but small businesses don’t want higher wages mandated, and most voters who aren’t minimum wage workers don’t want to pay higher taxes to provide income support and welfare benefits to the working poor who need those benefits because their wages are so low.

In short, voters want lower taxes, but no cuts in federal programs that benefit them, only in “other people’s programs,” and they also want to beef up programs such as immigration enforcement, law enforcement, without any increase in taxes.

Yet they’re angry that the “career politicians” can’t deliver this impossible package, and they get angry at any politician or public figure who points out that what everyone wants costs more than anyone wants to pay.

So they’re voting for the “outsiders.” The problem is that basic economics doesn’t care whether a politician is an insider or an outsider. We’ve reached a point where we can’t keep borrowing more than we’re willing to taxes ourselves… and a huge percentage of the electorate isn’t willing to face the problem. They just want someone else to pay for it, and they’re voting for anyone who will support their delusions.

With all the conflict during “Hugo season” about diversity, multi-culturalism, social justice and their relation to story-telling, I thought a little perspective might be useful, particularly with what I see as an underlying and incorrect assumption that F&SF was a white man’s province bereft of diversity and multi-culturalism until recently, say, perhaps the last twenty years or so.

To begin with, multi-culturalism and diversity in science fiction and fantasy didn’t start in the 1980s or 1990s. Andre Norton [aka Alice Mary Norton] was writing about full-blooded Navajos in the 1950s. Leigh Brackett featured Eric John Stark, with skin almost as dark as his black hair. The Left Hand of Darkness, the acclaimed novel by Ursula Le Guin featuring a biologically hermaphroditic alien human society, was published in 1969, and those are just a small smattering of the F&SF novels featuring diverse racial and gender settings and themes published long before the current “diversity” movement. Ironically, of course, a good many of those novels were written by women and published under male or gender-neutral pseudonyms. And yes, such novels were not in the majority. They were a definite minority, and often such efforts were overlooked when they were plainly there.

Ursula Le Guin has noted more than once that the dark skin of the protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea has been continually overlooked by readers and cover artists [or perhaps that artist was instructed to overlook it for marketing purposes]. Heinlein’s main character in Starship Troopers was a young man of Philippine heritage who spoke Tagalog, something that still gets glossed over in critiques of the novel.

By the 1ate 1980s, more than twenty-five years ago, F&SF novels with culture, race, and gender issues were certainly prominent, and the works (and death) of James Tiptree, Jr. [Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon] had inspired even greater discussion of gender and diversity in F&SF. Octavia Butler began publishing short stories in the early 1970s and went on to become a major voice for black themes and writers by the 1980s.

A number of other writers have quietly incorporated multi-culturalism, gender and gender issues, and other forms of diversity in their books as well, even if they have not been recognized as “standard bearers.” I’ve written eight books strictly from the female point of view and another three with multiple POVS, one of which is female in each of those three books. I’m also known for strong female characters. I’ve written two books from the “minority” POV, one a black male officer in a predominantly white space force, the other a blond Anglo in a predominantly Asian/Shinto culture, both of whom face quiet discrimination. I’ve also had strong minor characters [and not villains!] who have been gay, lesbian, and transgendered. I didn’t do any of this in service to any ideology. Those were the stories I was telling, and they were based on the kinds and types of people I know. I’m not claiming any honors or demanding praise, but I am saying that too many authors who quietly include what might be called multicultural societies and diversity in their worlds and who write a good story often have that diversity ignored or dismissed because it isn’t blatant enough, or because diversity itself isn’t the story. This often amounts to the minimization of non-obvious excellence and the elevation of often less-excellent message stories.

I’ll also admit that, at times, diversity can and should play a larger part. The Left Hand of Darkness is an amazing novel, and was especially so when it was written and published, particularly because it featured a straight protagonist facing politically and physically life-threatening situations sparked by the interplay of his very presence and two cultures whose hermaphroditic nature created a far more ambiguous and indirect weave of societal pressures than the protagonist could ever have anticipated. The story and the culture cannot be separated, and that’s the way it should be.

That doesn’t mean that every good or excellent F&SF story needs to be about diversity, or gender, or multi-culturalism, although not including a diverse cast of characters, given the makeup of our world today, strikes me a highly unrealistic. Nor should a novel be elevated unduly or praised merely because it features diversity, but a novel that has a good plot, and good characters, with diversity as well, should rate higher, in terms of literary value, than one that is simply a rip-roaring adventure story.

All of which underscores what I’ve been trying to point out for months – it should be the totality of the story or book, not the current flavor du jour [or decade] of what’s on readers’ social agendas, that determines the value of a book.

As a result of some of my comments about the Hugo kerfuffle, I’ve received several comments, here and elsewhere, that state or imply that I just don’t understand what happened and why. I think I understand it very well. But I obviously need to go back to some of the basics that appear to have been overlooked.

Human beings work through groups. Those groups range from cliques and gangs to various organizations and businesses all the way up to government. All these groups have rules. Those rules fall into two categories: explicit rules and implicit rules. The explicit rules can be verbal, but in modern society are usually written. The implicit rules are always unspoken and supposed to be understood by members of the group. Often, if people don’t understand the unspoken rules and follow them, they’re considered to not really be a part of the group. Generally speaking, the more structured and larger an organization is, the more it operates on explicit and formal rules. And the more diverse it is, the more it needs a greater amount of written rules to make sure that everyone understands what those rules are, and the consequences for breaking them. That’s why governments tend to accrete more and more laws and regulations as they grow and age.

The World Science Fiction Society is closer to cliques than to governments. It has specific rules and written procedures for how the Hugo awards are determined, but, as the recent Hugo kerfuffle demonstrates, there are clearly unspoken rules of behavior expected by the group I’ve termed “the new traditionalists,” which has dominated the proceedings and award selection process for at least two decades.

Just in the past few days, author and editor Eric flint offered an essay describing, with statistics, the change in F&SF “literary”/award standards and how the field has changed from one where there was considerable overlapping between “popular” fiction and the works getting awards to one where there is very little, if any. This change suggests that “story” alone is no longer as important a factor in determining “excellence.”

The “sad puppies” were formed by a loose group of writers and fans who felt, rightly or wrongly, that the new traditionalists were sacrificing “story” to other factors such as diversity and gender issues in determining what represented the “best” in F&SF. They raised the issue, and, predictably, because they constituted the minority of those voting, were effectively ignored and their concerns dismissed and minimized. So, after several years, this past year, they came up with a “slate,” something that was not prohibited (and, in fact, probably could not be prohibited in any way that would be effective).

Immediately, Vox Day, aka Theodore Beale, came up with an even more radical “rabid puppies” slate, out of motives that appear to be far more grounded in self-interest, and possibly gaining lots of publicity for his small publishing house and the authors he publishes.

At this point, the new traditionalists and their supporters expressed outrage, and have continued to do so, claiming that the puppies “gamed the system,” despite the fact that what the puppies did was well within the written rules. Why such an outpouring of outrage? Because the method used broke the tacit and unwritten rules accepted and followed by the new traditionalists.

What is continually overlooked in this kerfuffle is that the sad puppies expressed a concern, which was overlooked and minimized. Exactly why did they have any incentive to follow unspoken rules which they believe put them at a disadvantage in expressing their concerns?

This underlying conflict then provided Vox Day with the perfect opportunity to “self-publicize” and gain a platform he could not have possibly gained in almost any other way… as well as, incidentally, to further negate the actual underlying issues originally expressed by the “sad puppies.” The reaction to his acts clearly confirmed that there are unspoken rules and that the majority of Hugo voters did not like others breaking those rules. Whether the Hugo majority actually represents the feelings of the majority of F&SF readers is also another question, because even the massive increase in the voting membership of WorldCon represents less than one percent of all fantasy and science fiction readers.

In any case, the fact is that the unspoken rule against “slates” has been broken, and if the new traditionalists and their supporters do not greatly increase their participation in the initial nominating process, something that a number of others have already stated, the same sort of slate versus anti-slate confrontation could happen again next year. And if it does, the only “winner” will be Vox Day.

We have two groups with very different perspectives on what constitutes excellence. Each believes the other is wrong, misguided, or the like. Those on each side can argue quite logically their viewpoint. The problem is that, all too often, people with fixed mindsets believe absolutely and firmly that their understanding of a situation is the only way it can be accurately perceived. It has nothing to do with whether one is liberal or conservative, or any other social outlook. It has to do with a certain firmness of thought, described as “principled” by each of themselves, while describing their opponents as misguided or unprincipled.

In the case of the Hugos, as I see it, and I’ve certainly been criticized for the way I see it, there is some truth in both the cases of the “sad puppies” and the “new traditionalists.” [I have to say that I don’t see much truth or objectivity in the points of the “rabid puppies,” but perhaps my mindset just doesn’t accept what seems to be hateful provocation or use of hate to self-publicize.] And, as I’ve said before, not only do I think the field is big enough for both viewpoints, but the sales of a range of authors prove that rather demonstrably.

Yet each side is contending that the other did something hateful and discriminatory, largely because one side refused to abide by unspoken rules that they believed minimized their concerns. In the end, the other aspect of groups that this conflict illustrates, again, is why unspoken rules tend to be superseded by written procedures in larger groups.

One thing I have observed over a moderately long life is that when two sides both feel so strongly, usually neither is as “right” as it professes… and until each addresses the other’s concerns in some fashion, the conflict will persist – unless one side just destroys the other, which has certainly happened in human history.