I don’t watch soccer/football much, in fact, seldom, but I did end up watching the World Cup semi-final match between the Netherlands and Argentina… and the result underscored something I’ve said before, except with regard to basketball. Mastery of the simpler aspects of anything is key to continued success.

The Netherlands and Argentina played to a scoreless tie after regulation, and then after another 30 minute additional period the game was still scoreless.  Argentina converted four out of four penalty kicks in the shoot-out, while the Netherlands failed on two out of three attempts. While a penalty kick isn’t nearly as easy as a basketball free-throw, it’s far, far easier than scoring a goal in play, when it’s often difficult to even get near the goal with the ball, let alone get a clear shot.  Argentina made that abundantly clear, by not being able to score a single goal in two hours of play, but by putting four out of four shots in the goal in the shoot-out.  The Netherlands lost by not being able to accomplish the simpler tasks in the game.

This “case study” goes well beyond soccer or basketball.  I’ve seen people lose jobs because they failed to write a simple thank you note, or to recognize a former colleague or superior in a different setting.  I’ve seen more than one beginning writer destroy/abort his or her career by arguing violently with editors who have seen scores of writers come and go.  I’ve seen political careers tanked because no one asked a simple question – How did things get this way? – before going off in a direction that considering the answer would have most likely precluded.  I’ve seen singers lose competitions because, when talents were evenly balanced, the singer with more carefully chosen attire and polite mannerisms topped sloppy dress and flip mannerisms. And in all these cases, and others, the individuals involved were anything but stupid.  They just relied on their innate brilliance or talent and ignored mastery of simple skills.

A successful writer needs more than mere story-telling ability and more than mere skill with words, and, more than sometimes, some of those extras are simple skills, such as tact, thank-you notes [NOT emails,unless you’re in the tech world, where hand-written or print thank-yous have become a symbol of backwardness], and a certain amount of respect for those who control one’s fate.  And, oh yes, just plain showing up on time…or getting manuscripts in on time — and, here George R. R. Martin is the exception who proves the rule.

More than a few times, I’ve commented on how important it is for a fantasy or science fiction writer to understand basic societal economics if that writer wants to portray a workable and realistic fictional society.  In recent years, more and more writers have become clearly aware of this, and their books reflect this.  More recently, however, the comparative absence of finance and banking has struck me, yet some form of banking, whether it be counting houses, money-lenders, or the like, has existed in virtually every human civilization that became sophisticated enough to have iron tools. Any form of wide-spread trade requires at least a rudimentary financial system, and a financial system allows what one might call an oligarchical concentration of power and wealth, which in turn feeds intrigue and scheming.

One of the problem with portraying stock exchanges and banks is that few writers really understand them enough to portray just how much they can multiply either evil or good…or how quickly they can turn what seems to be good into total disaster. And, of course, the usual depiction of the banker/financier ranges from Shakespeare’s Shylock, to Dickens’s “early” Scrooge, to Mr. Potter in Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life,   to, more recently, the bankers and brokers in Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street. The problem with such one-sided depictions is that they actually understate the impact finances and financiers have on society and government.

The key role a financial system plays in any economy is to provide liquidity, because without liquidity transactions and trades become almost impossibly difficult.

I recently read an incredibly detailed massive fantasy epic, one that depicted almost all aspects of society – traders and their formal and informal associations, rulers and their bureaucracies and sycophants, military types, barbarians, entertainers, crafters, laborers, merchant princes, even authors – but not any financiers or bankers, despite a welter of trade and conflict between adjoining lands.  A great story – but I kept wondering what financial structure was behind it all, and why the bankers, or their equivalent, didn’t put the brakes on some of the idiocy, because successful bankers do tend to be conservative [except in today’s USA], sometimes foolishly so.

So… for better or worse, don’t forget the bankers… or their equivalents.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the Hobby Lobby case, declaring that companies, at least those privately held, are not required to provide birth control benefits under their health insurance plans when providing those benefits is against the religious beliefs of the company’s owners.  Whether the decision sparks other lawsuits or remains a relatively narrow example of an owners’ religious beliefs being able to dictate the scope of health benefits provided to employees remains to be seen.

The underlying issue that the Supreme Court did not address, and which Congress has also steadfastly ignored, is the degree to which Constitutional and statutory “rights” of individuals have been either enhanced or diminished by the exercise of the “right” to apply religious freedom” to others.

In the Hobby Lobby case, the Court verdict essentially states that an employer can effectively limit the access of employees to health care, solely on the basis of religious beliefs.  The employer is not denying birth control services to employees, because employees can theoretically purchase those services on their own.  But there are other aspects to consider, which the Court either did not consider or decided were not important enough to be a factor.  First, when an employee must pay additional funds for health services that the law declares other businesses must provide to their employees, the employee’s access is diminished or costs are increasing, if not both, and they are in a position whereby their total effective compensation is effectively lowered by the employer’s assertion of religious freedom. Additionally, other businesses, which do not have a religious exemption, will likely pay higher costs for employee healthcare insurance.

Thus, in effect, others must pay for Hobby Lobby’s “religious beliefs.”  Obviously, this would not be the case if there were not a law requiring insurance coverage, but there is, and the Court did not strike down the ACA as infringing on religious beliefs. In effect, the Court’s decisions declare that a public policy requiring health care coverage is Constitutional, but that effectively any employers with a clear religious affiliation can refuse to provide coverage for any procedure against their beliefs.  This effectively equates privately held corporations with churches, even though churches are non-profits, and money-making corporations like Hobby Lobby not.  All this brings up an interesting situation, because the Constitution declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” but there’s nothing in the Constitution to forbid the Court from issuing a legal opinion that effectively states that religious beliefs trump civil law and can be used to deny some citizens benefits that most others are entitled to receive under that civil law.  This strikes me as a rather dangerous precedent, particularly when it is endorsed and supported by so many of those who have railed against the fact that Islamic Sharia law supersedes civil law in the Middle East.  It’s wrong for Muslims to have Islamic law trump civil law, but fine for American corporations to sue, and win, for religious beliefs to trump civil law?

Not that any of the far right will see, or care, about the hypocrisy involved. They got what they wanted, and that’s all that matters to them.

In Starship Troopers [the book, not the movie], one of Heinlein’s characters makes the point that the society which governs Earth at that time isn’t necessarily the best, but that it has one redeeming feature – it works and operates reasonably well.  There are many aspects to that society with which critics have taken issue over the years, especially in recent years.  Some of that criticism reflects changes in society from the time at which Heinlein wrote the book, such as the fact that there is no longer the underlying feeling among a majority of the U.S. population that patriotic male citizens owed a certain unqualified duty to support their country with military service in times of war. The criticism about the details of Heinlein’s future society tends to overlook the basic point he was making about governments – they have to work well over time if they are to survive and their people are to prosper.

In turn, for popularly-supported governments to work reasonably well, the citizens have to have a common set of core values and socially and legally enforced basic rules that apply to all. Today, I think it’s fair to say that the U.S. government may still work, but there’s a real question as to whether it works reasonably well, and an even greater question as to how long it will work under the current deadlock between the two political parties, whose espoused core values are becoming increasingly divergent, and who keep coming up with more and more exceptions to those core values with which one group or another disagrees.

In the worst of cases when the core beliefs of citizens differ widely, each side perceives the other as an extremist, if not an out-and-out enemy, which is the case in all too many Middle East countries today. In the United States, the situation is structurally different.  Those who are politically active tend to be more extreme in their beliefs.  Whether politics attracts extremists or extremists flock to politics to attempt to impose their beliefs on others, the result is exactly the same. Those active in political parties are more extreme in their views than the vast majority of Americans, and the most extreme views tend to dominate party politics.

This growing extremism among political activists has several impacts.  First, the percentage of Americans who identify with either major political party has declined steadily, to the point where independent voters outnumber either Republicans or Democrats. In 1940, for example, less than 20% of voters identified as independents, while today the number of independents is approaching 50% of those eligible to vote. Second, the ideological gulf between Republicans and Democrats is at the widest point ever measured, and widening, and greater percentages of each party are inclined to portray the “other party” as the enemy.

Current and past history demonstrate clearly that great and unbending ideological differences make workable governing difficult, if not impossible, and yet the extremists in both Democrat and Republican parties, particularly the Republican party at present, are advocating even greater extremism as solution to governmental deadlock.  Neither seems willing to recognize that extremism in pursuit of ideological purity has never resulted in a workable government and has, if unchecked, always led to disaster, and that in the end, the only beneficiaries are the arms merchants and the undertakers.  But then, the extremists always insist that it’s the other party that’s extreme.

Obviously, different writers have different styles, and some writers’ styles are almost indistinguishable from others, and some writers’ styles are very different. Occasionally, a writer’s style is so unique that it’s virtually impossible to imitate or emulate, and, in general, such writers tend not to be huge financial successes, although a very few do manage it, usually those whose styles do not scream out the nature of their uniqueness.

That’s easily said, but what is style? According to the sixth edition of A Handbook to Literature, “Style combines two elements: the idea to be expressed and the individuality of the author. From the point of view of style it is impossible to change the diction to say exactly the same thing; for what the reader receives from a statement is not only what is said, but certain connotations that affect the consciousness.” Or what about this definition? “In fiction, style consist of the codified gestures by which the author tells the story.” Or this one by the mystery author Nancy Curteman? “Style is not what an author writes, but the manner in which she writes it. It is an author’s unique way of communicating ideas. One might say that style is the verbal identity of a writer. An author defines her style in word choice and syntax.”

The last definition centers on how a writer chooses words and sentence construction to convey the story to the reader. There are two aspects of that conveyance. The first is whether the words and structure are clear and in general accord with the “rules” of grammar, or at least enough so that the reader understands what is going on. The second is how the reader perceives that construction, and often that perception is based on the reader’s skills as a reader, having little to do with the writer’s skills as a writer. Use of unfamiliar terms, less common tenses, or extremely complex sentences are often cited as “stylistic” flaws, but their use, per se, is not a stylistic flaw. Only their misuse is.

Another question about style that’s especially relevant to fantasy and science fiction is whether the ideas presented are themselves part of style, or whether only the way in which they are presented represents style. This may seem like hair-splitting, but it’s really not, at least not in F&SF. In mainstream fiction, including mystery novels, frankly, the ideas are all out there. Most of them have been there for centuries, if not longer; so the stylistic issues center around the presentation of the ideas, not the ideas themselves, and this this mindset is reflected in the Curteman definition above.

By presenting new ideas or new perceptions about technology that does not yet exist or magic, which may never exist in our universe, except in the sense described by Arthur C. Clarke, an author changes the reader’s context, and by changing that context, influences, and perhaps even creates conflict with, the reader’s normal connotations of what some words may represent. By initially presenting “black” as the color of order (with the associated connotation of “law”) in the early Recluce books, I definitely challenged certain perceptual connotations, at least for American and western European readers. In a different way, the “culture” novels of Ian Banks also create challenges to standard connotations, and certainly so do the works of China Mieville and others.

Add to this the possibility that the presentation and development of an idea in fiction cannot truly be separated from the way in which it is presented and developed, and that suggests that critics and readers who talk about a writer’s style and ideas as if they are separate are missing the point. Over the years, I’ve read and heard comments about writers along the lines of “great ideas, poor style” or “great style, weak ideas.” That’s missing the point. Ideas are a part of style, not separate from it. Elegantly crafted sentences without the support of ideas well-presented are the literary equivalent of empty calories, and ideas thrown baldly at the reader might be classed, using the food metaphor, as raw meat of some type or another, possibly digestible, but hardly palatable to most. Or put another way, good style is when an author captivates you to the point where you enjoy the meal without thinking of either the ingredients or the way in which the chef put it together.